The silence is OVER!
And this time we’re not here just to talk about the upcoming changes. From the Ashes update is already here as well! But we do advise you to read this devlog first, as there is a lot of explaining to do.
First thing we’d like to shed some light on something not entirely game-related. But it is pretty noticeable – our lack of communications this year. And the reason for it is rather boring: a lot of what you’ll see below went through rapid iteration, and writing frequent previews would’ve meant publishing explanations that became obsolete almost immediately. We held off until the full picture was stable enough to present as a coherent update. Of course, we’ll do our best to prevent this from happening in the future!
TABLE OF CONTENTS (yeah, it's that big)
HAND OF FATE -- Card changes
CREATURES OF THE NIGHT -- ORX changes
ANIMA MUNDI -- World changes
EMERALD SWORD -- Rune Guardians changes
WHAT ALL OF THIS BRINGS -- Summary and wrap up
Now with that out of the way, let’s talk about From the Ashes update. Our goal with it was simple: “Go back to what made those first demos magical. And build off of that”. We went through everything. What makes it fun to build in ORX. What’s that special sort of anxiety you feel when the night falls. The high points, and, of course, the low points as well.
You can find the absolutely massive list of changes in the separate patch notes post. But we highly recommend to stay and read our explanations for the most important of those. As always, don’t forget you can click on the headers for some fitting power metal songs to get you into the right mood. Let’s go!
Cards in ORX sometimes felt like they’re more of a visual choice, than a gameplay one. Heavy restrictions for deck building, random acquisition of new cards, “play-and-forget” nature of most card effects. Your deck would become bloated and it felt like some abilities could be… well, “always present” abilities.
Here’s our solution to this: more deck building, card stashing and changes to infinite cards.
First one is pretty self-explanatory. You can now sell cards for Crowns at any shop on the map. Without any restrictions on how many cards you can sell. The vaults grant card upgrades instead of new cards. And Rune Guardians now have distinct deck archetypes – with other factions soon getting their own.
NOTE: We plan to add a proper animation for selling cards a bit later. And make it more convenient.
But what is card stashing? It’s in the name. You are now able to stash up to X cards onto the battlefield itself, away from your tiles. Once placed, they leave your deck cycle – disappearing from your hand until you either buy them back or finish the mission. Simple as that! Don’t need all those runes during the day? Stash them away. Built enough castles and need to reach somewhere with roads? Stash them away. Waiting for a better opportunity to play a card, but it causes congestion? STASH. IT. AWAY.
“Wait, but if I can use only the cards I need – I’ll just spam those!”. We thought the same. Which is why we’re adding cooldowns to infinite cards. The stronger the card, the longer the cooldown. This both limits the power provided by the card stashing, and adds more strategy to card choices. If you’re focusing on castles, for example, at some point you’ll need at least one more Single Wall card. Otherwise it’s going to be extremely tough to finish all those cool castles you might be able to start. And, of course, not all cards are infinite. More powerful ones still have limited charges, but no cooldown.
As an extra change tied to all this, it’s no longer possible to abuse the pause in order to place five hundred cards once you have enough gold. Now you really need to keep an eye on that night countdown and use everything you got!
When used together, these changes really flesh out the card aspect of ORX. And we hope that you’ll agree on how “tactile” the card stashing feels. Almost like setting away a card in a tabletop game that you plan on using later.
ORX! ORX!! ORX!!!
There will be no nice segway this time. When they come for you it will be sudden and you will feel like a shabby boat in a middle of a storm. Which is exactly the feeling we nailed down in our retrospective of what made ORX (and other tower-defence games) so appealing. It’s the constant process of putting out fires. The “oh, I wasn’t prepared for THAT” moments. Or, if you were lucky and strategic enough – nervously watching how everything plays out, and hoping that you live to see the dawn.
Previously, we’ve tried out a rock-paper-scissors system for buildings, units and ORX. The idea was that it cleanly puts all of them into counteracting categories. However, this system was based off of raw stats, and proved to be either confusing or barely noticeable. This time, we are going for a more tangible, direct approach. The Fierce-Resilient-Cunning triad is being phased out. And in its place the Metaclans are taking hold.
Metaclans offer a more tangible difference between different ORX, and extra clarity to your decision making. Each clan also unlocks with each new Act, which makes the difficulty curve slightly smoother. But be ready to stand your ground against combined forces of ORX in act 4. And yes, that’s new ORX featured in the gifs above. We also have a new boss in Act 2!
All of new ORX have unique behaviour. Some use hit-n-run tactics, while others do completely new things like launching ORX into your buildings like a circus canon. We’ll specifically highlight ORX Bombardiers – while being pretty simple, they are a precursor to a tag-driven system splitting units into the following categories: melee, ranged and flying. This system will dictate what targets can be reached, and, more importantly, which of them will be prioritized.
All in all, we aim to make all of the ORX an interesting and tangible threat, while also making their strengths and weaknesses visible almost at a glance.
We’ve talked about the cards and the ORX. But what about the World? The Global Map, the levels and how you affect them – all went through substantial changes.
We felt like interactions with the Global Map weren’t as interesting as we’d hoped. For starters, there was barely anything stopping you from clearing the entire Act. This would quickly snowball by the mid-game and meant that we couldn’t give you too many rewards for each individual mission. The campaign run time would also vary wildly – from way too fast for some, to way too long for others.
