Today, I am beyond thrilled to release Reality Break!!
I have been working on this game for a long time, and it feels rather unbelievable that it is finally out. While I got a small taste of this feeling when I launched the demo in August 2023, nothing can compare to the full release of my dream game, to the knowledge that all of you will be checking it out over the coming days, weeks, months. Thank you to those who have supported me on this journey with encouragement and feedback, and thank you to those who are just joining us now!
Reviews
Steam's algorithms include some benefits for the # of reviews a game has, so the sooner we can hit various milestones (including at just 10 reviews!), the more successful the game will be. So: please leave a review!
Features
Here's a partial list of what you can expect in the full version compared to the demo:
The rest of the Story!
Find out who the Unknown Voice is, what Jolgen's motives are, what really happened to Station 4, and your pilot's role in the galaxy!
More talents in the Reality Stream!
Speed up analyzing items with Multiplex Analysis, a talent that allows you to gain Inspection Points after destroying enemies and completing missions! And, if you find an item you like, preserve it to the next timeline as your Favored Item!
Rewrite the Universe!
The launch version includes many more elements you can eventually rewrite, such as rewriting Treasure Crates to boost their contents, rewriting the Affix Operator so that it multiplies a stat instead of adding to it, and even certain elements of the story itself!
New Epic items... and more!
Deploy the new ""Phasic Aligner"" phaser that grants a Power boost for each version of it equipped on your ship... in any loadout. Then, fire the ""Splinter"" Railgun that flings pieces of deadly shrapnel from enemies it hits for a devastating chain reaction!
Aptitude Expansion!
The cunning Sage uses the power of Ship Regeneration to turn the tables on adversaries, while the dominating Commander is a master of Drone technology. And, completing ever-higher Challenge Levels unlocks new Aptitude Ranks that grant various boosts and even unique Fate Affixes!
Item Customization
Replacing an item that has an Affix you like? Try to Extract it, then Synthesize it alongside others into an item Chassis!
Varied Mission Types
Survive a continuous onslaught until your Slipdrive comes back online, scan Facilities while dodging RPG projectiles fired by Institute ""Negotiators"", intercept a Convoy loaded down with loot, and more!
Dangerous Enemies
Face off against the mysterious Voi'ner with Reconstruction technology capable of bringing their ships back, dodge weapons fire by Rakeris Shrikes that can cloak at will, face off against the massive Nexus Mothership, and take down deadly new bosses while dodging their attacks, such as the Raider Factory's Cutter Lasers!
Replayability
Unlock Fatestorms to fend off assaults while completing random missions, complete side missions in any order you choose to stack Flow Bonuses that culminate in a highly rewarding Flow Combo, defeat the timeline-spanning Overlord, and complete new Codex Sets - even setting one as a favored set to increase the drops from it!
Ongoing Updates
Even though today's v1.0 launch is a complete experience, I have many plans to expand this game. I am particularly interested in shaping the game based on player feedback, and will devote a large chunk of my post-launch schedule to work on fixes and features that come directly from everyone playing the game!
Endgame
I love ARPGs for their replayability, and one of the mechanisms for that is encapsulated via a single word: ""endgame"". Reality Break ships with multiple endgame systems, but there is more I want to do. As a solo dev, it will take me some time to expand this aspect of the game while balancing against other important work, but I'm dedicated to making it the best it can be. I plan to focus my work on systems that interact with each other to create new mechanics and new playstyles!
r/Games AMA
Today at 2pm Central time I will be doing an AMA on the r/Games subreddit! I'm looking forward to answering all kinds of questions about life, the universe, and game development. Come hang out and ask me anything!
Beta branch
In the coming weeks, I will enable public playtesting of upcoming builds of the game via a Steam beta branch. Think of it like the PTRs used by online games: a way for you to check out upcoming changes and offer feedback before they go live!
Feedback
The best way to give feedback is to email me at [email protected] or to join the official Element Games discord! This is especially helpful if you encounter something that breaks the game for you or prevents progress in some way - go to your %localappdata%low\Element Games\Reality Break folder and email me all of your *.sav and *.log files along with a description of the issue you're experiencing. This will help me fix things much faster.
Modding
The game's community has already come up with various ways to mod the game in unexpected + fantastic directions, and I can't wait to see what comes out of that! The discord has a modding channel with various tutorials and tools, but I am very open to implementing suggestions for making the game more moddable over time.
Enjoy!
Also, below is a list of patch notes covering many (though not all) of the improvements and fixes I've made to the game since the various demo releases, the vast majority a direct result of player feedback.
On a personal note, I kind of knew a little about what I was signing up for as a solo dev making a Diablo-like, but at the same time, I was clueless. Out of my journey came Reality Break, a spaceship loot-based ARPG that truly I hope you enjoy playing. As I mentioned before, but reiterating since it helps so much: please leave a review after you check out the game! I can't wait to see what you all think of Reality Break.
