In today's Steam update we'll have a look at the death system within Evercore Heroes.

It's a little awkward to say, but we don't expect you to save the world of Lumerea on your first run, nor the second or third.. you get the gist!

(but we'd love to see you try and prove us wrong!)

As Evercore Heroes is an action roguelite, falling down during a run, and standing back up right after to do better next time is expected and an integral part of the core gameplay loop. This loop is what helps you learn, get better at the game and try out new ways to tackle tough challenges. We really want you to feel the progression as you play with your friends, having to adjust your strategy as you aim to beat difficult runs, specific bosses and/or unlock new awesome content together.

As always, everything you read here is still a work in progress and can change over time based on game development and player feedback.


There are two ways to go around 'falling down' in a game of Evercore Heroes.

You have the mission, your selected run, which you are trying to beat by making it till the end and beating its end-game encounter. You will fail your mission the moment all three players within the party are downed and you have no way of getting back up to finish the challenge of the island you are on (these are our randomized 'rooms'). This will automatically trigger the end of the mission and will bring you to the end-game screen where you will be able to view all rewards you gained during that run.

Then you have your sentinel, the character you play, which can get downed during an island challenge. This happens when the hit points (HP) of your sentinel reaches '0' and you have no way to get back up. This results in your character taking a break from combat and being out for the rest of the island encounter. It'll be up to the rest of the team to make up for it, finish the challenge and bring their teammate(s) back to continue to the next island!

This can bring about some pretty intense hero moments for both you as your friends when only one player is left to make it all happen - no pressure, you got this!!

(When all sentinels fall without a way to get up - you will lose the mission)


Depending on the type of island you are on, you get a reward for completing the encounter. Originally, it was the rule that as long one of the sentinels made it through an island encounter, the whole party would revive and could pick a reward (depending on the type of island).

We felt this wasn't punishing enough. We noticed players starting to play more reckless as in the end, as long at least one player was still standing, they would all win.

We also tried the opposite, where players that got downed received no rewards at all. We quickly noticed that although you are on the same team and trying to achieve the same goal, it wasn't as much fun when your teammates gained more rewards than you during a run and you couldn't focus on the build you wanted to build.

In the end we landed on a system that lies somewhere in the middle and does a bit of both. Although you won't get to pick a reward from getting downed during an island encounter, you instead receive a magical item called a 'Phoenix Shard'.

This luum-infused shard is automatically used to revive you the moment you select it, but its remnant will remain in your inventory as a shard you can sell at a store during your run. This means that although it's sill not desirable to fall during an island encounter, it still provides you with a (smaller) bonus that you can turn into power and towards your build later down the run.

(When you fall but the rest of the party survives the encounter - you will be offered a Phoenix Shard)

We'd love to hear what you think of this system! Let us know in the discussion area!

For now we hope you enjoyed getting some more insight in how Evercore Heroes is played and we'll see you again next time!

~ Evercore Heroes team

Lotus, the Heiress of Hydris, has the ability to revive herself from death, which is a central theme in the new narrative players will experience in Evercore Heroes.


Hello heroes, this is Volibar, co-founder of Vela Games and game director on Evercore Heroes.

Throughout its life, Evercore Heroes has seen a lot of changes and iterations, along with changes to the team at Vela. In this post, I wanted to take a little time to bring you through our major milestones over the years, and share some of the ups and downs along the way.

Whether you’re new to Evercore or you’ve been with us since the early days, hopefully you’ll have a better understanding of our journey so far, and why we believe in this game so much!

When we started Vela Games in 2018, we set out to create games that anyone could play together and have an amazing time, whether they were already best friends or strangers playing together for the first time. As you all know, playing online games can be a very mixed bag in terms of enjoyment with others!

Because of that vision, we have always wanted to build Evercore Heroes into one of the best team games ever. Set in the mythical world of Lumerea, it requires players to collaborate, combine their heroes’ unique abilities to overcome formidable bosses and unravel the narrative mysteries of the sinister Fate’s Blade and the shattered Evercore crystal. The foundation of cooperative play was never just a feature–it was always the core of our gameplay philosophy.

Realizing that vision, however, would turn out to be a quest with a lot of unexpected twists and turns. This is the story of how Evercore Heroes was reborn.

“Project-V”, the first codename for Evercore Heroes, started out as a team-based PvE experience, with light inclusion of Roguelite design patterns. We wanted to blend Roster Heroes together with PVE session runs. Sounds pretty familiar (as that’s what we have again now)? We had a small team of about 12 and were building the foundations of a multiplayer game, along with the unique roster of heroes. For those curious, Syrus was our first hero we made, because we wanted to be able to test both Damage and Support gameplay!

