Version Update 1.8.2

It's been a little while since the last update. I'll go into more details at the end of this post, but for now, let's dive into the changes! (≧∇≦)ﾉ

New Characters

Once again, I'm bringing you a batch of three new characters in a single update!

Ondines

Ondines is a physical tank-type character, meaning he can take a beating and hit back just as hard—a desirable trait for a Royal Guard and a member of the 2nd Delver's Platoon.

His weapon of choice is a trusty war hammer, perfect for crushing enemies with sheer force.

If smashing things with a hammer isn't enough, his ultimate, Unstoppable, allows him to swing his weapon freely while gaining a 100% armor boost.

However, wearing such heavy armor comes at a cost of mobility. Ondines can generate a shield to block direct damage, but the heavier the shield, the slower he moves.

In CO-OP, he’s also more likely to be targeted by enemies, taking the pressure off his teammates.

Dev Notes I received a few requests for characters that work better in CO-OP, so I wanted to lean into that. I hope having a tank-style character will be fun to play in both single-player and multiplayer.

Ondines is also the first armor-scaling character, which was quite a challenge to balance. But I think the movement tradeoff adds an interesting dynamic. Needless to say, he probably won’t be the best pick for exploration. (｡･∀･)ﾉﾞ

Kaware

Kaware is a summon-type character. But wait, what exactly is a summon type?

The last update introduced the new Dark element with its own mechanics. Summons, on the other hand, are a new type of weapon (right now, there’s only one summon weapon, but more are planned for the future). These weapons don’t fire projectiles but instead summon creatures to fight by your side!

Summons spawn with set damage and health, cannot be hit by enemies, but their health drains over time—the longer they exist, the faster they decay.

Now that we've cleared that up, let's introduce Kaware and her pet wolves!

These wolves automatically seek out nearby enemies, dealing Lightning damage on contact.

But that’s not all Kaware can do. She also doubles as a healer—for both characters and summons. Her ultimate, Magical Forest, creates an enchanted forest that damages enemies while healing all allies within its boundaries.

As the Sanctuary’s top scout, Kaware has spent countless hours beyond the city walls, patrolling dense forests for threats. Whenever she found an injured animal, she always tried to nurse it back to health. Naturally, that ability extended to healing humans too—though her methods can be a bit crude.

Dev Notes I’ve wanted to make a summon-based character for a while. Lucy laid some groundwork for it long ago, and I finally got around to implementing it. Hopefully, you’ll have fun experimenting with summons!

Kaware herself is still in an early state—her role leans heavily into summon DPS/support, but there aren’t many summons in the game yet. In the meantime, she pairs well with Earth weapons!

Also, while we have plenty of characters that thrive on low HP, Kaware is the opposite—she performs best when she stays healthy~

Dreya

Dreya is a Dark-element, Follow-Up DPS. A serious and dangerous explorer of the Forbidden Zones, she is the sole member of Diver Squad 6. Her job? To venture deep beyond the Sanctuary’s borders, recovering rare and potentially valuable relics for the Capital.

Her weapon of choice? Anything will do! But she always carries a hidden Dark Blade that feeds on her life force. Whenever Dreya takes damage, she immediately counterattacks with her blade, dealing Dark damage in a follow-up strike.

Her ultimate applies Withering to herself, draining a percentage of her health over time—fueling her deadly blade in the process.

On the rare occasion that she has to work with others, Dreya's follow-up attacks restore Special energy for both herself and her teammates.

Dev Notes It was about time Follow-Ups got their own dedicated character. Yami-no-Tokiya had some follow-up mechanics, but I wanted a character that truly embraced the playstyle. After many iterations, I think I’ve landed on a design that is unique in its own way while allowing follow-up attacks to shine.

Continuing the trend of CO-OP-oriented synergy, Dreya’s ability to restore Special should come in handy with some characters!

Minimap

As you may have noticed in previous screenshots, Requiem For a Lost Worldi is finally getting a minimap! It can be enabled in the settings and offers some customization options.

The minimap displays active shrines in CO-OP, unexplored locations, pickups, and more. If you prefer to find things on your own, you can disable the location pointers.

It does come with a slight performance hit, but hopefully, nothing too crazy.

Leaderboards

I've seen a few requests for matchmaking in the past, but I don't think we have nearly enough players for that to work ┌(。Д。)┐

So instead, I’ve implemented leaderboards! Players can choose to participate—or completely ignore them. This should add some interaction between players outside of CO-OP without relying on a large player base.

Requiem For a Lost World is... well, mostly unbalanced, so I wouldn’t take the leaderboards *too* seriously. Or would I? (. ❛ ᴗ ❛.)

Leaderboards will likely reset from time to time when major balance patches roll out.

Oh, and endless mode doesn’t count toward leaderboards!

Relic Fragments

Another patch, another relic-related update. It’s a tradition at this point—

Anyway, discarding relics will now have a purpose beyond just freeing up space. Whenever you discard a relic, you’ll receive Relic Fragments, with higher-rarity relics yielding more fragments. These can then be used in the Synthesizer to increase the roll value of crafted relics.

You can increase a relic’s roll value up to three times, with each upgrade costing 100 fragments.

Relic Shop

You can now buy relics directly from the shop! Five relics will cost around 1000 gems—slightly more efficient than pulling from Recollection.

