Hello! We took some time off after making the initial demo, but we've been busy beez for the last month or so working to improve the demo on the back end as well as bringing new features and Quality of Life !
You can download the update over on Itch https://thegamegarden.itch.io/astral-arena-demo
Change Log
Visuals
- 🐶New animations for all Astrals (ranged & melee skills, strafing, and retreating).
- 🖼️ Items now have images!
- ✨More visuals for status effects!
General Improvements
- ⚖️ Item drops rebalanced to appear earlier.
- 💪 Items buffed; all consumables now heal.
- 🕹️ New control remapping system - customize controls for keyboard and controller! Share your preferred setup to help us establish a good default.
- 🔧 Refactored UI & input systems for increased flexibility and robustness. This took a long time! 😅
- 🚫 Tutorial disabled - was always a temporary feature. Removed due to UI and input system refactoring.
- 📊 New UI for status effect info.
- 🐞 Numerous bug fixes & quality of life improvements.
Combat Enhancements
- 🛡️ Updated Combat UI for better readability and informativeness.
- 🔢 NEW damage info above Astrals showing numbers, damage type (ranged, melee, status effect), and effectiveness.
- ⚖️ Astral stats rebalanced.
- 🔄 Astrals now use a random equipped skill if no skill is assigned after a certain time, enhancing 2v2 and 3v3 battles.
- 🥊 Enemies rebalanced.
- 🆕 New skills!
- ♻️ Status effects and skills refactored for improved viability.
- ☁️ NEW weather system (visuals pending).
- 🌿 NEW nature synergy system - Astrals with shared nature gain boosts, encouraging specialized team building. Adds challenge to 2v2 and 3v3 battles.
- 🚀 Self-targeting skills are now always usable and auto-target the user.
- 🔄 Astrals now face their target and strafe rather than always facing the direction they are moving.