We experimented with large, open maps that were procedurally generated, and this was fun, but it wasn’t fun consistently. We also had an early version of Shards, which were our gameplay modifiers.

QUESTION: What do you think Project-V stood for? Reply in the comments and we’ll give you the answer.

(Character concept exploration for Syrus)

After we had this initial framework for the game, in 2019-2020 we really wanted to push the teamplay. We knew we didn’t want Evercore Heroes to be “co-optional” (a game where you could technically play at the same time, but didn’t really interact as teammates). Many games have co-optional features, and while they can be fun, we felt like players were really looking for those special moments when you come together as a team and achieve something amazing that you couldn’t do on your own.

We developed tight gameplay between the heroes - so tanks would have to taunt and protect, support would have to heal or shield, and DPS would have to interrupt and pick the right targets. Throughout the game’s life, this has always been a focus for us, and something players have consistently highlighted that they really like - especially as we’ve continued to develop and expand the unique roster of heroes.

(Early gameplay footage of Project-V)

As the game was coming together in 2022, our team had grown in size, but we were always experimenting with ways to make Evercore Heroes more fun and replayable. Through extensive prototyping of game rules and community feedback, we realised there was room to push the envelope further - to somewhere no one had really gone before.

The introduction of Competitive PvE elements was a decision born from the desire to innovate continuously and introduce a level of competition that was engaging and rewarding, but without hardcore domination (in other words, ending other people’s fun). Players not only had to cooperate with their team but also compete against the environment and other teams. This added a thrilling layer of strategy and urgency to the game, enhancing the variety of each match.

We also really wanted a 4-Team format in this mode. This allowed us to knock teams out through the game - meaning that if you weren’t doing well you wouldn’t be stuck in a long, hopeless feeling match. However, as we added game rules, having 4 teams increased complexity of both the rules and the game’s interface. Also, in this mode, sometimes you could see and interact with other teams, while other times you couldn’t.

During our Closed Beta in Summer of 2023 with this version of the game, too many players found it difficult to access the fun and depth that was there. By trying to innovate in so many areas, we had a game that was promising and fun, but was just too complex for its own good.

(The 4v4v4v4 Competitive PVE in action - there was a lot going on!)

As the games market became even more difficult in 2023 along with the Competitive PVE version of Evercore not resonating with enough players, we had some incredibly difficult choices to make. As those who have followed us already know, the end result was that we dramatically scaled back the team, and chose to reinvent Evercore Heroes.

We decided to call this effort “Project-R'' for both Roguelite, but also Reborn. We furiously designed, tested, and debated for weeks after the closed beta on how to change the game, while many of our Vela team members were leaving around us. It was a heartbreaking time at Vela, but we knew we owed it to our players and our team to set an exciting, new direction that could deliver on the game’s potential (and everyone’s hard work). We knew we couldn’t make a new game, so we decided to take Evercore Heroes back to its roots, keeping all of the best things we had made, but not being afraid to throw something out that wasn’t working.

Scaling down the team to a small number as we refine our focus means that we are even more of an underdog in a fierce industry going through a difficult time. But the challenges have only strengthened our resolve.

(Early gameplay for Project-R with a focus on more intuitive gameplay)


Project-R refines our original vision set out in the very beginning, focusing intensely on the strong, roster-based co-op gameplay that our community loves, while perfecting the strategic elements that allow players to experience wide variations in gameplay and deeper team dynamics. Plus, it’s fun to make crazy builds and break the game!

We're rebuilding and enhancing every aspect of the game—from a more intuitive game flow, more polished maps, and refined enemy behaviours to a deeper and more engaging narrative that tells the story of Lotus, Kaine, and the Luum Sentinels. We’ve made significant adjustments to the HUD, the camera, and the art style of the game, while adding full gamepad support. We even completely rewrote the combat system – goodbye MOBA combat, hello direct movement and more responsive action! Then there’s all the meta-progression…

There is too much to cover here, so we’ll make sure to share more details about the changes and improvements in the weeks to come. Let us know what you want to hear about most in the comments!

We are incredibly excited about the future of Evercore Heroes, even though the road ahead is still challenging. The journey has been full of learning and adaptation, but our commitment has never wavered. We're grateful for the community's patience and enthusiasm, and we can't wait for you to play what we have in store with the new Evercore Heroes.

Here's to the next chapter in Lumerea, where together we will forge new legends!

