Wielders of the Essence

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• Announcements·2 Oct 2026Official

  One month until launch!

  Greetings Wielders! It’s hard to believe that our little game releases in just a little over a month! What started as a crazy idea during a morning meeting has definitely grown far beyond the palate cleanser we first thought it would be. Now, about a year later, it’s an action-packed, chaotic, spell-slinging survivor that definitely stands on its own frog-like feet. It's eerily close! We’ve had some awesome help from the community through our closed test groups, and our larger playtest is starting today! Interest in it has been great, and we’ll start by letting a couple hundred of you loose in the swamp to play around with the game and tell us what you think.But bragging about what a great crowd you are isn’t everything I wanted to talk about. I also thought I’d tell you a bit more about what the game has actually grown into and keep you posted on the process. I should get around to playing that last map too! There are five different maps, each with its own enemies, bosses, and style. That already gives you plenty to fight your way through, and when we throw the different difficulties on top of that, there are quite a few hours of charming frog-themed chaos waiting for you.And it’s not only the enemies that bring variation. You start out with the new Wielder G’roda, featured in the game's key art. But there are more allies to rescue as you fight through the different biomes, each with their own playstyle, strengths, and weaknesses. It's a garden party, but not everyone was invitedThe cloaked M’sugna, for example, is a hell of a spellcaster, but she doesn’t lead nearly as many troops. Playing as her forces you to take a very different approach compared to the other Wielders, but let me tell you, having that much magical firepower at your fingertips is quite the rush.So, does all this mean we’re on track for that November 5 launch? Well, it sure looks like it!We’re just about content complete and are currently tweaking our endgame, making sure there is still plenty to...
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• Announcements·17 Sept 2026Official

  New demo, out now!

  Greetings Wielders!​Been a while since we did an update, and so much is happening right now that we’d better give you one. Things are looking a little different around here. Wielders of the Essence has brand-new key art, one that feels much closer to the game it has grown into: spell-slinging frogs, swarming enemies, and the right amount of chaos, but with a bit more charm. Like a beautiful tadpole finally growing up. What a charming smile Perhaps more importantly, we’ve updated the demo! There have been a lot of changes, from visual improvements like new map entities, buffs, and prettier spells, to gameplay changes both big and small. And a lot of them are there because of the feedback we’ve gotten from you, the community. So thank you! It's right there, what are you waiting for? A major new feature has been added: difficulties. One common piece of feedback was that the game could be a bit too easy, and with this new feature we can pretty much guarantee there’s a challenge for everyone. It also adds quite a bit to the replayability. What tactics work, and which don’t? Will that Arcana-focused approach get you through the same map at twice the difficulty? Well, maybe. But that’s for you to find out.Your build and tactics options have grown quite a bit as well. New powers and synergies connect troops, spells, skills, and equipment in all sorts of useful and occasionally ridiculous ways. Defeating enemies now pushes the next wave earlier, so clearing the battlefield means you can get on with things instead of politely waiting for a timer. Bosses have also become clearer encounters that interrupt the regular chaos. They do enjoy making an entrance. We’ve also reworked the compass and spent quite a bit of time on the balance and pacing of the opening levels based on your feedback. Combat has seen plenty of work too, along with menus, controls, and general readability. The demo is still only a small part of the full game, but it now gives you a much better idea of what W...
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• Announcements·27 Aug 2026Official

  Remember, remember, the 5th of November!

