Idylls of the Lunar Maria news & patch notes

Good evening everybody, I'm back with an update. Make sure to wear something windproof before you read this, because it will blow you away 😎

Levels:

• Crystal Woods

Combat Characters:

• Spooknight

• Infernope

• Dethroner

• Warpooch

• Dragthat

• Antler

• Labrador

• Moon Mammoth

Exploration Scenery:

• Factory Room

• Green Purple

Status Effects:

• Vulnerable

Changes:

• Return of the Demo!

• Combat now shows the effects of match reactions in steps, a bit like Balatro where the initial values and modifiers animate one step at a time. This is slower than before, so you can speed it up with the new combat speed slider in the pause menu.

• Combat Speed Option

• Navigation Scene won't show enemies if a story scene will happen instead

• A second hurt animation for damage over 9

• Congratulations scene includes a shower of the tiles witnessed

• Volume of some tile sounds adjusted

• Added some moments to story chapters

• Across the universe now includes the Moon Mammoth as a team member

• Added zoom and pan controls to Constellation Compendium

• Team Assemble screen includes character info like the constellation compendium

• The owl also gets a moustache if you pay the moustache conjurer

I'm very happy to announce the demo is back! I think the game is at a much better place to showcase itself before release. The demo will only allow you to play 1 story of each character, with no unlocks, endless mode or rat mode. It's quite generous as the game is still hefty with content otherwise. The combat now has a Balatro-like pace to it (which you can speed up in the pause menu) where damage adds up in steps with animations to show where and how attacks, heals, etc are coming from and going. A lot of feedback I have received revealed to me just how confusing the combat system can be unless you read all the character descriptions which is too much busy-work. It feels much more like a complete game now, I'm very happy with it and excited to hear feedback. As always, you can send me suggestions and feedback via my Discord or Steam Discussions. See ya next time!

Big news! The game will be fully released on the 26th of July 2026! Which is exactly two years after launching into Early Access. It's taken a lot of work, much more than I expected, but I'm confident that I can finish everything before this date. Bugs have been squashed, content has been created and the scale and scope of this game became fairly huge. I can now see the finish line and what I need to get done to complete the project. This won't necessarily be the end of content updates, but the base game should be done. See you next time with Tiny Update #14!

Good evening, I have a helpful update today. Explore these items of interest:

Combat Characters:

• Jumping Jack

• Big Green Rat

• Dragthis

• Robodent

• Heater

• Chopper

• Meal Eater

Exploration Encounters:

• Meal Eater approach

Exploration Scenery:

• Cliffside Walk

Meals:

• Cheese

Status Effects:

• Burning

• Cheesy

• Dragon

Tiles:

• Cheese

• Old Cheese

• Dragon

• Red Dragon

Changes:

• Better Status Effect Tooltips! Hover your mouse over status effects for information.

• Simplified Sour Status. There's no amount involved now, you simply attack with more damage based on the amount of lemons in the grid.

• Changed volume sliders aesthetic. Purple, not grey any more :)

• New How to Play in Main Menu with detailed information on mechanics. There are four pages currently and explain mechanics I found difficult to imply with UI alone. They answer common questions I receive from players, so hopefully it should help cement concepts and you won't feel like you have to guess how parts of the game work.

• New Hover Info for Tiles! Right click a tile on the grid, and learn what a tile will upgrade into, the Default Match Reaction, any overriding Match Reactions from characters, and how many there are in the pool. This is much faster than checking each character individually.

• You can buy permanent bonus tiles for the match pool now.

• Improved choice blobs again: Improved tile value logic for choice upgrades and shops. Should understand what tiles are good for you more accurately.

• Navigation Scene has some clouds to show you progress. Now it should be obvious how far you are from completing a story. I intend to expand this and have unique graphics for some stories.

• Constellation Compendium! Click on the rat in the title screen to see a constellation of all the characters you have defeated/played as.

