An Ankou news & patch notes

It's December and holidays are coming soon!

For you all to enjoy your cozy winter gaming sesh, we've added some exciting cool stuff this time with many new Steam Achievements to aim for. Like are you gonna be the ghosts' best friend? Or you're gonna collect almost all the possible badges of honor ?

V0.5.2 changelog :

• A bunch of new Steam achievements !
• Auto-aim has been improved and can now be overridden when using the movement input (keyboard & controller) or when using the aim input (only for the controller). It means that you can use the auto-aim and yet be able to focus on a specific enemy when you want.
• The Volatile Gift is not volatile now and won't trigger anymore when you're hit while protected by the Parry skill of the Soldier.

Follow for more updates by joining our Discord and wishlisting the game now:

https://store.steampowered.com/app/2281650/An_Ankou/

Important Balance change: - The Soldier now starts with the Crossbow instead of the Sword. Sorry we really wanted to do that and forgot to push this change yesterday. Fixes : - The Crossbow spirit was broken and didn't hit a lot of enemies with its bolts - Filled some missing German & Chinese localizations (still a few missing left)

New Features:

• The second music track (music of Noz-Ha-Deiz) is now in its complete and glorious state with live recordings of violin!
• The in game pause menu now features a character sheets with all stats
• A lot of items now have a far more precise description of the bonus they give per level / max
• Leaving a game and deleting a game now trigger a confirmation dialog box
• The Harvesting UI now show additional information (how many resources remain, how much you can carry, how much you have)
• The Crafting Wheel has been completely overhauled
• All upgradeable items are grouped in a parent category (Upgrades) : weapon, pieces of armor and spirits
• Alchemy subcategory has been moved in the tools parent category
• All weapon subcategories have been removed and weapons have been grouped (accessible weapons and how you can gain them will be changed in a future update)
• You can now cancel a craft at the cost of 1 resource (always of the first type of the recipe)
• Some Attack VFX have been added on Undeads and Spitters
• The in game interface show all armor slots, even empty ones.
• Items ready to be upgraded (weapons, spirits, armors) now all show a plus symbol on the new inventory UI
• Threat barrier aspect has been improved and you now have to actively interact with it to pass through (and raise the threat level)
• You have to interact with the barrier of Blue Arenas to leave them. No more risk of leaving by accident.
• Spirits are now orbiting your character as blue balls of light when you run and appear automatically as soon as you stop.

Balance Changes:

• Ker Koad has been modified to have an Altar right next to the starting point
• Players are now forced to choose a Spirit at the first altar of their first game
• Some tutorial steps have been removed
• You can now craft a Cursed Soul from 3 regular Soul
• Darkness difficulty modifier for Arenas has been significantly increased
• Ring of the Backpacker has been nerfed to grant only quarter of an heart when lucky instead of half an heart

Fixes :

• Mouse do not trigger the interface anymore while the controller is used
• The invincible undeads appearing at the dawn of day in Noz-Ha-Deiz are no more.

Pfew! That was a lot of work. We're sorry for those who were waiting for the rebindable controls, better menus, or some other features they consider major, but we had to make choices. Our primary goal was to make the game easier to learn and more fluid and enjoyable. We are aware there is still a lot to do, but don’t worry it will come with time. ALSO, IMPORTANT ANNOUNCEMENT! Starting November 20, 2023, we're introducing a price adjustment to 7.99 EUR/USD, ensuring we can continue bringing you new updates. We also have to slightly delay the Sailor Update. We will also have to modify the rest of our planning to account for unforeseen circumstances impacting the life of our humble sized indie game studio. We want to be upfront about these changes because you all deserve the honesty and transparency you've shown us. Your support means the world. Your engagement has guided us in prioritizing changes to make the game even better during the last months. Seriously, you rock! Keep those feedback gems coming; they've been invaluable. Let's continue this journey together, and don't hesitate to invite more players to join in on the fun!

It's Halloween! Features : - You can't craft a healing potion when you're full life - You can't craft ammunitions when you're already maxed out Balance Changes : - Spiders are now a bit slower and only make a half heart of damage per attack - Fast Spiders and Undeads attack a bit less frequently - Floating Eyes move and turn when they aim a bit more slowly Fixes : - 2 reward icons were swapped for the Nun - Added some missing texts for Chinese - Hopefully the "double nature whistle" bug should be fixed now

Hi all ! It's not final yet and we will revisit this in future updates but Brekilien is back to a more reasonable level of difficulty. We're extremely sorry for the spikes of difficulty caused by our update of last week. Noz-Ha-Deiz may still appear quite hard in comparison, but it is more by design as it is currently the end "game content" for now. It will probably evolve in future updates when we offer more intermediate goals and objectives to achieve on each map. Other small fixes: - sometimes the interface for whistles was triggered twice, it is now fixed. - maybe fixed the rare bug causing monsters to become invulnerable in Noz-Ha-Deiz at sun rise... maybe not... The cause is still unclear and we're still investigating. If it ever happens to you, signal yourself here or over our discord. See you in two weeks for the Quality of Life update, but in the meantime do not hesitate to give your feedback so that we can monitor the effects of our changes!