Tutorial Menu Rework

Tutorials have always been one of Requiem For a Lost World's weak points. Nobody likes writing documentation, and the gameplay loop of survivor-likes seems simple enough, right? Wrong!

The core gameplay is still very much a survivor-like, but everything around it has become much more complex over time. The last patch introduced menu tutorials to help new players navigate the UI and understand basic features.

This update expands the in-game "wiki," which has been a bit neglected until now.

I'll be gradually adding more content to make it a proper knowledge base for the game. Whether you're a new player or a veteran, I encourage you to check it out—and feedback is always appreciated!

Balance Changes

I've adjusted the difficulty curve for the first and second stages. Previously, difficulty increased on a full-minute basis. Now, the curve is smoother, so difficulty ramps up more gradually even within the same wave of enemies. The game should feel slightly more challenging as a result.

Capital Undergrounds now has fewer enemies overall, but each one is tougher (more HP and damage—because that’s what difficulty means, right?). The overall challenge should remain similar, but single-target damage will be more effective.

Elemental Reactions have received a significant buff. You should now see them dealing much more damage against tankier enemies (you can’t even set up reactions on weak enemies, after all). The goal of this change is to make elemental reactions a bigger part of the game by making enemies tankier—so using reactions will help bring them down much faster.

Follow-Up type weapons have also received a hefty buff to their base damage, allowing them to scale better with % damage increases from their dedicated upgrades.

Enemies Removed from Collection

I've temporarily removed enemies from the collection menu. I hated how it looked.

It’ll be readded once I figure out a better way to display them.

Writing Changes

Kaware, Dreya, and Ondines have a different writing style for their stories. I’d love to hear feedback from those of you who care about the lore!

If the response is positive, I’ll gradually rewrite the stories of other characters to match this new style. Let me know what you think!

Save File Changes

To reduce leaderboard cheating, save files are now encrypted. This means older versions of the game will no longer be able to read them.

The game will automatically create a backup in the game folder, just in case something goes wrong.

If your save file gets corrupted, please report it in the Steam discussions, and we’ll try to find a solution.

We haven’t encountered any issues in testing, but better safe than sorry!

Login Event

Log in for 7 days before the end of March to claim a free Ondines and a bunch of high-quality relics!

Bug Fixes

• Fixed scrolling in the settings UI bugging out and not working properly

• Moved spawn location in the Capital Undergrounds to prevent taking damage while spawning

• Fixed passive text not fitting text bubble correctly on some characters

• Fixed damage accumulation and hitbox of Gift Box weapon

Afterword

If you were here for the changelog, you're free to go! Or wait, leave a comment first! If you’d like to read some rambling from the developer, feel free to continue.

I would like to encourage everyone to leave a positive review if you haven't yet (｡･∀･)ﾉﾞ

Development Time

I’ve taken a few breaks while developing this update, and honestly, they were necessary. I felt the quality of my recent patches had been slipping, mostly because I was setting arbitrary deadlines for myself—and I hated it.

Getting content out quickly is still important to me, but quality has to come first. I have a history of taking both long and short breaks before releasing on Steam, so this isn’t the first time, and it won’t be the last. Rest assured, content will continue to come out—just at my own pace. Some days, I feel like working on *Requiem For a Lost World* nonstop. Other days, I don’t even want to look at the project files.

Working on Ondines, Kaware, and Dreya took a long time, but I’m happy with how they turned out. I don’t want to rush summons, so I pushed them back instead of cranking out a bunch of meaningless stat weapons just to meet a quota. Hopefully, that comes across clearly.

AI Stuff

Another topic I’d like to address is the recent AI witch hunt. My stance on this should be obvious, given that the game uses AI-generated assets.

People argue over whether AI-generated content is "art" in the traditional sense, but to me, it doesn’t matter what label it gets. I wouldn’t call myself an artist just because I use AI—but I am still a game developer, and making art is, unfortunately, a necessary part of that.

I haven’t personally been targeted by AI hate, but advertising *Requiem For a Lost World* has been nearly impossible. The entire project gets discredited and written off as "slop" purely because AI was used in some areas of development.

I wanted to make a free game. I still spend money on it without expecting anything in return. The truth is, I simply can’t afford an artist who can deliver the quality I need within a reasonable timeframe. I also don’t have 10 years to learn how to draw, nor is it a skill I particularly want to learn. AI allowed me to create the game I always wanted to make without compromising too much.

I code everything, make VFX, debug, and test all features alone. It takes hours every day on top of my 9–5 job. So yeah, it’s really, *really* discouraging to see all of that effort dismissed as "AI-generated slop."

Because of this, I haven’t been advertising the game at all—I just don’t have the energy to deal with it. At this point, I’m mostly relying on word of mouth. Shoutout to the guy on Reddit who randomly recommended this game!

Future Features

If you played the preview version or saw the news on Discord, you might have noticed I tested something called Visions of Calamity. It was meant to be a competitive, seasonal game mode feeding into the leaderboards, but I scrapped it from the latest build. Too many bugs, too little time~ It’ll return in a future version.

Unity recently added a neat little package that helps developers inspect their projects for performance issues. And wow, game development is *so* different from what I do on a daily basis.

Anyway, I’ll be going through this list—probably across multiple updates—cleaning up this mess of a project. Hopefully, I can squeeze out some extra FPS here and there!

Elemental Accumulation is still on the table. I initially avoided it due to network concerns, but I think I can make it work—possibly with a new character designed around this playstyle.