Update v0.9.0

A major update to the game's look and core gameplay!

Adventurers are now represented by "figurines" that have multiple frames, and unit status indicators have been completely redesigned to be more compact and stylish.

In addition, party members can now move through each other, and the line of sight algorithm has been made more permissive: if you would have line of sight by moving one tile (with some caveats), you have line of sight from where you're standing.

You can also unlock the ability to manually rearrange your cards, which is important because keywords like Overheat and Discard now deterministically affect your rightmost Action or leftmost Gambit. This also means you get to choose which Action gets hit by the Curse of the Clay Devourer, and it also means you can now overheat even your basic movement action if nothing else is available.

Hopefully, all of these changes expand tactical options without sacrificing depth.

The visual changes should give the board more life and breathing room, but you can revert to the old style in settings if you prefer.

Let me know how this feels! Steam reviews are always appreciated too.

CHANGELOG

v0.8.5 -> v0.9.0

BUG FIXES

• Fixed edge case soft locks involving splitter enemies and summoner enemies.

• Fixed edge case when playing an AOE card that causes the unit to be defeated due to backlash damage.

• Fixed enemy targeting for lunge cards when their movement options are cut off.

• Fixed Trail Boots triggering on non-movement cards, and failing to trigger on terrain that disappeared after you stepped on it.

• Wisdom of the Sixth is no longer missing 1 potency.

• Fixed reward menu sticking on screen if you end a run with it still open.

• Some outdated information in the tutorial codex entries has been corrected.

• The cost icon no longer reverts to blue/purple when a card is unplayable.

• Tutorial messages no longer block mouseovers when hidden.

• The stars hourglass no longer briefly displays the reward count from the previous battle.

• Fixed both character select portraits fading out character cards when moused over (even if only one was visible).

• Fixed curse level indicator reappearing after exiting character card/memory details on the run start menu.

VISUALS

• Adventurers are now represented by figurine-style pieces with several illustrations. (If you prefer the old banners, the "Player unit style" setting reverts this.

• HP indicators have been completely redesigned to be more compact. (If you prefer the old indicators, the "HP indicator style" setting reverts this.)

• Units now gently fade when highlighted/lowlighted rather than snapping to high/low opacity.

• Unit emanation circles now also fade when lowlighted.

• Units no longer lowlight when out of battle.

• Units banners are slightly lower visually, to take up less screen space.

• The yellow health-drain effect on HP indicators no longer skips its animation when previewing a new source of damage.

• Changed main menu background.

• The tile cursor light has been made less intense.

• Tweaked lighting and colours in the Wall of Memory.

• Tweaked text alignment in settings and keybinds menus.

AUDIO

• Added tense theme for certain conversations.

GAMEPLAY

• Party members no longer block movement for each other.

• Line of sight computation has been made more lenient.

• Added additional Curses (each can also be intensified after you win a run with them active):

  • Curse of the Nightmare: Party members gain 2(3) Fear on battle start.

  • Curse of the Behemoth: Non-boss enemies have a 1 in 8(5) chance to gain 1 Stable on spawn.

  • Curse of the Void of Nostalgia: Starting on round 3(2), enemy attacks gain 1 potency per turn.

• Curse of the Invective Scholar now triggers earlier when intensified, rather than dealing more unavoidable damage.

• Splitter enemies tend to create their clones nearer to them.

• New save files now start with 3 item slots by default, but this is increased to 5 with story progress.

QUALITY OF LIFE

• Certain tutorials now appear even when menus are open.

• Added a tutorial noting that you can use items out of battle.

• Added tutorials for cards that Overheat/Discard/Exhaust other cards.

• Cards that will be overheated/discarded/exhausted are now highlighted when a card is selected.

• Boss soul items are now shown in the enemy detail menu.

• On the pause menu, "Exit Game" is now "Save and Quit", to be more accurate.

• On the pause menu, "End Run" now notes that your experience will be saved.

CARDS

• The Overheat keyword now adds cooldown to the rightmost playable Action rather than a random one.

• The Discard keyword now discards the leftmost Gambits rather than random ones.

• Cards that exhaust other cards now exhaust from the leftmost Gambits rather than random ones.

• Added the ability to rearrange your cards, unlocked with story progress.

• All of Seagull's cards that gain "Ignore line of sight" on upgrade now also gain 1 maximum range.

• Butterfly's Crashing Wave now deals 5 self-damage when played.

ITEMS

• Stardust now gives 8 Stars rather than 3.

MEMORIES

• Seagull's Spell Capsule now triggers multiple times if you defeat multiple enemies at once.

ENEMIES

• Void of Nostalgia now summons a Reclaimer at a certain HP threshold, but has 400 max HP rather than 500.

• Behemoth no longer regains Stable if you remove it.

• Water: Mirrorscale's Polish now applies Exposed to party members, but only gives it 7 Block instead of 10. (Now that all its cards target party members, its aggro behaviour is more intuitive.)