Recursive news & patch notes

This is another HUGE update for the game and for myself. Recursive has officially launched on the Google Play Store for all to play, and will hopefully be coming to IOS in the near future.

Along with releasing on Mobile, today we're introducing a brand new system. Ascensions!

Ascensions work very similarly to the Prestige system, but with a new added difficulty layer and a huge new set of bonuses. The ascension system isn't technically fully available at this time, but will be very soon. Update 2.0, which will be releasing soonish, will introduce more ways of receiving ascension points as well as a MASSIVE content expansion for the game.

• Added achievement support for Google Play

• Added ASCENSIONS!

  • Ascensions work very similarly to prestiging, after a certain threshold is reached the system reveals itself, allowing the player to ascend.

  • Ascending grants AP(Ascension Points) which can be used to toggle ascension upgrades

  • Ascension wipes all progress (Except achievements)

  • Investing AP introduces the new difficulty system

    • Difficulty multiplies things like enemy health in all modes, base upgrade costs, mage hiring costs, mining rock hp, and so on.

    • Investing AP increases overall difficulty by 30% per point

  • AP can be added/removed to upgrades just like with Prestige upgrades

• Removed the "Thanks for playing" modal, as the game has gone far beyond what the original completion was.

• A bunch of mobile fixes/changes

• Google Play Release!

• Added proper height clamping for the initial language selection modal

• Added a new toggle in the options that provides better touch friendly UI mechanics, toggled off on PC by default, toggled On on mobile devices by default

• Reworked tutorials a bit more. Reduced total count from 42 to 25, removing quite a few that have been marked as redundant by many players. Consolidating a few into one better explained tutorial tip

• Fixed an issue with main town essences not dropping correctly in some specific cases

• Added actual icons to the prestige upgrades, matching the other upgrade trees

• Made it so the stars and shattered moon no longer move when panning the camera

• Lowered how much the parallax moves while panning by about half

• Applied the same parallax changes to Tower Wars

• Bunch of little backend fixes and clean up work

• Bunch of work for mobile port

This is another update mainly focused on tackling some bugs and improving on game stability. There's also quite a bit of work being done behind the scenes for a mobile port of the game, which will hopefully also translate to better touch functionality on devices such as the steam deck!

• Improved touchscreen support

• Started working on official mobile support/port

• Added a width cap for mobile platforms that makes it so certain UI elements don't get cut-off on devices with rounded edges

• Accepted the fact that most people want this to be an idle game over an active incremental

• Cried a bit, but ultimately got over it

• Added a new offline-collection system that allows the game to "play" while closed, gathers currencies and materials as if you were idling with the game open. Also auto-processes potion brews and accounts for them expiring while away

• New Idle Mode system is now capped at 4 offline hours (May be adding upgrades to extend the time)

• Idle Mode now displays a "While you were away" modal when launching the game and being away for more than 30 seconds.

• Idle mode will not kill a boss if that boss has not already been defeated, but will loop the boss if it has been defeated already

• Implemented a UI scale system with 4 options - 75%, 100%, 125%, and 150% (This was so rough to do, but honestly so worth it. 125% is my idea of perfect, but 100% is default)

• Moved around the equipment panel to better fit the new UI scaling feature

• Hovering over your equipment list will now show 2 modals, your current equipment and the hovered piece. Hovered piece will have green/red on the stats comparing it to the equipped piece

• You can now click, or hold, anywhere in the overworld to attack an enemy

• Forge of Creation amplification cost scaling is now a bit more intense. Previous cost scaling allowed for pretty much just spamming upgrades on any equipment with currency multipliers to upgrade infinitely

• Fixed a bug that was making it so the 3rd main essence never appeared as a drop/selection

• Swapped the mouse in mining expedition for a circle similar to the one used in the Tower Defense. Allows for clicking all rocks inside of its radius instead of just one at a time (Radius non-upgradeable)

• Fixed mage damage upgrades now calculating the multiplier correctly

• A bunch of bug fixes and stability improvements (I forgot to write a bunch of stuff down...)

While this is a mostly normal bug fix update, it's also HUGE in terms of the effect it has on the game. All values across the board have been fully transitioned to a new BigNumber numbers system that allows for true theoretically infinite scaling. With this change comes a huge fix to saves that had issues with values going negative. If you got so far that your currencies went to negative 9 trillion for example, this version fixes that!

Unfortunately if your save was marked as corrupted by the game, or you saw "inf" values anywhere then that save could not be saved (pun intended). I hope you guys enjoy, and I look forward to fixing all the new bugs I'm sure y'all will find!

