Hello again! This one is a doozy! ːsteamhappyː
We've joined forces with juice expert Calm Pewter (check out The Quizard's Domain) to bring you a shiny update to animation curves, particle visuals and the user experience as a whole. Most parts of the game's UI have been reworked already, but this is just the first iteration. We have a lot more planned!
Weather Rework: There is now ONE specific weather per run that has a 50% chance of being active every day. This means weather is now an additional "build-around" factor next to the run's boss. Previously it was more "avoid losing to it", which meant players would often just ignore two or even all three weather effects. Some weathers were rebalanced accordingly.
Structural Tweak: Deck size now increases when you reach the shop on an even day (2, 4, 6 etc.), instead of at the start of an uneven day. This doesn't directly make a gameplay difference, but it makes it easier to plan around the following day's deck size (and e.g. decide to buy another card in the shop).
UI Rework: Most UI elements have been reworked and/or repositioned to have a better look-and-feel. Menu flows have been largely retained with some small optimizations here and there.
Animated Backgrounds: We added a first handful of animated backgrounds. These will be chosen randomly per run and create a more immersive "moving through the environment" vibe.
Overlay Cutscene System: For now this is used when a Core breaks (which was previously easy to miss) but we plan to add more in future updates. And don't worry, they're all skippable.
Various smaller improvements:
Added Haste / Slow shaders to A.C.E. combat models
Improved animation curves and particle effects overall
Improved visual clarity of the deck list
Implemented background darkening when opening UI panels
Execution Counter: All cards and Modules in the combat log will now show how many times they were executed during the last combat.
Filter Shortcuts: You can now right-click tag and rarity filters in the card collection to activate ONLY the clicked filter and deactivate all others.
Minor improvements:
Added sound and particle effect when Triggers are executed
Added slight variance to sound effect pitches
Drastically reduced the game's install size
Various small fixes and tweaks all around
General note: We've been seeing a dominance of the temporal effects in general. Especially Freeze could lead to some "free win" runs that often weren't very interesting to play out, while it was a bit too easy to retain permanent Haste on yourself and Slow on your enemies. So we're primarily tackling these effects. In the full version we're also introducing a bunch of enemies that (partially) counter temporal builds in particular.
Also note that while these are mostly nerfs to player power, things should balance out overall with the weather change making the game a bit easier (since you can now specifically build around the run's single weather effect, while your enemies can't).
Frost: Common -> Rare | Load 1 -> 2
Healing Thrust: Haste 3 -> 2
Ice Barrier: Shield 2 -> 10 | Freeze 2 -> 1
Knowledge Barrier: reworked to scale Shield per card added to deck during fight
Note: There'll be more support for "card-spawn" builds in the full set. The general gist here is to give you more "potentially crazy synergy" options rather than just small bonuses.
Speed Burst: Haste 3 -> 2
Sprint: Haste 6 -> 4
Hourglass: Slow 3 -> 2
The Blitz: Haste 3 -> 2
The Eye: Freeze 3 -> 2
Kevin: 350 -> 300 max health
As always thank you so much for playing, testing and giving feedback (our Discord is always open)! We hope you enjoy this update and we'll be back soon! ♥️
All the best,
Fabian
P.S. Big shoutout to the "UX Task Force" (Kev Chang, Purple Moss Collectors, tricko) who have been providing immensely important feedback and ideas for the future.