Hello everyone!
Firstly, let me say that when we pressed the release button, we never anticipated that just four days later, there would already be players with over 10 hours in the game. We haven’t even reached the weekend yet!
Seeing some of you already express interest in a potential future expansion is incredibly motivating. While I do have ideas for one, I can't promise anything as it depends how the game performs in the long run. Word of mouth can have a huge impact, especially for a small, two-person indie team like us, but if you continue supporting us with this level of enthusiasm, it very well could happen!
On the other hand, what I can promise is that we’re fully committed to supporting the core game for the foreseeable future, regardless of how it performs sales-wise.
Please know that I’m reading the forums and listening to your feedback, even if I can’t personally respond to everyone. But I'm not just all talk, so let’s take a look at how we’ve addressed some of the most common complaints with the 1.0.5 patch (and share a few extra tips as well):
1.0.5 patch changes:
Clarity for resistance bases
New players had a problem locating the territories that had their starting base. To address this, now territories with a resistance base have their loyalty bar recolored to gold, in addition to the flag. This hopefully makes them stand out more.
Currently selected unit
Another issue that was reported is that the currently selected unit is not obvious enough. It already had a blue pulsating outline, but we have made it bigger, more pronounced. In addition, the currently selected unit's overhead status bar received an additional animation to signify its selected status.
Hard to see doors
After taking a hard look at our tilesets, we have redone the doors that blended a bit too well into their respective walls. The biggest offenders were wooden buildings with wooden walls. Here is an example of a before and after:
Other smaller bugfixes:
Fixed "Magic resistance penetration" description shown twice on staff weapons.
Fixed adamantine magic staff being unlocked after researching Starter rune categorization. It should now correctly only unlock when Advanced rune categorization is researched.
Fixed double moving prematurely ending a unit turn when it has more than 2 action points.
Tips for problems that already have in-game solution:
In general, I would recommend taking a bit of time to familiarize yourself with the bar on the top right corner. It has a bunch of nice options that can help you personalize the controls/visuals and help in edge cases. I will show you a few examples:
Uncertainty about wall type that are transparent because of a unit behind it:
Using the "toggle hide walls when revealed" button, you can temporarily turn off the transparency to check.
Misjudging tiles leading to movement to unintended tiles:
Tile targeting is pixel-perfect accurate, but judging the borders of isometric tiles without enabling the tile border option can be tricky, especially if you prefer playing more zoomed out. Accidents can happen, and I completely understand how frustrating that can be.
Personally, I like to play with the “Toggle facing while moving” option turned on. With this enabled, the player has to set both the destination and the facing direction, making each move take two clicks instead of one. It adds a small extra step, but it also gives you a chance to undo your move before it happens, a perfect safeguard against unintended movement if you don’t mind the extra click.
Small UI:
I’ve heard that on certain monitor and resolution combinations, the UI text can appear too small. While I’m thinking on a cleaner long-term solution, there’s already a simple workaround you can try.
If you lower your resolution while keeping the same aspect ratio (and restart the game for it to take effect), the game will dynamically enlarge everything, including the UI, when running in fullscreen or borderless mode.
Because Slaves of Magic is a 2D game, sprite sizes stay constant regardless of resolution, so you’re not actually losing image quality by lowering it; the visuals are simply scaled up. Dynamic UI scaling would work the same way. This method just scales everything, not only the UI.
For example, if your monitor’s native resolution is 2560×1440, try setting it to 1920×1080.
Future planned feature, save and exit:
I also want to clarify my stance on saving during combat missions: it’s intentionally not available. As someone nicely put it on the forum, it’s meant to raise the stakes Dark Souls-style, making players live with all of their decisions within a mission.
Of course, this doesn’t mean you can’t reload and try again if you don’t like the outcome; you’ll just need to restart the mission on a freshly generated map.
That said, while a standard combat mission usually takes around 10–15 minutes, it was never my intention to punish players who need to step away from the computer unexpectedly. So, I’d like to officially confirm what I already said in the forums that a “save and quit” feature is planned. It’s a larger addition and will take some time to implement, but it is coming.
Closing thoughts:
So, that's it for our first bigger patch note! Thank you all again for your support, and I hope these changes and tips can help learning the game a bit easier!