First Breath: The BURNOUT Update

This patch is largely focused on improving the difficulty balance - we've done our best to make the Accessible and Balanced difficulties a bit more forgiving, while keeping Challenging... well, challenging. We've also added some new QoL features, and a couple new mechanics meant to discourage some really boring battle strategies.

We're still getting the hang of this whole "making a videogame" thing, so please let us know what you think, and we'll take your feedback into account for future updates!

CHORDIOID: First Breath v1.1 Changelog

Balance

• Introduced Burnout mechanic to discourage spamming attacks with a single party member

• Introduced Downed Damage Redistribution mechanic to punish misses for downed party members

• Parries from downed party members no longer reward any TIDE

• Each party member can now use only one Item per Round

• Several Charms now have an associated DEF debuff

• Fixed a duplicate collectable Charm in the world (and introduced a new Charm by extension!)

• Scaled up party HP to allow for more nuance in damage numbers

• Tweaked the values of various healing items and spells

• Moved some subtle stat effects from the physical (ATK/DEF/HRT) to the tidal stats (KEY/STR/WND)

• Tweaked most enemy ATK and DEF values to improve difficulty progression

• Added hidden VIVIDITY stat to certain enemies that affects SPELL damage

• Increased final boss HP to 350, and EXP reward to 100 (not that it really matters yet)

• Altered final boss Aspect affinities

• Decreased StarSoda TIDE gain to 20%

• Decreased Djentman 7 attack boost from 5 to 3 (sorry! too busted)

• Decreased STR Bonding charge time

• Decreased KEY Piercing damage a bit

• Decreased damage multiplier for Aspect weakness from 1.5x to 1.333x

• Increased damage multiplier for Aspect resistance from 0.5x to 0.666x

• Tweaked enemy and player damage formulas

• Adjusted difficulty-based damage scaling

Quality of Life & Other

• Added basic Assist Mode to the Settings

• Strum inputs are now able to be rebound

• Introduced new input icons that fit the game's art style much better

• Added FPS Limit setting to Video options

• Added a Key Items section to the Items menu

• Changed Diner Gate Key from a hidden flag to a Key Item

• Shrunk Sam's battle portrait to be more consistent with the others

• Added Notes submenu to Journal for information about various game elements

• Party members now show a "DOWN" label when dropping below 0 health

• Camera zoom is now preserved through most dialogue boxes, and restored after cutscenes

• Encounter data for overworld enemies is now loaded on battle start, rather than at room load

Bugs

• Fixed section looping softlock caused by ending a battle with WND Halting active

• Fixed mouse clicks not being registered consistently if bound to an action

• Fixed party member attack animation not playing correctly if restarted before it ends

• Fixed various overworld state problems caused by saving in a certain lookout spot

• Fixed Downed & Game Over states not being triggered properly if caused by full-party damage

• Fixed a lighting/layering bug in the cutscene before the final boss

• Fixed final boss music stopping too late on Game Over

• Fixed some jank around section transitions

• Fixed a visual bug in the spell charging animation

(Please note that save files from v1.1 will not load in prior versions! We had to change some stuff which necessitated upgrading the save format version. 1.1 will load 1.0.x save files just fine, though.)

That's all for now! Thanks for playing CHORDIOID: First Breath <3 -Ash