 What's up everybody, I'm the Mangus. You are awesome and many of you join me for the latest playtest of Revenblade. The majority consensus was that the game has much more depth than anyone expected. Much of that is due to the map design. Revenblade incorporates verticality in such a way that it impacts how the game is played beyond just having some rocks to stand on. The various elevations found throughout the map provide a series of checks and balances that provide a means for the losing team to come back while also rewarding the winning team for putting in effort. This is some really basic design philosophy that seems to be underutilized in many games today. Before I explain how the map's verticality impacts the game, allow me to first explain the win conditions of Revenblade to newcomers. Just a reminder, this game is not in an alpha state, however, they do playtest damn near every Wednesday and all you have to do to join is hop in their Discord link in the video description. You can also download an offline version to test out the mechanics in the map layout if you want. Revenblade's basic layout is very similar to a single mobile lane. Situated at either end are your spawn points for each team. There are four crystals located on the map and your team needs to take control of all four in order to win the game. You begin with control of the two on your side of the map. In order to take control of the crystals, you first need to take the capture point closest to that crystal. You must complete health from the crystals to capture them, but doing so without first taking a capture point causes you to deal less damage as illustrated right here. And there will be a danger zone around the crystal that will deal damage to you if you enter it. It's not like a MOBA tower where one person takes the damage while everyone else can just tee off on the crystal. Anyone in the danger zone will take a massive amount of damage and die. So you first take the capture point, deactivate the danger zone and take out your opponent's crystal. You only have so much time before the danger zone reactivates so you do need to be careful and make sure you have enough health to retake the capture point and start the process over again. Also note the crystals do not reach in health so you don't lose progress. We'll go ahead and get on the archer and take a little tour around the map to illustrate some of these points. This is the offline version you would normally spawn up there in that little window. That's your spawn point so let's head down to our first crystal. This is the crystal that if the enemy team takes this game over you lost. We move up these stairs here we got this capture point. This is the capture point that the enemy team would have to take in order to take that crystal or you could take that capture point to take this crystal back your first crystal. I'll call that the primary crystal I guess I don't know but archer's really cool by the way. The longer you hold the bow back the further the projectile goes and the more damage it deals. She has a nice heavy too that does AOE damage arrow. But as we move down here this is the very first capture point of the game. Both teams will be fighting over this capture point in order to try and take the opposing crystal. Now what I think is really cool about this is that it's situated down at a choke point and that you have to fight uphill in order to get the crystal giving the defending team a bit of an advantage as they have plenty of vantage points to fire down on you. So let's move along after you take that crystal you would take this capture point mirrored on the other side and then after you take that capture point you could take the enemy's crystal and if you take it down you win. A good bit of the fighting in this game revolves around this very first crystal capture point so it's a nice choke point down here. There's a lot of AOEs that explode and go off and the more people on your team in that capture point the faster it is to take and the um if anybody from the opposing team comes in while you're taking that capture point it it stops it stops the that completely stops the capture but that's not the only way in you can take this little side route here but it's a little dangerous because if you fall at any point you will die but you can get into kind of behind the enemy team while they're trying while you're doing this capture point so that's good for let's say the archer or some assassins or something like that. If you are successful in winning that uphill battle and you take the enemy's crystal you are rewarded you get kind of a flat area kind of a neutral area here for the capture point but once you take this capture point you're actually on the uphill you have the you have the high ground in the fight which allows you to assault the last crystal a little easier now that's and it's important that that's a little bit easier because the enemy team has an easier time defending because their spawn point is directly on top of their crystal so deaths for them are as impactful full as deaths for you because if you die at this point you hit you spawn at the other end of the map you have to run all the way forward also the last crystal has about I think 150 percent more health than the first crystal so there's just a natural series of checks and balances here yes it's easier for the defending team to defend that crystal because they're spawning right on top of it however the opposing team because of the verticality of the map has a little bit of an advantage because they've got they've got the higher ground and it's like that throughout the game it's not just a bunch of stones outcroppings while there are stone outcroppings that you can get on top of and rain death down on people from above it's not all about that it's all about the the it's all about the objectives of the map being placed in such a way that there's always an advantage and disadvantage for each team and it matches up to whether you're opposing or defending so there's the basics of the game I personally find the layout of this map to be a piece of subtle genius I hope they put as much thought into future maps as they have with this one and yes they do plan to make more than one map for this game if you're interested in the various heroes and mechanics you can check out a video from panda sniper linked in the video description below hopefully some more of you guys will come check out the game with me on Wednesdays the team is trying to design a very competitive game while still remaining friendly to budget gamers and are looking for suggestions on how to do so personally I think a change to the lighting would go a long way towards making the game look a little bit more ominous right now the map looks way too sunny and happy making you think it's like a kid's game but this one is not for children the mechanics are deep and the skill ceiling is high hopefully I'll see some of you place testing and providing feedback in the future but for now this is the mango sunning off you guys have a good one man goose by the way I will be suing revan blade for the unlicensed use of my appearance