Dome: Become Thyself is out of early access.
thank you to everyone who played the early builds, got lost, died, and came back anyway. a lot of what 1.0 is came straight from your notes.
what 1.0 is:
the whole story.
eight emotions. eight npcs. find them, wake them, collect their memories. every one of them gives you a power that helps you progress through the world.
you wake them by typing. each one has their own room, their own dialogue and their own way of remembering. some of them ask you a question, and what you answer changes what they give back.
to avoid the game being unplayable due to difficulty, i've added a position readout, every chunk labelled on the map, a north-up option, and faint beams of light that mark the way between floors. a pop-up tells you which floor you just arrived on. the map now draws teleport gates, towers and the buildings on top of them. words written on the floor turn to face you, so you can read them from any angle.
your Emotional Dome Toolkit, complete. every mode. you no longer switch modes with the number keys. you type the mode's name and press enter, and you can cast in every mode.
the world got bigger
towers now span infinitely up and down, with real stairwells you can walk all the way up, and buildings on top that hide rare words. more biomes are in the mix, the corridors out of the shrine curve and sometimes dead-end.
letters are the economy
enemies scatter the letters of their name when they die. walk closer to collect them. every letter is a bit of insight (experience) and a little healing.
the letters floating in the world work the same way. there are plenty around the shrine (game start location), and the further out you go, the rarer they get. the deep and high floors are sparse too.
your words stay yours
words you learn stay learned. press J for the memory panel.
thoughts (quests). what you are trying to do right now, written as your own thoughts. every one shows where it is as [x, y, floor] with a short note on how to get there. click one to point your compass at it.
teachings (hints). the pages of the manual you have recovered.
vocabulary. every word you have learned.
attunement (levels). your stance and how far you are attuned to each emotion.
standing (reputation). which biomes remember you, and how.
team. everyone you have brought to your side.
collectibles. how much of the world you have found: artifacts, lore marks, pigments, dome items, emotion quests, akashic dials, words learned and dyads witnessed.
the ground breaks
all 36 dyads carve the terrain now. craters, corrosion, holes straight down.
focus
focus is no longer infinite. it refills much slower and waits a second after you spend it. every typed word costs focus now.
sound and music
a full soundtrack: the menu, the shrine, every emotion's room, the last fight and the credits. new sounds for typing, jumping, landing, teleports, saving, letters and leveling up.
readability
ui scale slider. the settings are a proper terminal now, bigger and cleaner. the boot screen gets you into the game faster.
the debug tab
the debug tab in settings is now hidden. it can be unlocked through a secret easter egg path. for advanced players only: these settings can break the game and even delete your save. use with caution.
fair warning
Dome is still merciless. tutorials are minimal. you will get lost, and that is still the point. if you get properly stuck, ask in the discussions, and a wiki link will be provided.
what's next
patches. achievements are on the way, plus fixes as you find things, so feedback is appreciated.
multiplayer is in the works and comes in a patch soon.
for the 2 people who bought during early access: thank you.
good luck.