Soul Reaper's official release - play it soon!

The official release is finally around the corner! The Steam Early Access period has given us plenty of feedback to work from and you'll find this official version to be a lot more complete and more bug-free. We're aiming for a September 30th launch date with a playable version available in the "beta" branch as early as August.

If you love monster-collection, deep strategy, complex loot/attribute systems, min/maxing your parties, and a solid Metroidvania-style exploration system, you're going to LOVE Soul Reaper! This new version brings everything to the next level. It really is a love letter to fans of Pokemon, Zelda, Diablo, Disgaea, Final Fantasy, and Castlevania.

If you've never played Soul Reaper before, the update notes below won't mean much to you, but know this: it's an epic update! It contains tons of new content & features and tons of bug fixes!

And if you're wondering if there's enough content for your money, here's what you can expect:

• Finishing the game once: 15-20 hours

• Finishing the game on New Game Plus: 25-30 hours

• Obtaining all the feats and achievements: 100-200 hours

• Defeating all the "uber" bosses: 200+ hours

• Maxing "everything": 300+ hours

And that's only on launch day. New content will be added monthly for six months following the release, and likely beyond that as well.

Stay tuned for more updates closer to mid-August! Anyway, here are the update notes:

Happy reaping!

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Story

• Added 8 new endings (see previous announcement for more details)

• Two special final boss fights with new combat mechanics (surprise, surprise!)

• Added new dialogues in the Void and in the intro scene

Combat

• Monsters in your party don't auto-attack anymore (you can turn this on/off). This allows you to select the action you want to use when equipped with other souls on a monster's loot. Fights can be more strategic this way.

• Toned down the cursor particles.

• Highlighting monster on their turn to better see who's taking action currently.

Vault

• Enemies don't respawn anymore after using regular teleporters (they still do when using waypoints). This has been done to minimize frustration when backtracking to find the path you're looking for. See "Void" section next for a new method for farming monster souls.

Void

• Completely new "Gauntlet" section. Allows you to instantly re-fight any squads you've previously encountered in the vault (this is by far a superior method for farming compared to rushing in the Vault)

• 20 new challenging bosses in the "Gauntlet". These will test your squad and combat planning. Some of them are much tougher than any of the final bosses.

Main Menu

• New Soul Gear "help" menu in the settings.

• New Loot Artifacts "help" menu in the settings.

• Minor UI updates to support different resolutions.

• Display of traits in the monster details panel (see below for more on traits).

Monster/Souls

• Monsters now have "traits"

• Each monster has 1-5 traits.

• There are 30 different traits in total (like "furry", "edible", "heavenly", etc.).

• Monsters can be made stronger with loot that enhances stats for monsters that have specific traits. See new attributes from the "Game Balancing" section below.

Game Balancing

• All monsters now have 2x more health.

• 140+ new attributes to roll on loot or in Soul Gear (in three groups) .

  1. Soul Amplification: Amplify effectiveness of a specific soul's ability (like the Balboa Fist already did in the previous versions)
  2. Trait Effectiveness Amplification: Amplify effectiveness of ability for monsters who have a specific trait (For example: Furry monsters deal 100% more damage)
  3. Trait Stats Amplification: Amplify Health and Agility for monsters who have a specific trait (For example: Flying monsters have +100 Health and +10 Agility)

• Rebalanced row bonuses using the new attributes from above (each monster now has a unique row bonus). Check back your current squads as they might behave differently after this change. We'll avoid big changes like that as much as possible post-release.

• Fixed discrepancies between row bonuses and socketed bonuses on some monsters

• Fixed tons of imbalance issues in socketed bonuses

Loot

• 80+ new unique loot - Themed after each monster - Obtainable by smithing level 200+ souls

• Gloves and boots can now have 2 soul sockets (up from 1)

• Gloves and boots now have 30 new Soul Gears each - "Gloves" Soul Gear amplify the effectiveness of abilities from monsters of a specific trait (see "Game Balancing" above) - "Boots" Soul Gear amplify the Health and Agility from monsters of a specific trait (See "Game Balancing" above)

Smithing

• Smith level 200+ souls to get unique legendary loot (based on the loot you smith)

• Added an indicator that your inventory is full

Achievements

• New Steam Achievements (final number TBD)

Other

• We added the ability to add new content and rebalance the game without the need for a full update on Steam (this will greatly accelerate the addition of new content and patches in the future)

Bug Fixes

Blockers/major

• Fixed most issues with computer language not set to "English" (if the game behaves strangely at the start, try switching your computer to "English" to see if that fixes it)

• Fixed soft-lock when talking to Sleepy Reaper with Romantic Reaper Fragment

• Fixed getting blocked by a black screen when entering combat while teleporting

Others

• Fixed some menus not scrolling far enough (devouring souls, smithing souls and smithing loot)

• Fixed monster some monster animations when soul smithing

• Fixed mini-map display errors on some maps

• Fixed Fournicorns sometimes running backwards towards you (byebye "moonwalking" animation :))

• Fixed movement pattern getting reset on teleport

• Fixed Reefraf being visible on respawn

• Fixed Reefraf and Stabbytabby not scaling in difficulty in New Game Plus

• Fixed "Deal Dark Damage" feat not registering

• Fixed loot not having the right number of attributes based on their rarity

• Fixed incorrect tiles in Polarus

• Fixed Polarus 9 (Icy Road) not having proper monster squads

• Fixed other visual glitches on the above map

• Fixed smithing menu not always updating after smithing loot or souls

• Fixed NG+ always starting from the second save file

• Fixed Devil Armor missing image

Regression

• We don't fully support game controllers anymore (though most of the game still works with a controller)