Requiem For a Lost World news & patch notes

Hello everyone!

It's been a little while, so I thought I'd give you a small update on how things are looking.

Not sure if monthly devlogs are going to become a thing, but I like giving a little sign of life here and there so you know I'm still alive and working on stuff (●'◡'●)

So, I've been a bit distracted with new game releases and ended up taking a step back from development. Before I noticed, a month had already gone by. Needless to say, I haven't done a whole lot—

I've mostly tweaked some cosmetic things around the game. Settings will now hide and show related configurations depending on whether the master toggle is enabled or disabled.

For example: if the fog effect is turned off, you won't see fog settings anymore until you toggle it back on.

We've also got a new grass option with a bit more fidelity available. As with any grass setting though, it's purely cosmetic, so just choose the one you like the most!

Both the new and old grass now react to the weather conditions added in the previous version, meaning it can get wet, frosty, and much more violent in the wind.

I'm also working on improving the lighting in Capital Undergrounds. I failed to bake the lighting last time, but I think I managed it this time.

On the topic of lighting, there should also be a new global illumination method available. A world-space one too, so the lighting should feel much more reactive and accurate.

Kind of difficult to catch the difference in a screenshot, but it's looking pretty sweet. Runs a little less sweet though.

And finally: the upgrades.

I'm a bit stumped with the implementation at the moment.

I do have the overall vision for what I want the new system to be, but implementing everything in a way that won't turn the codebase into a mess later down the line is a whole other beast.

For now, I've got this simple menu for browsing upgrades — also still very much a WIP.

The simpler ones are already implemented, but the more advanced upgrades, and especially evolutions, will take quite a bit more time to finish.

Anyway, just thought I'd give you guys a little heads-up and let you know I'm still working on it :)

As I mentioned in the last post, expect updates to be slower for a while since I'm starting a new job and most likely won't have as much time to spend on game development over the coming weeks/months.

Hello everyone!

I would like to welcome you back to the humble changelog.

Today we will take a look at the contents of version 2.3, which focuses on improving the boss fights, or at least giving them a way to fight back.

It is going to be a relatively small patch, so let us just get into it!

Boss Abilities

Every mini-boss now has an ability that they use periodically to attack the player. This may include shooting a projectile or creating an explosion under the character or in the area around the player.

Stage bosses have multiple abilities, but the principle is the same.

You could kind of see this already with the first mini-boss on the Capital Outskirts map.

For those of you who prefer AFK gameplay, or for those like me who dislike dealing with enemy projectiles, I have also included an unranked modifier that disables enemy attacks.

Better Environment and Weather

I have also added more weather conditions to all outdoor maps.

The terrain is now also reactive to the weather. When it is snowing, the ground will accumulate snow, and during rain, puddles will form.

Now, if you play with weather conditions enabled, you will be able to enjoy much better variety and visuals.

Additionally, Forbidden Zone now also has dynamic weather, so it is not always impossible to see!

Terrain Detail

To further improve the visuals, a new setting has been added.

For now, this only takes effect on the Forbidden Zone map. When enabled, it allows textures to deform the terrain, like so:Dunes get a bit more volume, and stones pop out of the ground.

Settings Improvements

There was one change I wanted to make to the settings page that is now going live with update 2.3.

All setting tabs have been merged into a single scrollable page, but more importantly, that change allowed me to implement proper settings search.

You can now type any text into the search bar, and it will display all related settings from every section.

This should make it much easier to find the exact setting you are looking for!

Projectile Transparency

Speaking of settings, there is a new option players can adjust called projectile VFX transparency.

As the name suggests, it adjusts how visible the projectiles created by the player character are.

It has been a long-running issue that visual clutter gets insane as the game progresses, with explosions and glow stacking up to the point where you cannot really see anything. That, combined with bosses being able to attack back, and the need to actually see them throw things at you in order to dodge, made the existence of such an option necessary.

Here is an example of a very late-game build with perfect clarity thanks to this setting.

There are some visual issues when using this option, but nothing too bothersome. I hope you enjoy it!

Local Leaderboards

Local leaderboards are now a thing too. The scoring rules are the same as with the online leaderboard. This list can store up to 1,000 best scores.

I also think it can double as build loadouts, lol.

Fixes and Adjustments

• Enemies will now deal significantly more damage in Recurrence+ difficulties to compensate for the high base health and defense provided by the Passive Tree.

