Kin and Conquest Demo Now Available!

Kin and Conquest's Playtest has been retired in favor of a shiny new Demo with new features! I'll outline the changelog below.

You may have also noticed that the art has been changed! I just like this one better, not much more complicated than that. It was commissioned from the talented Naiaru, who makes their art with watercolors! Pretty cool stuff.

Here's the patch notes! (only really makes sense if you played the Playtest):

If you played the Kin and Conquest Playtest, it's recommended that you start a new Save File for this version, as skill nodes have been changed and in some cases replaced.

Lots of balance tweaks and QoL stuff. A major thing is getting the Survival tree to be more impactful. It can be difficult to get defensive-oriented paths to feel good, so lots of adjusting has happened there and I think it's much more powerful now.

Also, new Floor, and you can now access Books and Staffs!

GENERAL STUFF

• Added: You can now access the next tier of nodes in the Skill tree.

• Added: You can now use Books and Staffs.

• Added: You can now access Floor 3.

• Added: Skill tree node tooltips now have a feature where you can hold a button to see more info.

• Added: Nearby Coins now merge together. Same with Essence. In order to respect effects that trigger when picking these up, the number of times merged is taken into account for these effects, so nothing is lost on that front. I primarily did this change to help with visual clutter.

• AddedChangedNew title art.
• AddedChangedWhen starting a new save file, irrelevant town NPCs start off as being hidden. This should help with how needlessly overwhelming the game can be at first. These NPCs are unlocked exactly when you can use them, so the game flow is kept the same.
• AdjustedChangedPlayer Projectile Opacity has been changed to Player Skill Opacity in the Settings menu. This setting is also placed higher in Settings so that it's more obvious that it exists.

• Changed: Player hitbox is a little less generous. I want the game to feel unfair in the players advantage, but it was a little bit too hard to actually get hit by enemies.

• Changed: Buffed various skill nodes.

• AddedChangedCoins dropped by ore nodes now launch a bit further out. This is mostly to prevent the coins from instantly being merged together on creation due to the new merging system.

• Changed: The speed in which a skill tree category pops in its nodes is now faster if you have more nodes revealed.

• Changed: Enemies on higher difficulties now move faster (except Boss enemies).

• Changed: When hovering over a difficulty in the run select menu, it now breaks down what changes.

• AddedFixedAdded safeguards against the game softlocking when transition to a new Floor.

• Fixed: When destroying an ore node, enemies would still path around where the ore node used to be.

• Fixed: When facing upwards, your shield was accidentally invisible. Strictly a visual bug.

SKILL TREE NODES

SURVIVAL

• AddedChangedThorns now reflects damage based on your Damage stat instead of a flat number. It also provides a new stat: A chance for Absorb to not be lost when an enemy is defeated via reflected damage.

• Changed: Revenge Orbs now follow you to the next Floor.

• Changed: Bouncing Shards has been replaced with Unbreakable Spirit. Shield Shards now have the Bouncing Shards bonus by default.

• Changed: Indominitable Spirit now inflicts 1,000% Damage, up from 100%.

• Changed: Shards generated via Reactive Armor now have +10 bounces.

CUNNING

• Changed: Wind Walker nodes have been merged, with the 2nd node being replaced with Determination.

• AdjustedChangedBase Haste Duration increased to 5s.

• Changed: Gale Runner now gives +5s Haste Duration.