-Volibar

Today we'll be taking a deeper dive into what Evercore Heroes looks like as a Team-based Action Roguelite! Grab your bags and let’s go on an adventure across Lumerea!

Here's a visual image showcasing a high level summary of the game flow you will experience in Evercore Heroes:

*As always, the game is still under development meaning that things featured in this news blog might change over time based on development and player feedback.

Before you start a run you always start in Castle Everae - our player hub. This is a single player environment where you can:

• Experience and engage with newly unlocked story elements
  
• Unlock new heroes & check out all shards you've found so far (and which you haven't yet!)
  
• Upgrade, unlock and select power upgrades for your heroes
  
• Visit the cooking station to use newly discovered ingredients to cook recipes for during your runs
  
• Collect new looks for your heroes - so you can adventure in style
  
• Fight practice dummies to theorycraft new builds

We'll do a deeper dive into some of these Hub elements in a future content blog.

Once you are done preparing and are ready for your next mission, it's time to pick your favourite Sentinel (this is what we call our heroes). We have a unique and diverse roster of sentinels available and will be adding more over time for you to experiment with and theorycraft. All our sentinels are currently categorised into three primary core categories: tank, support and damage dealers.

While some heroes really like to stick to their core role and will play more straight forward, others will be more complex and will want to dip their toes and expand into the other roles based on what hero upgrades you select and what rewards you go for during a run. Experiment with your team, redefine roles (or create complete new ones) and form completely new team synergies not yet seen before!

Once you and your friends have their sentinels locked in you'll be transported to a selected mission. Every mission run is replayable and will take place in one of the regions of the world of Lumerea. Every region will have new shards to collect, new enemy types to face and a different end-game encounter for you to overcome.

The run will exist out of a number of dynamic randomised islands (rooms) for you to get through that will get more challenging the further you get into the mission. If you make it through till the end you will be faced with the end game encounter of the selected mission, which for example could be a fierce boss fight!

Every mission run will offer different types of randomised islands that all will have their own type of challenges and rewards. You might be tasked to kill all enemies on the island, survive for an amount of time or face a challenging objective like a big laser tower you have to bring down among many others! The rewards are quite diverse as well, and could be a powerful shard, an upgrade to your abilities or stats, more gold to spend or something completely different!

When beating an island and claiming your reward, you will be faced with another decision on what island to tackle next with your team. Do you require more immediate power or do you want to invest in the future with the risk you might never get this far? Do you want to recover to push further to gain rewards or do you want to chase a very specific build instead? It will be up to you and your team to find a way through and create a build that can overcome the mission challenge!

Whether you made it to the end game encounter and achieved glorious victory or fell halfway heroically trying, the run will end. The run is over, however, it's time to collect some loot! You will gain rewards based on how far you got during the game and what actions you took. Once back in Castle Everae you will be able to use these rewards to unlock new content for future runs. We've now made a full circle and are back at step 1. Are you ready to go again!?

We'd love to do more deep dives like these and have more lined up for you. Let us know via the Steam forums what you think and if there’s anything you’d love us to cover.

We'll see you again next time!

~ Evercore Heroes team

We are thrilled to reveal that Evercore Heroes is a 3-player Team Action Roguelite!

Get ready to choose your favorite hero from a wide roster, customize your loadout, and go out on missions (runs) with your friends across the different regions of Lumerea!

Each run will contain a series of challenging, procedurally shuffled maps where you’ll work together to defeat tough enemies in blazing real-time combat, overcome tricky skill-based challenges, and of course survive epic end-game encounters!

The world of Lumerea can be a dangerous place so we don’t expect you to save the world on your first run. After each run you'll unlock new heroes, discover additional shards to use in future runs and get access to more powers to truly customise your heroes.

Come up with new builds & strategies, learn from your mistakes, regroup, and try again to win the day as a team! As you progress you’ll advance to new missions and uncover more of the gripping story!

We have a lot of exciting plans for Evercore Heroes and this is just the beginning. Our current plan is to hit Early Access version later this year.

You can expect us to start dropping more gameplay related content over the coming months. We will also continue to look for opportunities to playtest the game with you, so we can continue to develop the most awesome version of Evercore Heroes together.

If you like what you hear and see, consider adding us to your wishlist!

https://steamproxy.net/steamstore/app/2586780

You’ll be the first to hear about updates and upcoming playtests, and it really helps us make this game the best it can be!

If you have any burning questions or want to leave feedback we’d like to invite you to our Discord server where we are most active.

Join our Discord! [discord.gg]