Hear ye, hear ye, Minstrels! As you know, the situation in Harmonicis is critical. On our public Discord, you can read the statement issued by the Minstrels’ League, calling on every willing soul to join them in Eryndell, as well as Herd’s Director’s exclusive interview regarding the recent events.
The Black Titans are marching across Fraktar. We need you, not only to save the world, but also, and above all, to help us care for the Melodus, who need music to grow strong and happy.
Today’s update should address a number of issues you identified very early on: a smoother onboarding experience, a tutorial divided into several parts that will finally allow you to properly learn how to play, the ability to talk with Faerion, one of the mysterious Twins who regularly assists the Minstrels’ League, and a hefty collection of fixes.
These changes should make Herd far more accessible on lower-end systems. Major performance issues have been resolved, particularly in the main menu and during matches, and we have replaced all of our previous shaders with custom-built shaders of our own. The game should now be much smoother, prettier, and more enjoyable for everyone.
We hope the new tutorial lives up to our expectations. Please do not hesitate to share your feedback with us!
🎓 New: The Playable Tutorial
The biggest addition in this version: you now learn Herd by playing it.
Step-by-step guided learning: Faerion accompanies you through a fully scripted match, with highlighted elements, an arrow pointing to what you need to interact with, and progression driven by your own actions. Your opponent plays their turn and then hands control back to you, just like in a real match.
Faerion has a voice: the tutorial dialogue is fully voiced.
A short narrative prelude: the introduction gets straight to the point, with only six lines of dialogue, so you can start playing cards as quickly as possible.
“Talk to Faerion”: for the first time, we are revealing the earliest narrative foundations of the game. Tell us whether you enjoy them, whether they inspire any theories about what might happen next, and what kind of adventure you think you are about to be drawn into. We promise, it is going to be huge.
Progress is remembered: the game records which tutorial stages you have completed, rewards you with a “Tutorial Complete” icon, and saves your progress through Steam Cloud.
Animated buttons and a dedicated interface for the tutorial menu.
☁️ Steam
Steam Cloud: your progress is saved in the cloud and follows you from one computer to another.
Achievements: the achievement system is now implemented in the game. Their publication on the Steam store page will take place separately.
🃏 Card Readability
Category icons inside card text: every mention of a musical category, Bass, Melody, Voices, Chords, or Drums, in a card description is now followed by its corresponding small icon, aligned with the height of the text. This works in every language and everywhere a card is displayed.
Flow icon: the Flow resource now receives the same treatment. Every “+1 Flow,” “costs 2 less Flow,” and similar effect displays the crystal icon, the same symbol used for card costs and on the resource panel.
Sharp cards in hand: cards displayed in your hand are no longer blurry.
New artwork for Ragpipe, along with an updated Bassquake card.
🎯 Gameplay Comfort
Playing cards: the entire column is now clickable. You no longer need to aim precisely at the central slot. When a card is selected, clicking anywhere on the player-side column belonging to its category will play it. The active slot lights up when hovered to clearly indicate where the card will go.
What you preview is what you click: the target announced by the highlight is now always the exact target activated by the click. No more situations where something lights up but clicking it does nothing.
Visual aids in regular matches: the tutorial’s glowing indicators are also used during normal matches. Your category areas light up when you need to choose a category, and the Soundboard highlights itself whenever a Utility card is selected.
The preview follows the match state: zooming in on a card now closes automatically if that card is destroyed or discarded in the meantime. Its display size has also been corrected.
🐑 Melodus
Scoreboards are now fully connected: the 3D boards for the Nature Reserve, your island, and the opposing island display their Melodus counts and update live whenever one changes sides, for both the host and the client.
Balance fix, missing spawns: some matches silently started with 18 or 19 Melodus instead of 20 because a randomly selected spawn position was too close to an obstacle, causing the creature’s creation to fail. This has been fixed: the total is now always correct.
Defeat screen: a heartbroken Melodus now greets you whenever you lose a match.
🌐 Multiplayer: Improved Client-Side Reliability
A series of fixes for the player joining the match, the client, particularly when latency is involved:
Reliable Steam names and avatars: the player banner, whether showing you or your opponent, could remain empty for the entire match on the client side because it was still attached to outdated data during the transition from lobby to match. The banner now monitors its assigned target and automatically reconnects to the correct information.
Tiny cards fixed: a card played by the host could appear at postage-stamp scale for the client when its network creation occurred during an animation. Its scale is now normalized as soon as it arrives.
No more endless waiting music: the mulligan music loop could continue forever for the client if the stop instruction was lost along the way. Music is now controlled through a synchronized state, allowing every machine to independently converge on the correct loop.
🔊 Sound
Mulligan sound effects: one sound now plays when clicking a card to exchange it, and another when confirming with “Ready.”
The Landscape ambience now makes way for card music: this background sound fills the silence while no card music is active. It stops as soon as the first resolution involving a played card begins, including Soundboard cards, and does so for both players. Previously, it could continue playing over the cards’ music, or even continue indefinitely.
⚡ Performance and Visual Quality
Improved performance on lower-end systems: quality settings have been revised and card artwork resolution has been optimized. The game now runs better on modest hardware without any visible loss in quality.
A sharp image at every quality level: Low and Medium settings previously rendered the game at a reduced resolution before upscaling it, resulting in a blurry image. The game now always renders at native resolution. Your selected quality level affects shadows, effects, and detail, but never image sharpness.
🌍 Languages
All new content is localized into the game’s six languages: French, English, Japanese, Russian, Simplified Chinese, and Traditional Chinese. This includes the tutorial, Faerion’s dialogue, board labels, and menus.
Russian localization completed: approximately 200 text entries that had remained in French since Russian was added have now been translated.