• Every character has an assigned Zodiac sign now. There are 7: Cat, Rat, Moustache, Flower, Nonsense, Emerald and Onion

• Button sounds for unlockable character select/constellation compendium.

This update brings lots of information and UI improvements! Common feedback was telling me there was not enough direction for players to fully understand the mechanics, or what actually happens when you match tiles. I added a How To Play menu in the main menu, which explains the basic concepts as well as some more advanced topics that delve into how the game works. Various UI improvements allow you to read Status Effects better and Right Click on tiles to see what they do. Balance-wise I adjusted the prices of items, consumables are a lot cheaper, and you can now purchase additional tiles to the match pool with dynamic pricing. There is logic involved to only offer you tiles that help you by checking your team, upgrades etc. A new Cheesy Status can be gained from eating Cheese (which goes bad over time). A new Dragon tile moves around on its own, and merges into a Red Dragon, which moves and eats tiles!! I adjusted various enemies and introduced a few more that introduce these tiles. Including the new boss for The Recipe for Peace - The Meal Eater! They want to eat your cake. And speaking of enemies you can now check out all of the characters in what I call the Constellation Compendium! Which is basically a Bestiary. You can click on characters that you have defeated or played as to see their stats, and occasionally some trivia too. Every character has a Zodiac now, you can see them here. Click on the rat in the title screen to check it out! Thank you for playing, wishlisting, or even just checking out my game! I hope to announce soon a release date for the full release, stay tuned! If you want to give direct feedback or suggest something, you can contact me via Discord or Steam Discussions. Cheers!

Howdy gamers, please witness and savor the fruits of my labour:

Levels:

• Lemon Place

Combat Characters:

• Orange Ranger

• Illumimate

• Pigisimo

• Tower Defender

• OrbThat

• The Rat

• Mouse

• Good Rat Buddy

Exploration Encounters:

• Stumped

• Fox

Exploration Scenery:

• Lemons

Tiles:

• Orange

• Arrow

Meals:

• Orange

Changes:

• New navigation scene - choose the next conversation and enemies!

• Modified the UI to show current level on every screen, larger turn counter

• Some rewards can increase difficulty in hardcore, introducing risk/reward

• Improved Rat Mode - new rat player characters

• Fixed moving tiles (bullet and arrow), can now go both ways and works with big mode box.

• Fixed bug with Achilles Heel status

• Reduced reverb everywhere

For a while some recurring feedback has been that there should be more choice in where to go and who to fight. So I have started on a new scene in this update! You can choose the next conversation, level and enemies from a selection. Rat mode now has bespoke rat characters to play as, bullets and arrows are cool now (and in the case of arrows, exist), I tweaked the audio to be less reverby and fixed some obscure bugs and typos. Some private feedback has told me the game flow is much improved from the new scene so I hope to add some more visuals and mechanics to it! As usual there are more enemies (215 total now!), and a couple of conversations, some visuals for The Recipe for Peace (Lemon Land, where there are lemons).

Thank you to everyone for your support, and if you have any suggestions or feedback, feel free to contact me via Steam Discussions or my Discord.

Hullo, I'm back with another update. Please sit back, relax and enjoy these changes:

Combat Items:

• Shuriken

Combat Characters:

• Bulb

• Dino Knight

• Dino Forager

• Dino Muse

• Greenghoul

• Shiny

• Strand

• Ashley

• Standing Guard

• Coin

• Penny Pincher

Exploration Encounters:

• Penguini Show 3

• Umbro

Exploration Scenery:

• Castle Field

• Sewer

Charms:

• Shuriken Belt

• The Speck

• Dino Doohickey

Achievements:

• Rat Catcher

Changes:

• Bluesy can appear in Penguini's shows

• Hidden rats!

• Updated Godot version, helped to track down and finally fix bug where combat would not continue. Also refactored large parts of code (this took a lot of work!)