• Fixed the hover information for prestige points not appearing correctly

• Fixed some mining expedition upgrades not appearing until a currency was unlocked

• Fixed a small issue with Rubble currency

• Changed all number systems over to the new BigNumbers system (Mantissa based values for the people who know) allowing for proper "infinite" scaling without causing overflow issues

• Added a small patch that will convert old saves automatically, fixing most broken saves with negative value issues (Unfortunately if your save says corrupted in the loading screen I was unable to fix that)

• Removed the level cap for the mimic (Was 2.9k, is now theoretically infinite)

• Revamped the max upgrade button, should be more reliable and cause less lag for massive overcharge levels

• Made it so the "Max" upgrade button truly buys the max amount of upgrades instead of silently capping at 50-100 per click

• Game shouldn't stutter as bad anymore when clicking the "All" upgrade button (Unfortunately not perfect, yet)

• Added a new suffix system for numbers, (Ex. 1m, 1b, 1t, 1Qa, 1Qi, 1Dc, 1A, 1H, 1AB, 1ABC)

• Changed the max level and max overcharge level for Mining Rig upgrades

• Removed overcharge caps from Reinforced Drills and Rig Module upgrades

• Added the ability to use percentage values in Gamblers Den and Potion Brewer quantity boxes

• Fixed an issue with possible low FPS in the potion brewer UI when farming mats

• Mining Expedition chain lightning upgrade now does 50% of mining click damage instead of just .5

• Added a sub-upgrade to chain lightning that allows the 50% to be raised by 5% per level

• Moved chain lightning down a tier, making it easier to unlock early on

• Blacksmith now has both side panels open by default, making it easier to see equipment discovery/hints

• Forge of Creation now starts with the info panel open by default

• Moved the enemy regen numbers away from the right of the enemy and into the HP bar for better clarity

• Slightly altered the color of the enemy health bar for better contrast

• Changed the way crit chance affects the damage tooltip, now caps at 5 exclamation points but color goes through a big range depending on crit chance

• Changed the way damage tooltips appear over enemies in the overworld, making it a bit more clear to see damage done when it's happening rapidly.

• Moved the prestige button out of the giants modal and on to the top panel, next to the inventory button. (Does not appear until prestiging is available, same as before)

• Removed the existing prestige UI and consolidated it into a smaller panel top-right. All information is still present.

• Added the ability to hold down left mouse to rapid-click in mining expedition

• Improved click detection in mining expedition

• Added a "Quick Identify" button to material identification in the improvement results modal, now allows for back-to-back auto identification without as many clicks

• Added a "Arcane Identification" upgrade to the Mage Tower Research. Allows you to set a mage(s) to identify materials automatically for you instead of creating currency (Uses the mages speed upgrades to measure identification speed, has multiple levels)

• Added Rubble to the prestige rungs

• Iron Fortress run selector background now changes depending on which mode is selected

• Iron Fortress run selector now remembers which tab was selected during a game session (Will revert back to Fortress Defense by default any time the game is restarted)

• Switched from the basic fade transition to a new mosaic-pixel transition (Honestly not exactly sure how I feel about it yet)

• Fixed a bug that wasn't allowing negative material effects to become positive

• Added a "Auto Slots" upgrade to the Gamblers Den

• Added a new "Choose your path" essence selector for the 3 main essences. Shows only the town symbol, but not the name or description.

• Converted the timed tutorial tips to non-timed. (In hindsight having it timed was dumb, why wouldn't I let you keep it on your screen for forever if you wanted?)

Update 1.5 is here, and it's huge. This update makes a ton of very important changes, completely changing up the dynamics of the game. Enemy runs have had their health values reconfigured, making all runs more difficult and requiring more attention to upgrades.

The knights upgrade tree has been redone, cleaning up the jumbled mess it was before and modifying all upgrades across the board. Upgrades offer much more uniform value increases and scale higher than they did before, but at a cost.

You guys complained that the Mining Expedition felt mostly useless because it wasn't needed for progression at all, so now it's needed for progression! Rubble has been turned into a global currency and is now used for upgrades for the Knight and the Iron Fortress. The expedition also has a new upgrade branch available that allows for some nice passive currency/material gains. Rubble can be purchased in the black market now as well, and can also be used at the Gambler's Den.

A couple NPCs have been swapped out. The mining expedition is now led by Gollux, and the Iron Fortress is defended by none other than Cat! (I love Cat. I would kill for Cat.) Speaking of the Iron Fortress, it has had a HUGE change. Many people didn't care for the Tower Defense minigame it offered, and felt it was too idle or just not fun for them. Because of that, the Iron Fortress now offers 2 minigames instead of just the one, each allowing for the normal required Iron Fortress progression. The new minigame is still a Tower Defense style game, but it's called Tower Wars. It's gameplay is simple, but more hands on than TD. It's heavily inspired by Cartoon Wars, albeit much simpler than it.

