Grimslair v1.1 Major Update

Hello Reapers,

Holy... moly... this was an absolute beast of an update! Delay after delay, and we are finally here! I managed to pack so many awesome features and additions into the game that it almost doesn't feel like the same game anymore! New Cards, Enemies, Mechanics, Flow/Feel, Progression, Balancing... basically every single aspect of the game has had a microscope put on it and been polished to a degree that even I, as a perfectionist, feel satisfied to my core.

Let's cut to the chase here since there is a TON to talk about:

• NEW CARDS - There are over 50+ NEW CARDS in the game!!! Every single card is unique and does something different. I didn't want to create a bunch of cards that all did too much of a similar thing because I LOVE CHAOS in card games.

  HERE ARE SOME EXAMPLES OF NEW CARDS (Dont want to spoil all of them...)

  

  

• New Card Unlock System - When you die or win your run, depending on how many points you collect, after the high score is tallied, this will determine whether you have unlocked new cards for the global roster. Once you unlock cards here, they will be presented to you in your next run permanently. New Save Slots will need to unlock these cards again.

• NEW PERKS - 15 New Perks! And just like the cards, I wanted a variety of different perks to allow players to test out new builds, new synergies, and wild combinations! :D (These are all automatically unlocked at start but now have different rarities)

• Soulword Description UI Overhaul - Every Soulword and battle card now has proper text margins and a set of distinct colors to make it easier to read what each Soulword does.

• AddedNew Locations & Enemies - I have created 2 new location cardsAbandoned House and Snowy Ridge. Abandoned House is a permanent shelter, so if the weather is getting out of hand, you can visit this location and nullify all penalties from weather. Enemies in this location will mostly be Human. Snowy Ridge is home to a new enemy, the Dwarf, and while you are here, you have a -1 Agility point penalty in Battle Mode because you are cold! Dwarves are special because they now have the ability to stop you from breaking chains altogether, and they are high in block value.

• Enemy Battle Card UI change - I added a decal background behind the Card Level and # of times Played numbers so that they are easier to read.

• NEW GAME+ MODE - I have finally established a New Game+ mode, where when you win the game, you can now "Ascend" and go back into Grimslair with harder enemies and more Specials. New Game+ mode is INFINITE, so now you can see how far you can go and it allows you to bring the deck that you had with you!

• Grim Coin Toss Mechanic - There were times in the game where it got too frustrating finding enemies to meet quota... now... Grim will sometimes help you! At 7 AM every day, if you haven't met quota yet, he will flip a coin. So you now have a 50/50 chance for him to throw an enemy your way to help you meet quota.

• BattleMode OVERHAUL - Along with the new cards, while playing around with the battle system, I felt like something was off about it. So I spent about 100 hours debugging, tweaking, and enhancing the BattleMode experience to its fullest potential. Here are the updates:

  1. New Animation Speed System - You can now change the speed of every aspect of the battle system: 3D model animations, Card/UI animations, and VFX, all the way up to blazing speed. It's actually really crazy to watch the game at 2x speed... WOAHHHH... and the fact that it still works even at this speed is astonishing, and I'm really excited to showcase this new feature!

  2. History Panel - Underneath the animation speed is a new History Panel where it showcases the last Grim turn so you can fully grasp what happened in the last turn.

  3. New VFX Animations for Every Single Card - I spent a huge chunk of time making sure that every card played has a different animation each time. From simple attacks with your scythe all the way up to spawning meteors flying at enemies and giant explosions... (I think it's pretty cool!)

  4. New Card Flow System - In previous builds, cards would move pretty jankily, so I decided to add some flow to the cards and now everything looks smooth and natural. Now it's easier to get into a "flow state" while playing the game.

• Card UI Controller System Overhaul - In previous builds, it was hard to accurately hover your cursor over certain aspects of the cards, especially the Soulwords attached to them, but now every card has been updated so that everything is 100% accurate and there are no more frustrating bugs regarding hover icons and such. So when a card has 3 Soulwords on it, you will no longer have to fight the cursor to find the exact spot to see what that Soulword is.

• Weather System Update - There were too many times where the weather spinner just was not as fun as it should have been, so I made sure that it doesn't always hit "Sunny" anymore and now properly lands on the other weather patterns just as much.

• Stat Upgrade / Night Time Rest System Overhaul - I have changed and balanced some of the stats in the game to make more sense for a deckbuilder. For instance, I changed the +1 Agility stat so it is less overpowered and it now gives +1 Agility at the start of combat instead. All titles and descriptions have been reviewed, and some have been changed to more clearly convey exactly what that stat upgrade does. The night time rest UI in Roguelike mode also reflects this new change and now shows the title and description correctly.

• Music Has Been Remastered - I found a very useful technique using advanced noise reduction and compression mastering to make the music sound even better!

• Steam Achievements - I have established around 30 achievements in the game, and now you are able to obtain them! It may be best to start fresh with a new save if you want to collect all of them.

• Location Penalty Indicator s - Previously, you'd have to remember what Grim told you about locations like Desert, which gives you a -1 HP penalty each time you click a card, but now there are proper HUD placements that you can hover over which tell you exactly what is happening.

• Map UI Generation Skip + Fix - You can now properly skip the generation of the map at the beginning of the run by double-clicking or clicking the Close button. The map previously would disappear due to issues with the code, and this has now been fixed as well.

• Enemy Balances - Soul Wisp has been updated so that it can no longer chain 5 cards in one turn. This enemy was designed to be a "freebie" easy enemy and was too difficult for new players at the start. On average, I am now seeing about 1 to 2 cards chained at a time.

BUG FIXES:

(MAJORITY OF BUG FIXES ARE RELATED TO SERIALIZATION AND SAVE/LOADING THE GAME)

• Some players experienced inaccurate Soul totals when spending Souls in the Chamber of Time. This has been fixed.

• Many player stats like health, gold, and blood money have also been overhauled for save/load accuracy.

• The Map UI would place the player at 0,0 Graveyard after loading even when they were actually at a different location. Fixed!

• Map generation would block players from winning, aka traveling to Chamber of Time, due to Barrier locations accidentally blocking the path. I have made a robust algorithm that won't let this happen. If you load your previous save, it should also unblock all locations that are incorrectly blocking the corner final locations.

• Some players got stuck in a softlock loop while talking with Cassandra when trying to close the UI. This has been fixed.

• Some players experienced starting a game in Roguelite mode and later, either through gameplay and/or loading a save, switching to Roguelike mode. Now this should not change during or after loading your game.

Card Description Updates:

• Soul Split Soulword now says "5 Or Less Health" instead of "Under 5 HP" since you can kill the enemy if it has exactly 5 HP and still Soul Split it.

• When clicking on the Deep River location, it had old alpha text that read "Boat is required." This has been updated since there are no boats in the game. Sorry everyone! Haha.

Thank you to everyone that has given feedback and bug reports! This has been such an emotional rollercoaster! Can't wait for you to try out the new update!

Cheers, Reapers!

• Austin