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Full Steam announcements and update articles for this title.
🛠️ Fixes:
✦ Fixed a bug that would cause one of Minos' tentacles to stay frozen in place in the Circle 1, Limbo, boss arena.
✦ Level up card selection menu fixes and improvements.
🪧 Other changes:
✦ Restores events missed by previous build bugs (see Hot Fix Patch 6 HERE for more information).
✦ Game no longer pauses when the game app is out of focus (Alt Tab). This option was removed due to potential conflicts with how the game engine handles this type of stop. These conflicts can cause issues with core game systems, Unity systems and third party plugins. This action fixes game breaking bugs and increases game stability.
Thank you for your continued support. 💫🪽
🛠️ Fixes:
✦ Fixed an issue where interruptions mid-cutscene (due to game crashes, or players intentionally shutting down the game app) would prevent players from rewatching these events and acquiring achievements triggered by cutscenes.
✦ Main level timer would progress if the player spent more than 5 minutes in Ovid's Poet Rescue encounter, leading to a multitude of bugs, the most notable of which involved the player could end up fighting against Ovid's Coccoon and Scarmiglione at the same time.
🤖 Optimization:
✦ Improved texture memory usage across multiple assets.
Over the past week since Hell Maiden's Early Access launch we have been working hard to increase build stability for the game. We hope that all these updates have contributed to a more flawless experience for everyone, even if some users may still observe some outlier issues with the game.
Patch frequency will begin slowing down moving forward, as we start shifting the team's attention back to content development for the next content update for Hell Maiden (for more information, see our roadmap HERE).
If you're still experiencing major issues such as soft locks and game crashes after this update, be sure to reach out to us via email at [email protected] or, even more preferably, our Discord server.
🛠️ Fixes:
✦ Fixed a player state issue that softlocked the game by having Dante spawn back in the Forum after a run with Ovid's Signature weapon (Codex Amoris) active around her and the player unable to move in any direction.
✦ Fixed an issue where players would be stuck in a black screen during Scarmiglione's mid-stage encounter if the player leveled up, paused, or skipped right before the battle triggered.
✦ Fixed an issue where the card banish animation could be triggered even when banish was not available.
🪞 Visual Changes:
✦ Updated some descriptions for a variety of effects in the stats menu which displayed as internal code.
✦ Swapped the icons for critical rate and critical damage in the metaprogression upgrade shop which were incorrectly attributed.
⚖️ Balancing:
✦ Adjusted Succubus' projectile speed and slowed down attack animation to give players a slightly wider window to deal damage.
🤖 Optimization:
✦ Implemented a toggle to activate 4k videos in the settings. Note: turning on this option may result in videos lagging on certain devices.
As always, we are noting down everyone's feedback for the future. Even if some QoL changes do not come in this patch cycle, be reassured that many of your suggestions are being incorporated into our pipeline for Hell Maiden!
🛠️ Fixes:
✦ Fixed an issue where the mouse would no longer advance the dialogue in Beatrice's 3rd cutscene (after defeating the Circle 2, Lust, boss).
✦ Fixed an issue where the Miracle of Beatrice charm (Revive) would carry over between runs.
✦ Settings global reset now works as expected.
✦ Fixed a bug where, upon starting the Scarmiglione mid-circle encounter, player could get stuck in a black screen or with dialogue overlapping the gameplay in a broken state.
✦ Fixed glitching sprites observed in one of the Circle 2, Lust, boss repetition cutscenes.
✦ Solved a bug where players would get stuck in the Title Screen due to not having SavedGames Windows folder.
✦ Solved an issue where Ovid's Poet Rescue cutscene (when clearing the quest successfully) would not play if the player was defeated immediately before it.
🪞 Visual:
✦ Improved the look of bold text of Charms' titles
✦ Fixed additional missing characters in Asian languages (Korean, Simplified Chinese, Traditional Chinese).
🤖 Optimization:
✦ All videos are now set to play in 1080p by default to prevent lag commonly reported by many players. A toggle to restore videos to 4k resolution will be added to the Settings at a later date.
While we're currently focusing our resources on fixing many of the most pressing issues that are preventing players from accessing the game in its full capacity, we want to ensure you that we are also collecting information on many improvements, suggestions, and concerns expressed by players since the Early Access release.
Of these suggestions, we want to highlight a few that we are committed to in the near to mid future:
Difficulty balancing in Circle 2, Lust.
Improvements to player and enemy hit boxes.
Improvements to mouse responsivity in UI.
