Mirklurk: Every Step Matters news & patch notes

So, here comes a bunch of very needed stuff! But first a small reminder to leave a review and help spread the word, as well as a bunch of thanks for your patience, feedback and support! <3

This patch adds the following:

• Three new enemies.

• 40+ items, consisting of weapons, armor, clothes, placeable stuff, harvestable stuff, bugs, poison arrows, potions and more.

• One new unique location with a new character to meet!

• New spawning system for dungeons: Enemies will spawn once upon entry, and new enemies will only appear if the players returns days later. (Some special dungeons might be except from this, if it makes sense for that location.)

• You can now Auto-Sort your inventories, as well as link them together.

• When combat starts you now have the option to distribute armor evenly.

• More details to dungeons, harvestable mushrooms, large pillars, etc.

• Added a wobbly effect to pathfinding over slippery tiles, like mud and goo.

• Added an icon to the Codex (F1), clearly visible in the lower left corner. (Must players probably didn't even know one existed, my bad!)

• Added a new skin color, a less sickly brighter one.

This patch changes the following:

• Important status effects are highlighted even more, bobblying up and down.

• When Wellbeing is getting dangerously low, this will be highlighted further through a status effect at the top of the screen. It will also show estimated turns until death.

• More consistency with right clicking to cancel actions.

• At 'Fast Draw' rank 5 you can now use bows inside melee distance.

• All enemies will stop being hostile if they can't reach the player.

• You can now search underneath placed stuff, like campfires or loot/containers.

• The game now has a variable to balance the amount of rain a player gets. Just to even out needlessly cruel randomness.

• When trading, purchasable items are displayed better.

• Starting fires now compensate for the turn-loss from doing the action itself.

• Carcasses will disappear as time passes, when their harvestable stuff is totally gone.

• The Weapon-Swap button is better highlighted.

• Draws beings better in deeper water.

• Lilypads are now harvestable, grows and spreads.

• Grass will not grow over mud, hiding it totally.

• Moss will not grow as predictable and eventually always overing the stony areas.

• Flint is less rare, but has worse stats. (New sparks stones have been added)

• All weapon bonus-skills give the same AP reduction, eventually.

• Shield Savant gives 2.5% blocking chance instead of 2.25% per rank.

• Map Drawing Kits can't be used needlessly in dungeons or indoors.

• When burning an item, that stations "Burn time left", will light up, highlighting that you can add still add more fuel.

• The player will be clearly notified when an item breaks.

• If the players bag breaks, the items will not just disappear, but instead spread out on the ground around the player.

• Lost Hit Points won't be restored as easily when resting.

• Balanced several items price and weights.

• Before the torso becomes wet, the cloaks water protection is correctly applies.

This patch fixes the following:

• Two crashes have been fixed. One was related to items breaking when fire-crafting, the other to rafting.

• Extra damage from different arrows is much clearer, and works as intended.

• When dodging, the players HP-grid will always take priority, ergo pop-to-the-top.

• Fixed some inconsitence with too-close-to-bow checks.

• The bedroll in Bhatos hut does not occupy space.

• Shift-stacking no longer removes too little weight if only partially stacked. Also fixed an issue with partially eaten bread showing inconsistent weights.

• Item duration loss was not applied correctly when taking damage from slipping, thorns or spikes.

• Better depth handling, so stuff always fades correctly when player moves behind it.

• If you craft a raft with the heavy branch equipped as a weapon you will no longer keep the branch.

• Extra harvest from Butchery does not apply to Fang-weapon.

• Status effects aligned better when different UI-scales.

• Fixed an issue in which enemies didn't "wait" for the players projectile to hit, meaning the player missed without a proper cause.

• Calmia roots sprite not remaining despite being picked.

• The world will remember what was harvestable, so will you not be able to re-loot to get a larger amount.

• Fixed an annoying issue in which a menu was opened and then instantly clicked on/in, in the same click so to speak.

