Hello, everyone!
If you’re celebrating, Merry Christmas! If not, enjoy your totally-not-festive days, Happy New Year, and all that good stuff.
I hope I’m not too late to the party (っ °Д °;)っ. Honestly, I started panicking when other games began releasing their updates last week. Turns out, having a deadline sucks, and I didn’t get as much done as I’d hoped. For some reason, I spent more time fighting with Unity than actually developing. But that’s beside the point—anyway, I hope everything is good now!
With that monologue out of the way: this update was a bit rushed, so please excuse any issues I didn’t have time to find or polish out.
Now, let’s dress up and get festive for the changelog! (≧∇≦)ﾉ
New Map
Let’s start with the most important part of the update: the frozen wasteland of the Northern Tundra!
I’ll leave the exploration to you! The map is roughly twice the size of Capital Outskirts, with puzzles and points of interest scattered throughout. More will be added over time.
Oh, and yes—the snow is interactive, in case you were wondering.
New Skins
Snow alone isn’t enough to sell the winter update, so we’ve also added some skins!
Winter skins are available for Amelia, David, Lucy, and Oana! These are the first skins in the game, so I hope you like them~ Each one costs 50,000 gems and can be purchased in the shop.
Winter event
For a limited time (until January 14th), players can earn rewards like runes and the free Amelia - Winter’s Joy skin!
You can claim one reward per day.
Weapons and Items
Excuse my laziness, I wanted to record some gifs of these weapons but I don't want to set the standard for future changelogs too high Never mind—I did it anyway (✿◡‿◡)
This update introduces 8 new weapons and 1 new item, all unlockable on the new map.
Wind Maelstrom
An interesting new Wind AoE type weapon that creates a wind vortex that pulls enemies toward you. It may sound useless, but maybe you can find a clever use for it
Unlock method: Find an overhang on one of the mountains, climb it, and stand on the edge next to the lamp.
Snowball
A simple Ice-type weapon—a snowball that flies in an arc. It’s not very practical, but it’s fun!
Unlock method: Enter the new winter map. That’s it.
Gift Box
This Fire Follow-Up weapon spawns little gifts on the ground that explode after a short delay. While active, the gifts accumulate damage dealt by other weapons to increase their explosion damage.
Unlock method: Defeat the final boss of the winter map.
Comet
Comet is a new Cosmic Follow-Up type weapon. Don't worry guys, I heard your cries about the meteors - so here is another one to clutter your screen! Whenever an elemental reaction is triggered the comet will be sent down at the location of that reaction. Sick!
Unlock method: Enter the floating island on the Northern Tundra via the teleport in the crater below it.
Flame Purge
A Fire AoE weapon that shoots a fiery beam in the direction your character is facing. I’ve wanted to add something like this for a while!
Unlock method: Find four pillars near the floating island and use Fire-type attacks on them until they’re fully lit.
Shockwave
This Earth AoE weapon releases periodic shockwaves that deal a single instance of damage around your character. Trust me, it looks better in-game than in the gif! 😭
Unlock method: Near the big cavern, find a chest on top of a pillar. You’ll need to parkour your way up to it.
Frost Breath
An Ice DoT weapon that releases a frosty mist in the direction your character is facing. Enemies caught in the mist are inflicted with Ice DoT. Finally, an Ice DoT weapon in the game—oops!
Unlock method: Find a hidden village in the mountainous area near the spawn
Orbital Strike
This Lightning AoE weapon works similarly to Summer’s Arrow Rain, prioritizing enemies with higher health.
Unlock method: Locate the ruins of a temple. Within the ruins, open the chest to obtain the weapon.
Black Gloves
This new item enhances AoE-type weapons by reducing their internal damage cooldown, allowing them to deal damage more frequently.
Unlock method: Find a small camp on the path between the cavern and the spawn. Look for a tent or a lamp hanging from a tree, and open the chest next to the gravestone.
UI stuff
DPS display
You can now track your DPS in real time with a new UI component.
Menu tooltips
Added tooltips to certain menus. Hover over UI elements to see what they do. Let me know if there are areas where additional tooltips would help!
Menu theme settigns
Added an option to switch between the new and older main menu themes. There’s also an early beta theme available to try out for those that never got the chance to see it.
Shop stuff
Stamina upgrade
You can now upgrade your stamina by buying the new permanent stamina upgrade!
Bug fixes and minor improvements
- Fixed CO-OP enemy HP scaling (or rather, the lack of it).
- Removed the flat lifetime increase from Amelia’s passive buff. It caused issues with some weapons, giving them permanent uptime.
- Enemies now scale with the number of players currently alive, making it easier to revive teammates.
- Fixed a bug that caused the game to freeze when using Tornado with only one enemy on the field. (This freeze was reported way back in 1.7.3—I finally found the cause!)
Future plans
Hey, it’s post-changelog dev here with some spoilers for upcoming content and whatnot! (●'◡'●)
Here’s what might be coming in version 1.8!
I have big plans, so I can’t promise everything will make it into the final build. I don’t want to give myself a strict deadline again! (ノ｀Д)ノ
This one doesn’t directly concern you as players, but adding weapons with my current workflow is a pain and takes far more time than it should. I want to make this process easier for myself in the future. However, this might take some development time away from features you can actually play with, so let me know what you think!
I’ve bought some assets to experiment with. I can’t promise a new map just yet since I’m not sure how or if these assets will work, but if they do, I’ll try to put one together.
Nothing too big! I don’t want to force anyone to play the game daily, but I’d like to give something back to those who return every now and then.
I recently picked up ZZZ, and their anomaly build-up mechanic really grew on me. I’d like to implement something similar as a meta-progression system for current and future characters, ideally synergizing with niche playstyles like DoT or pure elemental reactions. You know, actually use the elemental part of the game.
This character was teased on Twitter ages ago, and I still haven’t gotten around to completing them. I guess now is as good a time as any!
This could involve a game settings screen rework, but I think it would be fun to let players tweak the game to their liking.
As you can see, there are big plans but limited time. Knowing myself, I’ll probably go off on a side quest and work on something completely unplanned! (●'◡'●)
Let me know which of these ideas you’re most excited about! How’s the current content treating you? As always, I encourage you to fill out the survey available in the game’s main menu!
I'm a bit scared to have big down times between updates, it's easy for active players to lose interest especially with a small community like this one, anyway!
I also post early screenshots of new stuff on Discord as it’s being developed, so feel free to join if you’re interested or to chat with me or the others!
Until next time!