With this new addition to the fortress comes a revamp to the upgrade tree. Iron Fortresses upgrade tree now has 3 tabs at the top, one dedicated to TD specific upgrades, one for shared upgrades, and another for Tower Wars specific upgrades. All upgrades were redesigned in a similar fashion to the Knights upgrades, with some noteable changes being that to unlock Archers and Mages you MUST have some rubble, further enforcing the Mining Expedition as a required minigame. But that's not all! In addition to the new Tower Wars minigame, there's also a new utility town! Thea is back under a new profession, so everyone welcome Potion Brewer Thea to the kingdom! Potion Brewing is a new town that allows you to use your monster mats for a good purpose. The concept is simple, one Thea spawns in your town (is placed) all monster materials will be rolled through an effect randomizer. By interacting with Thea you'll open up a new modal with a list of all your available materials, here you can choose any combination of materials and quantities that you want to throw into the pot for Thea to turn into a potion. Depending on your selection of materials, Thea's brew will grant either positive or negative effect modifiers in the same fashion your equipment grants you bonuses. At the start, since all materials are randomized you have no way of knowing what effect a material will have. You can throw them into the pot and right them down one by one, but your character will not remember this so you won't be able to see the stats in-game unless your potion is active. In order to solve this mental dilemma, you'll have to identify your materials. Identifying a material is simple, give it to Thea and she'll turn it into a puzzle for you to solve. Once solved for the first time, you can see all the effects a material has by simply hovering over it. If you continue identifying a material you can eventually turn even negative effects into positive ones. Perhaps with the help of the mages or a blessing from the gods you may even take materials beyond their limits. If you get tired of identifying materials fully by yourself Thea will gladly take payment to assist you in the process. Potion Brewing is a completely optional town, however you will find your journey will be much easier going forward if you let Thea assist you. This update is big, and introduces A LOT of changes. From new mechanics, to completely redesigned gameplay loops. Existing saves will work with this update, but I personally highly suggest starting fresh so you can fully experience it with all the new changes. And if you've been looking for a reason to return to the game then this might just be it! With all of that said and done, I have had a few people reach out about showing some extra support for the game on top of buying it. Initially I didn't want to any of the extra support, just because it's already an insane blessing if you bought the game in the first place, but some of your are pretty insistent. So, I have officially started a Patreon. I will be posting all sorts of teasers here, as well as using it as a place to ask questions and get suggestions from you guys outside of Steam and Discord. https://www.patreon.com/cw/XeramGaming If you want to grab a membership and show support just know that it means the world to me. If you can't, or don't want to, show any extra support in a financial way then know that you still mean the world to me. 99% of what I post to the patreon will be completely free and accessible to everyone. And any financial support that is received is simply going to go towards me improving Recursive even more as well as towards my next project, or projects! I hope you guys enjoy this update. The more detailed changelogs can be found below:

• The Iron Fortress now has a new mode, Tower Wars

• Tower Wars runs now unlock the next available run for Tower Defense when cleared, and vice versa

• Tower Wars runs are available in the normal Iron Fortress run selector screen, under a new tab (hard to miss)

• Iron Fortress upgrades now has 3 sections, Tower Defense/Shared/Tower Wars

• Shared upgrades only need to be purchased once, but affect both game modes

• Fixed enemies in the Iron Fortress(Tower Defense mode) not regenning hp even if the run has the modifier active

• Rubble is now a global currency

• Unlocking Archers/Mages for the Iron Fortress now requires some Rubble

• Added equipment bonuses specifically for Rubble gain

• Added a new upgrade tree to the Mining Expedition minigame, Mining Rig, allows for passive generation of all currencies as well as all materials

• Fixed Rubble ignoring certain bonuses from achievements and prestige's

• Some upgrades for the Knight now require Rubble

• Fixed a few more translation issues

• Added a new area/run, the Field of Bones.

• Eclipse Throne is now Run 9

• Eclipse Throne enemies now have a chance to drop all materials from previous runs

• Renamed Winged Skull materials to Bone Statue materials to fit the new enemy

• Rubble can now be purchased for Prestige Points in the black market

• Mining Expedition is no longer considered just a Utility Town

• Completely changed the HP values for all 9 "main" runs, creating a steeper curve

• Changed the resistances present in runs 1-9

• Added resistance badges to Iron Fortress(Tower Defense)

• Mage projectiles now have an actual sprite + animation

• Mage projectiles now use a different sprite/animation when chain lightning is active

• Improved performance in late-game Iron Fortress(Tower Defence) a bit

• Completely re-did the Knights upgrade tree (Placements, costs, max levels, cost scaling, effect values)

• Iron Fortress NPC has been swapped, say hello to Cat!

• Mining Expedition NPC has been swapped, say hello to Gollux!

• More improvements to Iron Fortress projectile tracking (Both modes)

• Added a few more safety nets and small refactors to prevent Int overflow (Big numbers going negative)

• Improved the look of the tooltip, ensuring auto-sizing for content worked correctly and the tittle banner properly covered the entire top inside instead of clipping

• Thea is back in town with a new profession! Everyone welcome Potion Brewer Thea!

• New Utility Town - Potion Brewing.

  • All monster materials are now granted a random bonus effect when Thea is placed.

  • Materials will have 1 guaranteed effect, but can hold up to 3 at initial randomization. 2nd effect has a 25% chance to be added, 3rd has a 10% chance

  • First effect has a 75% chance to be positive, Second has a 50% chance, 3rd has 25% chance.

  • Effects include most of the effects found on equipment.

  • Thea allows the user to brew potions by combining different materials at different quantities. Potion duration is determined by the smallest amount of contributed material (So if you have 5 of 3 different materials and then only 1 of a material the potion will only last 1 second)

  • Potion effects are stretched to accommodate difference in times

  • You can choose to dump brews before their timer is up, but you will lose all contributed materials.

  • Thea has 3 slots "loadouts" for recording your custom brews. She also allows you to name them.

  • Potion loadouts show materials used when hovered

  • Material effects are completely randomized when Thea is placed (Essentially randomized on prestige)

  • Any combination of materials can be used, allowing for a wide variety of stat bonus mixtures.