That's enough from me - much love, and happy breaking! <3
~Courtney
Reality Break full version build v1.00.0 has gone live!
Performance
- Substantially sped up various Reality Stream UI functionality.
- Substantially sped up Reality Stream save/load.
- Slightly reduced performance impact of many dozens of uncollected world drops existing at once.
Quality of Life
- Substantially improved Reality Stream legibility.
- Further distinguished visuals for main Reality Stream talent UIs that unlock new features.
- Changed the player ship icon on the Area Scan’s overlay mode from a dot to the same triangular sprite used in the dialog mode, including rotation, to make it easier to see.
- Don't start the Chaos Vortex mission timer until dialogue is done showing.
- Treasure crates can no longer spawn inside hazards.
- Rewrite entry UI tooltips for Affix Type/Value and Unique Modifier Type/Value now show a description of their affix/stat.
- When equipping an item, preserve the ship's previous health/energy/shield fraction.
- Moved expert goal completion UI/fx to fixed screen area, improving clarity
- When dying due to collision with something, correctly display the name of the collided object in the skull icon hover tooltip on the area scan dialog.
- Move Storage dialog to the right while the rewrite dialog is open, rather than closing it.
- Item tooltips now appear adjacent to the UI dialog containing the item, such as just outside the ship dialog UI's bounds, rather than overlapping other inventory items or equipment.
- Show the reason for player ship's destruction on the Defeated outro/respawn UI.
- Don't advance mission elapsed timers while on Defeated screen or if the map isn't currently running for any reason.
- The Tech Specialist dialog UI now shows current resource amounts.
Polish
- Sped up appearance of Interact instructions.
- Improved Interact instruction sound.
- Improved hitboxes on Reality Stream Talent UI items.
- Made it clearer that the game has an Ironman Mode option.
- Map music continues playing through death and respawn to keep up the energy level.
- Made portions of the Break Profile flow mandatory, including tutorials that always show up and cannot be skipped.
- Added tutorial for Multi-Loot.
- Most Points of Interest and other things that can be scanned or approached no longer appear as gray on the Area Scan before they have been completed.
Content
- Reduced physics impulses on player ships by a further 50%.
- Shields are now hit before Armor to start with, until the new Guard Inversion talent has been purchased.
- Added Fortify skill (CL: one of multiple tools for player-controllable survivability)
- Added Recursion skill
- Redesigned Aggressive Engagement: it now triggers on secondary weapon kill for +25% crit chance.
- Redesigned Surge: it now triggers on Fate Beam kill for +400% energy regen.
- Additional Resource types are now required for various purchases in the game, and they can now be obtained from the usual sources of Resources with decreasing drop rate for rarer ones.
Balance
- Gave enemies extra targeting range when in combat.
- Reworked Gold Plated talent so it adds up to 100% of current Armor at high amounts of Credits.
- Removed errant +1 to RP break multiplier based on number of previous breaks.
- Mission CL rewrite costs increasing amounts of fate.
- Mission CL rewrite is capped at 4 CLs above highest completed.
- Reduced the effectiveness of Draw Essence by 90%.
- Multishot now has 5 points max.
- Dramatically buffed Pillager loot drops.
- Reduced baseline item drop rate by 50%.
- Toned down out of control Max Energy affix scaling at higher item levels.
- The free item received from Pulling the Strands now drops at a higher item level, based on the aggregate Tier level.
- Rewriting item rarity now costs less for higher rarities.
- Increased Negate Existence cooldown to 25 seconds.
- Reduced damage output of Nexus enemy ships.
- Dramatically reduced damage output of Colossus Detonators.
- Dramatically buffed context-based Affixes, such as damage from weapon power source, specific weapon specialization damage, pilot Skill effect.
- Removed the time limit on Investigation side missions.
- Increased the time limit on Demolition side missions by 30%.
- Fate Beam damage now scales with 20% of your Pilot Level.
- Reduced exponent base for completed Expert Goals by 15%.
- Reduced exponent base for completed Codex Sets by 25%.
- Rebalanced Codex set bonuses slightly.
