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Steam News27 May 20261mo ago

All About NECTARMANCER

Greetings from beautiful Oakland, California! The Beauty Cult is just Zac and I (Don), and we've been so fortunate to be able to dig into making this crazy game of ours.

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Full The Beauty Cult's NECTARMANCER update

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  • Maps
  • Gameplay
  • Balance
addedNectarmancer is a Gardenvania , that means that you explore a big seamless open world (like Ori, not like Blasphemous), doing acrobatic combat and unlocking new abilities that help you explore new areas and incentivize re-exploration. The world map is dense, and secret-laden, which is important for making re-exploration feel good and rewarding. But that's just regular metroidvania stuff that players should expect, as a gardenvania , much of Aisa's (that's you, the Nectarmancer) combat power comes from the plants that you grow.
addedEach seed is totally unique and can either be shot as a bullet or shot into the ground and grown into a bullet factory. If you're running through The Wilds and run into a swarm of pixies, it would make sense to just shoot your low-value seeds at them and move on. But if you're exploring a new area and stumble into a room that hits you with waves of enemies, you should plant a few high-value seeds into the ground to help replenish your stock as combat progresses. Likewise, you should carefully plan your loadouts when attempting boss fights.
addedAdditionally, plants have a list of genetic traits on them that change how they behave. The Piercing trait lets you hit multiple enemies, while the Volatility trait will create explosions on impact. When you plant a seed into the ground, the traits of that seed are passed on to its children. Nectarmancer has MANY traits, and the first skill the player unlocks, Nectarmancy , lets you add traits from your inventory to seeds. We're very happy to let the players create nukes that will clear out entire rooms (and probably kill you), as well as plants that can hack the economy with incredible Nectar production.

The Beauty Cult's NECTARMANCER changes

addedNectarmancer is a Gardenvania , that means that you explore a big seamless open world (like Ori, not like Blasphemous), doing acrobatic combat and unlocking new abilities that help you explore new areas and incentivize re-exploration. The world map is dense, and secret-laden, which is important for making re-exploration feel good and rewarding. But that's just regular metroidvania stuff that players should expect, as a gardenvania , much of Aisa's (that's you, the Nectarmancer) combat power comes from the plants that you grow.
addedEach seed is totally unique and can either be shot as a bullet or shot into the ground and grown into a bullet factory. If you're running through The Wilds and run into a swarm of pixies, it would make sense to just shoot your low-value seeds at them and move on. But if you're exploring a new area and stumble into a room that hits you with waves of enemies, you should plant a few high-value seeds into the ground to help replenish your stock as combat progresses. Likewise, you should carefully plan your loadouts when attempting boss fights.
addedAdditionally, plants have a list of genetic traits on them that change how they behave. The Piercing trait lets you hit multiple enemies, while the Volatility trait will create explosions on impact. When you plant a seed into the ground, the traits of that seed are passed on to its children. Nectarmancer has MANY traits, and the first skill the player unlocks, Nectarmancy , lets you add traits from your inventory to seeds. We're very happy to let the players create nukes that will clear out entire rooms (and probably kill you), as well as plants that can hack the economy with incredible Nectar production.

Greetings from beautiful Oakland, California! The Beauty Cult is just Zac and I (Don), and we've been so fortunate to be able to dig into making this crazy game of ours. It's been a long-time coming, but we'd like to share some details about what this game is as well as some development updates.

Nectarmancer is a Gardenvania, that means that you explore a big seamless open world (like Ori, not like Blasphemous), doing acrobatic combat and unlocking new abilities that help you explore new areas and incentivize re-exploration. The world map is dense, and secret-laden, which is important for making re-exploration feel good and rewarding. But that's just regular metroidvania stuff that players should expect, as a gardenvania, much of Aisa's (that's you, the Nectarmancer) combat power comes from the plants that you grow.

Each seed is totally unique and can either be shot as a bullet or shot into the ground and grown into a bullet factory. If you're running through The Wilds and run into a swarm of pixies, it would make sense to just shoot your low-value seeds at them and move on. But if you're exploring a new area and stumble into a room that hits you with waves of enemies, you should plant a few high-value seeds into the ground to help replenish your stock as combat progresses. Likewise, you should carefully plan your loadouts when attempting boss fights.

Additionally, plants have a list of genetic traits on them that change how they behave. The Piercing trait lets you hit multiple enemies, while the Volatility trait will create explosions on impact. When you plant a seed into the ground, the traits of that seed are passed on to its children. Nectarmancer has MANY traits, and the first skill the player unlocks, Nectarmancy, lets you add traits from your inventory to seeds. We're very happy to let the players create nukes that will clear out entire rooms (and probably kill you), as well as plants that can hack the economy with incredible Nectar production.

We've been working on Nectarmancer for close to 7 years, we're really happy with how it's shaping up and we're always blown away by how special it is during our playtests. While we will have a public demo available in the future, if you'd like to know more or join our private playtests please join our discord! https://discord.gg/kK5QwaxU

💕Don & Zac, The Beauty Cult

Source

Steam News / 27 May 2026

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