Tl;dr - a major visual + magic update: the 2.5D and 3D modes get a serious glow-up, war cheese magic is reworked, and there's a new Hardcore Mode (permadeath, random spawn, traditional style).
The world looks better than ever (2.5D / first-person mode)
Tall buildings - settlements now build upward: huts stay cosy, but keeps and big structures rise to proper dramatic height, so towns finally have a skyline.
Animated water - a brand-new lit water shader: rolling waves, sun glints, shoreline foam, rain fizz and river flow (replaces the old flat slab).
Curved-corner shorelines - water meets land with smooth, Caves of Qud-style rounded shores.
Golden-hour god rays + water sheen - sunrise/sunset light now streams through the scene
Better rain, shadows and night - rain reads more clearly, actors have firmer grounding shadows, and night light-pools have softer edges.
See-through fences, flat beds, sleeping workers - settlements feel lived-in; you can see over fences and villagers actually sleep.
Walk-through doorways & proper windows - doors are full-height openings (no more chest-high gaps), windows sit mid-wall on a sill, and the wall above doors fills in correctly.
Highlights hug the terrain - movement paths, targeting and AoE markers now conform to slopes instead of clipping through uneven ground
War cheese magic reworked (Manna)
Spell wheels are now permanent - once you have a wheel, it stays. Casting spends a single Manna pool instead of consuming the wheel.
Restore Manna by eating cheese or resting safely.
Cleaner onboarding - the magic intro fires at your first real fight (not on a random late loot pickup), with an arrow pointing at your starting wheel on first threat.
Better targeting readouts - previews now show the effective spell and clearly mark casts you can't afford.
Mastery is made more readable - mastery now reads as a count badge above a larger spell icon, with a persistent HUD bar and a "home stretch" callout as you near the next tier.
New: Hardcore Mode
This one is for the traditional roguelike community
A visible, always-permadeath sandbox run
Discovery-only minimap - no handed-to-you map, no guide, etc. You uncover the world yourself.
Continue / New Run flow with its own save slot.
Steam Deck & controller
Controller glyphs now show correctly in modals and settings; "Auto" prompt mode locks to controller on Steam Deck.
Gamepad/Deck parity pass + toast-to-log polish and title-screen QoL tips.
Fixes
Click-to-move now stops for danger - auto-travel reliably brakes when a new hostile comes into view (fixes several cases where direct clicks never armed the brake and you'd walk into enemies).
Teaching modals show again - fixed a bug where tutorial/teaching popups never appeared in the real game.
No more duplicate quests - centralized the quest-offer logic to kill the recurring duplicate-quest bug class.
Sprite flicker fixed - deer and fox no longer flicker between drawings.
Invisible shrines fixed - terroir shrines (and a few ASCII-only tiles) now render properly in both 2.5D and 2D.
Fixed an unreadable QUIET stat on the Character panel.
Thanks as always to everyone on Discord playtesting the demo and sending reports. It would be literally impossible to make this kind of game without your collaboration - thank you!
Tim Graham