The Harbinger of the Deep · published · build 24813908
Heyyo, CraftedCircuitry here! Today with a good chunk of progress to The Harbinger of the Deep, from testing the endings, Power Heal, and many various fixes to the game, as well as new effects to the Shout and Shock Actions!
Added
New Being Attack Patterns due to Optimized Attacks
More Sound Effects
Battle Phases in Being Encounters
All Achievements Integrated
New Cutscene Tutorial explaining Enemies
New Shout and Shock Effects to better differentiate from Slice and other Being Attacks
Updated
More Sound Effects
Proper Implementation of Steam Cloud
Sprint UI switches to Walk when Sprinting
Power Heal now has Sound Effects on success
Fixed
Trees not properly swaying when using Better Graphics
Subarea Text showing even though it hasn't been explored yet
Background Music not playing in certain instances
Chance for Certain Important Quest to be Interrupted
Chance for Certain Trial to happen due to a Shop
Chance to softlock due to certain buildings and rocks
Final Boss Bugs
Other optimizations and polishing
New Combat Updates
From new effects for the Player's Actions to new Battle Phases to strengthen Being encounters, there's a little more depth to the combat to the game now!
In trying to optimize the Being's attacks, the patterns and spawning of the Attacks have been tweaked slightly. Each frustration spawns in with a small delay to not impact performance too much. Not apparent with less frustrations, but once you reach the end of the story, flamethrower-like attacks will start happening.
Battle Phases happen when the Being lost all of its frustration due to your powerful befriending actions, but reloads all of it back with a ruthless shout for another or maybe more rounds. Beings also get higher speed every time they change phase, making the encounter a little more interesting.
Due to a recent post and feedback I got, I've also given the Shout and Shock Actions a little more differentiation to them, especially when encountering multiple Beings with lots of projectiles in the screen. I think they look nice, Shout doesn't look like a Slice clone and there's some extra effects for Shock. I think I'll keep Slice the same though.
The Being Attacks are still more prominent though. Knowing where the Being is attacking is still more important information so the Player can still dodge the attacks better. I may look into making the Befriending Action more prominent later on.
East Asian Indie Games Celebration 2026
It'll probably be ending by the time this post is up, but the game has been part of the recent EAIGC Steam Festival! I would still stay tuned for more coming these -Ber Months!
That's about it for today. I've gotten some more time to work and polish that I'm able to test the achievements and the various endings I have in store for the game!