While there's other improvements we have planned out, we are a small team and will prioritize this list first and foremost in order to resolve the most common frustrations reported by players so far! 🙇♀️
We are so grateful to everyone who has taken the time to voice out their opinions and suggestions. Your interest for Hell Maiden is very appreciated.
❤️🔥 Important Announcement: if you've been experiencing crashes, please be sure to launch the game with DirectX 11. It should now be the default launch option, with DX 12 available for other users.
🛠️ Fixes
✦ Fixed a bug where Spell videos would be instantly cut off upon repetition.
✦ Removed reroll options in menus where rerolls would always have the same result (eg. Poet Weapon Blessings screen)
✦ Fixed a bug where changing resolution would result in visual glitches in text.
✦ Fixed an issue where Weapon damage counts would display as '0' in the Results screen.
✦ Fixed a bug that prevented the final cutscene from playing upon defeating the Circle 2, Lust, boss. If you have already completed this boss fight, the missing cutscene and the "Pilgrim's Journey I" achievement should trigger automatically upon game launch.
⚠️ Important: Users have reported issues with this cutscene getting stuck when using mouse. To progress, press the standard Confirmation key on your keyboard. Alternatively, please connect a controller. We will work on a fix as soon as possible.
✦ Fixed an issue where the control remapping would not carry over between game sessions.
✦ Fixed an issue where chosen resolution would not carry over between game sessions.
✦ Removed a black screen that would pop up after defeating the Circle 2, Lust, boss for the first time.
🤖 Optimizations
✦ Performance optimization for Spell videos.
As always, we truly appreciate all the love and feedback we've received. We'll continue to work hard to improve the current state of the game. ❤️🔥
🛠️ Fixes
✦ Opening cinematic no longer skips from joystick input.
✦ The "Press Any Button" prompt now correctly responds to any button press.
✦ Fixed a potential crash caused by invalid settings.
✦ Fixed an issue where the "Essence of Poet IV" achievement would not unlock.
✦ Fixed an issue where Dante's Spell splash screen displayed white squares Portuguese (Portugal).
✦ Fixed several issues with achievements not unlocking.
✦ Fixed an issue where some map assets would not be generated for Circle 2, Lust. The landscape should now be more scenic!
✦ Fixed an issue where leveling up before cutscenes could disrupt gameplay.
✦ Fixed missing characters and incorrect bold rendering in English and several Asian fonts (Japanese, Simplified Chinese, Traditional Chinese).
✦ Fixed an issue with the Steam Cloud Saves system. You can now sync your progress between devices without issue.
For more information please check the community post here.
Thank you all for your continued feedback, bug reports, and support!
Wishing you all a great weekend in Hell (Maiden)! ❤️🔥
Dear players,
We want to extend a word of deep gratitude to you for accepting to dive into Hell alongside us! ❤️🔥
We are very thankful to all of you who have supported the Hell Maiden’s Early Access launch, be it by purchasing, wishlisting, playing the demo, or promoting it in any way.
Hell Maiden started out as a small concept that grew into something even beyond our initial imagination. As development progressed, so did our ambitions and the vision that we had for Dante’s journey.
All the support and feedback we received for the past year and a half (since we first announced Hell Maiden) has been the biggest source of strength and inspiration for us! 💠How can we report bugs and share feedback? Naturally, there will be various issues and bugs coming up throughout the Early Access period. We ask for your understanding while we work on resolving reported issues, and promise to do our best to continue updating each content patch with bug fix and balancing patches.
If you’ve encountered some bugs, issues, or have general feedback you’d like to share with us, there are a few channels where you can contact us:
For Bug Reports:
- Steam: https://steamcommunity.com/app/3372060/discussions/ - The Bug Report channel in our official Discord server: https://discord.com/channels/215312493864681473/1526944795807711243 We’re also planning to share a player survey in the upcoming weeks with some focused questions, as well as an open field for general feedback, so be sure to check back soon if you’d like to participate! To players in Asia, we know from past experiences that language barriers can be difficult to traverse. Thankfully, our publishing partner XD Inc. is helping us bridge communication with players on that side of the globe so that your concerns and input can be heard and addressed in a timely manner. 💠What to expect moving forward? You can check out our Roadmap for a preview of what’s ahead and our plans for the next content updates. Players can look forward to meeting many more of Dante’s colourful allies and fiends, unlocking their unique talents, and deepening their understanding of the mysterious circumstances surrounding Dante’s memory loss and banishment from Paradiso!
