Hunter's Hand Demo · published · build 23266906
Two weeks of mostly forest-biome and combat-feel work. The headline is the battle visuals rework finally landing on main; new impact camera work, scene lighting, and an enemy death crescendo, alongside a real pass on making the forest enemies feel distinct from each other instead of reading as the same fight in different skins.
Also fixed a genuinely embarrassing bug: enemy AI was drawing from a filtered copy of its own deck instead of the real one, so it never actually emptied and reshuffled... around 44% of enemy rounds were just generic attack/defend/charge on repeat instead of their unique cards showing up. That's fixed now, and cleared the way for a proper identity pass: every forest enemy owns one signature status instead of half of them all rolling Stun or mind-debuffs.Escape got reworked too, it's no longer a coin flip you could lose after already committing your whole turn to it. If you've unlocked it, it works deterministically, and it clearly costs you the fight's rewards.What's new
Enemy AI actually cycles its full deck now instead of re-drawing the same 9 cards forever
Every forest enemy reworked to own one signature status (Bramble Torrent, Nighthowl, Nightshade Nymph, Fungaloid, Blight Hawk, Forest Shade, Thornbeast, and more all touched)
Escape is now deterministic - no roll, but it costs the fight's spoils; fixed a soft-lock where fleeing the Forest Guardian stranded the run
Escape panel split into its own scene with per-encounter flavour text
Incoming-damage preview is now watertight against multi-hit attacks and Thorns/Soulbond recoil
Battle visuals rework merged: impact camera scaling, scene relighting per turn, stamped decals, ability banners, and an enemy death crescendo
Acid reworked into a proper "ignore X DEF this turn" pierce instead of destroying block outright
Drain is now blockable by default; a new Piercing Drain variant keeps the old ignore-DEF behaviour for guardians and Soul Drain
Poison's status UI now shows stacks only (duration and stacks were the same number, just confusing to show twice)
Fixed a crash when an enemy died mid-activation from Thorns/Soulbond/Counter reflect damage
New controls-hint overlay: on-screen input prompts that fade out over time
Event rooms now gate on affordability - Gambler, Blood Sacrifice, Fountain of Life, and Howling Altar won't get offered if you can't pay; Warding Circle's "Back Away" is always free now
Secret ambush battles: Event nodes have a 12% chance to be a hidden tier-1 fight instead (tutorial runs excluded)
Groundwork for a new City biome as the run's opening trunk, plus generalized biome-transition code and dynamic map option buttons
Shop got a "?" info button explaining colourless vs. class cards
Targeting glow shader visual upgrade
Full patch notesSystems
Enemy draw pile fix: play_top_card was popping from a filtered copy instead of the real draw pile, so it never depleted and never reshuffled — fixed, along with a matching bug in conditional-card selection
Forest enemy identity pass: each of the 12 base forest enemies now owns one signature status (Stun was on 6/12, mind-debuffs on 7/12 before this); Madness retired from the biome entirely
Escape rework: removed the roll entirely — escape now always succeeds once unlocked, but you leave the fight's rewards behind; added a NO ESCAPE state (with tooltip) for top-floor and guardian fights where fleeing isn't allowed
Fixed battles_fled_succeeded double-counting from a duplicated signal emit, which meant the Pacifist/Untethered medals needed only 2 escapes instead of the intended 3
Fixed three battle-scoped state leaks (enemy_attacks_first, enemy_evade_chance, Burden's hand-size refund) that survived a flee and carried run-wide
Damage preview now predicts multi-hit attacks and incoming Thorns/Soulbond recoil, instead of reading "safe" on turns that were actually lethal
Fixed a crash when an enemy died mid-activation (from its own Thorns/Soulbond/Counter recoil) before its queued cards finished resolving
Acid reworked: now a true "ignores X DEF this turn" pierce rather than stripping block outright, and fixed to always expire at end of turn regardless of stack count
Drain reworked: base Drain is now blockable (heals only for damage that actually gets through), with a new Piercing Drain keyword preserving the old ignore-DEF version for the three guardians that use it and the player's Soul Drain
Event room affordability gating — Gambler, Blood Sacrifice, Fountain of Life, and Howling Altar won't be offered (or will get swapped) if you can't afford them when you arrive
Warding Circle's "Back Away" is now always free, even at Threat > 0
New secret ambush battles: Event nodes have a 12% chance of secretly resolving to a tier-1 fight instead (map icon stays generic, no spoiler; tutorial runs untouched)
City biome groundwork: runs now open in a City trunk before branching into the existing biomes; generalized the biome-transition code so it isn't hardcoded per-biome-pair anymore
Balancing
Forest enemy tuning pass: Bramble Torrent, Withering Coils, Needle Storm, Toxic Bloom, Waning Vines, Ethereal Rend, Forest Shade, Blight Hawk, and Nightshade Nymph all retuned
Eldritch Elk's Horrifying Antlers toned down (was 5 Might/5 Armour first fight, now 3/3; later fights 6 instead of 10) — the old numbers stacked too hard with Goring Charge for an opening-turn blowout
Ghastly Greenman's Overgrowth banking increased from 3 to 5 stacks
Removed the old per-tier escape-chance multipliers (obsolete without a roll)
UI and visuals
Battle visuals rework merged: impact camera now scales continuously with the played card's power instead of 3 fixed tiers; per-turn scene relighting; stamped impact decals; ability banners; hit-reaction polish
Enemy death crescendo: background desaturates and holds on a kill, with a "DEATH BLOW!" popup riding the existing death animation
Per-card element colour accents (Bloodcurse Revenant → bleed, Stormguard → lightning, Anointed/Martyr → holy)
Damage/crit/block/word popups no longer freeze mid-animation during hit-stop
Camera shake reworked to read as weight instead of random jitter; wind-up shrunk so the impact snap reads as the payoff
New controls-hint overlay showing input prompts that fade out over time
Targeting glow shader visual upgrade
Poison status UI now shows stacks only, not a redundant duplicate duration number
Card tooltips reformatted for readability; unique status colours added; fixed "Razor Thorns" mis-highlighting as the Thorns status
End screen visuals updated; floor-path icons now render correctly (were rendering black due to a runtime-shader bug)
Shop "?" info button explaining colourless vs. class cards
Bugfixes
Fixed DEF not applying until a card activated instead of when played, on 5 named cards and 6 pet cards
Fixed shop items falling off-screen after a reroll
Fixed broken Discord link across the game's menus
Fixed a pink bar glitch at the top of the HP UI
Fixed card art showing through during tenuous/discard-played animations
Fixed the escape panel's Continue button being effectively unclickable, and a case where a fight could keep resolving behind it and pay out a full victory on top of an escape
Fixed Crusader's Gearplate sometimes falling back to a basic stance instead of granting Exalted when a real alternating pair had been earned