Thanks to the efforts of new community contributors - primarily Blue Guy - Downfall returns to the scene with a brand-new playable boss! The Awakened One arrives, with a full suite of custom card art from our amazing art team!
Play as the leader of the Cult of Mazaleth itself - a powerful spellcaster in a former life, turned into an avatar of dark magics through a ritual of sacrifice. Awakened One’s mechanics include:
Conjure - Draw powerful Spell cards from your Spellbook and unleash them on your enemies.
Power cards - Play tons of Power cards to activate Chant effects on your cards to make them stronger for the rest of the fight. If you play enough Powers, you enter your second phase, empowering all of your Conjured spells!
Voids - Turn the negative of losing energy into a potent but highly risky upside. This archetype is high risk, high reward but allows for a lot of strategy to evade the downsides of losing energy entirely or even turning it into a pure positive given enough support and effort.
The Awakened One also represents a new general target of balance for Downfall characters. Much like the original cast of characters, playing the Awakened One successfully requires experience and understanding of mechanics. We have had a history of releasing characters a little too strong and then have needed to backpedal in post-launch updates, and we’re trying to avoid that going forward. The Awakened One has been in testing and has had more runs than any character we’ve ever made, and we’re confident that it is reasonably close to the “core 3” (Ironclad / Silent / Defect) in terms of power. Success is most definitely possible, as we have A20 Awakened One streaks on record, but does not come without understanding how the draft comes together and how to shore up any weaknesses you encounter.
We look forward to seeing everyone’s reaction to the Awakened One!
In addition, this patch includes a suite of balance changes, as well as core game changes to the starting floor layout and the Key break mechanics.
Full patch notes: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1Pj2tFBOjFUn-labSzO5l_bME8kH1k-ed6916kdtvtNM/edit?usp=sharing
Join us on Discord to chat on the update and share your experiences.
And as an extra bonus announcement, if you didn't hear, Downfall is heading to the tabletop! The Slay the Spire board game by Contention Games is receiving a Downfall expansion! We couldn't be more honored by this and encourage everyone to follow their Kickstarter campaign here to be alerted when the campaign begins: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/contentiongames/sts-downfall