Apart from more weapons and boss fights, upcoming maps will feature new challenges that we can’t wait for you to encounter! Finally, a huge word of love and appreciation for all the people who have helped us along the journey so far, from artists, to composers, sound designers, voice actors, animators, QA testers, localizers, etc!
Their dedication to this project is priceless and we always feel like the luckiest devs in the world to be surrounded by so much talent, warmth, and friendship! Once again, thank you all for support Hell Maiden.
Let’s continue traversing the depths of Hell together!❤️🔥
We're very excited to read and watch everyone's reactions and feedback.
We've already started working on important fixes to ensure stability on everyone's machines, and bring you our very first hot fix patch.
🛠️ Fixes
✦ Fixed an issue where Virgil's Ultimate splash screen displayed white squares Portuguese (Portugal).
✦ Fixed a game-breaking issue where progression could stop after defeating Libicocco during her clone attack.
✦ Fixed Settings tab labels not updating to selected language.
✦ Fixed an issue where Horace's carriage would remain on-screen after use in certain situations.
⚖️ Balance Changes
✦ Virgil's Curse card (Curse of Dido) now always guarantees a minimum of 1 projectile count.
✦ Reduced the chance of Minos repeating the same attacks in quick succession, making her attack patterns more varied.
❤️🔥 New Launch Option Available
✦ For players experiencing GPU crashes, you can try launching with DirectX 11 (Beta) and see if the issue is resolved.
Thank you so much for your support so far, we hope you're enjoying your time in Hell (Maiden)! ❤️🔥
Literally!
Hell Maiden has just launched in early access and we can't wait to share everything with you.
Our plan for Hell Maiden is to follow the Divine Comedy's structure with the third Circle of Hell, Gluttony, coming still this year. The goal is to ensure we address our community's input with regular updates and hot fixes when necessary, all alongside the development of our next big chapter realease.
We've been working hard to bring you a polished and fun experience with Hell Maiden with several improvements, new features and quality-of-life fixes since the demo version, and will stay focused on making our next content patch even better!
Bear in mind that this roadmap is subject to change or adjustment.
As we take input from our community, we will do our best to make Hell Maiden the best game we possibly can so please do share your thoughts with us via the Discussions Section and/or our Discord server.
Please refrain from leaving extensive feedback in your Steam review, as we're most likely to see and address it if you post it in the directed links.
Thank you so much for your support! ❤️🔥
Your journey through Hell starts here!
Hell Maiden releases in early access with two complete Circles of Hell, each with their own challenging boss fight, and four different Poets of Limbo to unlock.
We hope you enjoy your time in Hell and will be counting on you, your support and your feedback to make Hell Maiden the best game we can!
Make sure to write us a review and please leave your feedback in the Discussions Section or, alternatively, in our Discord server so that we can easily access and keep track of any issues.
Don't hesitate to join our community on Discord to share your builds, achievements, fanart, theories and much more! See you in Hell! ❤️🔥
X/Twitter | Discord | Instagram | Newsletter | YouTube
There are several reasons behind this decision, these being the inevitable lack of parity between the demo and early access, changes in balancing and our own vision for Hell Maiden's development.
💠Lack of parity between the two versions of the game
After the upcoming EA 1.0 release, our main focus will be to provide full technical support, in the form of bug fixes, updates and patches, while simultaneously prioritizing development and the fulfillment of our roadmap goals.
It would be very difficult for a small team such as our own to do this while updating and maintaining the current demo, which is already very different from EA 1.0. Constantly updating the demo would directly take away time and resources from development, making it very unsustainable to maintain.
💠Our vision for Hell Maiden
Hell Maiden in an ongoing work and our goal is to focus on the game feel, visuals and narrative we aspire to develop while taking your feedback and experience with the game into account.
The initial balancing for the demo was developed to facilitate a faster progression through the game's content.
In this sense, our direction with EA 1.0 is to provide a more complete and satisfying gameplay experience with the addition of systems such as meta-progression and the adjustment of its overall balancing, stats and mechanics.
💠Future Demo
Despite this, we still intend on releasing a better demo after the game is no longer in early access. This demo would, naturally, have full parity with the game's mechanics and updates, share the same overall balancing and be a more enjoyable experience for those who just want to try it out.
Thank you so much for your understanding and we hope you'll enjoy playing Hell Maiden EA 1.0!
We'll be sharing more updates and news with you all the way up to the release, so keep an eye on AstralShift's socials, subscribe to our newsletter and join our community on Discord to keep up with everything!