  • Thea's town has an Identification tab. Here you'll be able to put the puzzle pieces to identify the stats of a material as well as improve them and even have a chance to add an extra effect (Caps at 5 total effects per material)

• Added 2 new upgrades to Mage Tower Research that relate

• Re-arranged town essence drop order one more time

• Essence Selector now queues correctly when a boss drops more than one essence at a time

• Added a "You should start fresh" popup for existing saves

• Added a few achievements for Tower Wars

• Added a few achievements for Mining Expedition

• Added a few achievements for Potion Brewing

• Added a few rubble related upgrades to Mage Tower Research

• A bunch of backend fixes/changes to improve UI interactions

• Added new icons to the Knights upgrade tree

• Added new icons to the Iron Fortress upgrade tree

• Fixed the playtime not being pinned to the right in the save selection menu

• Fixed Magic damage not appearing correctly in DPS Breakdown panel

• Finished moving over some systems from Int values to Floats

• Locked the "Buy All Upgrades" button behind a new T1 prestige upgrade

• Fixed the Iron Fortress results screen not showing the correct multiplier amount for Iron gains

• Fixed an issue that was causing tutorial pop-ups to grow incredibly tall, hiding the buttons and making it impossible to close

• Fixed a few translation issues, likely many more that need to get fixed still unfortunately

• Slightly adjusted some UI sizes to better accommodate the new languages

• Added proper formatting to some numbers that were missed last time

• A bunch of backend fixes/changes to improve FPS in the post-game

• The blacksmith now has the ability to teach you a recipe for a random piece of equipment, for a small cost

• The Explorer has joined the Kingdom!

• New town linked to the Explorer, with a whole new minigame!

• New minigame, Mining Expedition. This minigame adds a new fun way of obtaining the existing currencies. It also introduces a new currency that is used specifically for this minigame, Rubble.

• Added a "Farm Mode" toggle after losing the Eclipse Throne battle for the first time (Allows for easier material farming)

• Expanded the new upgrade node system to the Knight and Iron Fortress upgrade trees (Nodes are hidden until their dependencies have at least one purchased)

• Upgrade trees now zoom in on mouse cursor, instead of towards the center of the screen

• Upgrade trees now start focused on the first upgrade of said tree

• New runestone area in the overworld

• Fixed the achievement popup sizing

• Fixed an issue with bad banding when the CRT filter was on in Fullscreen mode

• Added per-track volume sliders for music

• Setting volumes to 0 now correctly mutes the volume

• Added guarding for when certain values get too high that should prevent save corruptions (Cause y'all are insane)

• Demo now points to the full-game instead of wishlisting

• Even more small bug fixes and tuning!

• Added a language selector in the settings

• Added first draft translations for Spanish, Simplified Chinese, Brazilian Portuguese, German, Japanese, Korean, and Russian

• Fixed a bug that wasn't allowing the completion of the Archmage Council achievement

• Fixed an issue with currency going negative after hitting a certain threshold

• Fixed an issue with Forge of Creation enhancing and amplifications costs going negative

• Buying upgrades with the "Max" option selected will now stop at the base max level first if the Overcharge prestige is enabled. This prevents accidentally buying 60 upgrades past the cap when trying to max out base levels first

• Fixed an issue where some upgrade description numbers were being rounded down instead of showing the correct value

• Added more numerical notations to the number formatter (Cause some of y'all are insane)

• Gambler's Den now supports a theoretically infinite number for betting (Don't spend it all in one place)

• Further improved the FPS dropping issue caused by damage and auto-click rates at excessive values (Tested with 19999824793567163000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000001999982479356716300000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000 auto click)

• Added number formatting to knight stats

• Added number formatting across the board to equipment stats and bonuses

• Added a new first time language selection modal, will appear on first launch (and once for existing players)

• Abyssal Titan and The Mimic now have a chance to drop any material from previous runs (base 1%)

• Added number formatting to the enemy drop list

• The Mimic has been reworked (Still temporary, testing a feature). The mimic now goes up a level every time it's killed. It gains 25% of the previous levels HP, and drops 25% more XP per kill. This is a placeholder boss for now for those who want to test how far they can push the limits

• Added an "All" button to the 3 main upgrade screens (This purchases all upgrades, iterating through each and buying the cheapest where possible)

• Added number formatting to pretty much everywhere else I could think of

What's up everyone! I wanted to thank everyone who's bought the game so far. It's been incredible to see how many people have been interested in my creation, and how many people seem to truly be enjoying it!

I wanted to let you guys know that I have been seeing the feedback, reviews, and everything else and my eyes and ears are wide open! I'm trying to tackle all the little things I've seen as quickly as possible, hopefully this update knocks quite a few of them out. But I am always open to more feedback and suggestions.

