- New demo, out now! - 17 September 2026
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…
- Remember, remember, the 5th of November! - 27 August 2026
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 an…
- Superpowers unlocked! - 22 May 2026
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…
- Devblog: The Remix Update - 30 April 2026
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…
- Up next after Next Fest? - 13 March 2026
Hello Wielders,About two weeks ago we launched our demo during Steam Next Fest. The result was truly spectacular and we now have over 25,000 Wishlists for the game. A huge thank you to each and every one of you who have played, wishlisted and left feedback for us!Almost 1000 people have filled out the feedback form available through the game. On top of that we've read all Steam reviews, Discord messages and Tweets. It's a mountain of thoughts and suggestions, but we are happy to climb it! So today we want to talk about what we've learned from your feedback and what we're doing about it!Here's a nifty summary from the week of Next Fest! It seems rejuvenation is a popular skill! The early game needed further improvement. This was the single most common piece of feedback across every channel. The first few runs felt like too much of a grind. Rats took too many hits. Gold rewards were too l…
- Twitch votes and treasure troves - 26 February 2026
Hello Wielders! What’s this? Two patches in one week? I guess we are feeling weirdly productive during Next Fest! We've now added something we've been wanting to try for a while: Twitch chat integration. Plus a big expansion of trinkets and a bunch of fixes that we hope will make the game feel noticeably smoother. Streamers, this one's for you! When you level up, your Twitch chat can now vote on which upgrade they think you should pick. The vote is a suggestion, the streamer always makes the final call. But it's a fun way to get your community involved in the run. We're curious to see how people use it! We've also added a lot of new trinkets, bringing the total to 56. Since trinkets drop randomly from chests during a run, there's now a much wider pool of effects you might encounter. Some runs you'll get trinkets that complement each other nicely, others will push you in unexpected direc…
- First patch is out! - 24 February 2026
Hello Wielders!The demo is live and we've been reading every comment, review, and piece of feedback rolling in. The response has been incredible. Thank you. Genuinely! Seeing players discover things we've spent months building. That's the stuff that makes all of this worth it. We want you to know that we are listening, and shipping! Based on all feedback during the last 12 hours we have now pushed an update for the demo. Here is the lowdown:Unlocked the Creation Spire and Caustic Exhale spell.Added DPS and total damage to the Summary screen.Fixe the Auto aim. It should work now, but tell us if it doesnt!Squashed a performance issue with experience giving map objects.Polished the important object marker effect so it's easier to spot what matters in the chaos. Caustic Exhale in full effect! Time to use that Area skill and synergize!We've been playing a lot of runs internally with the new…
- Next Fest is here! - 23 February 2026
It's our great pleasure to present you with the demo for Wielders of the Essence! It was tough getting the demo ready for Next Fest but we think you will like it!Please check it out, and feel free to join our Discord and/or leave feedback through the form accessible in the demo! The team is working hard to prepare an update for the demo later this week that will open up more content. Fingers crossed that we can make it happen. Enjoy! /Magnus and team Lavapotion
- We changed everything (Try it at Next Fest!) - 18 February 2026
Hello Wielders!We've got two things to share today. First: Wielders of the Essence isn't quite the game we first showed you. Second: A demo launches on February 23rd during Steam Next Fest.But let's back up a bit.When we announced the game, we described it as an intense survivors-like where "frustration and flow co-exist." The playtester feedback we got was encouraging. People thought it was good! But there was a recurring note: it felt like it needed something more to stand out. And honestly, we agreed. There are a lot of survivors-likes out there. We needed to find our own take on the genre.Around the same time, we were playing the incremental indie darling Shelldiver. Like, way too much. That game's core loop (short runs feeding into satisfying incremental progression) had us hooked. And we started thinking: what if we could fuse these genres together?So we did. And it worked. To exp…
- Devblog #3 - 13 December 2025
Hello Wielders,Much of our time right now is spent “dogfooding". (It’s a real term, I promise!) It basically means trying your own product out and improving as you discover what works and what doesn’t. So right now we are ferociously building features, trying them, noticing what feels off, making adjustments, and then repeating the loop. It is a steady rhythm of small discoveries and small corrections. It’s in this process that the true identity of Wielders takes form. Every test reveals a little more of what feels satisfying, what falls flat, and what surprises us in the best possible way.This coming week, we will take a nerve-wracking but important step. The first external playtest will be sent out to a small group of players. It is always a strange mix of pride and anxiety to let someone outside the studio try something that still feels unfinished. It is also one of the best ways to…
- Devblog #2 - 5 December 2025
Greetings Wielders,I’m Niklas, the CTO of Lavapotion, here today with a devblog about how we are working with the levels for Wielders. Well, since this is a game with a much shorter development time than compared to Songs of Conquest, we need to figure out two things related to the levels!First, there’s the question of “How important should exploration be in WotE?”. Many other games in the genre have various emphasis on this, so we needed to consider how it affects the gameplay and frankly - what audience it will attract! Secondly, we needed to find out how much time we could spend on creating exploration elements of the levels.Behold our level editor in action!Let’s look at two simplified examples of the difference we are talking about:Brotato: Pretty much no focus on exploration. You see the whole map at all times. More focus on interesting choices between runs.Vampire Survivors: Larg…
- Devblog #1 - 28 November 2025
Hello Wielders!It’s been one week since the game reveal, and we’re honestly buzzing about finally being able to talk openly about Wielders of the Essence. Starting something new is always a mix of joy, nerves, and a little bit of “oh no, people will actually see this”, but that’s part of the fun.When debugging enemy behaviour, it's nice to have development tools like this one that Niklas made. It helps both visualise movement patterns and makes for nice GIFs, so thanks, Niklas! We’re currently deep into finalising the core gameplay. Before we dive into the juicy effects and the dopamine spark, the foundation needs to be genuinely fun. That means refining the moment-to-moment experience, testing Wielders and their signature attacks, experimenting with spells, tuning troops, and discarding elements that don’t earn their place. It’s still all a bit messy, in the best possible way (we’d lik…
- Announcing Wielders of the Essence! - 20 November 2025
Hello dear reader, We’re Lavapotion, a small studio from Sweden, best known for our fantasy strategy game Songs of Conquest. Where Songs of Conquest is all about deliberate strategies and long game sessions, we wanted to explore something faster: a game built around split-second decisions and “just one more run”. Something that somehow lands right between oddly meditative and stressfully intense. After countless hours with bullet hell games, we found ourselves drawn to their rhythm and intensity. We couldn’t resist exploring what a Lavapotion version might look like and a bullet hell set in the Songs of Conquest world felt worth exploring. What started as a side project soon took on a life of its own. After a few workshops and plenty of wild experiments, something fast, chaotic, and fun began to take shape. That something became Wielders of the Essence. Non-stop pixel action! We’re curr…
