Last devlog I flagged that the Anointed's animations were placeholder while the kit itself was playable. That's done now, full anims and VFX are in, including a batch pass across all 20 of the Anointed's card files so they're wired up consistently rather than one at a time.

The bigger change this update is to relics, which aren't called relics anymore, they're Artefacts. Artefacts are now weaker in their base form, and you upgrade them at the Reliquary in the hometown using meta currency, with the base version sitting at about half effectiveness until you do. I'd rather have the room to tune the early-game power level down and let upgrades be a real decision than have everything front-loaded and nothing to spend currency on later.

Each of the 3 planned characters now has a starting Artefact with its own playstyle and lore attached. The Bloodcurse one grants temporary HP, lets you overheal for that battle at a reduced rate, and has a blood orb that hovers above the character and visibly scales as you stack more temp HP. Momento Mori is no longer a starting Artefact, it's moved to a treasure Artefact any character can find.

Lore got a big pass too. Every card and Artefact in the game now has lore snippets attached, viewable from the card gallery and card menu. End-of-run lore now shows character-specific lore first, then general lore only if the character's pool is exhausted (was showing both and felt redundant), and the lore pool itself won't repeat until you've seen everything, then falls back to a small flavour pool.

What's new:

• Artefacts replace Relics - renamed across all player-facing text, base versions are weaker, upgradeable at the Reliquary in the hometown with meta currency

• Starting Artefacts for all 3 characters - unique playstyle and lore per character, including the Bloodcurse temp HP relic with a scaling visual

• Anointed animations finished - full anim and VFX pass, batch-assigned across all 20 Anointed cards (a couple of cards — Moment of Reprieve, Ignite - are still on placeholder anims since there's no exact match built yet)

• Lore everywhere - every card, enemy, and Artefact now has lore snippets, viewable in the card gallery and at run end

• Enemy damage preview - enemies now show a live -X / BLOCKED label based on your staged cards minus their block, so you can see the actual outcome before committing

• Glyph/rune visual overhaul - Clue Glyphs got a hand-painted redo with a glow layer, resized and stripped of their old background and border

• Gold and Nullfrag UI - gold now tweens visually when you gain or lose it (and previews the tween when you're about to buy something), Nullfrag meta currency has a UI home in the top bar during runs

• Fixed a meta currency exploit - continuing a run right after finishing it let you farm currency from the same spot; that's closed now

• Bloodcurse Revenant and Herald Guardian cards added

• Shop scene got an aesthetic pass

• Upgraded the project from Godot 4.6 to 4.7

There's also a chunk of work that doesn't show up as a single feature: 3 shrine modifiers (Wanderer's Pact, Voidscarred, Cursed Bounty) that looked implemented but weren't actually wired up, a level-up content system that had two different drip mechanisms colliding with each other, an idle animation that was set to interpolate instead of linear and silently broke looping, and a pass to clean up old Bloodcurse character name references that were scattered through scripts from an earlier naming pass.

Also did an early architecture pass on a pet system - a new Menagerie building, a PetData resource and PetManager autoload, pets persisting across runs and their cards getting added to your deck at run start through the existing blessing hook. 7 dark-fantasy pets are proposed so far (Rimefang, Tollhound, and others) but this is plan and framework only, no art yet.

I'd love to hear your thoughts on the Artefact change specifically - starting weaker and earning the upgrade is a different feel to "find a relic, it's just good now," and I'm curious whether that reads as more satisfying or just as more friction.

BW,

Dan

I'm building Hunter's Hand solo in Godot 4. Demo on Steam if you want to try it out yourself.
Steam: View game page

Full patch notes:

Artefacts (formerly Relics):

• Renamed Relics to Artefacts across all player-facing text and scripts

• Artefacts now weaker in base form; upgradeable via the Reliquary in the hometown using meta currency, base sits at roughly half effectiveness pre-upgrade

• Added starting Artefacts for all 3 planned characters, each with a unique playstyle and lore snippets

• Bloodcurse starter Artefact grants temp HP — overheal for that battle at reduced cost — with a blood orb visual above the character that scales with temp HP gained

• Momento Mori moved from a starting Artefact to a treasure Artefact available to any character

• Added pulsing rarity glow to Artefact UI in treasure and shop scenes, matching existing card UI treatment

• Fixed Artefacts not showing in the end-screen unlocks screen

Lore:

• Added lore snippets to all black cards and player cards, viewable from the card gallery and card menu UI

• Added lore to all remaining cards, including enemy and Bloodcurse cards

• Added lore to all Artefacts

• Updated lore_handler with current lore plus character-specific and general end-of-run snippets

• End-of-run lore no longer shows two snippets — character lore first, general lore only once character pool is exhausted

• Lore pool no longer repeats until fully unlocked, then falls back to a small flavour pool

Anointed:

• Finished Anointed animations and VFX

• Wrote an EditorScript to batch-assign animations across all 20 Anointed card files

• Fixed missing card_animation_finished signal on Righteous Resolve and Cleansing Flames

• Moment of Reprieve and Ignite still on placeholder animations — no exact match built yet

UI and visuals:

• Shop scene aesthetic update

• Nullfrag meta currency UI added to the top bar during runs

• Gold UI now tweens on value change, and tweens a preview value when considering a shop purchase

• Clue Glyphs reworked to hand-painted art with a painted glow layer

• Clue scene now shows only the glyph, not the Artefact itself — tooltip already covers the effect, so showing both was redundant

• Glyph UI resized to 288×288px, dark background and border removed

• Artefact reward screen now shows the glyph and glow instead of the old relic UI, matching the existing card reward treatment

• Migrated all Artefact .tres files to the updated glyph paths and UIDs

Combat:

• Added a last_outgoing_damage signal mirroring the existing incoming damage system

• Enemies now show a live -X / BLOCKED label based on staged player cards minus enemy block

• Switched the damage preview lookup from %unique_name node lookup to an @export drag slot for reliability

• Fixed an exploit allowing meta currency farming by continuing a run immediately after finishing it, resuming from the last location

Codex and combat preview:

• Updated Codex scene

• Updated combat animation preview scene

• Fixed an enemy AP initialisation crash in combat_animation_preview.gd

• Both player and enemy now animate when the preview scene opens

• Removed unused animation_gallery scene files

• Temporarily disabled the animation preview, bestiary, and lore tabs in the Codex — still work in progress

Content:

• Added Bloodcurse Revenant cards

• Added The Herald Guardian cards

Pet system (architecture only, no art yet):

• New Menagerie building planned, following the existing BtnArchive pattern

• PetData resource and PetManager autoload proposed

• Active pet to persist across runs via save profile

• Pet cards to be duplicated into the deck at run start via the existing run.gd blessing hook

• 7 dark-fantasy pets proposed (Rimefang, Tollhound, and others)

Meta progression review:

• Identified quick-restart / return-to-town as the only real pre-Next Fest gap (since fixed, see exploit fix above)

• Lore repeat prevention, a Blacksmith building, and a Trainer NPC flagged for post-fest

Tutorial:

• Multiple tutorial bugfixes across two passes

• Added tutorial coverage to remaining run scenes

Other bugfixes:

• Cleaned up level-up content drip — two separate systems were colliding with each other

• Fixed 3 shrine modifiers that weren't actually wired up: Wanderer's Pact, Voidscarred, Cursed Bounty

• Renamed lingering Bloodcurse character references left over from an earlier naming pass

• Fixed an idle animation bug — was set to interpolate instead of linear, which blocked the animation when looped

• Adjusted the debug button overlay for readability and added new debug buttons for testing

Engine:

• Updated Godot from 4.6 to 4.7

Demo on Steam: View game page