Oneirium NextFest Demo Released!

Demo Patch Notes v18.0.0.0

Reworked Character & Animations

• Reworked character sprite and animations

• Added wall cling, wall slide, and wall climb animations with smooth transitions

• New dust VFX when wall climbing

• Fall damage has been removed to accommodate wall climb mechanics

Wall Climb Mechanic

• Added wall cling and wall climb system - cling to walls and scale walls, with the ability to hold position so you don't slide off

• Wall jump to leap away from walls with increased velocity compared to ladders

World Map Overhaul

• Redesigned world map with cell-based exploration system

• Map now reveals as you explore each section of a level

• Added region support - Cycle between different map regions (Cave & ASTRAL)

• Door and elevator icons show connections between rooms

• Puzzle room icons displayed on map

• Player icon shows your current location

• Save/Travel point tracking on map

Metroidvania World Design

• Revamped world layout with interconnected level design

• Some levels now feature seamless door auto-transitions

• New scenic elevator system for multi-level travel with lever interaction for shortcuts

Parallax & Backgrounds

• New parallax backgrounds throughout the game

• Added Foreground parallax layer support

• Fixed parallax movement and horizontal scrolling issues

Audio Overhaul

• Revamped Sound System with randomized pitch variation for more natural audio

• New background music tracks

• NPC ambient sound system - NPCs now have atmospheric audio

• New Sanity tier sound effects when your Sanity changes

• Various new sound effects added

• Refactored current player sound effects with new assets

Sanity System Visuals

• Updated Sanity Eyes visuals

• New insanity glitch shader effect

• Dream clouds now modulated by Sanity level to improve visual clarity (Less bright for any Sanity tiers)

• Fixed blurry overlay rendering issues

Combat & Controls

• Added attack cancel window - cancel attacks into roll or backstep (Currently at a small range, will be watching for adjustments based on feedback)

• Added projectile parry and reflect system - Report any enemy that isn't parryable (Note some enemies, such as Bosses may intentionally have unparryable attacks)

• Right-stick camera panning (controller-only, will add keyboard support soon)

• Attack direction now locks during swings with enlarged hitboxes (fixes an issue with direction being misplaced when spamming input)

New Enemies

• Added The Recollector enemy & Nightmare The Recollector variant (More aggressive)

• Implemented Sentinel and Grinning Bile AI with patrol behaviors

• Added Cephalid execution system with multi-phase animations

• Added enemy body-contact collision system on some enemies (Grounded enemies only)

Enemy Improvements

• AdjustedReworked enemy damage systemenemies now have damage caps and drastically lowered health pools, creating a more balanced experience where a consistent number of hits is required instead of variable damage ranges. Upgrading Traits, Passives & Weapons still have an effect to damage, a hybrid between damage numbers & damage hit count. Essentially, you won't ever feel like you are "understat or underleveled" for a given area.

• Grinning Bile now uses elliptical patrol pattern with adaptive behavior

• Disabled homing on Grinning Bile projectiles

• Reduced axe projectile knockback for Merkosm

• Enemies now treat jump-down platforms and ledges as ground (Fixes falling through)

• Improved enemy collision and patrol rerouting on wall collisions so that they don't get stuck

• Various enemy damage and status effect tweaks

Ladder System Rework

• Unified ladder and rope climbing into single system

• Ladders now properly stop player movement at the top, if they do not intersect with a platform's top collision

• Improved ladder jump-through immunity - You can now jump off a ladder that intersects, and not hit your head on that intersection collision

• Increased jump height & velocity when jumping off ladders

• Jump off ladders is supported when holding UP button, no longer feels delayed or blocked

• Active jump supported when detaching from ladder when no directional input is applied

Ledge Improvements

• Allow jump down from ledges

• Allow passing through ledges from below

• Reduced ledge hang delay

• Avoid grounding/hanging when moving upward

Bosses

• Added Blood Vortex mechanic to Vicaris, The Unsainted

• AdjustedVermilliaImproved camera during intro with smooth return to player

• VoidmarkWitness: Melee attack now aborts when energy ball phase starts

NPCs & Dialogue

• Added eye cursor when talking to NPCs instead of the elongated selection box

• Centered dialogue options with a new Exit button, to reduce confusion on how to exit chatting with an NPC

• Improved dialogue progression and input handling, preventing a bug where some dialogue was unintentionally skipped

• Dialogue and cutscene dialogue has been improved to be more lore-related =)

• Standardized NPC spritesheet and bounding box sizes so that each portrait is properly aligned and not cut-off for some NPCs

New Events & Hazards

• Added Switch Device that controls various things such as Gates - break them to unlock what they are attributed to

• Added a new trap: Mines that are underwater

• Replaced Insta-Death when colliding with Hazard Spikes (Not the Spear traps) - you are now restored to the position you jumped from, taking 25% HP damage, if below 25% then only set to 5 HP, allowing many retries for Platforming sequences.

• Arrow Traps arrows now collide with terrain instead of passing through

UI & Quality of Life

• Reworked HUD sprites

• Auto-pickup for Enemy drops with manual pickup prompt for other item sources (spawned by level, bosses or breakable objects)

• Redesigned interact bar UI for pickups

• Enhanced execution prompt UI with styled panel and colors

• Added styled panel backgrounds to tutorial prompts

• Quest notification HUD system to inform you of completed quests

• Refactored hotbar UI with a new improved system

• Display potions per count in the new HUD UI (3 HP potions will display 3 HP potion sprites instead of text value)

• Empty potions will have flash & sound effect alerting you that you're out of potions

• Added Candelabra description panel to all menu options

• Updated main menu support link to Kickstarter & Discord

Cutscenes

• Added per-cutscene background and overlay support

• Implemented cutscene chaining system

• Updated cutscene dialogue

Bug Fixes

• Fixed blurry overlay rendering

• Fixed parallax moving during backstep

• Fixed horizontal parallax scrolling

• Fixed ladder climb animation freezing

• Fixed crouch logic when looking down during jump

• Fixed jumping after being hit while crouching

• Fixed bonfire menu wrap-around selection

• Fixed swapped bonfire menu descriptions

• Fixed NPC portrait centering and dialog text

• Fixed region handling when opening world map

• Fixed chain/jar drawing alignment and direction

• Fixed ledge drop state issues

• Fixed attacking while climbing ladders causing animation issues

• Fixed grabbing ledges while attacking

Balance Changes

• Increased starting Lucid Candle quantity: 1 → 3

• Various damage, status effect, and enemy stat tweaks

Thank you for trying the Demo build! Note that this is fresh off the playtest release, and many improvements are still needed. Please report any bugs or feedback through Steam discussions or on our Discord. Steam post image