Guardians of L.U.S.T.: classic combat is coming back, comic-style

Greetings, agents! Rocketman on comms.

This entry is about a decision that will shape the game from here on, and it started with you.

You asked, we listened

When we moved the game to Match-3, the feedback was loud and clear. A lot of you missed the old battles and said so in comments and messages.

We didn’t want to answer with a quick promise. For the past couple of months we kept collecting feedback, testing options and talking it through as a team. Thank you to everyone who kept writing during that time: every comment was part of the discussion.

The decision is made: classic combat is coming back in an updated form. It isn’t in your hands yet, it’s in production right now, but this time the approach works.

Why we stepped away from it

The honest answer first. The old combat demanded more than a team our size could produce. Full battle animations for every character are among the most expensive things in game production, and making them in-house either took far too long or fell short of the quality bar. The version we could realistically ship never looked or felt the way that combat deserved. That’s why we switched to Match-3, which let us keep fights varied with the resources we had.

Here’s the thing, though: I always liked classic combat more. What I didn’t like was how it turned out in our hands: the presentation, the look, the feel. Your feedback pushed us to sit down and attack the problem one more time, and this time we found an angle that plays to what we’re good at.

Battles staged like a comic

The new direction is combat that plays out like a living comic. Instead of full animation, fights are built from hand-drawn stop-motion frames: the camera punches in on strikes, abilities land as bold impact frames, and key moments are highlighted like panels on a comic page. Think Darkest Dungeon, but in our world and our art.

Hand-drawn art is what this project does best: every background, character and scene in the game proves it. Comic-style combat is something we can produce at the quality it deserves, and we intend to.

Mechanically it will be close to the last version of classic combat you played before the switch. How exactly it will work (cards, abilities, the full ruleset) is still on the drawing board, so I can’t share details yet. What I can say is that the early implementation is coming together, and we like where it’s heading.

We’re working through the details now. Treat the screenshots as a direction, not the final look.

Match-3 isn’t going anywhere

One important point: Match-3 stays in the game, and everything we built for it stays too.

Plenty of you enjoyed it, and it earned that. The themed boards, the hazards, the build synergies are worth keeping. So Match-3 moves into the role it fits best: special encounters, where a full staged battle isn’t the right format. Think Siren’s restaurant trials or a boxing match against Laila. These are early examples, and the lineup may still change.

Beyond fights, Match-3 will also live on as a puzzle minigame for situations where a battle makes no sense: cracking a special lock, clearing a collapsed passage and other hands-on problems an agent runs into in the field.

When

I want an early build with this combat in your hands within the next couple of weeks. I can’t promise an exact date yet: combat comes first, and I won’t ship it half-cooked. Subscribers will get it the moment it’s ready.

Meanwhile, the story pass continues

In parallel I’m reworking the game’s story texts. Some scenes have been rewritten so many times that the meaning got tangled along the way. I’m rewriting those passages, building proper quest maps and tightening the story itself. The combat rework and the story pass are moving side by side.

Thank you

This change is happening because of you. You told us the combat direction wasn’t right, kept explaining why, and stuck with the game while we figured out the answer. That support made this decision possible, and I’m excited about where the game is heading.

Keep the comments coming and tell us what you want to see next on Discord. We read everything.

End of transmission.