• If loading a game with an unlit torch equiped, the light menu won't always auto popup.

• Carcasses will can still show their outlines even when the game is loaded. Previously their became un-highlightable.

• Flying enemies will not be slowed down, or even stuck, on water or obstacles.

• Volume bars no longer overlap at larger ui scale.

• Stopping weather soundeffects when exiting to the main menu.

• Right clicking during sleeping will NOT pause the turns passing and bug the game.

• Fixed an issue in which dropped empty bag would disappear when trying

  to merge with an already existing container on the ground.

• Added a clearer and better sound effect when deleting saved game.

As always, If this patch causes anything unforseen: Let me know ASAP! I will hot-fix like a mad man.

A thousand thanks for all the reporting, feedback and help! It means the world to me and really helps me improve the game! <3

Best wishes and lots of love! <3 //Mattias

PS: General improvements to the game will of course continue - There is more to be done!

Next bigger patch will focus on foraging, adding planting mechanics and skills, but it will of course add more items, enemies and content in general! EDIT: I noticed that during knockback enemies moved towards their enemy, instead of away from, so I fixed that and changed to v. 0.7.0.1

Full disclosure: I'm 90% sure this patch fixes a particular total-freeze. It happened when jumping away from an enemy, then dodging right afterwards. Thanks Special Caesar for helping out with that one!

Best wishes and lots of love! <3

//Mattias

Three survival skills: Body Warmth, Focused Mind and Slow metabolism, were not fully implemented and did not work reliably. My bad! This was a simple miss from my part, but big thanks to the mad experimenter Gogo for noticing that something was strange.

Best wishes and lots of love! <3

//Mattias

PS: This is most likely the last of the early rapid-patches. There still some weird quirks and QoL stuff missing, but next patch should be a bigger one, with lots of content, fixes, etc etc. Stay tuned!

This patch is not the biggest - but what it does is very important to certain players.

It does the following:

• The player can now build a raft and explore the waters. This is especially important for those who were softlocked by areas of vast waters.

• Adds a heavy cypress branch which can be used as a two handed blunt weapon, firewood, and is one component in building rafts.

• Fixes a bug were the player could not progress the mainquest at Bhatos hut.

• Makes sure that the quest related sceetler always spawns, even if the randomly generated dungeon happens to be very small.

• Ambushing snakes always trigger combat correctly, so the player can distribute armor points.

• Average waterproof and average insulation was calcuated to generously and could go above 100%. This has been fixed - You shall struggle more, now and always.

• Large Logs can now be stacked x2.

• Wellfed bonus is now doubled, making it more worth to 'over eat'

• Water beings will not move slower in deeper water.

• Fixes a bug in which camp fires remained lit despite being picked up by the player.

A huge thanks to those who helping out with testing the patch!

Always: many thanks for bug reporting, feedback and your support!

Importantly: If this patch causes anything unforseen: Let me know ASAP! I'm very ready for hotfixing!

Remember to leave a review and/or spread the word! It really helps! =)

Best wishes and lots of love! <3

//Mattias

This patches fixes a mainquest-breaking bug, in which (understandably) the player took a the companion of a escort-quest, went off-path to use his great skills, and then he becoming lost (bugging away) - never to return again.

The fix: if you load that save again: He will return to you, when you are outside and in the Fort Solid-area. So if your save is in a cave, or in another area: he will return once you re-enter the starting area.

In the future, you can't take him to new areas or caves, he will (understandably) tell you that he is in dire need of rest and wishes to go straight to the fort.

This patch also fixes another related bug. When entering a new cave/dungeon with a companion (which are available later in the game) they will always spawn next to you.*

Sorry for the inconvience!

Best wishes and lots of love! <3

//Mattias

*There is still this bug I want you to be aware of: If you have a companion -> enter a new dungeon -> exit the game without saving -> the companion will be lost. This will be fixed in the future, ofc, its just a bit trickier to fix so it will take longer.