• Shops and upgrade choices should now be more relevant to your situation (based off of your character's match reactions and progress)

This update I worked to balance the upgrades you get after combat to make more sense. It's not totally random, and you are offered boosts/discards that help your build. I adjusted the difficulty scaling a few ways and it sets a good foundation for some more experimentation with build possibilities. There are now hidden rats to collect! Just a fun side-activity. You may see them after a combat (wait for the gameplay UI to move out of the way and then you can click on them like a hidden object game). Introducing the shuriken as a new combat item, it clears rows or deals damage to an entire team. To go with it is a shuriken belt, which gives you shurikens at the start of combat. The Speck is a ridiculous charm that has you locating the speck for a bonus attack. And the Dino Doohickey will provide you with a dinosaur pal (a unique one for each of the main characters). A new type of attack that pinches your coins can be experienced with the penny pincher. I also added a new idle animation to some enemies. Boring technical details: I had to refactor a large part of the project for the new balancing, and updated to the latest version of Godot. This involved fixing some breaking changes and tweaking to get the game back to a working shape. It was worth it because new error messages started appearing where previously I had no feedback. This helped me track down a bug that would halt gameplay. Hope to see you again sooner than last time, and if you have any feedback I am always listening on the Steam Discussion forums or on my Discord.

Ladies and Gentlemen, and gentle ladies and men, I hereby announce yet another update. Here is its contents:

Levels:

• Mafia Boss Room

Combat Characters:

• Banaknight

• Starfish

• Eyemafish

• Sewastronaut

• Phantasma

• Rattio

• Cowch

• Spooklet

• Lunatrick

• Phantom Conjurer

• Geometrytodefeatme

Exploration Encounters:

• Rattio

• Duckstrange

Exploration Scenery:

• Twisted Peaks

• Someplace

• Sea Tower

Meals:

• Banana

Tiles:

• Banana

• Banana (green/under-ripe)

• Banana (brown/ripe)

• Triangle

• Pitchfork

Changes:

• Unlock playable characters by defeating them! Click on the campfire to start.

• Tiles have their own turn counter now, utilised for certain mechanics, such as decaying bananas

• Turn Counter has improved visual feedback

• Mousing over characters brings them to the front

• New trailer by the way!

• Changed some enemy behaviours

• Fixed a bug where characters did not play their idle animation at the start of combat

This update brings progression! You can unlock certain enemies as playable characters by defeating them. I had some people playtest the game and noticed some things so I improved the turn counter and mousing over characters shows them fully. Some enemies I felt weren't too fun to fight so I changed them, especially the Knight Rat, which summoned another Knight Rat after taking damage. There's now a boss for the Forager's Red Rodent Rescue story, although it doesn't make sense yet. There's now a new trailer featuring music by Huw Roberts! A huge improvement for the Steam page. As always there are some new characters, which brings the total to 195!

I hoped to do more but it's been a couple of months since an update and I felt the need to post what I've got so far, just to keep momentum. Sorry if it's slow! To finish this game, I plan to include more progression systems, bosses for every story, and at minimum have those stories make sense. The Red Castle is at that stage, and others are close. Then there is always the challenge of balancing the game with so many moving parts. I want Rat Mode to be less random and feel more like a game. For the roguelite aspect to work there needs to be more build opportunities with items, tiles, upgrades, charms and meals. Hopefully I can do it!

As always you can contact me by joining my DIscord to give suggestions or to follow my WIP progress with Idylls and other random projects.