• Enemies will no longer drop Gold or Gems when the character has a high Luck stat. This is mostly an optimization workaround, since these do not merge like EXP shards, but the amount also felt very insignificant and has been transferred to end-game rewards instead.

• Characters will now have their HP set to MAX HP at the start of a game.

• Fixed Focus Fire keystone failing to trigger when the cooldown keystone was unlocked and failed to refresh cooldowns.

• Rolled back to using DirectX 11 by default, since DirectX 12 could cause crashes in the Underground Dungeon map.

• Renamed weather settings to Static/Dynamic from Clear/Random.

• Menhir buffs no longer grant element-specific buffs, and the buffs they provide have been increased from 1-10% to 10-100%. Armor and Attack Count remain unchanged.

• Improved Binding Field VFX.

• The default keybind for using items from the inventory has been changed to Q.

• Chest minimap icon will now disappear upon interacting with a chest.

Afterword

It is a bit of a weird patch containing a bunch of random changes I wanted to make for a while, and since I had some time on my hands, I got to work.

The enemies may still receive more changes later down the line, since I think they are still not quite where I want them to be. Call me too lazy to care for now, I guess 😭

The next patch, though, should be a much bigger one, including a complete rework of how upgrades function... unless I fail badly at implementing my ideas or decide the idea is trash in the first place.

Which means expect the next patch to take some time to come out — like, a lot of time.

Hey everyone and happy Easter!

It's me again, bringing you some fresh content and improvements to the game!

As promised, the second entry into the 2.X patch cycle is a Passive Tree rework. If you followed the game's development for a while you may remember that I said the Skill Tree was releasing in its current state because I had no better idea for the implementation, but wouldn't want to stall the release any further... Well, the time has come to go back to the drawing board and figure out what this system is even supposed to be- and that's exactly what I did.

But before I go into more detail let me officially welcome you to the 2.2 changelog review!

Passive Tree

The above is the brand new tree. I've renamed it to Passive Tree over the old Skill Tree since it's not much of a skill tree, but rather a set of passive improvements.

How does it differ you may ask?

Well, for starters, each node provides better stat improvements compared to the old one.

The branches are now labeled to better indicate what their specialty is.

Each branch ends with a Key Stone, which is a more powerful culmination of that branch. As an example, let's look at the Key Stone of a Follow-Up attack branch:

You can now click on the node to open a side panel with a description. From that panel you can unlock or disable the selected Key Stone or special nodes

As you can see above, a culmination of a branch focusing on cooldown reduction of Follow-Up type weapons results in a buff that is rather significant overall

But the last node of each branch is not the only special node!

Each first node of each branch is a special node that unlocks a mechanic in the game

As an example, the first node of the Reactions branch unlocks the ability to use Elemental Reactions in the game, which means some game mechanics will now require you to unlock the node first to benefit from them.

Lastly, the Elemental Damage path ends with repeating Key Stones that you can continuously invest points into to buff the related stat

Quality of Life changes

In addition to these changes there are some quality of life improvements in place.

• As mentioned before, you can freely disable nodes if you don't want the effect to be active.

• You can re-spec at any point for free by clicking the Reset button in the top left corner

• You can double-click nodes to interact with them: double-clicking on an unlockable node will unlock it, while clicking on an unlocked Key Stone will disable/enable it

• You can now zoom in and out to your heart's content (there is no limit to how much you can zoom, do with this as you please)

Also, if you have any points to spend, the Passive Tree entry in the main menu will show a red dot indicator

Because we all love red dots in our menus, right?

That wraps up the quick introduction to the new Passive Tree

I hope you'll find it more interesting to interact with and explore!

Now we move on

Recurrence Difficulty

I would like to introduce a new difficulty called Recurrence

Players get access to Recurrence once they complete the Deep V difficulty with any character, and it is unlockable separately for each map

Recurrence difficulties don't have an upper difficulty limit. Completing Recurrence 1 unlocks Recurrence 2 and so on, each being a harder challenge.

As an additional change, the Deep difficulties will now be limited to up to 3 de-buffs, with 5 de-buffs being reserved for Recurrence difficulties

In Game Inventory

When opening chests, instead of picked-up items being activated immediately, they will be placed into an inventory slot. This way, the use of items can be timed for maximum benefit.

Key-binds for inventory can be freely changed in the settings

Key Prompts

It's a small change, but one that's been driving me insane.