Bug fixes
- fixed difficulty button not showing up on current pilot after buying Omen talent
- fixed Fission elites spawned from Ambush Crates subdividing into allies of the player's ship
- fixed ClearLatestCompletionOnLoad not working if you just exited to main menu and returned
- fixed light color on railgun attacks
- fixed various enemy projectiles exiting the plane of gameplay and flying over or under the player's ship
- fixed ambiguity when interacting with specialist shipyard or item storage while near both of them
- fixed aiming of railguns and other beam weapons when their cast was started in a different targeting direction than when they fired (also demo internal: clear focus targets cached flag too)
- fixed beam attack direction becoming detached from player's aim and its fx
- fixed skill rewrite fx and audio playing every time the pilot dialog was opened after a skill was rewritten
- fixed a bug where some items could load in a Suppressed state and get stuck with nonfunctional affixes
- Fixed propulsion abilities not canceling when player input is suppressed or when speech bubble shows up
- fixed rewriting Unique Modifier Type not updating its display in a matching Unique Modifier Value rewrite
- fixed wrong interactions between Unique Modifier Type and Unique Modifier Value rewrites on the same item
- fixed tutorial flow getting stuck in a loop in cases where it was flagged to hide on a completed NPE step
- fixed being unable to click Codex dialog’s close button
- fixed input display icons not always working on international keyboard layouts
- fixed interact instructions not updating their input displays when interact binding was updated
- fixed area scan instruction input showing {0} the first time
- Fixed inline input text replacement not respecting QWERTZ
- Fixed input icon replacement not respecting QWERTZ
- Fixed Windows and Enter keys not working with input icon replacement
- Fixed bindings not refreshing if the system keyboard layout was changed while they were hidden
- fixes for overlord continuing its escape cast across death+restarts
- fixed front end metagame button label with specific # of RP getting overwritten by translated text
- fixed reflect/deflect mechanics not preventing projectile damage when the projectile was redirected
- fixed player ship no longer appearing on nav map after completing a mission and before jumping to another sector
- fixed item rewrites for affix value and affix type not being updated when an item was granted as a mission reward at a higher challenge level
- fixed various affix stats getting a double boost from being higher level (their value was increased by both the item's level and the Core Multiplier, which comes from item level)
- fixed Dormant Punisher not matching the rotation of the debris field it spawns from
- fixed Envelop fx not working correctly on repeated casts
- fixed Envelop not disappearing smoothly when its time was almost up
- fixed long pilot names overflowing their pilot dialog UI label
- fixed ship center HUD propulsion icon being at half opacity
- fixed item tooltip UI not always showing alt compare instruction when hovering a drone equipment item
- fixed Affix Type rewrite using previous entry's value to calculate conversion multiplier rather than the parent entry’s value, as it should be for multiple-choice rewrites
- fixed various inconsistencies in how affix values were displayed in the ship dialog and its stat details panel
- fixed a variety of issues with Ironman Mode deaths not "taking" and with pilots being Extinguished when they shouldn't have been
- fixed being able to go into the vortex while player input isn't allowed or the player's ship is dead
- fixed Current Sector display for side missions without objectives, such as Elimination
- fixed blank icon for Engine Thrust affix type rewrite entry
- fixed item loss if the "slot for analysis" input binding was pressed on an item while there was another picked-up item as well as an item slotted into the quantum frame
- fixed lack of audiovisual fx when rewriting an item in the stash
- fixed erosion of Talent Tier level when refunding Sub-talents that would have put it above 100/100
- fixed skill UI sheen overlay getting stuck in various positions if the dialog was closed during the animation
- fixed quantized item affixes, such as Twin Bolt, sometimes having fractional components under the hood, which resulted in their summation not working as expected
- fixed certain enemy railguns knocking back the player's ship after they'd already fired
- fixed epic sensors item Vivisector and epic propulsion item Superhero Launch making various things vulnerable that shouldn't be
- fixed resource items showing up dark in ship inventory UI due to recycling and stale non-matching equipment overlay
- fixed toggle favorite/scrap sweep not working in Storage UI
- fixed Slipdrive input binding working before Slipdrive was repaired
- fixed Raider Fighter's projectile attacks sometimes going over/under their targets
- fixed Volatile Crates not exploding
- fixed some issues that prevented Launcher missiles from homing in on targets correctly
- fixed Teleport propulsion ability sometimes lodging the ship in the middle of an object
- fixed stack overflow leading to a crash when completing a Reality Font point of interest
- fixed getting stuck with Mission-type "equipment" items if they were in Storage when a quest needed them
- fixed various radar and area scan signatures going gray immediately upon approaching their entity rather than after that entity was completed, such as defeating a Volatile Anomaly
- fixed Railguns being classed as Ammo-based instead of the correct Energy-based
- fixed Rarity rewrite doubling up the CoreMultiplier increase calculation
- fixed Rarity rewrite stat increase from CoreMultiplier bump not updating an item entity's stat cache, resulting in stale values post-rewrite
- fixed rewriting Rarity to a Defined Item not upgrading the item's affixes
- fixed items rewritten to Rare not generating their 2-part randomized display names
- fixed Elimination targets showing massive max health and shields with only partial current health if encountered on higher Omen levels
- fixed being able to toggle front end UI dialogs while launching into space
- fixed Salvage mission targets that split due to Fission losing the mission's target item