I also want to expand a bit on the future of Recursive. Full release was part 1 of my plans for this game. In its current state I can definitely say that I am extremely happy with what I've made, but that doesn't mean I don't intend on expanding on it. Recursive will continue to receive updates for as long as I can maintain them. Some of these "updates" may actually come in the form of free DLC for the game. I have plans to add so much more content as time goes on, some that will fit perfectly, some that'll likely seem out of place. Recursive is a project I started working on because I wanted to make the perfect game for me, and that's the path I hope to continue taking it on. Thank you all again, and I hope you keep enjoying the game! <3

• Added a "Don't show again" button to both variations of "The Titan Retreats" pop-up modal. Confirming this option will make it so the modals do not appear again during that session (Starts re-appearing after a game restart or after fully defeating the Titan)

• Added a golden indicator that points to the Iron Fortress NPC after defeating phase 1 of the Eclipse Throne

• Fixed a bug that was causing animations to be called hundreds of times in some instances, causing massive frame drops and affecting UI in really weird ways

• Prestige Points gained from boss kills now appear in the normal drop list instead of as a floating tooltip

• Visible damage numbers in the overworld have been capped, there should only ever be 12 visible at a time

• Added a cooldown for saving on boss kills (Fixes the issue with FPS drops on high damage runs)

• Added an Iron Gain Multiplier for equipment bonuses

• Added the new multiplier bonus to a few pieces of equipment

• Added a new ability to the Forge of Creation, Amplifying (Amplifying doubles all current stats on the selected piece of equipment for 500B of every currency (no material cost) This cost doubles, with no cap, and cannot be reset like enhance can)

• Iron Conduit now allows mages to convert Gold and XP to Iron!

• Fixed a bug that wasn't updating active equipment bonuses when enhancing equipment

• One of the prestige blessings now grants the Black Market vendor the ability to convert something to currency, I wonder which it is? (It's Boss PP Harvest...)

• Forge of Creation now shows stat changes and currency costs when hovering over either the enhance or amplify buttons instead of always showing

• New T3 Blessing, Overcharge Protocol, allows players to buy upgrades beyond the cap for the Knight, Iron Fortress, and individual Mages (Speed and Damage upgrades do not qualify)

• Knight, Iron Fortress, and Mage upgrade costs text are now truncated. Full values are still visible by holding down left-shift

• Added a small "please leave a review" reminder and button to the victory screen

• Added a new temporary run, The Mimic. This will be available until I can flesh out further run extensions for those that want a continued challenge post-game.

• Toned down the brightness of the grass in the Iron Fortress

• Added a black outline to enemies in the Iron Fortress

• All Iron Fortress enemy sprites are now 3x as big

• Added a CRT filter to the game (I love it!)

• Added a setting to toggle on/off the CRT filter

• Changed up the text for some of the tutorials, hopefully making some core mechanics a bit more clear
• Changed the "Return to Overworld" button in the Iron Fortress pause menu to "End Run"
• Added a dedicated "End Run" button to the bottom right corner of Iron Fortress endless sessions
• Camera Placement and Zoom Levels in the overworld are now tracked per session, placing the players camera exactly where it was when they left the overworld
• Added a new prestige blessing, Swift Harvest, that removes the death animation from normal and elite enemies, allowing them to spawn instantly. (This allows for much quicker material farming)
• Added an extra tier to Swift Harvest that removes boss death animations
• Fixed the Forge of Creation icon and name not displaying correctly (For real this time)
• Tower Research costs now uses abbreviated amounts (500K instead of 500000)
• Overworld runs now pause when the essence drop selection modal is open
• Damage no longer tries to apply to an enemy if the run is paused for some reason
• Added a new Tower Research, Enchanted Harvest Knife, that applies a drop multiplier to materials collected from monsters
• Fixed a bunch of bonus effects that weren't applying correctly
• Fixed a visual bug when purchasing max upgrades

Update 1.0 is here! This update marks the official end of the Recursive beta updates. Going from our tiny little heart character with only clicking, to our animated knight with a bunch of extra systems is a huge accomplishment. I'd like to thank everyone who's played the demo, provided feedback, and even play-tested the full game, all of this wouldn't have been possible without you guys <3

• Corrected Forge of Creation essence name

• Assigned an icon to Forge of Creation essence

• Fixed audio not working on demo web build

• Fixed Crit multipliers not going past the 300% crit chance

• Corrected DPS number formatting, now shows proper values past the millions

• Kill Tracking achievements now persist correctly on prestiges

• Refined some values for kill tracking achievements

• Blacksmith Auto-Forge can now re-create equipment pieces that have been merged into creation items (Random selection, cannot manually recraft)

• Black Market no longer removes PP from lifetime counts, now properly handles deductions

• Poison on enemies no longer kills enemy modifiers in Iron Fortress

• Updated game version to 1.0

• Added a guard to currencies to prevent them from going negative

• VSync is now enabled by default

• Floating damage numbers now get formatted to include proper suffixes

• Added an option toggle to enable/disable formatting on floating damage numbers

• Added a "Takes effect on next prestige" tooltip to all qualified prestige upgrades

• Redesigned Auto-Forge prestige upgrade: The blacksmith no longer tries random combinations every 30 seconds, instead he is now guaranteed to craft a piece of equipment every 15 minutes. Upgrade now has 2 extra tiers, allowing to decrease the time between crafts

• Extinction Event & other enemy kill tracking achievements now also track Iron Fortress enemy/boss kills

• Bosses now have a 1% chance of spawning in Iron Fortress endless runs after 5 minutes

• Bosses in Iron Fortress endless mode have a chance of having modifiers applied

• Modified the cost to upgrade for quite a few equipment pieces

• Modified stat bonuses for quite a few equipment pieces

• Iron Fortress Endless sessions now display a "Bosses Killed" count

• Iron Fortress stats now display a "PP Earned" count if the prestige upgrade is active

• New Prestige Upgrade that allows bosses to drop prestige points (Overworld and Iron Fortress)