Nun Balance Changes:

• Base move speed increased.
• Push Skill can now be chained.
• Push Skill is now almost instant to cast.
• Push Skill sends the Nun farther away (almost as far as a dash but not quite).
• Push Skill now slows monsters caught in the area of effect by 60% for a maximum of 5 seconds. The farther the monsters are, the lower the duration is.
• The Prayer Book (Weapon & Spirit) now slows enemies by 60% as long as they are in the area of effect.
• Prayer Book and Candelabra resource costs have been slightly decreased
• The Nun gets 1 additional soul each time she harvests one. When lucky, the harvest will produce 3 souls instead of 2.
• Candelabra reach and animation speed have been slightly increased.

Other Balance Changes:

• Lowered Korrigan’s Truce from 90s to 60s.
• 1 Greater Soul can now be crafted from 3 Cursed Souls.
• Brekilien and Noz-Ha-Deiz center areas will now contain more Animal Skin and Fiber resources.
• From now on, bosses and enemies with powers too close to the border of the screen do not have the permission to use their power.
• Noz-Ha-Deiz is now unlocked by winning Brekilien with any Profession and not the Nun.
• The Nun is now unlocked by surviving 10 minutes in Brekilien with the Apothecary.
• The Gold Magnet is now unlocked by winning Brekilien with the Nun.
• The Shielding Scythe is now unlocked by surviving 20 minutes in Brekilien with the Nun.
• Harvest timing for Greater Souls has been changed.

New Feature:

• Added a marker pointing to the Bosses of Noz-Ha-Deiz when they are offscreen.

Bug Fixes:

• Fixed a bug limiting the duration of the Lucky Lantern based on Carry Capacity, the duration is now properly always 5 minutes.
• Fixed missing death animations for a lot of bosses
• Decreased a lot the cases of monster / bosses stuck in the environment due to too close colliders
• Gargoyles were added to some Ker Koad enemy waves by mistake, they were removed.
• Danger Hints are now shown on top of most paved stones.
• Some additional german and chinese loc fixes (still a few missing texts for both)

Additional balancing for Brekilien and Noz-Ha-Deiz are in the works and should be deployed by the end of the week. We hope that you will continue to give us your feedback even if you sometimes have the impression that the game is not moving in the right direction. Some changes require time and careful considerations of all possible effects, obvious and less obvious. Since we also have to share our effort between fixes, balance changes and new features and content, our changes may appear slow but we usually get there… eventually.

A release wouldn't be a release without it streaks of hotfixes! There was an issue with the craft caused by items giving a penalty in crafting efficiency. Some balances fixes were not merged into the main branche before we built earlier (woopsie) : - days are a bit longer - enemies scale less rapidly with each day - bosses have a bit more base HP - adds for arenas are now back to a reasonable level

Major features:

• A new map Noz-Ha-Deiz with its new mechanics, bosses and rewards. To unlock it, you have to survive 20 minutes in Brekilien with the Nun.
• A new music track for the new map, at least a first version of this new track. Expect it to become even better soon.
• A complete rework of the waves of enemies on Brekilien and Ker Koad

Balance Changes:

• The reward between the achievement of surviving 20 minutes and winning Brekilien with the Nun have been swapped. Winning Brekilien now unlocks the Gold Magnet and surviving 20 minutes unlocks Noz-Ha-Deiz, the new map.
• A new currency (Greater Souls) is required to reach the top level of item upgrades.
• Skeletons do not drop Souls anymore but Floating Eyes do instead.

Minor Changes:

• Some environmental optimization. Hopefully Brekilien should run a bit better on lower specs systems even if there’s still work to do.
• Visual for Soul drops have been reworked.
• Markers on the map are different for Merchants and other points of interest.

The amount of work necessary to rebalance Brekilien and Ker Koad with the new waves of enemies was pretty huge. We hope they did not become too easy or too hard in the process and we will follow your reactions to those changes closely in the next few days. We’re also quite excited to see what you think about the new game mode because it’s a big change in the pacing of the game and we’re convinced its a big step forward in the right direction! Let us know what you think in the steam forum or on the Discord server.

We were hoping to deliver our new patch today but it will have to wait tomorrow, sorry. We spent quite a few days to re-design from scratch our waves of enemies to create a better pacing for the game but it forced us to rework entirely Ker Koad and Brekilien on top of our new map / game mode. The new balance and new game mode, even if still not perfect, are a lot closer to our end goal and we're looking forward to hearing what you think about it! - Alkemi

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Bug Fix: - the danger hint zone of suicide monster now correctly move with them when they are pushed - Spirit of the Book was interrupted when you attacked - Gold Magnet description was displaying an error Balance Changes: - Nun initial move speed is 10% faster - Spirit of the Book has been completely revamped to hopefully be more useful: - the radius has been increased by 25% compared to the Book weapon - the spirit cast the spell centered on your character and not himself - the spirit now cast the spell each time you stop if you're not inside its previous circle - the circle of the spirit will stay indefinitely as long as you're staying inside or go outside but don't stop. - if you interrupt the spirit by moving while it's channelling and you didn't reach the third power of the circle, you'll have to start a new circle by leaving the first one to trigger a new cast.

A few fixes spotted by our players this week-end: - fixed an issue caused by interacting with something while in Parry where you could not get the Divine Touch status anymore. - fixed multiple issues caused by the Ring of The Harasser (Ring of the infantryman stopped working if you had also the Ring of the Harasser, You got bounced back like crazy by any impact, game frozed for a fraction of a second or longer sometimes for each parry... It was bad, really bad) - fixed an issue with Gargoyles' charges where they could inflict damage multiple times during the end of the charge. Balance: - increased the health of Gargoyles.

- Now Added the possibility of using the "Force Push" of the Nun even when not moving. It was kinda ok with a gamepad, but definitely NOT with keyboard and mouse. Note for "future self": try to remember to do the important stuff when a colleague keeps telling you something should probably be changed.

Your usual post release patch with... - Korrigan Merchant cost is now 50 instead of 100 - Balance changes on the Candelabra - added some direct damages on both attacks of the combo - a reduced costs for level 1 and 2 - The Ring of the Backpacker now heals only half an heart when lucky (too powerful otherwise with Crits) - Crits have now a base of 1% chance to happen instead of 2% - Fixed a display issue with Spirit Blessing - Fixed a visual bug with the book of prayer when dropped while a circle is active - Change the name and description of the Spirit Oil, it's now Burning Coating. - Added some missing loc to german and chinese.

Welcome to the Nun Update of An Ankou! New features: - A new playable character with her 2 class weapons and her special skill - New items for all classes (the Gold Magnet, the Elixir of Divine Resistance) - German Localization - Chinese Localization (Traditional & Simplified) Changes : - A complete rebalance of all weapons and spirits of the game (damage, speed and costs) - Modification of behaviour for The Ring of the Harasser - It's now easier to aim with the Blunderbuss for the charged shot - You can now "crit" each time you inflict damage to an enemy if you're lucky We hope you'll enjoy this new content! The next update will contain a new map with a new game mode and hopefully a second music track. Expect the publication of a new roadmap soon with a more detailed content for the next few months.

Fixed a few problems with our new Golem friends: - sometimes the Flint golem wouldn't appear, this is fixed. - Spirits and main weapon with auto-targeting won't fire on enemies while they are regenerating / deactivated. - Finishing or canceling an Arena while a Golem was deactivated could cause its deactivated form to stay in memory and cause a crash if interacted with.

Yet another small patch to fix or improve a few things:

Harvest can now be interrupted again by the Skill (Parry or Dash) or Attack

There is no more recovery period to chain 2 harvests, so you can double tap to perfect complete a harvest and launch the next one. If you play in long press mode, you can re-press immediately after releasing the button to chain the next one.

The option menu is no correctly removed when exiting the pause with ESC or SELECT

Character and Level selection menu will now automatically focus on the select button when you press A on a character or a level, making navigation more comfortable. Those menus are temporary, please excuse their relative awkwardness...

Interaction radii have been improved for Golems making them easier to "harvest" when down.

Hey Reapers! Had a good night? This morning we decided to submit quickly a new version to make one major change and also add a few fixes that just couldn't fit in yesterday's schedule. - There is now an alternate way to Harvest and it's now the default one. You start harvesting by tapping button B or the E key and you either let it complete or try a quick collect by tapping again (more about that after). - We forgot to include a new fifth arena in Brekilien (oops). - Options are now accessible in the Pause Menu. - You can once more interrupt Parry to harvest or interact with something. - Gargoyle walk animation is now working properly. - You now properly loose the power of the Charm of Escapism when you replace it. - Weapons were sometimes disappearing during cooldown, this has been fixed. - Added some colliders missing on Brekilien and Ker Koad. Let's come back to this new Harvest input system: The version that was pushed yesterday was and remain my favorite option. It's now accessible through the options if you select Harvest Mode = Long Press instead of Tap. But after internal discussions, it's not the default option anymore. Though I admit I don't particularly think it's nice with a keyboard, it's how I think the game works best with a controller and the game is DEFINITELY best played with a controller. The whole Crafting Wheel thing does work a lot better with a controller. Since I'm aware I'm a weird little guy with sometimes dubious tastes, we rolled back that choice and leave you the option to join my weird little gang. Like a lot of things in this game, this may be subject to later changes and improvements, as the game evolves to its more advanced forms. - Alkemi

Hi Everyone! We're finally live, with just a few hours of delay. This been a pretty tough first update for us because of special circumstances. Though we didn't manage to add everything we would have liked, the new content and features are pretty nice and we hope you'll like it ! So what's new ? - The Korrigan Merchant and his treasure are now scattered over both maps. Retrieve all the gold you can and buy new very powerful items from the merchant! - Somewhere in Brekilien lies an Avatar of the Earth. If you're brave and smart enough you can defy it and earn quite a few gold pieces in the process! Beware, he will preceded by an army of Golems, a new type of enemies. - Brekilien now has a map (event if it's still procedural) giving you indications of what you can hope to find and (vaguely) where. Will you be able to find your way with the Soldier and the Apothecary who are not experts in navigation? - The Harvesting has been completely overhauled and you now have to keep the action button pressed to collect stuff. You can also decide to release the button earlier to try a fast collect. But if you fail, it's the same as just cancelling the action. - A few new challenges to unlock stuff at the Merchant Sorry, if we were not able to add more challenging content for you if you already finished everything the game had to offer. Count on us for the Nun update to add way more challenging content and new difficulty modes! You won't have to wait long, it's coming in 3 weeks ;) Enjoy! (Expect probably a few hotfixes in the next few days)

... I guess when I start reading properly my code, all of my code. - Fixed (for real, I hope...) the achievements linked to Darkness level, which were in fact, no yet fixed for the apothecary. - Fixed the description of the achievement "A handfull of rings", you need to wear 4 rings AND WIN. - Fixed a minor issue with the crafting wheel and mouse roll over behaviour.

Fixed a number of issues : - the achievement "A handful of rings" is now working properly - the achievements based on Darkness level should work properly noew for Darkness superior or equal to the required level instead of strictly superior to the required level. - fixed a bug if you were to reach 0 maximum life by wearing too many rings - the difficulty modifiers should now be properly reset when a save is deleted ... - AND MOST IMPORTANTLY, Brekilien is now easier to complete. When all spawning of threat level 10 is complete and only a few enemies remain, an indicator will point toward your closest target to finish the stragglers swiftly!

Just a small patch to hotfix some issues from yesterday's release : - fixed a few music transition timings - fixed an achievement that was improperly described (speedrun in KerKoad) - fixed the icon of the processing tools in the crafting wheel We hope you enjoy the game. New content in a few weeks... so back to work!

We're hard at work on the features of this new version, which is only the very beginning of a long journey paved with regular updates and new content to discover. Here's a roadmap for the first weeks of life of the game to discover what you can expect from this first version compared to the demo and how the game will evolve. {STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/44116019/563f7c1f0f732cd03313e4383590c91bbdfdf648.jpg We hope that you'll join us on this journey and that you'll come back to the game regularly to enjoy all the little and big updates that will come. See you in two weeks! - the Alkemi team

Hi ! We've been busy since the release of the demo working on new content for the upcoming early access but there was something that was really bothering us: how the sword felt and behave. It took an almost entire rewrite of the weapon system of the game during two days, a quick overhaul of the animations... but it's better now! So here's a small patch with this new behaviour for the sword, a few tweaks on the balance (early difficulty of the run have been reduced) and on the onboarding. That last point is still lacking sorry, we will try to do better next time. Sadly, do not expect regular patches like this one before the actual launch of the Early Access. This particular point felt very important but we really have to focus on adding new stuff now and there are not enough of us in the team :) We will try to announce soon what you can expect right at the beginning of the Early Access period and also what you can hope to see very regularly after that. More about that a bit later! - Alkemi