Hi comrades,
I've released an update to the game. It adds a side-adventure Treasure Hunt, cross-adventure Investments, new quirk and mechanics, and many gameplay changes and quality-of life talked about in previous diaries.
This is a gameplay focused update, but future updates will contain new adventures, and I will do my best to release them smaller-sized, but more often. The game is planned for a full release in 2025.
Here are the full patch notes.
- New Side Adventure: Treasure Seas. Buy a boat from a familiar character, and engage in boat-to-boat combat to get to the treasures first. This errand will be given by the Board in HQ, after completing Displace Bay and No Job Slope adventures.
- Added New Errand marker ("!") for acquiring certain side-quests. They appear above the building in Edge Harbor, and above the quest-giver
- Investments: new mechanic for cross-adventure progression in Edge Harbor. Allows you to buy upgrades for your factory using Investment Rounds. There are currently 5 rows of Investments, affecting your Units per Turn, Health, Heal per Isle, Factory Power, and Max Power per Department. You get Investment Rounds for completing adventures. You will get them retroactively in old saves. You can access Investments through the board in the HQ.
- Certain camera moves (opening Journal, opening Pause, etc.) now use percentage value instead of an absolute one, making the zoom-out more consistent in small rooms compared to big islets
- Inspect Screen and Calibration Screen now fade out if you have Journal opened
- Updated the design of building prompts, now a bit simpler.
- Requirements: new mechanic for certain reactions and Engine outputs. You must pass a requirement to use a reaction. Requirements don't show up unless you are failing them. Some examples of requirements are:
- "requires at least 1 other magic unit" for "Double 1 random magic unit" reaction
- "requires at least 1 other available department" for "Random department of yours goes on Strike. Get 2 Gold" reaction
- "requires valid targets" for "Random opponent's department goes on Strike" reaction
- New Quirk: Hidden. Hidden magic units refuse to reveal their element to you. You must deduce it based on what departments are willing to take it. Opponents get confused by Hidden units, using them in a random way.
- New Effect: damage multiplier, applied for certain elements. Damage is rounded in favor of bigger number
- New Effect: extra unit at new turn
- New Effect: shuffle opponent's factory (might be used against you by the opponent)
- New keyword: Overtime, makes a department that was busy for that turn available for use again
- Inflict keyword now only inflicts quirks on turn began
- Reworked Calibration: now departments automatically consume power to support enacted policies, instead of manually adding/removing it. Cutting down on micromanagement.
- Reworked Look Close button into Oversee Power button: now it's a lens through which you can quickly manage factory power. Left-click on a department from this lens takes you straight to the Calibration Screen. Right-click on a department quickly reduces power in the department so you can use it elsewhere.
- Reset Power button in Calibration replaced with Manage button, which opens Oversee Power mode. Reset Power moved into Oversee Power mode, now located near the power meter.
- Calibration policies now display the change in the tooltip, instead of you having to try it to see. This can display changes to damage, element, effects, new crit and crit chance, and authorizing new reactions
- New mod type: authorizing new reactions
- Added animation for changing the reaction's element through mods
- In Reactor Overload (whenever you have departments consuming more power when available), there's now an arrow following your cursor
- Calibration Tutorial updated for the reworked mechanics
- Building the Spell Tutorial updated, now won't go away until you use a department. Also added an explainer about units per turn mechanic
- Factory Building Tutorial updated, now won't go away until you move a department into the Factory
- Slightly rebalanced order of after duel rewards, but this will be reworked in the future again
- Capitalization breakdown after duels is now available by default, instead of after completing Displace Bay. Hopefully, that will make the system more approachable. Frankie will get another job in future updates
- Effect rectangles now appear from the department/engine they are originating from.
- New units now appear above the department/engine/effect rectangle they are originating from.