• Prestige Points are no longer capped

• Unallocated Prestige Points are now displayed in the currency hud

• Black Market now has a small chance to buy prestige points in exchange for large amounts of currency

• Black Market stalls should no longer bug out and display inaccessible stalls

• Prestige Upgrade tooltips should now update correctly on clicks

• Overworld should no longer continue to operate normally when in the prestige screen

• Bulk Purchasing upgrades should no longer cause visual lag

• Swapped some colors around in mage tower (Iykyk)

• Added an Unequip All button to the equipment panel

• Added a delay to the coin flip minigame so that it doesn't look like you won when you lost, or vice versa

• Finally added multi-tier crits. 0-100% has a chance to do normal crit damage. 101-200 does guaranteed normal, but also has a chance to do double crit damage, 201-300 triple, etc.

• Multi-tier crits now have different colors and add an extra "!" per level

• Made the equipment modal slightly taller

• Equipped equipment now has a green container to better represent it as equipped

• Clicking an equipped piece of equipment in the list now unequips it

• Fixed blacksmith equipped sort option

• Equipped equipment pieces now have a green container in blacksmith too

• Blacksmith Auto-Forge timer now displays minutes and seconds

• Iron Fortress Timer now splits into hours alongside minutes/seconds (Cause some of y'all are insane)

• Cleaned up a bunch of debugging code that was still present

• Time to completion is now saved and displayed on the load selection menu

• Game completion status is now displayed on the load selection menu

• Added a "Victory" button the giant that allows you to display the completion modal again at any time

• Joy has entered the kingdom, and she's talking about a Forge of Creation? (New Essence/Utility)

• What is this melody?! (Forge of Creation dedicated background music selected)

• Added a thorough explanation menu for the Forge of Creation

• The Abyssal Titan has appeared

• Auto Forge timer is now serialized (Saves on game saves)

• Added 5 new achievements (4 for total enemy kills and 1 for defeating the Abyssal Titan)

• Fixed Gambler's Den rewards being affect by currency multipliers

• Fixed an issue where equipment was changing rarity colors to locked tiers in Demo

• Fixed a bug that was causing Gambler's Den games to be affect by multipliers of other games

• Added a small black dot to the center of the attack radius in the Iron Fortress

• Holding mouse down now does 9 clicks per second instead of 3

• Fixed an issue preventing hold to click from working in the Iron Fortress

• Corrected some multiplier text in the Gambler's Den

• Removed Pairs as an eligible win metric in slots

• Black market trades are slightly more expensive

• Black Market Merchant now offers XP as a possible reward

• Added the current version number to the main menu

• Prestige Upgrades now correctly hide their tooltips until criteria is met

• Added 1x/5x/Max upgrade purchase multipliers to Mage Tower

• Made a few more modals reactive to currency and material changes

• Prestige points now get unallocated and returned to the player if the tier of the upgrade no longer has the criteria met

• Fixed an issue with a T3 prestige upgrade and the T1 prestige passive effect

• Swapped some prestige upgrades around

• Redesigned the Essence Selector modal to better fit the rest of the game

• Equipment now stays equipped when the Equipment Continuum upgrade is active

• Runestones are now clickable

• Runestones now display a small list of your available essences when clicked, allowing you to quickly select an essence placement instead of dragging (Dragging is still an available option)

• Added damage types to each damage source, split into Melee/Magic/Ranged

• Added a resistance system for Overworld and Iron Fortress enemies

• Added small bubbles to the right of OW run selector that displays if an enemy has resistances/effects

• Added a Regeneration effect for OW enemies (Specific to certain runs)

• Added random chance modifiers to Iron Fortress enemies

• Added Tower Mages to Iron Fortress

• Tower Mages now act almost identical to archers, however they inflict magic damage instead of ranged

• Tower Mages now require you to own 3 mages in OW before becoming purchasable

• Added Chain Damage upgrade to Tower Mages

• Renamed Iron Fortress projectile setting, now also cover Tower Mage projectiles

• Added a radius circle for Tower Mages, same as Archers but blue

• Added a DPS panel to the overworld, under the currency panel

• DPS panel now shows DPS Total as well as individual per damage type

• Damage types show more information when hovered in DPS panel

• Chain Lightning now does instant chain damage

• Added hover tooltips to Iron Fortress runs showing if they have any modifiers

• Added a Damage Types information breakdown panel in Iron Fortress run selector

• Added a Enemy Modifiers information breakdown panel in Iron Fortress run selector

• Added a 10x modifier for Iron Fortress runs (For you sickos trying to speedrun the sessions)

• Added a HP Regen upgrade for Iron Fortress

• Final boss now has multiple phases

• Final boss now has a scary mechanic for Phase 3

• Final Iron Fortress run is now Sealed.

