I made an announcement about big upcoming changes last night, thinking that I would hold off a couple more days before updating, but after knocking out a few more big changes and features today, I started thinking, "Well, now I'll either have to hold off for more Extra Beta testing, or I can just bite the bullet and push it all out now." I have opted for the latter.
What's the point of Early Access if I can't majorly screw with everyone's copy of the game whenever the whim strikes anyway?
There are some daunting patch notes below (and they're the abridged version!), but here are the highlights:
- New matching mechanics
- New item mechanics
- A pause feature
- A score multiplier that increases over time, but resets when you pause the game
- Fear rewrite (fearful heroes will drop out of battles and retreat from your dungeon)
- Codex changes (e.g., you can drag the codex around to reposition it now)
- Lots of additional fixes and adjustments
Please let me know what you think of the changes, and report any of the inevitable bugs in the discussion forums! Thank you =)!
[Edit: Updated to 2015.04.27 to fix the Bomb description, remove Punji traps on floor item changes, and prevent duplicate usables from being spawned.]
[Edit 2: Updated to 2015.04.27b to fix a rare crash and make some minor adjustments.]
Changelog
Additions:
- Ability to pause (spacebar or on-screen button)
- Score multiplier that increases over time (up to x1.5), but drops back to x1 when you pause
- Hovering ghost icon on fearful characters
- Added a comma to the multiplier font, for regions where it replaces a period in denoting decimal places
- Added codex icon that can be clicked to open the codex, or dragged/dropped on things to open to a relevant entry
Changes:
- Matching mechanics have changed significantly, allowing for vertical slides and multiple slides per move (four, by default)
- Item mechanics have changed significantly, making items re-usable with a cooldown, and sorting items into distinct Usable/Deployable/Passive categories
- Floors can now have a deployed item, which will automatically be used when appropriate (and pending a cooldown); assigning a new item will replace the old one
- Items that are usable on the Hoard no longer target specific tiles; you just click to use them
- Calcifier, Bomb, and 'Sploder are no longer usable on floors
- Greater Grasp now increases number of slides allowed per move by two
- Portable Punji can now be used on floors that already have traps
- Calcifier, 'Sploder, and Mit now "spread" their resource types; any Hoard tiles of their type will randomly infect adjacent tiles
- Magnet now immediately sucks up all gear and scrap tiles from the Hoard
- Bomb now destroys the top four rows of your Hoard; it does not collect tiles, but it is useful for quickly clearing room for another floor
- Reduced item drop rate
- Items no longer stack
- All items have a type: tool, device, potion, relic, explosive, or artifact
- Can no longer purchase items
- "Shop" floors now decrease cooldowns for specific categories of items (for example, the Alchemist reduces potion cooldowns by 10 seconds)
- Can no longer sell items to Fence by dropping them over that floor (doubt anyone was doing this anyway)
- Fenced items now refund their full value
- Fenced value is now displayed in the "recycle bin" where you fence items
- Fearful heroes will now retreat from you dungeon without engaging your minions (they should still trigger traps, however)
- Potion effects no longer stack (this prevents a dormant floor--such as the Sanctum--from benefiting from many item cooldown cycles)
- Changed the way fatigue is calculated for characters with buffed defense, allowing defense to be re-buffed (this helps offset the effect-stacking change)
- Some tutorial revisions
- The codex can now be dragged to reposition it on the screen
- A number of display and language changes in the Codex
- Many other UI changes and adjustments
Fixes:
- "Background text" wouldn't always appear on Codex entries (this is the fake text blocks that surround the actual text and images)
- Some splash and shard particles were not behaving appropriately
- Assassin backstabs were sometimes broken
- There was a *very* brief visual glitch when tiles were collected
- Smoothed out some tile motion
- Icons on popups wouldn't always move smoothly with the popup
- Some Hoard effects were not mirrored on the dedicated Hoard view