The Future, Rising

Dear Rising Community,

Back in April of 2014 when we launched Vampires Dark Rising on the Play Store, we hadn't the slightest clue we’d be here writing to you in 2021 about all the cool stuff we want to bring to you. Which is of course exactly why we’re here, and it’s entirely thanks to you. As a community your devotion to VDR has been an astonishing part of the game’s presence and growth. Your support is unparalleled and we’re so grateful to every single one of you!

We know our additions to VDR up to now have been sparse. As it is when handling anything complex, developing content for games is a process rich with potential, but also one that's more than happy to steal away time. With only four of us on hand, half of us working second jobs, no outsourcing, and developing two games on multiple platforms—it’s easy to see how matching the speed of competing companies with large teams and great financial backing is an unattainable goal. But that isn’t stopping us. If we excel at anything, it’s seeing our visions come to fruition.

So buckle in, because we’ve got a vision to share and have been hard at work on it.

Ever ask yourself what’s to become of VDR in the future? We have... and we have an answer! Our ultimate goal is to expand the Rising with fun, full feature sets, improve how you socialize, overhaul its navigation and look, and up the excitement value to where it’s primed to become the model for one of many amazing worlds you can play in with us! It’s a long road ahead, but we’ve got our map in hand and we’ve already started our journey.

By now we’re at the point where our vision is going to begin positively impacting you. Specifically: as time marches on you’ll be getting more and more updates. We’ll be updating in phases, the first of which will be smaller as we work our way up to the inclusion of a brand new feature which not only offers text-based exploration, bossfights, and new reward types, but is meant to play into and off of your current core gameplay mechanics.

Excited yet? We are too, so let’s talk some about what’s to come!

Coming Soon: Customization/Avatars
Our partnership with Gravatar is soon to come to an end. While this is unfortunate, we’ve got you covered. We’re excited to announce that player avatars will be introduced to the game as a new form of customization. Not unlike your old Gravatar you can change them at your whim! Avatars will first launch as a Crypt exclusive—but don’t worry! They’ll soon be able to be earned as free rewards in a future feature.

Our goal is to offer a plethora of high quality, diverse and exciting artistic representations for you to collect and use! As time marches on we intend to offer an eclectic array of two dimensional art styles in multiple mediums that span the numerous time periods, genres, and cultures to which vampires exist—as well as those items, landscapes, scenery, and creatures a vampire may encounter.

We’ll have more details in the official announcement—keep your eyes peeled!

Coming Soon: Premium Currency
We’ll soon be introducing a new premium currency called Instinct Points [IP]. Once implemented, Instinct Points will completely replace Sparring Points. Not to worry, your free Spars will remain intact and we'll be transferring any of your purchased spar points to IP! As time goes on you’ll find that IP will be a useful currency for extending your gameplay in future features and more.

Stay tuned for the official announcement for more details!

Next: Expanding Red Blood Powers
Get those Marked Ones ready for a workout, because we’ll be breathing new life into your Red Blood Powers arsenal with 38 new unlockable abilities! But wait! We’ve taken it up another notch. When this update hits, every single one of your Red Blood Powers will be available for upgrading. If you’re excited about fusion and ready to buff your stats, this update will knock your bats off!

More details to come in a future announcement!

Next: Prowling the Darkside Lands
This update will bring an entirely new feature, called Prowling. Prowling will become the fun, new beating heart of Fusion and Red Blood Power Upgrades. Several times a day you’ll be able to freely undertake quick narrative adventures to prowl the Darkside lands to farm for unique fusion ingredients.

You’ll be in charge of your Prowling experience, deciding if it’ll take you into dark forests, deadly plains, deathly mountains, or dangerous cities! In any of these locations you’ll be hunting for precious materials to fuse your upgrades, earn free avatars, and even more. During your prowl you may find success, failure, or run smack into a fatal confrontation via a brand new kind of turn-based boss fight!

More details to come in the future!

Next: Sparring Revisions
Along with using Instinct Points to extend your spars, this feature will see some general improvements in how and what it rewards. We’ll have more details on this later!

In the Future: Events & Participation
We’re taking a long hard look at our monthly events! Not only are we hoping to expand the types of events available to you, we’re also working out a fabulous plan to shift toward a contribution-based reward system. We truly feel those who participate deserve more. Keep your eyes peeled for details when we’re ready!

In the Future: VDR 2.0 - Visual Overhaul
The Rising was built and designed in 2014... and admittedly, it looks like it! At the time the game launched so many years ago, the top-end smartphones were hardly more than 4-inch qHD resolution (540x960) and CSS wasn’t nearly as flexible as it is now. We’re overdue for a refresh, don’t you think?

We’ve since come to understand a clear vision for what a future VDR should be, and we’ve nicknamed it “VDR 2.0”. So sometime in the future you’ll see the refreshed logo on our App page and VDR+ become official, along with improved navigation, layouts, graphics, fonts, and more. We’ll be in touch again as we get closer to bringing this into reality and we’ll have even more after!

In the Future: Even More!
To make a VDR 2.0 feel complete, we have future aims for even more game features, a more specified lore, new ways to socialize, a more useful and engaging storefront, and better ways to communicate with you ingame. We also want to deliver a dedicated, always available live coven/team chat, and offer you even deeper customization options that make avatars just one of many things which you can use to make the Rising feel like your personalized home.

Also, we made mention of the Rising being but one of many worlds? That’s not a throw away line. We’re not going to touch more on that right now, but we have some exciting plans surrounding that notion.

Thanks for being here and do stick with us—there’s so much to come it’ll blow your mind. We'll be back soon with more. See you then!

— Kwaai Software
     VDR Dev Team