• The game now has an "Ending"

• Total playtime is now shown upon reaching the "End" of the game

• Phases are disabled for the final boss after officially completing the game

• Eclipse Throne run becomes unsealed in the Iron Fortress after defeating the final boss

• Added a Frost Aura upgrade for Tower Mages that slows enemies in range by 40%

• Added Fortress Regen upgrade for Iron Fortress tower HP regeneration

• Fixed the Forge not allowing combinations from previous runs to be crafted after a prestige

• Fixed an issue preventing the demo completion modal from being interactable when first killing the 4th boss

• Demo completion modal now only appears once per run when killing the 4th boss

• Demo completion modal will only appear in the overworld, preventing interruption of minigames if the 4th boss is defeated by passive DPS

• Added purchase multiplier buttons to the Giant and Iron Fortress upgrade trees (You can now purchase 1, 5 or the max amount of upgrades in one click)

• Archer radius is a tiny bit better, still needs more tuning

• Hopefully fixed an issue where a yellow overlay would cover the screen rending clicks useless

• Removed the old achievements

• Created 48 new achievements tailored towards current gameplay

• Achievements panel now updates when an achievement is completed

• Fixed the achievement completed pop-up never actually appearing

• Moved the top panel buttons slightly so they're not directly touching the corners of the screen

• Removed Obsidian Gauntlets (May come back in the future)

• Iron Fortress speed toggles can now be toggled through keybinds (Also added to keybinds menu)

• Added a "Play" button in the iron fortress upgrades screen

• Iron Fortress click radius is now red, was yellow/gold

• Updated tutorials for Iron Fortress to mention the new keybinds

• New town/essence, the Gambler's Den! (Not available in the demo)

• Gambler's Den now has 3 game types, Higher/Lower, Coin Flip, and Slots!

• Added a new runestone area

• Fixed the background stretching weirdly on some resolutions

I wanna give a HUGE thanks to everyone who's played the Demo so far, and especially everyone who's dropped a bug report or suggestion. All the help and feedback is greatly appreciated and helps me see things I may not have otherwise!

• Reduced cost scaling for the Iron Fortress mining upgrades (Passive Iron/sec), making them more realistic

• Fixed Iron/sec upgrades not actually generating currency correctly

• Reduced all music and sounds backend volumes by roughly 40%, as they were all pretty loud even at 1% set on the sliders

• Swapped the sounds for the knight in overworld, Auto attack now uses the Swoosh sound and is synced with the animation. Manual click uses the old auto attack sound, and manual click crits use the old auto attack crit sound

• Knight auto attack sounds are now "directional", scrolling out makes them sound slightly more distant and when the knight is not on screen the sound stops completely

• Knight sword is no longer clickable during the swing animation

• Fixed Iron Fortress enemies spawning upside down on the right side of the map

• Fixed some small issues with archer smart targeting, should work correctly now

• Added an option to disable the animation for Iron Fortress Archer Arrows (Disables the arrow and impact animation, still does damage and targets the same)

• Repositioned Iron Fortress timer to be below the towers health bar, also added a background frame to it for better contrast

• Fixed an issue with Auto Save not actually triggering correctly

• Fixed a bug that was not allowing the game to process normally after leaving Iron Fortress results screen

• Boss Drops now display a card pop-up for both equipment and essences, similar to the one that displays when crafting equipment

• Fixed a bug that was not allowing Iron Fortress overworld DPS upgrades to function correctly

• Fixed an issue where tooltips sometimes wouldn't appear when hovering over certain game elements

• Changed the back button in the upgrade menus to red, from gray, so that they stand out a bit better

• Added a new button in the Iron Fortress results screen that allows players to go directly to the upgrades scene for the fortress

• Fixed tooltips not appearing for passive prestige bonuses (details hidden until unlocked)

• Tutorial tooltips now appear within the Iron Fortress minigame to better actively explain the minigame

• Tutorial tooltips now appear within the giants upgrade menu

• Added some small features to tutorials, such as highlighting inventory items

• When holding an essence arrows will now also appear pointing to runestones that are out of the players viewing area

• Added a couple tutorials for the Iron Fortress

• Camera panning now works while holding an essence

• Added/Modified a bunch of tips for most systems

• Demo players can now obtain a max of 10 prestige points, was 3

• Demo players can now access the first 3 areas in the Iron Fortress

• Demo players can now obtain a total of 15 equipment pieces, was 5

• Prestige button is now visible forever after it first appears

• Correctly locked certain prestige upgrades for the Demo

• Improved tooltips for locked prestige upgrade for the Demo

• Obsidian Gauntlets now equip to hands instead of feet

• Mage Tower backend fixes/optimizations

• Lots of backend file changes to improve performance and system integrity

• Iron Fortress results modal can now be closed by pressing ESC

• Iron Fortress results modal now fades in like other modals

• Added pop-in animations for the Mage Tower modal

• Added pop-in animations for the Mage Tower Research modal

• Added pop-in animations for the Essence Selection modal

• Standardized pop-in animations across all modals (Giant, Prestige, Blacksmith, Iron Fortress)

• Iron Fortress results modal now auto-widens when many materials are collected

• Black Market modal now auto-sizes its width to fit the number of trade slots

• Equipment slots are now centered in the Equipment modal

• Mage Tower modal is slightly more compact to avoid clipping on smaller screens

• Overworld run counter panel widened to prevent text clipping at high enemy counts