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We're super excited to announce our collaboration with Project Mili for the opening theme of Hell Maiden — Not my Paradiso!
📆The Hell Maiden opening will premier on July 15th on YouTube!
It's a great joy to collaborate with such a passionate and talented group of creatives on something that means so much to us.
Thank you all so much for your feedback and bug reports, your input has been essential for us to tackle these fixes quickly and efficiently.
We'll keep working hard to make Hell Maiden the best game we can! ❤️🔥
💥Crash Fixes:
- Levelling up while using the Spell could cause the game to enter an unplayable state.
🛠️Functional Fixes:
- Player could lose during Minos' last phase right at the end and the game would still consider the boss as defeated making it so the next time the player faced the boss the end Victory cutscene would play automatically.
- Fixed a bug where the controls displayed in the tutorials wouldn't load in time, displaying instead a placeholder string.
- Pause menu no longer loses selection when you switch to the mouse in certain parts of the animations.
- Some health potions were impossible to consume.
- Sometimes the player could get stuck in a permanent slow motion state that would only reset if the player exited and reopened the game app.
- Some players were experiencing a bug where the Spell animations had pretty low framerates.
🖼️Visual/UI Fixes:
- Stats menu UI fixes.
- There's now a health decrease HUD effect.
- Fixed a visual bug with the gems' colour in the Horace blessing screen.
🌍Localization fixes:
- Some characters weren't showing up for the Japanese, Korean, Traditional Chinese and Simplified Chinese languages.
📺Ultrawide support:
- Multiple ultrawide support bugfixes. Even though not fully supported, it is now easier for the player to find a configuration that works since the settings menu should now work correctly on ultrawide, allowing the selection of a different aspect ratio or windowed mode.
ℹ️Take care when leaving reviews:
If the issue you're reporting is fixable and/or a minor bug rather than your honest opinion about the game, please report it via the discussions forum rather than a regular Steam review.
We'll be working hard to fix everything we can as quickly as possible!Thank you for playing Hell Maiden! ❤️🔥
Follow us on social media for news and regular updates:
🔗 X/Twitter 🔗 Join our Discord 🔗 Check out our LinkTree for more!We did a stream all about Hell Maiden with Marikyuun and answered a few of the most popular questions you've been throwing our way.
We hope you've been having fun playing Hell Maiden! Thank you for playing! ❤️🔥
Follow us on social media for news and regular updates:
🔗 X/Twitter 🔗 Join our Discord 🔗 Check out our LinkTree for more!Marikyuun who will be showcasing the game while chatting with AstralShift developers Kira, our creative director, and Ebee, our writer.
We'll be answering popular questions about Hell Maiden — about its development, our ambitions for the game and more!
Or watch the whole thing right here on Steam!
Don't forget to give our host Marikyuun a follow on Twitch as well, she streams often and does super fun variety streams from gaming, to art and karaoke! ✨
Thank you all for playing Hell Maiden! We'll see you during the stream!❤️🔥
Follow us on social media for news and regular updates:
🔗 X/Twitter 🔗 Join our Discord 🔗 Check out our LinkTree for more!The demo version of Hell Maiden is out and we're very happy to finally share it with you.
Your opinion and bug reports are essential for us to improve on the game.
Click here to access the discussions forum and here to access the Bug Report & Feedback board.
Alternatively, you can join our community on Discord and leave your reports and feedback there as well if you'd like to share it with other Hell Maiden fans!
If the issue you're reporting is fixable and/or a minor bug rather than your honest opinion about the game, please report it via the discussions forum rather than a regular Steam review.
We'll be working hard to fix everything we can as quickly as possible!
Thank you so much for playing Hell Maiden! ❤️🔥✨
We've been working hard behind the scenes to bring you a demo, and what better opportunity than Steam Next Fest to release it?
✦ The complete first level of Hell Maiden, Limbo — with enemies to beat, quests and challenges to overcome, and a tough Boss Battle to beat!
✦ 25+ abilities to mix, match and experiment with.✦ 1 Poet of Limbo to rescue.✦ 6 Weapon Cards and 10 Mod Cards to unlock.✦ The compelling introduction to the narrative and new character dialogues unlocked with each individual run!The demo will be available in English, Spanish, Brazilian Portuguese, Simplified and Traditional Chinese, Japanese and Korean.
You can find it right here on Hell Maiden's Steam page, or on the dedicated Demo page.
