Greetings, Adventurers!

We've been hard at work since you last heard from us, and we're happy to announce that another round of playtesting is underway! If you signed up for one of our earlier playtests, make sure to check your email inboxes; we've been rolling out invites over the last few days! Those who already participated in prior playtests will already have access to the new playtest, as well! And if you haven't signed up yet... what are you waiting for? There's always a chance we'll send out even more invites!

The current playtest focuses on the Campaign mode, where you can recruit, train, and manage your adventurers. It's recently been revamped with a new structure and content, and is now centered around a 'run'-based approach on randomly-generated maps. You'll be rewarded with various resources regardless of your success or failure (though exactly what you get will depend upon that!) that can be used to purchase various things—including, perhaps, rare classes—so that win or lose, you'll still be able to progress through the meta-game and unlock new features at your base.

In addition, we've added a total of four new classes for you to try: the Assassin and Cultist, as well as the two hybrid classes, General and Centurion!

We look forward to hearing your feedback on the adjustments to the campaign mode, as well as the new classes!

Greetings, adventurers!

It's been a little bit since our last update, but we've got some good news for you: a new demo of Escape the Mad Empire is on the way!

Our first demo focused on the game's prologue, and was based on the curse of the Undead King. In addition to a tutorial, it contained three dungeons, each with their own variation on the Undead King boss fight!

This new demo centers around a new Escape Run game mode, which focuses on an intense, survival-run style of play. Your goal is to explore and survive a set of three dungeons; your success will unlock the next difficulty level for you to continue challenging yourself!

• This new mode does not have boss fights or an embedded story. It also contains no meta-game or campaign mode content; these will be introduced in future iterations on the demo!
  
• Each dungeon has a challenge room at the end, offering a bigger 'final battle' rather than a boss fight.
  
• The Escape Run mode has 5 unlockable levels of difficulty, ranging from 'Easy' to 'Hellish.'
• Characters will have a maximum level of about 3 on the lowest difficulty level. This will increase to a maximum of 4 on the second difficulty level, and up to 5 (for the first time!) on the third, which is where we feel the game mode really starts to open up!
  
• Players should start to encounter the hardest types of monsters currently available in the game during this third difficulty level, and even maybe discover some that have never been shown to the public before!

The new Escape Run game mode also introduces two new features for your adventuring!

• Party Composition: Rather than being locked into a pre-set party, players can now select which classes they'd like to take along for the adventure. Want to have a more rounded party? Great! Want to challenge yourself by filling every slot with one class in particular? Go for it!
• Skill Selection: Rather than be assigned a skill at random upon leveling up, players will now be able to select from a list of three skills or spells when a member of their party reaches the next level!

The new demo will be available for download tomorrow, May 8th around 1PM Eastern (10AM Pacific, and 7PM CEST)! We look forward to hearing your feedback—come join us on our community Discord[discord.gg] or post here on the Steam discussion boards if you prefer!
You may have done it before... but can you Escape the Mad Empire this time?