Welcome back, Pioneers! The Rixels Update is the biggest visual transformation Reforj has seen – a full refresh of how the world of Reforj looks and feels. This update covers new textures, fancier lighting, and mysterious new structures waiting to be uncovered.
Until now, we've focused on the players' gameplay experience, but in the Rixels Update we've completely overhauled the art style and lighting of Reforj. With building at the core of Reforj, a palette that inspires players' creations is key. This is where Rixels come in — a completely new art style and technology that covers everything from our Element materials to our mobs and characters!
We wanted to create a stronger visual identity, tying the texture system to the Element shapes within Reforj. With these changes, we've been able to redesign our characters, bringing them to life with fun animations and expressions!
Our faceted graphics looked great, but achieving perfectly sharp geometric textures remained a challenge. The breakthrough came when our team combined vectors with 2D versions of our Element shapes, using them as pixels to build every composition. These unique building blocks became known as Rixels! This new look immediately creates a cohesive and recognisable visual identity. Rixels also give us a significant storage improvement, reducing texture storage sizes by 98.2%! This gives the team even more space to explore exciting new features, biomes, worlds and much more.
Rixels aren't the only visual change! The Rixels update introduces the first of our planned post-processing effects: bloom. Bloom and glow apply to emissive Elements, items, and mobs, as well as the sun, stars, and moon. The worlds of Reforj have never looked so good, from glistening sunrises across an ocean to the warm sunsets in a lush jungle, exploring the world has never been so immersive. Pioneers can now explore the darkness guided by the warm glow of wild Ember Stems and Aurberries. But watch out for the sinister eyes of the Tunnelers. For a full list of all the changes, check out our patch notes on Discord!
But the Rixels Update isn't just a new art style... Pioneers will notice some strange new structures appearing in the world of Reforj: ruins of a lost civilization. Some of these hold valuable loot, helping Pioneers survive, explore their world, and travel between the Ruins and the Gateway Nexus.
To allow players to experience and playtest Gateways, we've implemented an early version of the Gateway Terminal that temporarily requires depositing Aura to function.
Worlds created in the Rixels Update will include these ruins, but if you want to continue a world created before this update, you can craft the new Gateway Terminal. This lets you explore new world generation without leaving your old worlds behind. We're looking forward to seeing how our Pioneers use this feature — we have lots of ideas we're working on…