First of all this: This is not a big patch but it is an important one, which deserves some attention (I think).

This patch does the following (for the main game and the demo):

• If not in combat, performing actions which cost more AP than available, will automatically be performed, end the turn and AP recharge will take the difference into account. This should hopefully make the gameplay out of combat much smoother and enjoyable. (Stamina loss has been reduced slightly to compensate for less "resting", since unspent AP is what restores stamina.)

• The spawning inside dungeons was bugged, and it spawned way too many enemies. This has been fixed, and it also takes into account if you are already in combat. (With this said, dungeons are far from done, and how the spawning happens will change, but I really wanted to fix this ASAP.)

• Using the inventory/bag button, will no longer close already opened stashes, frustrating the player and causing needless AP-loss.

• The player will not automatically stop resting when focus is 100% but stamina is not. Now, when both focus and stamina is 100%, there will be a notification to communicate why the resting ended. (This is referring to resting without a bedroll/tent)

• Previously, enemies moving while the player "paused" when walking greater distances, always interrupted the longer path. This was done to prevent the player from walking straight into previously unseen danger, or such. This has been changed: set paths will not be interrupted. This will be much smoother gameplay, but slightly riskier.

• Dungeon exits are more visible, both through providing more light and they all have some brighter colors, like bright moss, to further distinguish them.

• It now costs 2 AP to swap weapons. ('Z' key swapping, this is)

• You can no longer accidentally quick-stack items into harvest-menus, like when collecting plant fibers.

• When searching/examining tiles, the player now needs to close any open search-stashes to continue searching. Previously rapid-clicking-searches was often clunky and required multiple, unresponsive clicking. Hopefully this is more straight forward.

• Both crafted and purchased torches weights 1 now.

• Cursor doesnt show a '?' when hovering on the players current tile.

• Two crashes have been removed!

A huge thanks for all the feedback, bug-reporting and patience!

As always: Should this patch cause anything unforseen, let me know ASAP, so I can hotfix this!

Otherwise: Please let me know how this new version feels!

If the game runs smoothly, I have one more should-be-quick-work patch: adding rafts to help soft-locked players traverse larger bodies of water. After that, the next patch will be much bigger and be more content-focused.

Best wishes and lots of love! <3

//Mattias EDIT: Made another patch (v 0.6.5.1.) I made one important fix (the player would sometimes get an AP-discount for no apparent reason - just a bug) and I made sure that the XP bonus mentioned in the Focus related perk, actually applies.

This is just a hot fix for one rare bug in which you exited a cave and the game just froze, black screen forever. My bad! It has been fixed now, and if this happened to your save: you should be good now!

Feedback and reporting means a lot, so huge thanks everyone who takes their time!

Best wishes and lots of love! <3

//Mattias

Wooohoo and huzzah! The game is out!

I really, really hope the game (even in EA) lives up to your expectations and that you will enjoy your time in The Mirk!

Firstly: This is a work in progress! Please report issues, bugs, inconvieniences, etc, so I can improve the game as fast and smooth as possible!

Discord channel: https://discord.gg/VfZDXnH (Easiest way to reach me)

A huge thank you to everyone who supported me and the game! A special thanks to Feedback Lords/Ladies Galore:

DrTasslehoff, Shkibs, Grim_Diamond, Cidewalk, and the others who wanted to be anonymous! <3 (Really, I can't thank you enough!)

Lastly, if you like this game and want to see it grow: Please spread the word! Tell your friends, name your firstborn Mirk/Lurk, leave a review! Small devs like me manage to make a living very much through word of mouth, so sharing your experience in any way really helps! (Especially reviews ;D )

Remember, there is much more to come, so stay tuned!