The game will now try to guess which input players are using (keyboard or gamepad) and display proper key prompts for various interactions

Relic Sub-Stat filtering

You can now use text search to find sub-stats and include them in the search. As you can see in the attached screenshot, typing "damage" results in crit rate appearing — that's because it has a flat damage sub-stat.

Additionally, hovering over a sub-stat will now display a small popup with the stat name

Character Tuner Attack Type Filtering

You can now filter the list of weapons by their attack type if you wish to limit your search to just AoE or DoT weapons

New Stat and Relic

Elemental Accumulation has been separated from the Elemental Reaction Effect.

Up until version 2.2, the speed of accumulating element stacks on an enemy was determined by the Elemental Reaction Effect, which felt a bit strange to me. Now the accumulation has its own stat to increase the speed of application, while the Elemental Reaction Effect still remains as a stat increasing the actual infliction effect

Tutorial Changes

I went ahead and improved the tutorial a bit. No more full-screen popups info-dumping. Tutorials will now display text on the side explaining the very basics.

To make things more interactive, weapons will be set to manual casting in a few tutorial scenarios, allowing players to experiment and see the mechanics and differences much more easily

Minor changes and bug fixes

• Chest highlight will now disappear right away upon interaction

• New post-processing pipeline is now on by default and will be toggled on current save files; you can fall back to the old one in the settings

• Optimized background DoT calculations

• If a player leaves after the host dies, the game will now end immediately for the host

• Fixed Relic equipment flag that got saved when migrating from old save file format, marking relics as equipped even if they weren't

• Sprinting did not work in CO-OP

• CO-OP player health bar now uses the same reddish background as normal health bar

• Fixed the issue with loading certain controls in Control Settings with a controller enabled, which could result in an error or an incorrect button being displayed in either the keyboard or controller section

• Fixed mini-boss enemies not leaving Memory Rifts behind after being defeated

• ESC key should now close the Leaderboards menu

• Fixed an incorrect collider flag on the Angel Statue in the Forbidden Zone map that prevented players from obtaining its achievement

• New post-processing pipeline should no longer ignore tonemapper settings

• Fixed an issue that caused the new post-processing pipeline to lock the game rendering scale at 66% of the resolution

• Fixed a networking issue that caused the game to randomly softlock when a joining player had auto-select upgrades enabled

Afterword + Roadmap

Apologies for the smaller update this month — life's been a bit hectic as of late, and some health issues got in the way too. Nothing serious, just annoying as hell.

There are two more reworks planned for future versions:

• The previously mentioned Upgrade Rework, which will touch all weapon and possibly item upgrades to make them more interesting by increasing the impact of player choices during the game

• Boss Rework is also on the menu

I'm not yet sure which one will come first. Most likely the boss rework, since it's the easier one to get done.

As for the upgrade rework, I did make a little mock-up a month back, but I have no idea if that's the direction it's going to go

So a rough roadmap as of now would look like this:

• 2.3 - Boss Rework

• 2.4 - Upgrade Rework

• 2.5 - Nóreia Release

• 2.6 - Old Characters done reworking

• 2.7 - Completed Story

• 2.8 - Purely bug cleansing patch with no new content

• 3.0 - Out of Early Access Release

• 3.1 - Character Cores - new progression system

• 3.2 - Capital Map

• 3.x - The Abyss, a new map with a whole different gameplay being more of an RPG experience

I will try to commit to this roadmap, though some things may shift up or down depending on circumstances. I'm also moving on to work for a different company, so for a while I may have to put development of Requiem For a Lost World aside, but I hope it won't come to that!

Also, I know I was supposed to exit Early Access with version 2.0, but seeing how many things can still be improved, I want to at least get all the reworks out of the way before calling it a release

Hey everyone!

I’d like to make an announcement regarding another future update to Requiem For a Lost World, something I’ve been holding onto for a while now.

As you may know, while developing Requiem For a Lost World, I’ve used AI to help create visuals (character cards, shards, and so on). Unfortunately, that process is not only highly unethical, but it also often fails to reflect my true vision for the characters.

Going forward, I’ve decided to change my approach. I will now hand-draw all art assets for Requiem For a Lost World to fully bring my vision to life - no more shortcuts!

I’ve already taken the creative liberty of redrawing a few characters.

As you can see, I’ve adjusted the designs to better match what I originally had in mind, and the difference is night and day. I also believe this new art direction better aligns with industry standards.

This is a long process, so bear with me as I gradually transition the remaining assets. Drawing everything takes significantly longer than prompting AI, so you can expect the full transition to take a few years.

On top of that, since I’m clearly putting much more effort into developing Requiem For a Lost World, the game will also transition from free-to-play to a paid model at $30, with a 10% launch discount for the first week, effective immediately after update 2.2 releases.

Thank you for your support! Links to commissions and Patreon will be in the comments!

Happy April Fools!

PS.

Expect the version update 2.2 relatively soon-ish, it's almost done

Hey everyone!

We are back to the regularly scheduled updates (at least for this one).

I've decided to dedicate the 2.X series of updates to enhancing existing systems rather than introducing brand-new features, but as you'll see below, these should still be sufficiently interesting in the grand scheme of things.

In short, expect the game to change a lot in the coming updates, which will include: Relic System rework, Perk Tree rework, and Weapon/Item Upgrade rework. Each update will also weave in community-suggested improvements and adjustments to reworked systems based on feedback.

This one is a bit short and mainly UI-focused.

With that said, let me introduce the Relic System rework

New Relic System

Relic Sub-stats

I showcased this change as a possibility before version 1.9, and now it's finally happening thanks to the change in the next section!

Relic Pages

In earlier versions we migrated from Runes to Relics, which were mostly cosmetic changes. This is meant to be the finalization of that migration.

To simplify the system, each character can now equip only 5 Relics (2 offensive, 2 defensive, and 1 utility).

Additionally, I've moved the advanced filtering into the main interface, which means you can filter by rarity, type, and so on from right above the Relic Inventory without swapping back and forth.

Since characters can equip fewer Relics, each Relic will now provide significantly higher stat bonuses.

Reforge Changes

Relic reforging also works differently now. You still risk losing a Relic when reforging, but upon a successful reforge the Relic's roll value is guaranteed to increase (the increase may vary in strength). This also applies to sub-stats, with a 50% chance of increasing the roll value for each sub-stat. In addition, the higher the Relic's rarity while reforging, the higher the chance of obtaining a random sub-stat (up to 3).

Even if the Relic is destroyed, you'll receive Relic Pieces. More on that in a moment.

Discarding Changes

This mostly works the same, except now discarding Relics returns Relic Pieces. The amount returned depends on rarity, the number of sub-stats, and the combined roll values. Before discarding, you'll be shown the total amount of Relic Pieces you'll gain.

Relic Synthesizer

Relic Synthesizer has been completely changed.

This is where you spend your Relic Pieces. You can specify exactly which stats and rarity you want on your Relic by editing the values on the card.

If you don't remember how the old Synthesizer worked... good. If you do, I'm sure you'll appreciate the change!

Synthesized Relics appear with a blue sheen in the inventory.

They can be searched using the filtering options mentioned above.

Loadouts

Lastly, we have the Relic Loadouts Editor. Functionally it's similar to the old one, except the dedicated interface looks better. You can specify the main stat for each slot as well as sub-stat priority. Stats on the left have the highest priority, while stats on the right have the lowest priority.

The system will first match by the main stat and its roll value, which always takes priority. If two similar Relics exist, the final pick will depend on the roll values of each sub-stat.

This is the menu I expect will need some tweaking in the future, but for now it's very functional.

Each stat can be selected from a dedicated Relic Picker window, which can be filtered by text if needed.

Important Note

This rework, as well as future ones, won't be compatible with older versions of the game. That means Relic Pages and Loadouts will be erased and will have to be set up again.

Additionally, save files from 2.1 most likely won't load correctly in previous versions, so keep that in mind if you plan to go back to older version.

Sorry for the inconvenience!

Improved Level Up Screen

I've seen requests for an indicator showing whether a pick is an upgrade or a new unlock, and I thought it was a good idea, but I couldn't fit it into the old UI in a way that looked good while remaining visible.

I went with a more card-like design for the upgrades, and I think it turned out pretty nice. It displays all the info it used to, in addition to the indicator and a type (weapon or item). You can also hover over a card to dim the background and display more details.

UI Numbers

The in-game interface will now display the HP, shield, and stamina amounts in the UI.

A textual cooldown has also been added to the skill icon.

Maxed Out Indicator

When all upgrades for a weapon have been obtained, it will display a "Max" indicator instead of the max level.

Stamina Changes

There was a bug where holding the sprint button while stationary would still consume stamina - I fixed that, and I also took the opportunity to improve the system a bit.

Now the stamina regeneration cooldown will be shortened if the character isn't moving, and regeneration itself will be quicker while stationary.

Automatic Level-Up Selection

The automatic level-up option has been moved to Global Game Settings, so it can be toggled freely during gameplay.

As before, you can pick between automatically selecting everything or just late-game Components.

Additionally, automatic selection will now prioritize weapons and items specified in the Character Tuner if they appear as options.

Glowing Chests

Chests now emit a subtle glow, making them easier to spot in the dark.

Collection Text Filters

Following the recent addition of text filters, I've also added them to the Collection and Achievements screens.

The Collection screen will also hide headers that contain no elements.

In addition, there are a few minor changes as well:

• When banning an item, the ban icon will also be displayed on the pop-up window.

• You can now click on the achievement required to unlock an item to navigate straight to the Achievements list.

New Shop Tab

A new tab has been added to the shop, containing optional items that tie more directly to the game rather than characters themselves.

For now it contains two items:

Guiding Light

Enables a glow around the player character, helping to navigate dark areas such as Capital Undergrounds or Capital Outskirts at night. Once bought, the light can be toggled with the 'L' key and will automatically turn on/off depending on the day-night cycle.

Treasure Compass

Enables minimap markers pointing to special locations to be pinned to the side of the minimap. This keeps markers always visible, allowing players to navigate toward undiscovered locations more easily.

Shop Upgrades

Permanent upgrades bought from the shop will now display a total bonus.

Character Selection

The weapon visible on the character selection screen will now display basic information about its element and type.

Additionally, visible stats will now also include bonuses from equipped Relics, not just base character stats.

Capital Undergrounds Enlargement

I've also gone ahead and increased the scale of the Capital Undergrounds map. It was supposed to feel claustrophobic, but not to the point that it interferes with gameplay.

I took the easy route of scaling the whole thing up, so doorways and some objects are now disproportionate to the characters — but I might fix that later.

Minor Changes and Bug Fixes

• Added additional restrictions to Clara's S5 → DoT retrigger is now restricted to Simple/Pierce damage with a 0.25 s cooldown.

• Digital Arrow will no longer cast point lights onto the scene.

• Attack Count upgrades are now treated as decimal values rounded down, which means the stat now scales with rarity. This behavior will be expanded to other similar stats in the future.

• Banning an item via the modal popup did not refresh the modal state.

• The music player couldn't be closed with the Escape key.

• Holding the sprint button while standing still would consume stamina.

• Arrow of Arcana was missing the numbered description.

• Removed Abyssal and Void elements from filters in the Collection screen.

• Fixed typo in Magic Ball description.

• Fixed typo in Devouring Mist's upgrade Soul's Bane (I).

• Fixed a bug that caused the skill cooldown overlay to freeze with a few pixels remaining.

• Fixed scaling of the player marker.

• Fixed inconsistent chest collider behavior.

• Fixed an error caused by a missing weapon reference on the "First Flame" enemy in Capital Undergrounds.

Afterword

As mentioned at the start, I'll focus on these kinds of improvements for the 2.X update series. I may go on some side quests if I get tired of reworks, but for now that's the plan.

Perks will need revisiting since I haven't touched them since the hurried release.

Upgrades will also receive a major (I hope) update in the future; I went into more detail about what's planned on Discord.

Overall, I expect some tweaks will be required — whether to Relic balance or additional improvements — but I'm quite happy with how it turned out.

As usual, your feedback is much appreciated and largely shapes updates as they come (●'◡'●).

I can't promise the next update will come quickly, as the next set of changes will require more work. So—see you when I see you~

Hello everyone!

It's been a moment, and I'm quite a bit past the deadline I set for myself, even longer since the last version.

As per usual, before we get into the changelog, let me talk to you guys~

So, over the past month or so I barely got any work done on Requiem For a Lost World - burnout, real-life issues, and laziness all combined. For that I apologize.

I still managed to get some things done, but not nearly as much as I had planned, which is a bit disappointing. However, stalling any further doesn't seem reasonable, especially considering how far behind version 1.9 already is. I even considered changing the version number to something lower, but I think we can stick with 2.0

As mentioned, it won't contain everything I envisioned and, as such, it won't be the planned release version either; at least not until all achievements, stories, and wiki pages are done.

So for now I think we're kind of stuck in EA until my motivation comes back.

Anyhow, now that I've complained, we can get into the changes. It should be fairly long, so grab something to drink before continuing!

In Game Stuff

New Character - Clara

Clara is a hybrid between a DoT and single-target DPS, allowing her to build either or both, as these two stats contribute to each other.