  Hello Wielders,We were so caught up in the preparation for a new demo build and PC Gamer show that we completely forgot to post this news on Steam. Wielders of the Essence launches on Steam on November 5th, 2026! To make it official, we premiered a brand new trailer at the PC Gaming Show. Give it a watch, and let us know what you think!If you haven't played in a while, you'll be pleased to know that we released a big demo update in June. What was new? Tons of things, but in order of the top of my mind: Enemies now spawn in a way that gives you more room to maneuver around them. Slightly less grind than the old demo. We've added more bosses, a new level, another Wielder, and a range of new enemies. And of course, there is also a talking egg that teaches you how to Wield the Essence!Einar is working on new Key Art for the game! Opinions are appreciated!We're closing in on 40k wishlists and we’ve been a bit swept away by the response so far! Every wishlist, every piece of feedback, every clip you've shared has pushed this game further than we imagined. Thank you. We're not taking a single one of you for granted. More buff-buildings are coming! If you haven't yet, the best thing you can do to help us is wishlist Wielders of the Essence and play the demo during Bullet Fest. Then come tell us what you think on Discord or in the Steam forums, we read all of it!And remember, remember, the fifth of November.(Yes, we know that most of you already know about launch date and that this might be old news. But rest assured we have more meaty devblogs coming up very soon!)/Magnus & Team Lavapotion
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• Announcements·22 May 2026Official

  Superpowers unlocked!

  Hello Wielders, Last time, we promised a new trailer and a huge demo update. The trailer is now done, and we are thrilled to announce that it will premiere at the PC Gaming Show on the 7th of June! The demo update is still cooking, but you can expect it to be released on the 8th of June, at the start of Steam Bullet Fest. It feels great to be able to finally share a trailer as well as a demo with new and exciting gameplay! Patrik is working on making the menus for map objects a bit more impactful! The biggest piece of news about the game is the Superpowers! Your Wielder loadout is full of troops, skills, and spells. If you bring a specific combination into a run, it has the potential to unlock a Superpower. It's a powerful new effect that changes how parts of your build behave, often with new artwork to match. We won't tell you too much more about the Superpowers, though, as we want you to discover them in the game for yourself! Trying some stuff out with the dev tools. Adding four units apparently breaks the UI! Seeing how these new Superpowers also added design complexity, we chose to trim down the Wielder roster slightly, now totaling six. However, we've tried to make the Wielders feel very different from each other. Rasc, for instance, moves with higher than average speed, a narrow attack pattern, and gets an extra troop slot. M'Sugna, on the other hand, is built entirely around spells and has more spell slots but far fewer troop slots than the other Wielders! The whole game world also got a fresh coat of paint. We reworked the lighting, shadows, and materials across every biome, from Arleon to Loth, so each faction's territory reads differently. Likewise, the Egg has now gotten a visual glow-up to accurately represent its importance to the meta progression. New art, a new level-up sequence, and a new effect when you feed it XP from your runs. More menu updates! That's a sketchy-looking shopkeeper if you ask me! Niklas spent a good stretch of this update down in...
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• Patch Notes·30 Apr 2026Official

  Devblog: The Remix Update

  Hello Wielders,We've been meaning to write this devblog for a while. The honest reason it took so long is that every time someone sat down to summarise where the game was, somebody else would push a new feature into the build and the summary would be out of date. So we eventually gave up waiting for a quiet moment and decided to just write the dang thing.Working hard, or hardly working? There's a subtle difference!In the weeks after Next Fest, Patrik had been tweaking his own private set of game settings, originally just to make the game more optimal for him to test against. Slightly lower enemy speed, a different XP curve, a few other tweaks. We started calling it Patrik's Remix, mostly as a joke. Then everyone playing the game started reaching for it instead of the default settings. After a couple of weeks of this we realised what was happening: Patrik had basically been balancing the actual game while pretending to balance his own little spin off. So we baked the Remix into the main build. It’s now the official “mix”.Look at all those amphibians, perhaps enjoying roasted marshmallows and a cup of hot cocoa?One of our testers mentioned how much they loved that the roads gave a speed bonus. Which they didn't. But we figured maybe they should? It was a small tweak that we ended up adding to the game. As Niklas put it during a playtest, you get a "subconscious desire to follow the path." Which works rather neatly, given that's exactly the phrase he used months ago when explaining why he was adding roads in the first place.Patrik har reworked the visuals for the treasure chests. Sweet.A bigger piece of feedback from the demo was that players often felt unfairly swarmed by enemies, so we rewrote the wave system. Waves now ramp up rather than slamming in at full force, and the kill threshold to clear a wave is 95% instead of 100% so you don't have to chase down stragglers. Niklas also wrote what we're calling the anti swarm helper. If the crowd system detects you're pro...
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