• Blobetto
• Dropletto
• Mountain
• Stumped
• Bigly
• Buskermit

• Jigsaw Piece
• Moustache Conjurer
• Buskermit
• Onionbud

• Snow Canyon
• Lunar Hill
• Bright Trees

• Onion
• Lasagna

• Alchemy Amulet
• Starfish
• Teapot
• Cone of Fury

• Crotchet
• Quaver

• Choice blob sprite bigger
• Pause menu button is nicer
• Better vase smashing sounds
• Balance changes (enemy health & shop prices increase as you progress. Decreased how much max health you gain with progress)
• Go to goose shop choice after combat is less likely now, but shop has more options
• New mechanic: some enemies have attacks that repeat x times
• Sparkle combat item doesn't clear tiles, only upgrades them now
• Story selections are ordered better now
• Fixed a bug when playing hardcore and winning a combat with only summoned characters
• Adjusted some sounds
• New Congratulations screen music, credits scroll and characters you've seen in the run appear

• Terra Tower Hall

• Red Moonster
• Red Moon Guard
• Red Moonion
• Mercynary
• Squiddo
• Door
• Chicken
• Treasure Keeper
• King Poodle
• Curse King
• Roboyar
• Blue Cog

• Chest
• Bombles
• Drilleye
• Spidercrab
• Designer

• Jetty
• Farmside
• Tower Nothing
• Blue Woods
• Snowset

• Red Moon
• Gunpowder

• Fire > Gunpowder

• Fixed a bug with Stormy Status being pesky and halting gameplay
• Fixed a bug on hardcore when team members died
• Fixed a bug where enemies that had multiple attacks at the same time would halt gameplay
• Optimised the match pool info for when there's too much to show
• New cat coins display
• Changed some sounds
• Changed some tiles (lemons look especially less ugly)
• Changed how the cogs work (play The Heist to see them in action)
• Boss battles for The Heist and The Red Castle
• Reduced file size! Depends on your operating system how much exactly but all of them have been reduced by at least 200MB!

• Snowblob
• Magman
• Vampy
• Zappyappz
• Egguvna
• Carriot
• Ghost
• Pumpkind

• Sacko
• Pumpkind

• Windy Field

• Carrot

• Beekeeper Broach

• Magma
• Carrot

• After combat, a choice of three rewards appears (just like in those video games)
• You can choose to boost or discard tiles appearing in future combats, which should be an aid in making builds.
• New "Chonky" variant of enemies that appear after combat 16 with extra health.
• Fixed various enemy descriptions that had lacking info.
• Any team member dying on Hardcore does not come back anymore (including your main character).
• Fixed bug with Stormy status that would carry over into other combats.
• Reduced Bark's health and frequency of shield as sometimes his combats can drag on.
• Also reduced light tiles in some levels as they heal all characters, for the same reason as above.

• Factory Cogs
• Factory Wires

• Zapprentice
• Blobes
• Waterminator
• Teardrop
• Mystick
• Wiry
• Brokin

• Little Investigator

• Factory Deck
• Sunny Woods

• Bin of Begone
• Cursed Root

• Sea Spear
• Teardrop
• Branch

• Cat Coin Collector

• Various small UI changes based on feedback
• Turn counter display makes more sense, starts on turn 1 now
• You can see the match pool now by hovering over characters and the turn counter
• Characters show their take damage reactions
• Fixed conversation buttons is the new default
• Status effect casts now follow the rules for statuses like wide, tall, drilleye etc
• Match Pool information is now exposed in various character/item/level descriptions
• Meta Novelty system: reduces repetition of enemies and some exploration encounters across runs
• Goose shop redesign

• Mysterious Moon Hills

• PainTer
• Pointy
• Electrorat
• Stopportunist
• Flatmate
• Dogosaur
• Reader Rat

• Penguini
• Penguini Show
• Penguini Show 2

• Factory Tunnel
• Dark Woods
• Castle Approach

• Combo Crunch

• Snowdrop
• Money Magnet
• Combo Cup

• Stop
• Paintbrush
• Flatmate
• Thief Knife
• Paper
• Book

• Bluesy Enjoyer
• Big Damage
• Huge Damage
• The Red Castle (Gold)
• The Recipe for Peace (Gold)
• Unda Da Siege (Gold)
• Red Rodent Rescue (Gold)
• Ice Crisis (Gold)
• The Never-Descending Terra Tower (Gold)
• Across The Universe (Gold)
• The Heist (Gold)
• Treasure Cloud (Gold)

