Playtest Now Ongoing | New Officer Makaila Arrives

Commanders,

A huge thank you to everyone who has jumped into the playtest. Your participation and feedback have been incredibly valuable.

After meeting so many of you and hearing your thoughts at events like BitSummit and ChinaJoy, we realized that closing access to the playtest would feel like cutting a great conversation short. So we've decided that:

The playtest is now ongoing, with no scheduled end date!

To support this extended mission, we'll be rolling out regular updates. Today's patch introduces a new officer for Exploration Mode, along with some new narrative content to uncover:

New Officer MAKAILA: Once destined to be the light of her civilization, a tragic accident caused her to cast it into shadow. She can inspire allies with a warm glow or unleash scorching flame upon her enemies.

New Story Content: Discover more of the world through the reworked exploration mission.

General Improvements: A batch of quality-of-life optimizations and experimental sound effects have been added to improve the overall experience.

Patch Notes

Content

• AddedNew OfficerMAKAILA is now available as a starting officer in Exploration Mode.
• AddedNew NarrativeAdded new exploration plotlines and branching events with unique dialogues for each Officer.

• Gameplay Change: To ensure tactical integrity, character modification (leveling up, equipping echoes, resetting levels) is now restricted in the combat phase.

UI / UX

• AddedCameraYou can now pan the camera by moving your cursor to the edge of the screen. A boundary has been added to prevent the camera from moving too far into unexplored darkness.

• Ability Clarity:

  • Available Duality Swap abilities will now have a glow.

  • Abilities on cooldown are now covered with a grey mask.

  • Zone object buttons now have a pulse indicator for better visibility.

• Status Indicators: Operatives with remaining movement or attack actions are now highlighted on their health plate.

• Combat Flow:

  • Added a "Skip Confirmation" option for ending your turn, for faster play.

  • Damage prediction is now more accurate, accounting for more triggered effects like damage redirection.

  • The "Retreat" button is now correctly disabled during the enemy's turn.

• AddedGeneralAdded an option to lock the mouse to the game window (hold ALT to temporarily unlock).

Visuals

• Animations: Officers now play deployment animation when entering the battlefield.

• AdjustedUIIterated the panel for Duality Swap abilities and improved the tooltip layout for tile effects.
• AdjustedEffectsUpdated the outline effect on units and objects to be crisper and more defined.

• Environment: Decorations will now become semi-transparent when a unit is standing on their tile or when hovered over, improving battlefield clarity.

Audio

• AddedExperimental SFXAdded the first implementation of sound effects for various gameplay actions and UI interactions. This feature can be enabled in the settings menu.

Performance

• Optimized performance to improve average FPS across most scenes.

• Reduced the frequency of frame spikes during gameplay.

Fixes

• Fixed a bug where dialogue could get stuck if the player held CTRL to speed it up.

• Fixed a bug causing dialogue text animations to be delayed at incorrect positions.

• Fixed a bug where the Protection Totem could incorrectly grant damage immunity to units not adjacent to it.

• Fixed a bug where tile trigger effects were not being saved correctly.

• Fixed a crash that could occur when exiting to the main menu under certain conditions.

• Fixed a bug where damage from the "Surround Consume" mechanic was being incorrectly reduced by Defense.

Other

• Updated the credits roll.

• Updated some area and unit names to align with the latest story developments.

How to join

[dynamiclink href="https://store.steampowered.com/app/2881620/"]

1. Open the Paraside: Duality Unbound Steam page

2. Click Request Access

3. When Steam notifies you, the playtest will appear in your library—download and dive in

Share your thoughts

Your feedback is the compass that guides our development. Please continue to share your thoughts!

• Press F2 in-game to report a bug or share a suggestion

• Fill out the survey after completing each mode (it's also available from the main menu)

• Join our Discord to chat directly with the dev team

If you're enjoying this journey, please consider adding Paraside: Duality Unbound to your Steam Wishlist. For a small team like ours, that single click makes a huge difference.

Thank you for being with us.

— Paraside Dev Team