Steam Next Fest Update! - v0.9.7 - Weather Update

Do you know what’s Next? Fest!

Yeap, we are using this announcement to tell you that we’re participating on this edition of Steam Next Fest, alongside our traditional development updates!

I know I know, we’ve already posted an update this month and we’re already posting again, don’t worry, we won’t spoil you like this ever again, that just proves how committed we are!

Let’s not waste any more time, we aren’t getting any younger, or older for that matter. So before we get into the bones of this matter, let’s talk about the Next Fest and why you should care.

Steam Next Fest: it kinda matters a lot

This is it, the final countdown for Early Access is upon us. Will I tell you the date? No. But I’ll tell you we’re getting reaaaally close and there are certain things we have to do because of it. Yes, I said we, you’re in it now too! Steam Next Fest is an once-in-a-deathtime opportunity that up-and-coming games have where visibility is just like the majestic giraffe: really high. Many living souls will be able to get to know E-Lich for the first time, and more importantly: wishlist us! Yeah, you got that right, it is time for you to join us in shameless promotion of this experience, Undead Resources told us it is in our eternal contract, so you kinda have to do it.

But really: this is a crucial part of the road for any indie developer (whatever that means) to reach a good sizeable audience of living souls. So grab that fax machine (or pager) and share it away to all your family, friends, enemies, acquaintances, neighbors and even exes. Tell them that they’ll have so much fun playing it that they can go ahead and already wishlist it before even trying, just to save some time! And to help you convince them, I’ll share some extra changes we did, and also include the full changelog that covers those additions and the ones from our last post.

There ain’t no rest for the wicked, and that’s us! And since we are legally obligated to keep working, you can join our eternal toil! Don’t forget that we hold regular playtests, besides the ever-constant bragging competition in our Discord server. Your presence in it, just like in our completely fun happy hour gatherings, is mandatory! And that’s it for this news-update. As always, we really appreciate your support! It’s almost as valuable as your souls. E-Lich Corp - "We value your life. And death. Seriously."

Changelog v0.9.7

Unity Version Update!

As you may now have heard, Unity has been made aware of a security vulnerability that affects all games built with Unity Engine 2017 and newer, so it recommended that any games developed with affected Unity versions should upgrade to a patched engine version. You can read more about it here: https://unity.com/security/sept-2025-01

New Content

• New boons

• A new spell evolution

• New talents

New Enemies

• NEW HERO!

  • By that I mean a new boss.

• New Adventurers

• New regular enemies that no one really cares about other than their souls

Changes

• NEW WEATHER FEATURE!

  • We're introducing a game changing feature to your runs: Dynamic Weather!

  • Rain, Snow, Eclipse... you name it! Each weather has unique effects that impact gameplay, ranging from boon drop rate differences per weather, unique weather-related boons, unique enemy spawns, stat modifiers and more!

  • You can check the weather in each stage directly from the Stage Selection screen

  • Note this is a very early implementation, so expect more weathers and effects in the future!

• NEW BOUNTY & STAGE MODIFIER FEATURE!

  • You can now increase your Bounty in the Stage Select screen, making enemies tougher! And yes, management has confirmed bonus E-Scrips will be paid according to your bounty level!

  • You can now also enable Run Modifiers!

    • These are challenges for the toughest employees! They will eventually unlock new perks, achievements and more. But for now, they're there for those veteran players who want tougher challenges.

• Stage Select screen was revamped to accomodate the features above

  • The World Map was improved and is now animated!

• NEW LOBBY TELEPORT QUICK MENU FEATURE!

  • You can now teleport to key places in the lobby instead of walking to them

• New VFX Visibility setting!

  • You can now change the opacity/visibility of weapons and spells so you can finally understand what's going on behind the hundreds of simultaneous projectiles on your screen!

  • Loading Screen Tip of the day: "Lowering VFX visibility can have positive impacts on performance!"

• The Legendary Weapon Refactor is here!

  • If you've been around on our Discord server and/or over the dozens of in-skeleton events we've been to in the past couple of months, you have likely heard we were working on this for the past many mortal month-cycles

  • Melee weapons have been refactored!

    • The Sword can now do multiple slashes at once!

    • The Axe now does a spinning attack on its 3rd hit!

• The office is now more "alive"!

  • You can now see some coworkers going places and showing just how busy they actually are. Follow in their footsteps and get to work!

• The Village and Cave stages now have their own music!

• Added an Ambience volume slider to the settings menu

• Revamped several old talent icons to improved art

Balancing

• Early enemies' experience has been lowered

• Rebalanced the Axe and Sword due to their new revamped behaviors

Fixes

• Fixed the massive frame drops caused by mass collecting souls

• Fixed the game generating thousands of logs per minute, which impacted fps

• Fixed an issue that made all Adventurer enemies spawn from the same spawn point off-screen

• Somewhat fixed an issue where you no longer earned exp after defeating the first boss

  • This unfortunately can still occur (and we're still looking into it!), but it's much less frequent now

• Fixed a layer/passability issue near the eastern elevator

• Fixed several audio related issues, including mixer issues, SFX volume spikes, missing SFXs in some UIs and Spells, and much, much more

• Fixed an issue where you could get dash boons without having dash unlocked

• Fixed an issue where the Boss's HP Bar could appear in the death screen / animation

• Fixed localization errors