Best wishes and all the love! <3

//Mattias

PS: If you have a demo character you wish to import, post 0.6.0.0 version, you can simply copy and paste that folder into the full games identical location. Right click on the game in Steam library -> Manage -> Browse local files -> Saves and then copy folder named after your character. <3

This patch updates the demo so it's more representative to what the full game will be like. Beware: previous saves will be incompatible with this version!

There are now more UI improvements to communicate clearer with the player, a bunch of bug fixes, and much more items to discover. It is, of course, still a demo and most of the content will only be available in the full game.

If you discover anything unforseen, bugs or weird issues: let me know!

As always: thousands of thanks for all the help, feedback and support! The EA-release is almost here, so remember to wishlist, tell your friends, shout it from your local roof top, name your babies Mirk,Lurk or maybe even Step, etc, etc!

Best wishes and lots of love! <3

//Mattias PS: The previous version is still accessible through your Steam library, right clicking, yada-yada-you-know-the-drill!

This patch does the following:

• Gets rid of a game freeze which happened when hovering over craftable items when menus were overlapping.

• Crafting menus now clearly indicates which items are currently craftable (A green outline will show if the player has the needed ingredients, without the need to hover over each option)

• Instead of firewood needing specifically an Iron Hand Axe, it now just checks if the player has any item with Chopping Power >= 2. (It also check equipped items!)

Thanks for all the feedback and bug reports! Please remember to wishlist and share! =) Best wishes and lots of love! <3

//Mattias

The latest version for the demo is out! Version 0.5.1.0! This version changes and adds a ton of stuff. Your old saves will be incompatible with this version (but you can still access the older version, should you choose to)

So, the new version does a ton of stuff:

• New darkness mechanics, which is tile based and impacts the character/gameplay and not just the player.

• Swimming! You will not sink instantly, instead you will be able to swim until your stamina runs out.

• UI-improvements - some really impactful ones, like how path-cost is displayed, being able to turn off certain Tool Tips, a new larger Help Menu, etc.

• More than 20 new items + a new enemy.

• Improved combat mechanics and UI communication.

• Improved enemy info if you research them (through examine).

• A scouting mode in which you can view further away.

• Difficulty settings - Easy, Medium and Hard.

• New skinning mechanics.

• Item durability now impact item stats, like armor, waterproof and insulation. Durability is lost when struck, when slipping, walking through thorns, etc.

• A new system in which items will deteriorate, get lost, etc, if you don't store them securely.

• Placing bedrolls or tent will now include "Concealment", impacting your chances of having a successful rest.

• Murky logs will be searchable for a cheap source of fire wood, and other stuff!

• A different 'ending' to Clays collect-quest, which actually offers rewards.

• And dozenz of dozens of minor fixes, changes, balances, etc.

This version does a much better job at showing what the final version will be like. This version is also the product of the feedback I have recieved, so in that sense the Early-Access has already begun ;D

As always: If there are game breaking bugs, annoyances, or crashes, please let me know ASAP, so I can path it right away!

A billion thanks for all the feedback, fair criticism and bug reports! If you want to support my work, please recommend the demo to your friends, and/or maybe even buy one of my other games! <3 Best wishes and lofs of love! <3 //Mattias PS: I will get working on updating the Steam Page so it matches this version ^^ so stay tuned!

Hello, everyone! I'm very glad to see that the wishlist keeps increasing and more and more people are trying out the demo! Please continue spreading the word! =)

I wanted to release the game by the end of March, so Q1, but that was overly optimistic. My current estimation for release is somewhere around late April - mid May. I really don't want to rush things! =)

The other information I want to disclose is this: It might become an Early Access release, so I wanted to give you a little heads up. I have really great beta-testers* (you guys rock <3) and they give me great and thorough feedback, but an RPG like this just has sooo many edge cases, weird builds, balancing issues, etc, that I will have a hard time guaranteeing a smooth n' stable version upon initial release. It might be the more honest and fair option to release the game EA. In that case, the EA period would most likely only be for a month or so, until I have gotten things in proper order.

