Heartspell: Horizon Academy news & patch notes

• Fixed a bug where the Worldspell's "Match this element:" description appeared in all puzzles.
• Added an achievement for getting rank 10 in Worldspell practice.
• Fixed an issue where starting a relationship with Ember in her post-story dates wouldn't "stick" in some contexts.
• Fixed a bug where you could kiss Miko while not dating her.
• Updated Purifying Wave's description to correctly say that it converts up to 5 gems.

• Once the finale is complete, you can now practice the Worldspell with any of your friends in the practice arena. It is very hard.
• Miko is very drowsing if you practice with her at night.
• Various typo corrections.

• Fixed a few minor typos.
• Changed the vfx for Amara's astral realm to be more performant.
• Fixed a bug where trying to start dating Amara after her story was complete would sometimes fail.

• Now when the map populates, if there's at least one character who's story you haven't completed that can progress their story at that time of day, there will be at least one story chapter available. So as you're approaching the finale, no more searching through mini-dates if you're trying to complete the core content.
• A few small typo fixes.
• Fixed a bug where sometimes Dawn would not change into her sports clothes when doing sports.

• Heron now has content in various chapters where his relationship with Charlie shows up, if one exists.
• If the stakes of your bet with Typhon were asking about the Remnant, there's a new date with him that does that.
• Miko's visions in her third chapter now give the player gender preferences for the romance and spice visions.
• Various minor typo corrections.
• Constantine and Lila now have sports outfits, wherever it matters in Dawn's story.
• Fixed a major bug where if you were using a screen reader, the game would sometimes get stuck at the end of a character's story.

• There's now a button to hide the UI on reward illustrations so you can see the art without obstructions.
• Cleaning up the credits a little.
• Caught a few text-voice mismatches.
• I think we've fixed a bug that in very rare circumstances would cause the game to not initialize properly, resulting in a weird-looking screen where you'd see very early concept art of Cassie.

• For reasons I don't understand yet, achievements very rarely don't get all the way to Steam. I'm still looking into the root cause, but for now I'm causing the game to recheck all story-based achievements when you enter the title screen, so it's likely that some of you will get an achievement or three the next time you load the game.
• Fixing a couple small typos and one visual effect that appeared where it shouldn't.

• Fixes to various small typos.
• Fixed the bug that cause VO to no play correctly in some cases in the scene where Riley unlocks the practice arena.
• The 'time skip' feature that unlocks after the finale is complete is now an account-level unlock, meaning that it will be on when you start new saves.

• A new option under Accessibility to turn off the typewriter effect.
• A new option under Audio to mute flavor VO during puzzles.

• Ups the resolution of the title screen illustration.
• Minor changes to a couple lines where the text didn't exactly match the voice over.
• Addressing an issue where players picking up from a demo save from more than two months ago have lost access to Force Wave and had it replaced with Shape Darkness. Force Wave will now be back in your spell list. Shape Darkness will also be there, which is slightly unfortunate, but it felt wrong to take away things you already have.

With launch just around the corner, we wanted to update the demo with all our various fixes and improvements, and unlock just a couple more chapters. v15.02

• The three tutorial segments now have much better callouts to highlight gameplay elements the player needs to understand.

• All the VO has better volume normalization.

• All characters are now animated.

• Fixed a major bug where the puzzle would sometimes lock up if you supplied an unexpected input (looking at you, right mouse click)

• Fixed scaling on some characters.

• Better UI for cantrips.

• Cassie now has a fun little animation when she takes her turn.

• All special gems have better visual treatments now.

• Conner-the-eagle now has art. No, you cannot date him.

• Adjusted when some music plays

• One more chapter for Heron.

• One more chapter for Cassie.

Enjoy! And we hope to see you at school when the full game launches!

It's launch month! We wanted to celebrate with a new build that brings in all sorts of bug fixes and visual/audio improvements. We've also added two big new things to the demo. First, we've expanded Morgan's demo content to four chapters - the same as Typhon and Miko. Morgan has a very different tone we wanted to highlight, and they also have a rather different perspective on what's going on in the Academy. We're not going to spoil too much here, but go see what our mischievous healer has waiting for you.

And second, the practice arena! Now when you complete the demo content, instead of being booted back to the title screen you can stay on the map and use the practice arena. This means you puzzle-fiends out there can play to your heart's content AND every character has their own saved practice rank, so you can test your puzzle skills against your friends.

We're so excited for our upcoming launch, and we hope everything we're adding to the demo will get you just as excited. See you at the Academy!

We've been working hard all summer and are happy to announce a big update to Heartspell's demo. Improvements include:

• Big Font option.

• Options to change the size of the cursor, or to set it to 'native.'

• Screen-reader support, for story mode.

• All locations have been updated with their final backgrounds and many of those backgrounds have animated elements.

• The main map has been updated with a number of animated elements.

• Lots of new music, applied to various tonally appropriate chapters.

• Better aspect-ratio handling. Go nuts widescreen friends.

• Lots of new visual effects related to the puzzles. Spells and effects that transform gems now wait a moment before calculating matches, so you can see what's actually happening.

• Cassie now takes every other turn instead of every third.

• Cassie no longer exclaims about how good you are when she was the one taking the turn.

• All folders have been updated to Heartspell (from our old name of Scholomatch)

• Fixed some lines where the VO and text were slightly different.
• Increased the size of character buttons on the map screen.
• The classroom now has final art!

v13.41

• All characters (and the narrator) are now voiced!
• Steam Achievements are now active.
• Ember and Lin are now in and playable.
• Backgrounds have final art for Picnic, Lake, Hills, Field, Castle, Forest, and Swamp.
• Tons of small UX/UI and art improvements.

• Title Screen has new UI.
• "Delete Game" has been moved out of settings and onto the title screen.
• Miko's spicy content in her fourth chapter has been toned down just a smidge.
• Under settings there's no an Accessibility menu with a couple font options for dyslexic folks. If anyone has friends who fall into that category, we'd love feedback.
• Charlie has changed just a little.
• Charlie's puzzle trait has been replaced. She now has "Research Goals" which asks you to destroy a few specific gems in addition to hitting the points goal.
• Morgan now has expressions.

• Puzzle pieces move faster when you're swapping them.
• Equipped spells now have a little burst vfx when you get enough mana to cast them and have an ongoing effect as long as that remains true.
• Equipped spells and magic styles now have tooltips on the Spell selection screen.
• The puzzle 'time' element no longer incorrectly appears just as you beat eh second tutorial puzzle.
• Cassie now acts every 2 turns instead of every 4.
• Typhon's unstable gems now do a little pulse after every turn to remind you that they're there.
• Cassie's first chapter can now happen at the lake and waterfalls. The castle is a bit of a bottleneck in the early game so it's helpful to be able to meet characters in other places.
• Clicking anything now immediately kills the tooltip.
• Shooting stars' trails remain longer.
• Careful Study had wonky vfx. Made something a little better.
• Fixed a bug (I think) where sometimes a level would end in success, but the Score bar wouldn't be filled.
• Slightly lowering the required points of the third tutorial level.
• The very end of the tutorial now has a response where you can tell Riley that you're poly, so all of this is normal for you.