In this update we’ve decided to limit your amount of moves for each Act. You start the run with 4 map moves, which would carry over to the next one, if you have any left by the time you slay the boss. And yes, to prevent you from running out of moves, we’ve made each Act boss available from the moment you enter the new region. If you’re either mad or really love tough challenges you could, theoretically, challenge them straight away.
You’ll also be able to pick from 3 different starting locations whenever you begin a new Act. Your first pick is the most generous, offering an enhanced starting bundle – a mix of card, free upgrades, or an artifact, – while the other two will lessen their reward pool, but still be accessible in case you’d decide to grab them.
We have also dialed up a notch on level generation algorithm, increasing the map variety and the number of their layouts. We always felt, that one of the less visible, but more important factors was the difficulty of the map itself. And now, some of them will definitely affect how you play. To the point, where we’ve also added this parameter to the pre-mission info window, so you could better decide how easy or difficult it’s going to be.
Arguably the most fun change in regards to the level is the new interaction with the forest tiles. Now, whenever a forest tile gets removed due to you playing new cards, a band of ORX can spawn from it. Their spawn chance, count, and strength scale with distance from your Main Building – and are further shaped by mission difficulty and how deep you are into the Acts.
Most obviously, it creates much needed tension during the day. It won’t be unbearable, but it removes certain periods of the mission being completely safe from the ORX. Secondly, it allows you to get a feel for how strong the ORX are going to be when the night comes. Plus, it points out weaknesses in your defences. Which gives you a better idea on what you should prioritize building and how you should be placing it. Finally, it puts real pressure on road expansion. Reaching every point of interest is now a trade-off: rush a Vault for an early upgrade, or secure a Village to make the nights easier.
Being the first and oldest faction in ORX, Rune Guardians used to look like it, but played like a grab-bag: a little bit of walls, a little bit of runes, a little bit of units, and no clear direction to commit to. In part it was done as an intended player experience for the beginners. It’s the “poster boy” faction that was supposed to teach you about the basics of everything. But from your feedback and our discussions, we saw that it wasn’t ideal and the faction identity suffered as a result. Now Rune Guardians have three distinct archetypes, which you can build your deck around: each with its own “win button”, its own pacing, and its own weaknesses.
The first one is the OG “one fortress” fantasy: finally supported by the rules instead of getting punished by them. The old structural penalties for large castles are gone, so building tall and wide is once again a valid plan rather than a self-inflicted handicap. Instead, we’re introducing a new castle timing layer – wake-up delay. It turns size into a clear choice: bigger castles are slower to come online, but they pay back tenfold once they’re awake. This gives a nice tempo to your defences, without the once-sided penalties. Now if the run is about a single defense axis, Big Castle is the cleanest answer.
Next up is the “DoT Network”. This archetype is about attrition and coverage, not raw tower DPS. Many small entities, lots of damage sources, many stacks. To support it, we’ve completely remade how the status system works: effects like Poison, Puddle, Malediction and other indirect damage tools now scale through stack boosts and multipliers, not hidden stat math. As a result, the “spread the rot” plan becomes clear and controllable. The map stops being a set of isolated kill-zones and starts behaving like a connected damage field. This archetype performs best against tanky ORX and bosses.
The last archetype is the “Infantry might”. The Rune Guardians also needed a unit plan that doesn’t feel like a side dish. Infantry is now a real archetype with a streamlined roster and a clear progression. We’ve slightly reduced the number of unit cards and made them fit explicit categories:
Militia – general purpose infantry;
Spearmen – defensive control;
Orbcasters – ranged units;
Templar – elite anchor unit.
All of this is crowned by the new Veterancy mechanic for all RG warriors. Veterancy is earned by surviving nights, and there are effects that accelerate how fast it accumulates. It doesn’t carry over between missions, and it’s not exactly an EXP system – so the Boreal Nomads still preserve their uniqueness, – but it is a readable and actionable concept that you can build off of.
WHAT ALL OF THIS BRINGS
The reworked world map, smaller starting decks, card selling, cooldown/charge split, and stashing system all push toward deliberate specialization. And Rune Guardians needed to fit this paradigm as well. The three archetypes are their answer: less generic “good stuff” cards, more personality and distinct archetypes, and clearer reasons to sell, stash, upgrade, or double down.
If a run collapses now, it collapses for a clear reason: the castle woke up too late; the network didn’t click; the infantry bled out before Veterancy could snowball. That is the point. And it’s something that you, as a player, could improve upon and grow. Which is exactly what video games are all about.
And the best part is that the changes covered above are just the most important ones. There is a slew of new content as well: runes, buildings, unique effects, UI improvements and more!
We hope that this update will restore some of the primordial joy you’ve experienced when you first played ORX. Or show you how committed we are to improving the game and not being afraid to implement massive sweeping changes.
So, what’s next? Looking into 2026 we can finally see the path ahead. Not only we’ve changed ORX – it changed us and our development process as well. Our plan is to polish up the changes introduced in From the Ashes update and flesh them out even more, where needed. Then get to some of the more neglected parts of the game. And afterwards, introduce the 4th faction. All of this is going to be supported by new content of differing amounts, as well as general refactoring and technical polish.
And don’t forget to share your feedback and opinions about the game. Never stop sharing those, actually. We thank each and every player who decided to voice their ideas and concerns throughout these couple years. And we thank you for reading this beast of a devlog.
Enjoy fighting off the hordes of Green Menace, and see you next year. Happy Holidays!
Work in Progress demonstration.