Hell Maiden is both developed and published by AstralShift and everything is still a work in progress. If you'd like to support us, please consider leaving a review and your feedback on Steam.
We hope to keep developing Hell Maiden alongside our community and your input is key!
In Hell Maiden you won't only count with the help of Dante's beloved, Beatrice, but with the support of the Poets of Limbo — Virgil, Homer, Horace and Ovid — who will grant you their Blessings throughout each run.
* From left to right: Virgil, Homer, Horace and Ovid.
In Dante's Divine Comedy, Limbo is where the souls of virtuous pagans reside. Poets, philosophers, great thinkers and artists from antiquity who lived without sin, but whose lives came to an end before they could be introduced to God's glory.
Thus, we took inspiration from Dante's most admired historical figures and brought them to life as the Poets of Limbo!
Our inspiration for Virgil came directly from the Divine Comedy, rather than the original author of the Aeneid. That said, she is the post-mortem reincarnation of the Roman poet Virgil and not simply a different interpretation the Divine Comedy's Virgil. Just like in the original work, however, she will be Dante's guide throughout the entirety of Hell Maiden.
The author of the famous and influential poem, Metamorphosis. Much of Ovid's personality, memories and attitudes are inspired on the author's biography and the real-life events he experienced, as well as on his body of work, including his love elegies such as Heroides and Amores.
Who doesn't know about Homer and his timeless works? Our interpretation of the legendary poet was very much based on trivia and the many myths surrounding his life. As a result, our Homer is just as mysterious and elusive as the real-life historical figure she's based on!
As one of the world's first autobiographers, there's a lot to know about the original Horace — his beliefs, life-events and even his likes and dislikes. While we're taking a lot of liberties with our interpretation of Horace, she's no more assertive and level-headed than the historical poet himself.
In Hell Maiden, the Poets of Limbo will be supporting Dante throughout the story and you, the player, throughout each run with their Blessings.
Each Poet will have their very own character-themed pools featuring rare (and super rare) cards that can totally make or break your builds. As such, you'll definitely want to strategically aim for a certain Poet's skills and abilities depending on your play style!
* All text, visuals and details are still place-holders.
Additionally, every Poet of Limbo will come with their own exclusive assortment of Signature Weapons, perks and even Ultimate Attacks — each with their very own 2D animation cut!
* A still frame from Ovid's ultimate attack animation.
You'll be able to chat with each Poet of Limbo in-between each run to get know them better. They'll be available in the Forum intermittently, so make sure to talk to your favorites whenever you spot them!
What's the Forum, you ask? That's where the Poets of Limbo live their quiet and uneventful lives.
* Taken from development build, in no way representative of the final game.
There are a million possibilities when it comes to which historical figures we could potentially include in Hell Maiden. At this point in time there are only four Poets — Virgil, Homer, Horace and Ovid — but we're actually missing one of vituous pagans Dante Alighieri admired most — Lucan.
Her character design and profile will be revealed in due time, so don't forget to follow our socials!
Given our studio's visual identity and past works (Little Goody Two Shoes and Pocket Mirror), we couldn't pass up on the opportunity of reimagining the Divine Comedy and giving both the work, and the characters within it, our very own anime twist!
With other games such as Hades and Limbus Company as inspiration, we find it super fun to explore these historical figures' work and lives, and to breathe new life into classical poetry through this playful lens.
We hope Hell Maiden's reimaginings of Dante, Virgil, Homer, Horace, Ovid, Lucan (and many more to come) will be not only memorable and fun, but interesting to interact and play with!
We love sharing more about Hell Maiden while it's still in development and hope this short post sparked your interest in the game.
Don't forget to add Hell Maiden to your wishlist and share it with friends if you haven't already, we really appreciate all of the support we're getting for our first independently published title! ❤️🔥
Want to know more about Hell Maiden and our vision for the game? Check out this interview!
Thank you all so much for wishlisting Hell Maiden and supporting our new title — we're beyond grateful and can't express to you enough how much this means to us here at AstralShift!
We're working hard to bring Hell Maiden to you as quickly as we can, so keep an eye out for updates and follow us right here on Steam so you don't miss anything.
About
This page aggregates Steam news feeds, patch notes, and developer announcements for Hell Maiden, sourced from official Steam community posts.
Major updates, balance changes, and seasonal events often correlate with player-count spikes — cross-reference announcements here with the live charts on the main Hell Maiden statistics page.
Articles link back to Steam for full changelogs. SteamScope refreshes news entries as new posts are published to the game's Steam hub.