Revelation of Release (of Early Access)

Woho!

18th of June. That's it! That's the Steam Early Access release!

After all of those long years, it's finally time! Xuhivan's Autonomous Cube is coming to the big stage!

To celebrate this, here comes: Another massive update, including some requested reworks and lots of QoL!

General Gameplay Changes

Listening to player feedback, the unit movement has been reworked: Your units now take priority when moving, such that blocking and units getting stuck is now much rarer. On a technical level, this means that your units move first, and the opponent units thereafter. Yet a unit can always do its own movement, and will only die after all teams have finished their movement-so enemies can still retaliate, beware!

For reference, this was old behaviour:

On the same note, the Orb of Love Mechanic was removed, all units now always turn when they hit an obstacle. You guys just seem too stupid to play the game the way I designed it. -,- What can I do. Maybe those mechanics will return in some format or another???? (Yes, this is a threat)

To make the game even easier (Ha!), there now also exists a thing called Déjà-Vu Potion:

You will automatically gain this relic after beating the first boss, Tasanzang. It allows you to restart one cube, while keeping all permanent changes such as clock and used relic charges as they are, so it's like a one-time get out of jail card when you have run into a roadblock, or a bad enemy spawn.

Unit Variants

Completely reworked enemy unit spawns. There are now three variants for each cube, secretly unlocked along with the other stuff!

Overworld Refurbishment

Also, the Overworld got partly reworked, and completely refurbished in act 2 and 3. Some nasty lighting bugs haven been fixed, especially noticeable before on the roof of act 3. A plattform on the water/ice for the event before the Act 2 Boss (Aranthos) was added: it is now just a random event like any other, instead of always being the breaking ice event.

All lights spawned by events are removed, making their looks more consistent. All cutscenes have been improved, especially making the movement speed of the camera more consistent.

And?

The HP Shield of Bosses now have a different color instead of plain red, with a custom one for each boss! The overhead UI of immortal units was darkened to make it more clear that they are immortal, and added an FX to bosses when they block hits because they are not the last unit yet:

The the hair and attack of Lung of Mythenmetz now have a purple touch to make it visually clearer that his attacks do not use the fire damage or ground inflaming mechanic. Slightly modified the Fire Phenomenon attack particle system for the same reason.

And a long list of smaller but no less important changes:

• Added an automatic save and load system for runs!

• Added an effect for the Demon Totem after rotation that shows which tiles of the cube need yet to be solved

• Added a counter how many units still have to be defeated in the top right. Can be clicked to mark all units that still have to be defeated (i.e., the effect ignores immortal enemies)

• Improved unit placing UI such that units no longer "get lost" above the screen with the need to scroll down to see them

• Added Earth Wyrm and Phoenix to the possible starting units (if unlocked)

• Made Earth Wyrm darker and more brownish to improve glance value (tm) versus Elder Wyrm

• Clarified in the unbound status that it only applies to kills during unit movement

• Fixed the scale and spinning wheel events sometimes incorrectly rotating the units offered

• Fixed Burial Urn never being actually offered in events despite being unlocked

• Esc and Backspace now close the small Esc-Menu, the Settings Menu and the Manual (instead of opening Esc-Menu over them or doing nothing)

• Clarified in Isabella's description that she does not drown

• Fixed Krios the Martyr triggering his attack on own units

• Made the 4th cube requirement unlock level 6 (that of Earth Wyrm) instead of depending on the unlock score (so that the level does not get unlocked in the middle of a run)

• Made the keyword hovering UI fade out faster the further away the mouse is from the border of the UI

• Fixed restarting a run while in an event unit selection breaking unit placement visuals for the following run

• Clarified and streamlined lots of relic and unit texts, especially whether their effects are permanent or just for the current cube, and whether a count is resetted after a cube

Last Words

And as a little concluding easteregg, if you enjoy a little bit of "how the sausage is made", I(and ChatGPT) also created a nice system that samples and plots the new spawn patterns!

It shows a sample of some random spawns, and for each the total sum of all hitpoints of opponents on a cube, the total sum of all hitpoints of non-invincible units, the number of units and and the number of invincible units of a spawn pattern. (Difficulty means the act: act 1 (left), act 2(middle) and act 3 (right), and the three colors show the three different patterns per cube).

That's it! The secret is out! See you on June 18th!!

Addendum of May 30th

Another Update got pushed, with some smaller improvements:

• Reduced the on disk size of the game by 40% by being less dumb when packaging

• Fixed cube rotation sometimes skipping the current song

• Background music playlist system should be more reliable in general now

• Fallen Deluder now ignores immortality and boss block

• Fixed Drunk Demon of Sand not blocking other Demon placement

• Fixed Deja-Vu Potion incorrectly showing its cork after save&load when used

(This means all bugs from the current pre-recorded stream are fixed now lol)

Also, there is now a pretty FX when one demon blocks another from placing: