Cauldron news & patch notes

Hey Everyone!!

One year. Can you believe it?

Exactly one year ago today, I hit "Publish" on Cauldron and crossed every finger I had. I had no idea if anyone would show up. You did. And then some.

Since launch, you've brewed countless potions, uncovered every hidden secret, and built one of the best communities I could've asked for. To celebrate, Cauldron is 50% OFF starting later today! If you've been waiting to take the plunge into this weird little world, now's the time!

One Year by the Numbers

A few stats from the past year that still make my jaw drop:

• 3,881 concurrent witches brewing at once at our peak!

• Over 90,000 copies sold!

• 29.3 hours of adventuring per player on average (12.5 median)!

• Only 15.7% of you conquered every mode to become a true Cauldron Master!

Thanks again for playing, for leaving reviews, for reporting bugs, and for helping this game find its community. Cauldron would never have come this far without the suggestions and feedback from all of you. You've made this an unforgettable, magical year. Here's to year two!

Also, keep your eyes peeled for some upcoming Cauldron news. There may be a new game announcement coming soon ;)

Pete SleepyDad Games

PS. Join our Discord to discuss strategies, ask for help, report any bugs, or just hangout!

Hi Everyone!

First, I wanted to share a quick milestone: Cauldron has now sold over 70,000 copies! Thank you to everyone who has been playing, battling, and catching apples this year. You made this happen!

And now… the Steam Awards are here, and we'd love your help!

If Cauldron has been one of your favorite incremental minigame-fueled RPG auto-battling fever dreams this year, we would be incredibly grateful if you nominated us for Sit Back and Relax! Cauldron is a weird little experiment made of stitched-together ideas, and it means a lot that so many of you connected with it.

Thanks again for playing, for leaving reviews, for reporting bugs, for sharing Cauldron with your friends, and for helping this game find its community. You've made this an unforgettable, magical year.

Pete

Hi Everyone!

The language update is now out, with Japanese, German, French or Brazilian Portuguese as new options! There are also a bunch of other updates and fixes in the patch.

General Stuff:

• 4 new languages! We now support French, German, Brazilian Portuguese, and Japanese!

• LOTS of performance optimizations. While working on the Switch port, I reworked a ton of code, especially around drawing. So let me know if this new version is working better for you!

• Everything has been tweaked, essentially. Menus should be faster, battles that were slower because of all the damage numbers popping up should be faster, minigames, dialogue, EVERYTHING!

Endgame Balance: (to make those last achievements a bit easier)

• Enemies with Vengeful Blast have their explosion damage capped at 100/50 for frontline/backline heroes.

• Replaced the final ice game meta-upgrade with a more GPU friendly one, so it shouldn’t cause as much slowdown (and should be much easier to get to +99 ice level)

• Mining game diamonds are now worth 750 instead of 500. This increases the meta-upgrade bonus mode diamond mult from +5% to +7.5%

• Apple game targets now add 5% to score instead of 4%.

• Henry the Octopus now gives a 6% bonus instead of 5%.

• Cart game blorbs now start at +2% bonus instead of +1%.

• Not really endgame, but Idle mode's collection box is now faster, so it shouldn't be as much of a slog.

• (NOTE: to see some of these changes in your current saves, refund your skill trees!)

Misc Fixes: (this isn't an exhaustive list, just some stuff I can remember!)

• Blinkie’s collision box in the ice game should work correctly now, so she can squeeze through tight gaps.

• Enemies no longer get the goddess bow item in battles, since it’s useless for them.

• Fixed the Special Draught unlock requirements: having x number of heroes at level y in the cart game

Thanks for playing!

Pete

Hey everyone! Cauldron is part of Wonders of Wizardry 2025, live on Steam over the weekend! To celebrate, Cauldron will again be available for 20% off, so go tell all your friends who have been waiting for a discount.

And do check out the other great games that are part of the event too!

Hi Everyone!

It’s been a while, and we've been quietly chipping away at some new things that we wanted to share with you!

Additional Languages

Firstly, Cauldron will be getting support for a wider selection of languages this fall. We'll be adding French, German, Brazilian Portuguese and Japanese in the coming months!

A Nintendo Switch version!

Secondly, we are working on a Nintendo Switch port of Cauldron! Since this is the first time we’re doing something like this, we can’t make any promises on how long it might take. In the meantime, we've set up a mailing list that you can join if you want to stay up to date with any release date announcements! Send it to all your Switch-playing friends that have been jealous of your apple picking highscores! Go to the signup page here.

We'll let you know when our Switch store page is live for wishlisting, and when we have a more concrete release date planned!

Thanks!

Pete

• I've upgraded the save-checking to avoid the random issues people are having with their save files. If anyone has lost any data, feel free to reach out and I can try to help retrieve your files, or as a last resort - create you a custom save file!
• The recent update that requires controller "activation" is now a toggle found in the new "Controls" menu. It is defaulted to off, since it was causing some people's PS5 controllers to stop working
• I put a note in the mining meta-upgrade that you can steer bonus balls
• Dodge's skill hits now save correctly
• I changed diamond and multiplier upgrade scaling in the mining minigame to make grinding for late-game achievements slightly easier

• Controllers now have to be "activated" by pressing either the action, back, or d-pad buttons. This is to avoid controller drift that players were experiencing from phantom devices picked up by GameMaker
• Full screen has been reworked to a sort of "fake" full screen, to avoid the game minimizing for some players when clicking away from the game.

Hey Everyone!

A short status update coming in, but before all that, I wanted to give another huge thanks to everyone for all your comments, reviews, suggestions, playtesting, and bug reports these last few weeks! Cauldron is getting better because of all of your input, so keep it coming!

Steam Deck verification

First of all, Cauldron has been working well on Steam Deck since release, and about a week ago became Steam Deck verified! For anyone hoping to play on their favorite handheld device, now’s your chance!

The Cauldron Soundtrack

Secondly, we wanted to highlight that we released Cauldron's soundtrack on Steam, and also across a variety of streaming platforms yesterday. For those of you that simply can't get enough of Andrew’s music and want to support him, go check it out!

The soundtrack is created by Andrew Moon, the songwriter behind indie prog-pop band Bored with Four, and Cauldron is his first video game soundtrack!

Check out Bored with Four on Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/artist/6uaEtDSVe9eXQYEYymTL74

Summer Sale incoming

Thirdly, Cauldron will be taking part in the Steam Summer Sale starting later today 🙂. So for anyone waiting to take the plunge into the weird world of Cauldron, now’s a great time!

PS. We now have Steam community items too, so get collecting!

And as always, keep posting your feedback!

Pete

• Trying something new with the mouse cursor! This should hopefully get rid of the double cursor issue
• The mouse now auto-activates itself if it moves a certain distance, so you don't need to click an extra time if you're using a hybrid mouse/keyboard playstyle
• More window size options! Keeping window size set equal to resolution is best for image quality, but there's a setting in the Video - - --- Options menu to change this now to whatever you want!
• Fixed error in skill trees where if you pressed fast enough you could refund upgrades beyond 0, causing all sorts of weirdness
• Added the "auto-talent" visual to party upgrades in the Talent menu
• Fixed an issue where auto-talent was still on for heroes after refunding a skill tree entirely
• Mouse controls now work in final boss room
• Added icons to the map so you can see where Nyx is, as well as where the minigames are
• Fixed another saving issue where bonus frozen and bleed damage upgrades from the party talent skilltree weren't saving correctly
• Tweaked the controller inputs a little, to hopefully help people who are constantly moving in a certain direction.
• Fixed some typos

• Fixed a saving issue with the spirit upgrades for elemental abilities. They should now save correctly. Refund your spirit skill tree fully to reset them!
• Added some new controller buttons! I've been looking into creating a custom button-mapping system, but I don't think it will be easy. For now, I've added some extra controller buttons for the apple and fishing minigames (bumpers and triggers), and added the ability to open the map with M or start/select on a controller. If anyone has any other recommended buttons they'd want me to put in, let me know!)
• Fixed double mouse cursor
• Fixed skit with Cleanse and Plague
• Fixed an issue with selecting Nyx during autoplay in the ice game
• Fixed a bug where you could get more inventory space without brewing
• Enemies (and heroes) should no longer be able to get more than max hp
• Fixed a bug where Nyx would crash the game if she used her skill or special exactly as all enemies were dying
• Fixed ice minigame value+ capping for bonus ball splash damage
• Blinkie's ice minigame trajectory can now continue past 6 o'clock going in either direction!
• Thor no longer copies Hearth's Special in the cart game
• Bonus magic damage upgrade on frozen enemies now also applies to poison cap amount
• Fixed Fump's menus being messed up when using the mouse
• Spirit books should fade out completely after a certain amount of time in Spirit Fishing

Hey Everyone!

Patch Notes:

• Starting a new game mode with effects turned off shouldn't just show a black screen anymore,
• I beefed up the way that saving works, so the game now does better checking that the files are formatted correctly (and not blank). I also created a backup system for savesettings.SAV, since this file seemed to get corrupted the most when players lose power or the like.
• Auto Fishing should no longer hover at the bottom of the level
• Added version number to the title screen
• Apple game lasers don't get canceled when hitting fancy fliers anymore
• Henry's Brethren upgrade will now show up correctly in your first game mode
• Inventory should no longer be able to go negative for any reason
• Added another error check when fighting Morgana to stop the crashes
• Dodge's Focus upgrade now correctly applies +10% dodge instead of +1%
• Clicking the item menu from the Talent menu before unlocking items will no longer crash the game
• Capped the +value level of ice blocks at +99 (because people were getting super high numbers that would break the game!)
• Fixed bonus character battle stat calculations
• Might have fixed the issue where enemies were suddenly getting tons of hp in battle (if it was related to damage-return weirdness).
• Auto-positions will no longer be locked on in game modes where Flip's power has been used but the auto-battle menu isn't unlocked yet.
• Fishing powerup time+ upgrade now correctly shows +50% increments instead of +10%
• Added a slight pause when the menu shows up after a minigame ends, so that players don't accidentally hit replay instantly
• Fixed power level calculation after bonus characters are in party
• Newtonian waves should now stop when pause menu is active
• Achievement for 100 stacks of all elements should now check all enemies instead of just one
• Map update - added the other waterfall

Hey Everyone!

Playtest Branch

Patch notes:

• Memory Leaks - There seemed to be a couple types that popped up for people, both in the overworld and within battles. I've hopefully taken care of these now, but let me know if you still encounter them!
• Item Menu Error - Equipping items, specifically while using the mouse, would crash the game for some people. This should hopefully be fixed as well!
• Fish fade out faster in the fishing game after being caught, reducing the clutter
• Hearth's special no longer triggers while she's outside the cart in the minecart minigame
• Fixed some oddities with the map, including some headless trees and floating pixels
• The electric effect in the minecart minigame now matches the transparency of the other attacks
• Fighting Pits now show the correct progress instead of Battletown's
• Mage town NPC's word bubble is now off-white, so certain hints are easier to see
• Fixed an issue when refunding the augment upgrades in the minecart minigame, where you could pocket extra crystals by refunding
• A bunch of typos

Bug Reports

Welcome everyone

Hey Everyone!!

Hey Everyone!

Big numbers!

Some Updates

• THE ENDING! The true ending is now playable for those of you who have completed at least 2 game modes (full-release content).
• New art! Check out the new character sprites! We're still missing a bunch of the side profile/attack animations, so some characters might look a little weird when battling. Those should be coming very soon!
• New music! (post-demo content) Check out Frog town and Battle town! We're still tweaking these a bit.
• Completed map! Well, maybe not totally completed, but very close! (also post-demo content)
• Tweaked late-game scaling for all minigames! I put caps on certain upgrades that don't really help with endgame once you buy a bunch of them, and I made a few upgrades scale more easily. This should help some of the balancing for of max high scores for some minigames (especially Fishing and Rock Digging), and will also help with some frame rate issues.
• With the better minigame scaling (and because of some other feedback), I decided to increase cauldron requirement scaling accordingly. Tougher Enemies and EVIL have changed the most, so hopefully those will still be beatable (I didn't change EVIL as much as Tougher Enemies, though).
• Ice fishing has been reworked! Now, there are "bonus fish" in each of the levels that essentially work as powerups. The amount of these fish increases with each loss, along with added hook weight.
• Added battle maps for Battletown and the fighting pits
• Added some new character portraits for the town leaders
• Fish now telegraph their next move. They'll turn in the direction they're going to move for about half a second before shooting forward.
• Changed Nyx's sprite! This one was kind of half changed in the last update, since we were testing out a few ideas. Now it should be consistent!
• Added a new meta-upgrade for Fishing to make Henry a little more impactful as the game goes on
• Fixed Cart game blorb's not bouncing correctly when they get too big
• Fixed some lag caused by the Ice game's bonus block upgrade
• Fixed an issue with REALLY large numbers in the ice game not calculating correctly
• Fixed the fighting pit NPC so you can actually see it! The menu should work now as well!
• Fixed some other menus
• Changed some of the hidden villager objects
• Fixed a bug with the new ice fishing bonus fish
• Fixed some of the cart game attacks not changing color when they're upgraded to have a different element
• Fixed the prior battle position not working for some characters
• Added some more character portraits
• Fixed random bugs and visual stuff
• Fixed a bug with the Chinese translation crashing the game
• Added new music to Magetown
• Fixed Fump's location for the swamp puzzles
• Added an arrow to indicate where Henry is going to be in the fishing game as you get close
• A bunch of other small things!
• Fixed the ghosts having 950% dodge rate...
• Fixed the ending not showing up when starting it with the effects level all the way down
• Fixed the alert not showing up above the Magetown leader's head when finishing her quest
• Fixed apple game's idle AI to not ignore golden+apples
• SSP blast meta upgrade now works on set bombs

Hey Everyone!

Some info:

• Wishlist and share: Any help we can get with spreading the word about Cauldron is worth a lot to us! If you enjoyed the demo and want to support the release, tell a friend!
• Demo plans: The Demo will be still be available after release, and all progression carries over to the full game!
• Beta Testing: Starting next week we’ll begin a closed beta, so if you want to help out with testing and bug spotting, please join the Discord!
• Press, streamers and content creators: If you want to review or create content about the Cauldron release don’t hesitate to reach out to us! Either join the discord or send an email to: [email protected]

Completing the map:

• Added scientific notation, handy for those big numbers!
• Added battle tips that show before battle starts.
• Bugfix: Fixed a late-game battle slow down whenever Cleanse would use her new ability to return status effects to enemies. This should happen a lot faster now!

Hi Folks!

• Enemy Stats: There's a new feature that lets you see enemy details from the battle menu in the overworld! You can now hover over enemy icons to see their stats and details BEFORE entering battle!
• Refund Individual Upgrades: Finished up adding the individual refund option to all skill trees!
• Easier Party Builds: There's a new "Auto Build Party" toggle you can choose in party select that will build a very standard party, for those who don't want to think at all :)
• Battle Tips: Added some "battle tips" that automatically show up in the battle menus. These are still a work in progress, and definitely need to be word-smithed! (let me know if you have some good ones to add!)
• Upgrade Fixes: Fixed the individual refund issue where you could end up buying upgrades out of order
• Preset Builds: Tweaked/added preset builds for heroes

• Cap Apple Laser: Added a cap to apple game laser duration so that it can't overlap with the prior laser
• Huge Apple Numbers Fix: Added numbers suffixes past "jj" since people were getting that many apples! (though they might not be able to now because of ^)

Art updates continue:

Achievement time

I’m back!

Steam Next fest summary

Recent demo update

• Ticktock: Magic Attack - Ticktock's basic attack applies +1 stack of a random magical status effect
• Burny: Weak Spot - Burny's Skill and Special attacks deal +1 damage for every stack of negative status effects his target has
• Sparky: Gotta Go Fast - Gain +10% more action speed, but at the cost of -3 hp (to a minimum of 1 hp).
• Plague: Toxic Fumes - Plague gives off toxic fumes whenever he attacks, giving all enemies a stack of poison
• Chill: Chill, Bro - Enemies who attack Chill receive 1 stack of freeze (upgradable)
• Chop: Reckless - Chop opens himself up to being attacked and returns +20% of the attack damage to his attacker, as well as +1 stack of bleed, but loses 1 Speed, 1 Armor, and 5% Dodge.
• Thor: Healing Feathers - If Thor hasn't used his Skill or Special abilities yet, he heals the entire party for 1 hp after attacking
• Cleanse: Status Reflect - When Cleanse uses her Skill or Special, cleansed status effects are given to random enemies
• Buffy: Pep Talk - If an ally falls in battle, Buffy will apply Attack Buff to the rest of the team
• Debuffette: Rejuvenate - Remove 1 additional stack of every negative status effect at the end of your turn
• Debuffette: Discourage - Enemies who attack Debuffette receive Attack Down status

• Shock enemies have double action speed, but half hp
• Freeze enemies have double hp, but half action speed
• Burn enemies have double attack, but 66% hp and 66% action speed
• Poison enemies have double armor (and a little extra) and +50% hp, but half attack and 66% action speed

Hey everyone!

Next Fest

Updated Sprites!

More Balance Changes

Feedback

Hey Everyone!

Try Cauldron's Idle Mode!

New styles

Feedback

Hey Everyone!