Or who knows, maybe the game will be stable enough for a straight-to-1.0-release? Time will tell!

I also figured I would share some of the progress. Things are moving along rapidly and I am having a blast, so I am eager to share! =)

While the demo only takes places in 1 area, the whole game will take place in a much larger world, 5x5 world areas like this:

This is just a little preview/example, so there might of course be changes. The world and the starting location will be randomly generated but always containing certain locations, like specific ones for the main quest. And there will also be large areas underground. ^^

Here we can see how the combat system will improve, as well as a two-handed weapon:

You will be able to make more tactical and fun decisions when it becomes clearer what your chances for damage actually is. In the demo, the damage is evenly distributed across the pattern, which is too random, and makes weapons too similar. With the new system you could for example have a really piercing weapon, dealing highly concenterated damage, which is great for smaller armored beings but worse for huge unarmored ones.

Here we can see how the game freezes and give the player the ability to dodge:

There will be a main skill (and items) to increase the chance of dodging. When reaching rank 5 in the skill, the player will learn to dodge diagonally as well!

That's it for now! I have of course done much more than this, but these are the most visually interesting ones! ^^

Thanks a bunch for all the support, encouragement and feedback! It means the world to me! If you want to support my work while waiting for Mirklurk - please check out some of my other games here on Steam! =)

Best wishes and lots of love! <3

//Mattias

*PS: If you want to become a beta-tester: just join the discord and ask! There are still many weeks befor testing, but till!

This patch fixes a few things:

• You will not get 'rained upon' when inside a cave or the forts basement.

• Enemies will not spawn stuck in walls in the basement. In fact, they shouldn't spawn there at all.

• Eir has a better hostile check and will approach enemies near the fort.

As always: if this patch causes anything unforseen, let me know and I will fix it ASAP!

Like I said in the previous patch notes: My main focus is progressing the work on the full game, but I still want the demo to be fairly polished and enjoyable, so hopefully this path achieves that! =)

Best wishes and lots of love! <3

//Mattias EDIT: This patch also adds regeneration to trolls, so at the end of each turn they will regen 1 health point. So yeah, good luck with that! ;D

First all: Welcome all new players! <3 I am extremely glad to have you here! Most of you probably found this game through Splattercats video, for which I am very grateful! He pointed out several issues and came with great feedback, much of which will be implemented in the full game.

Most importantly, he (and others) experienced a crash related to picking up stuff from the floor after talking to the trader, overfull inventory, or similar situations. This patch fixes that! It also implements a few other thing I had already started working on:

• A new enemy. They are called Mirk Runners and are a classic RPG enemy, but I will let you discover them for yourself ^^. There is also a few items that can be looted/harvested from them.

• Items now display their stack limit with their name, weight, etc.

• Eir now moves around a little sometimes, as she is now full animated. This means she swings her maul if defending the garrison.

• Balanced a few items values.

I think that was it for this little patch! Please remember: This is just a demo. It is meant to entice new players, showcase the game and be a little sneak-peek. As soon as it stable enough (no more common crashes), I will move on to actually finishing the game. The core mechanics and UI will recieve fundamentals changes and improvements - I take all your critques to heart!

Once again: extremely glad that the game is getting some attention - every wishlist matters ;D

Should this patch cause anything unforseen, please let me know ASAP and I will fix + upload a better version!

Best wishes and lots of love! <3

//Mattias

PS: I made the previous version accessible as well, through your steam library -> properties, etc etc.

The first playable demo is officially out! Please give it a try and share it to a friend! I really hope you like it! =) I will soon focus 100% on getting to 1.0, but for the next few days I really want to improve the demo and iron out any bugs, so please let me know how it runs!

The easiest way to get in touch is on Discord: https://discord.gg/VfZDXnH A huge thanks to everyone who beta-tested! It really means a lot!

Best wishes and lots of love! <3

//Mattias