Hello Reapers,
Today I have some exciting new features in store for Grimslair! Let's cut to the chase:
NEW FEATURES:
The 10-Day Limit is no longer in the game - Due to the new location card unlocking system, you no longer need to worry about making it to the corner of the map on time, since that requirement is now redundant. There is no longer a limit on how many days your run can last, but once you reach Day 10, Grim will begin asking for more souls for the quota the longer you continue, and the game will get harder until you reach the Chamber of Time. This allows players to relax more and focus on what is fun for them. If you want to grind for better cards, card levels, and/or Soulwords before heading into New Game+, you now have the full liberty to do so!
Time Travel in Battles - There is now a clock button on the left side while in battle. If you have collected 1 or more Time Warp cards during the exploration phase, you may click this button to reverse time, undoing all effects that happened during Grim's last turn. This creates a paradox, since the cards currently in your hand stay in your hand while this happens. Any Curse cards obtained during the previous turn are also removed, and you are healed for the same amount of damage you took. Also, any cards that were forced to discard and/or exhaust also return to your hand.
EVENTS! - The clock during the exploration phase now shows an "E" where the "3pm" would normally be. When you land on that time, an event page will pop up and provide multiple options to choose from, allowing you to gain new cards, upgrade stats, and/or suffer dire consequences. There are over 30+ different events, each with their own descriptions and lore. Time traveling after an event has already happened for the day will not trigger it again... so don't even try... haha.
New Settings Feature - Pause while minimized (or when you open another window) - In the game settings panel, you may now toggle this feature in case you want the game to pause when opening another application.
New Achievements - Please visit the achievements page for the new ones!
POLISH, POLISH, POLISH
(Now that the majority of bugs in the game have been eradicated, I could finally find the time to really play the game from start to finish and focus on things that make the game "pop" more.)
Starter Decks have new art, VFX, and sound effects - When selecting a starter deck, this UI now looks better, the button highlights look cooler, and I added sound effects when selecting them that give me that "Resident Evil menu" vibe I've been wanting for a long time.
Battle cards that only have 1 Soulword (And dont level up to unlock more soulword slots) now present the Soulword info directly on the card - I was very hesitant about doing this one since I wasn't sure if it would fit correctly in terms of the overall look, but all in all, I needed to make some cards more accessible right from the start without the player always having to hover their cursor over the Soulword just to figure out what it does. Now, these cards can be drawn, read very quickly, and you can determine faster if you want to collect/use them in battle more often.
Clock (3D) on the table has been redone - The clock has been updated to reflect the Event system, but it also needed a facelift after being in the game since alpha testing. Overall, it looks way better, and the font matches the theme of Grimslair more.
Some 3D elements have been moved around on the table
Some UI elements have been moved around to better fit the screen - The Gold, Blood Money, Soulwords book, Map, Weather Icon, and Ascension panel have been moved to better areas so that things don't get blocked by them.
Soulword Book visual overhaul + dropdown menu - I really disliked the UI for the Soulword Book, so I made the panels bigger, cooler looking, and also added a new dropdown menu for Soulwords. You can now filter based on Soulword criteria, which is super nice when you have a large amount of Soulwords in your collection.
Map UI now has icons instead of just colors for the tiles - Each tile now has a specific icon on the map to help you easily identify what location it is without memorizing colors and/or hovering over the tile to figure it out.
Witch idle animation has been fixed - The Witch, ever since her debut, had a placeholder idle animation due to a lack of animations in general, but I finally updated it and it looks way better now.
Dragons and larger enemies now accurately display health/block/indicators in battle - Due to the size of certain enemies, the health bar, block values, and indicators would often get in the way of other enemies. I have created a robust system that automatically keeps these out of the way so nothing gets hidden by accident.
Blood splatter effect when killing vendors - When I launched the "kill vendor" update, it was cool, but it needed some extra VFX, so now there is blood that splashes out everywhere.
BUG FIXES:
Level 1 cards no longer give a "2" value when played for the first time - Due to the new cards that were featured, I had been diligently trying to fix many variables and systems, and I missed one line of code that was supposed to hit the enemy before the realtime level-up system took effect. This has been fixed, and Level 1 cards will now always be accurate.
Tons of fixes for certain Soulwords - Like the title says, I went through the entire database and tested all cards myself to make sure they were working exactly as they should.
Multiple enemies were still softlocking players - This bug keeps creeping into every build, so I went ahead and took a very long time to figure this one out and finally found the culprit. This has been fixed, so you should no longer have issues with multiple enemies spawning at the same time.
Card Container would disappear after battle - Sometimes after battles, especially in save/loaded games, the Card Container that held all your exploration cards would disappear. This has been fixed.
High score accuracy and missing rows - In the previous build, the high score was missing key variables/rows needed to accurately showcase the total score. This has been fixed.
Various Performance Updates have been implemented for smoother FPS
Please let me know if you run into any bugs with this latest update and have fun with the new systems! :D
Thank you so much, Reapers!