• Master volume default changed to 50% (games are too often unpredictably loud when you first boot them up so thought this would save the odd person a jumpscare)
• Combos now have a UI indicator
• Dancing Victory Rats
• Unda Da Siege ending makes a bit more sense
• Ice Crisis ending makes a bit more sense
• The Recipe for Peace now has an additional story moment
• Tile Upgrades available in the shop should make more sense for your character. (e.g no more mushrooms unless you're the forager)
• New hover info blob, which is animated and has bigger text. You can also scroll properly now.
• Font rendering should be better (crispier) on scaled resolutions, so that's good for windowed mode and Steam Deck
• Bunch of new achievements, mainly for not dying on hardcore. The game now keeps track of your deaths as a stat (or you could call them more accurately "defeats")
• Added an option for fixed conversation button placement, as some people don't like the way they move around randomly

• Moon Hills
• Moon Beach

• Creature
• Octopirate
• Orbwave
• Treasure Creature
• Moochine
• Acornucopialadin

• Jelly Hills
• Red Rocks

• Brussels Sprout

• Big Mode Box

• Geared Up

• Scimitar
• Moon Wand
• Leaf Sword
• Red Sword
• Brussels Sprout
• Leaf Shield
• Blue Cog

• Match 7
• 10x Combo

• UI button colour changed
• There is now a tutorial finally!
• Big Mode (larger grid, smaller tiles), activated by a charm

• Purple Orange Forest
• Spiky Ice Cavern

• Mushy
• Deep Squeezer
• Venom Soldier
• Cool Cactus
• Badeggunsmoke

• Slash

• Frumpy

• Ice Cavern
• Lunar Stroll

• Ice Cream
• Boiled Egg

• Combat Bag
• Boulder Badge
• Tree Trinket

• Moon Sword
• Fire Sword
• Cactus
• Boiled Egg
• Corrupt Egg

• Volume Slider preferences are now saved
• Marvin's mishap now rewards you with a unique combat

• Jelly Town
• Unda da sea
• Sunlit Seabed
• Ice Cavern

• Poison Potion

• Deep Siege Beast
• Shroom

• Ordinary Snowman
• Impassable Snowman
• Prospector

• Snowy Place
• Snowy Trees
• Jelly Town

• Lemon
• Friendly Pie
• Blob Snack

• Snake Plush
• Giraffe Plush
• Flag of Plan B
• Blaze

• Pickaxe
• Frosty Sword

• Ice Crisis can have snow in the exploration scene
• Achievements! 9 For now, one for each story
• Chest tile looks less like a bread loaf or a brick
• Cool title theme by Huw Roberts!!!

• Fireplace Place
• Sparkle Woods
• Sunset
• 3 Terra Tower Levels
• Dino Deck
• Red Castle Hallway
• Crater

• Health Potion

• King
• Stilton
• Deep Sleeper
• Icyclearly
• Bark
• Coin Cat
• Green Knight

• Squeaks
• Deep Sleeper
• Collected Cat

• Terra Tower
• More Trees
• Inside the Red Castle

• Tough Cookie

• Friendly
• Tough
• Sleepy

• Crown
• Cookie

• Horsey Tiles are rotated for better visibility
• Tweaked some UI ordering
• Story Blobs wobble on mouseover
• Red Rodent appears in forager's hand in Red Rodent Rescue
• Some boring characters have changed stats/mechanics
• Improved visiblity of Darkness tile, Wide and Tall Status
• Changed the initial owl conversation to at least give you some tips if you ask for a tutorial

• Each main character will have 3 stories to play through, each changing up the game in some way.
• There might be a bespoke soundtrack! Will update on this if it happens.
• I would like to add Steam Achievements eventually
• All feedback will be considered! That includes desired additional content and changes. You can contact me in my Discord (Link Here)
• All bugs will be squished before I consider the game released