• Essence Selection modal improved to prevent vertical content overflow

• Standardized backdrop dimming across all modals

• Essence Selection modal now has proper panel styling and backdrop

• Consistent font sizes across modal titles, pause menu, and currency HUD

• Inventory item icons updated with slightly thicker borders and rounder corners

• Improved spacing in the top menu button bar

• Achievement grid now uses 4 columns to prevent overflow in the dropdown panel

• Prestige Blessings header spacing tightened for better layout

• Mage Tower stats tab now uses consistent color theming from UITheme

• Pause menu and stats screen colors now use centralized UITheme values

• Demo prompt modal restyled to match the game's visual theme

• Prestige Blessings completely redesigned as an interactive constellation star map with animated starfield, pan/zoom, and octagonal gem nodes

• Prestige tree restructured from categories into 3 tiers: Continuity, Power, and Ascendant

• Prestige Point cap raised from 17 to 26 with rebalanced ladder rewards

• Currency progress stays visible in Prestige modal after prestiging

• Prestige modal now shows styled star icons on buttons and colored PP header

• Old saves automatically refund all blessing points for reallocation into the new tier system

• Demo prestige locks updated to use the new tier system (Tiers 2 and 3 locked)

• Iron Fortress tower now uses pixel art sprites instead of placeholder shapes

• Tower appearance upgrades through 3 visual tiers based on Hire Archer level

• Arrow projectiles replaced with animated pixel art with spinning frames

• Arrows now show an impact burst animation on hit

• Archers now use smart targeting, skip enemies already committed to die, reducing wasted shots

• Tower dynamically centers in the viewport

• Enemy reach distance adjusted to match tower sprite bounds

• Archer range upgrades rebalanced (Eagle Eye and Hawk Vision reduced per-level, max effective range ~700px)

• Added grass tilemap background using two TileMapLayers for full viewport coverage

• Added procedural decor scattering, random decorative tiles (flowers, rocks, etc.) placed at 8% density each session for visual variety

• TD minigame now pauses when the pause menu is opened; resumes when closed

• Removed "Clear Save Data" button from the Options menu (save management now handled via Main Menu)

• Back button in Options menu now always appears at the very bottom

• Reclassified Mage Tower from utility town to minigame for essence selection and blessing categorization

• Added background music system

• Music crossfades smoothly between tracks with no overlap

• All music tracks loop seamlessly

• Iron Fortress music resumes from the same position after unpausing

• Main theme plays during TD pause menu and anywhere without specific music

• Added Music and Sound Effects volume sliders to both Main Menu and in-game Options

• Added scroll wheel zoom in/out for the overworld (smoothly zooms between 50%–100%)

• Camera panning bounds automatically adjust when zoomed out to show more of the world

• Enemies now have an invisible padded click box around their sprites, making them easier to click (especially when zoomed out)

• Added Credits screen accessible from the Pause Menu (dedicated Credits button + full scrollable panel)

• Added Credits button to the overworld top-menu Options dropdown (opens the same Credits screen via Pause Menu)

• Added SFX system (`SFXManager`) with pooled audio players, per-sound cooldowns, and pitch variation for organic feel

• Sword impact, crit, and manual-attack sounds play during overworld combat; bow attack/impact/poison sounds play during Tower Defense

• UI sounds throughout: confirm/cancel feedback on upgrades and prestige blessings, door open/close on modal entry/exit, craft success/fail in blacksmith, button presses in menus and main menu, whoosh on tutorial popups

• Iron Fortress now works correctly with widescreen/ultrawide monitors (expand stretch mode)

• Iron Fortress tower is now always centered in the viewport regardless of screen size

• Iron Fortress enemies now spawn from a fixed radius around the tower instead of viewport edges

• Iron Fortress grass and decor coverage doubled for ultra-wide monitor support

• Added scroll wheel zoom in/out for Iron Fortress (55%–100%, smooth interpolation)

• Iron Fortress spawn radius increased beyond max archer range to prevent enemies spawning inside archer coverage

• Scene transitions now work reliably regardless of pause state

• Iron Fortress enemies now play a hurt flash + shake animation when damaged by player clicks (not triggered by arrows or poison)

• Archer range circle replaced with a gold smoky particle ring shader with drifting puffs, natural gaps, and wispy tendrils

• Placing a Black Market essence now spawns NPC Thea (animated sprite) on the tile, matching the Blacksmith's Rolfe NPC pattern. Thea is pixel-perfect clickable and opens the Black Market modal on click.

• All boss timers standardized to 30 seconds across every run

• Boss HP doubled for Runs 2–8 (e.g., Run 2: 500→1000, Run 8: 15M→30M)

• Iron Mine upgrade tree expanded from 2 nodes to 5 nodes, all with max level 25 and tiered currency costs (Iron → Iron+XP → Iron+XP+Gold)

• Town upgrade tree repositioned into a compass layout: Cursor Damage (North), Archers (East), DPS (South), Currency/Iron (West)

• Town upgrade tooltip now correctly reads "Iron/sec" instead of "Currency/sec"

• Black Market NPC changed from Thea to Admurin

• Iron Fortress essence now spawns an animated Knight NPC on its tile (clickable, replaces runestone)

• Mage Tower essence now spawns an animated Resting Mage NPC on its tile (clickable, replaces runestone)

• Runestone blue swirl correctly removed for all NPC-replaced essences (Black Market, Iron Fortress, Mage Tower), not just Blacksmith

• Added decorative pixel-art props to the overworld: market stalls, weapon racks, arrows, barriers, flags, and smithy elements

• Added Discord button to main menu (blurple-styled) that opens the invite link in the player's browser