- Some effects now have a thread connecting them to their targets (such as Doubling units, Inflicting Curses, Overtiming departments)
- In-world UI now can show tooltips. Added tooltip to in-world Factory Power for Building mode
- Added a camera cut for Inspect mode, instead of smoothing to it, because that was making me nauseous
- Added a camera cut for Engine Inspect mode, and changed how Overdrive animations work (now engine start spinning out of control when you Inspect it during a duel, and cuts away once you click Overdrive so you can continue using the factory instead of watching the full animation)
- Fixed return buttons in Engine Inspect, which used to overlap in certain situations
- If there are at least 2 reactions, and one of them take Any element, it will now read Any Other, and only work if no other reactions are relevant (this was already the case, but new label makes it official and clear)
- Doubled unit now waits until crit roll animation plays out
- Rewrote some reactions to be more consistent and clear
- Workers now play striking animation when department is On Strike
- Broken Engine hint in tooltip now shakes if you try to Inspect a broken engine
- Reactions can now have multiple keywords explainers per reaction
- Keywords in reactions are underlined
- Updated engine tooltip to use more consistent colors with the rest of the factory
- Updated department tooltip so that department's name wouldn't overlap with power in department indicator
- Updated effect rectangles appearing animation, now doesn't take as long
- Updated some effect rectangles icons
- Shift-Click on department now opens Calibration
- Shift-Drag on parts in Building mode now quickly moves parts between Factory and Inventory
- Tooltip now might change input prompts when holding Shift
- Tooltip can now show several inputs
- Opponents now can use "Select" effects
- Opponents now can use Calibration, either on policies assigned by me, or auto-distributing power if they have any available. This is not used widely yet, but I'm planning to use this for new difficulty curves
- Added special AI values to be used by opponents for some reactions
- Adjusted opponent's timing slightly
- Departments now display their status in tooltips, such as Busy (for this turn), on Maintenance (until the end of a duel), on Strike (until the effect is over.)
- Polished layout for Journal, now errand steps won't overlap if they're taking several lines of text
- Polished Errand Tracker in the top-right, won't overlap with Track button
- Improbability Department: fixed improved luck mechanic, now actually checks if you can use the element you get (this is locked behind 1-power policy)
- Improbability Department: added new damage reaction, "2 damage for each unique element in unused units." (this is locked behind 1-power policy)
- Tsar Cannon: now does damage first, then runs a crit check (with relevant policies)
- Wires Department: fixed accumulating damage not resetting between turns
- Wires Department: now get +1 damage for each unit that damage, which can be improved into "each unit use" through Calibration
- Wires Department: added a new Gold Reaction, "Random department of yours goes on Strike. Get 2 Gold." Must be first authorized through Calibration
- Wired Department: updated visuals slightly
- Knights' House: added policies for existing reactions
- Break Department: updated visuals, removed from the starting factory to reduce confusion in new players
- Fay Care: new reactions (Gold: "Restore 3 health", Ice: "Curse next 2 opponent's units"), added policies
- Vault: added policies, fixed animations
- Hot and Cold Air Manipulation Department: swapped reactions' elements, added policies
- Feed the Rich: reworked into a double department, with updated visuals, reactions and policies. Now will do damage or heal both you and opponent
- Warehouse: now might be moved into Inventory while you are building the factory, but they still must be in factory to exit Building mode
- Warehouse: added mini-version taking only one slot
- Train Engine: reworked passive bonus, now gives +1 Fire damage for the rest of the turn on using a Fire unit
- Revolution Engine: reworked visuals, replace Overdrive with "Open Build mode"
- (new) Drama Engine: "Reroll element of your last remaining unit" as a passive bonus, and "Next crit roll is guaranteed to succeed" as an Overdrive
- (new) Inspiration Engine: "Apply random Quirk to random magic unit" as a passive bonus, and "Overtime 2 random departments" as an Overdrive
- (new) Nostalgy Engine: "Restore 1 health for each unused magic unit" as a passive bonus, and "Restore 8 health" as an Overdrive
- Conversation font size is now a slider, instead of limited options
- Slightly adjusted the default conversation font
- New font for character names
- Added new dyslexia-friendly fonts, Atkinson Hyperlegible and Comic Neue
- Freshened up quick conversation settings
- If there's too much text on screen in conversation, the text will now go off-screen instead of overlapping with choices
- Added toggles in settings where appropriate (instead of list of two options)
- You can now press Escape to cancel rebinding
- Reviewed settings items, rewrote some explainers
- Fixed bug: Microskipping Water sometimes didn't provide a unit as described in tooltip
- Fixed bug: After playing Burn the Money mini-game in Displace Bay, departments didn't do any damage until reloading the game
- Fixed bug: certain resume gizmos were not moving for a femme Overseer
- Fixed bug: Tax Avoider used to give units to the player even if it belongs to the opponent
- Fixed bug: save files with longer names sometime had an incorrect layout