THE WHISPERING DREAD V.0.12.1 - Major Update is LIVE

The THE WHISPERING DREAD update is now live for Hunter's Hand! If you've been waiting to try the game, now's a good time to jump in.

What's new:

• The Guardian Subclass - Now fully playable in the demo with completed artwork. Three subclasses are in the game. The Guardian plays differently to the Stormguard and the Martyr with a more measured, defensive pressure style. Worth trying if you've been sticking to one class. Steam post image

• Card visual overhaul - Cards now communicate their state much more clearly. Playable cards glow differently to unplayable ones. The cost gem has VFX that scale with the card's cost. Instant cards have their own new visual indicator. The rarity colour scheme is back to the Lovecraftian palette. And there's a new card frame, with new frames planned for each character & enemies.

• Accessibility options - Added colourblind modes, a dyslexia-friendly font, and 4× text scaling. All toggleable from the settings menu.

• Map and UI improvements - The map has been resized and the camera now moves smoothly. Tooltips on statuses and relics now match card tooltip formatting. The end turn button signals when no cards can be played. A lot of smaller things that should make the game feel cleaner to navigate.

This update has been a long polish pass more than anything else. The card visual work in particular is something I've been putting off - it always felt like a "later" job, and later finally arrived. The Guardian Subclass finishing its art pass is the milestone here though. Three subclasses in the demo now, each with a distinct playstyle, and the game is starting to feel like it has real build variety rather than one path with cosmetic differences.

Thank you to everyone playing the demo, leaving reviews, and sending feedback. A lot of the UI and accessibility changes in this update came directly from things people flagged. Keep it coming.

Full patch notes:

Changes:

• Card visuals — added card playable glow behind rarity glow that only shows when the card is playable in hand

• Card visuals — added sparks & glow to the cost gem that scale visuals based on cost between 1–9

• Card visuals — added sparks to instant gem when card is instant and playable Steam post image

• Card visuals — re-added discard & tenuous shaders; discard shader burns through the card before sending to pile, tenuous shader ghostly fades it out

• Card visuals — removed particle VFX (too distracting); replaced with InstantGemGlow to highlight the instant icon

• Card visuals — rarity colours changed back to Lovecraftian palette: Grey (Common), Blue (Uncommon), Violet (Rare), Red (Ancient)

• Card visuals — new card frame added; base frame for colourless and colour cards; character, enemy, and ancient frames next

• Card visuals — instant icon moved to top left under cost; cost label made larger for readability

• Card UI, card menu UI & enemy card UI updated to accommodate new card frame size

• Card pile UI — added card shuffle animation, card added animation, and inspect animation on hover

• Burn shader animation tweaked on discard

• Fake 3D card shader now applied to card menu UI and enemy card UI

• Cards in played_card containers now zoom on hover the same way they do in hand

• End turn button — glows on hover; glows persistently when no cards in hand are playable; if hovering while cards are still playable, makes those cards' glow stronger

• Tooltip formatter — "If" conditional effects now highlighted in yellow and animated when active

• Status tooltips and relic tooltips now use the same formatting as card tooltips — colour-coded statuses, keyword icons

• Status view — updated tooltip text; panel background restored (was transparent)

• Threat over 20+ threshold — UI pop-up now shows "max threshold reached" text (was empty before)

• Added Reduce Threat as a battle reward option when defeating powerful enemies (Elites, Guardians, Ancients)

• Added Guardian Subclass artwork; card tweaks alongside

• Map — resized to middle two-thirds of screen

• Map — added toggle to fade in and out of view

• Map — legend now tweens into position on appear

• Map — room icons clickable again

• Map — active room icons have idle zoom/shrink animation to indicate where to go

• Map — camera now tweens smoothly between positions instead of snapping

• Map — removed unneeded @export variables to tidy up inspector

• Battle — updated functions to reset battle positions and camera zoom at start of battle and every turn

• Battle — reactivated activation phase zoom-in; player and enemies move into striking position at battle start

• Battle hazard beast's breath — tweaked visuals to be more prominent

• Added colour correction shader to battle background scene

• Battle fog and post-processing shader tweaked for better aesthetics

• Status Effect VFX scene converted to 2D node; position and scale are now exported so they can be fitted per-enemy in the inspector

• Added fog transition scene for all scene changes — replaces the old fade to black; black fog envelopes the screen between scenes

• Combat animation preview updated to include enemy animations

• Survival guide added to main menu and pause menu — basic tips and reminders, accessible any time

• Main menu and pause menu — added feedback form pop-up on game exit

• Run — added demo text under top bar with version number

• Accessibility — added colourblind modes

• Accessibility — added 4× text size scale

• Accessibility — added dyslexia-friendly font, applied across all labels via recursive function; toggled from settings menu

• Settings — pause and ui_cancel inputs no longer block each other

• Settings — re-bind conflict detection fixed

• Settings — action names now display as friendly names instead of raw internal identifiers

• Settings — added reset to default settings button

• Settings menu — tidied up button layout; all settings now on one page Steam post image

• Removed certain pause menu items for Steam release version

• Finished hiding demo content for Steam full release version pass

Bugfixes:

• Fixed card tooltip z-indexing — was rendering behind cards to the left in hand due to z-order; now set to layer 100

• Fixed Echoing Conviction crashing — was set to target single enemy instead of self, returning a null array; no code existed to find targets in that context

• Fixed tooltip formatter not applying status formatting correctly — was calling .bbcode_text instead of .text; 8 statuses had a stale bbcode wrapper, now removed

• Fixed pause menu settings not opening after the first time

• Fixed settings rebind options not saving on game exit

• Fixed Storm Spike card not using the lightning sprite

• Fixed map battle hazards not populating and not updating colour on the map

Balancing:

• Spectral Lumber (Wraithbark) — now applies Spectral every 2nd turn; was snowballing too aggressively if left unchecked

Demo on Steam:

Hunters Hand