Steam Next Fest (Feb 24) Update v0.040 - Overview

This build will be updated when Steam Next Fest begins. Also, we have updated a pinned FAQ in the Steam Community discussion board to address some of the questions everyone cares about—please go take a look.

For this update, we collected suggestions and feedback from Discord, the Steam reviews section, the Steam Community, Twitter, QQ groups, and other channels. After careful analysis, we adopted quite a few valuable changes. We hope you’ll leave feedback in the Steam reviews section or give us some encouragement—we’ll be very happy either way. In short, we’ll keep working hard to make the game better.

1. Appearance unlock

After clearing the demo once, the Appearance feature will be unlocked (one clear takes about 40 minutes; players who cleared the old version still need to clear it again).

After you enter the game again, you will find an “Appearance” option on the Equipment page, where you can swap outfits and hairstyles and change hair color. Of course, the demo will have only a small selection of swappable content.

In the full version, the Appearance feature is actually unlocked after Chapter 1 ends and after a story segment in Chapter 2. Because of workload, in the end-of-Chapter-1 cutscene you may see the outfit forcibly revert to the first set at the moment the cutscene triggers. There isn’t much we can do about this—it’s a small side effect of enabling the Appearance feature in the demo. Thanks for your understanding!

2. DLSS 4.5 implemented

You can enable this in the graphics options. Only Nvidia GPUs will see this option.

From my own testing, the difference compared to FSR 3.1 is almost only noticeable by overlaying screenshots in Photoshop—it seems to make the toon-render outlines slightly more pronounced. On RTX 40-series GPUs, the FPS gain also seems smaller than with FSR 3.1.

We don’t have any RTX 50-series cards in the studio, so we haven’t tested those.

3. In combat, using items now consumes only 1 ATC segment.

4. Added a starting skill, which also consumes only 1 ATC segment.

5. You can now change equipment during combat, consuming 1 ATC segment.

6. Reload logic updated

After combat ends, the game will auto-reload.

If ammo is acquired later, you can open the menu after equipping a weapon and reload/unload with one click.

We have abandoned the old one-bullet-at-a-time loading method.

7. ATC now starts at 70 points at the beginning of combat

1 ATC segment equals 100 points. This is to avoid every fight starting from 0.

In the full version, players will be able to obtain special components that can pre-charge ATC to 1 or 3 segments at the start, speed up ATC charging, etc.

Character level growth will also make ATC charge faster, but these features are not available to try in the demo yet.

8. Added more story text to enrich the worldbuilding

Presented through newspapers, notes, and diaries.

9. Puzzle improvements

Adjusted some hints during puzzles, and added a new puzzle item.

10. Minor balancing adjustments

Slight numerical balance changes for weapons and skills: reduced the damage of the energy cannon and the short SMG, and increased pistol damage.

11. Adjusted repeat enemy trigger logic

After transitioning between scenes, enemies may re-trigger/respawn, but the probability decreases with each occurrence.

12. Bug fix

Fixed a bug where, during combat, the character could sometimes get stuck when a certain monster used the “Blood Vessel Leech” skill.

13. Combat scene improvements

Optimized the movement bounds and camera placement in some combat scenes to reduce the chance of monsters running outside the camera.

14. UI text improvements

Optimized some issues where fonts were cut off or overflowed their bounds.

15. Battle music replaced

The original battle music has not been removed; I just felt its rhythm was a bit too gentle, and it will be used in a boss fight in the full version.

Kind regards, Icesitruuna