Her passive grants her a significant increase in damage dealt to targets in close proximity, further leaning into her duelist background.

Last Waltz is Clara's ultimate ability: she stops all timers and, after a brief delay, performs a series of slashes dealing dark damage.

New Stage

Forbidden Zone is finally being released as a playable area. It's BIG and fairly empty. Hopefully I can fill it up with new achievement locations as they come.

Being a corrupted area, it has a special affinity with DoT, significantly boosting that damage type!

There are also no elite enemies, which makes acquiring weapon upgrades much trickier.

New Location

The Capital Outskirts also got a new location: a small pond with a curious book stand.

New Weapons

• White Hole (Light DoT)

• Raging Star (Fire AoE)

• Prism Ray (Light on-hit Follow-Up)

• Dissolving Strike (Wind)

• Corrupted Katana (Dark AoE)

• Eclipse Edge (Dark)

• From Lost World (Unstable)

• Dying Star (Fire)

• Echo Anchor (Cosmic, Follow-Up)

• Reaper's Call (Dark, Summon)

New Songs

• The Abyss Within - Nyxaria's Theme

• Child of Dawn and Dew - Kaware's Theme

• Shattered Mercy

Character Reworks

Working toward my goal of bringing old characters up to speed with the current design philosophy, two characters are getting a rework in version 2.0

Alice

She was supposed to be the lightning-wielding beast hailing from the Previous Era; however, not much of that transferred into her kit. Hopefully the new design will lean more into that fantasy.

Her new kit emphasizes Lightning damage: each instance of lightning damage now grants her a special resource called Judgement , which increases her stats and is required to cast her new ultimate.

Her ultimate scales off Judgement stacks and provides stronger effects if it's maxed or even overflowing.

Nishi

Base Nishi has also gotten a rework. I had an idea with the black flames before, but in the end the Disintegration elemental reaction filled in what I wanted him to do perfectly, so his kit now leans toward it.

In the new version of his kit, Nishi prefers a build containing a mix of Lightning and Dark weapons. Attacking enemies with either of these elements will apply a stack of Cycle Mark to them, which can be consumed to deal additional max-health damage.

He's also gotten a new weapon, which now deals Dark damage by default.

Double Sided Character Sprites

I'm just going to reuse the gif from the previous post.

Characters now have back and front views as well as walking and idling animations (both scuffed, but hey, I tried (￣y▽,￣)╭ )

Screen Space GI and Reflections

Also reusing old screenshots, but not much has changed here.

Honestly, I was comparing screenshots, and the new Global Illumination method doesn't seem to have as much visual impact as I thought it would - at least not on the existing maps.

Fingers crossed for actual Ray Tracing implementation for Unity in the near future!

Reflections are pretty nice, however~

New Environment

We are also getting a new environment for open-world maps. It includes a day-night cycle, volumetric clouds, god rays, fog, dynamic weather, and so on. High settings can be pretty heavy, so if you experience performance issues you may want to tone the Environment setting down

To add to this, enemies and characters now interact with the light in the environment so they shouldn't stand out as much

Also, grass has been darkened and should react to changing light in the day-night cycle

3D Chests

We now have 3D chests!

These are more sturdy, so you won't break them; however, no key is required to open them - just approach, open, and leave

Chests can now reward relics upon opening! If you die during the run, there is a 50% chance to keep the relic you found; if you win, it's all yours.

These rewards replace the flat relic reward for winning the game

Affected Weapons Indicator

When picking items, the game will try to determine which weapons would be affected if the selected item is picked

Pickup Numbers

When picking up experience shards, gold or gems a number will be displayed next to the character showing the cumulative amount.

This can be disabled in the settings

Dash Indicators

It's hard to show with a screenshot, but each Dash stack now slowly charges back up after being used, which is a nice touch

Difficulty Adjustments

Deep difficulties have been adjusted. Instead of providing straight enemy buffs, those difficulties will now provide randomized buffs that can help the player or buff the enemy. Each level of Deep difficulty will increase the number of buffs/debuffs for the run

I hope it will make running harder difficulties a bit more interesting

Oana's Ultimate VFX

I went back and changed the VFX of her ultimate; it looks much cleaner now

Enemy Pathing

Enemies should now pathfind properly in the Capital Undergrounds map. It's pretty cool to see them actually navigate the stairs

Menu Stuff

Ultra-Wide Support

Requiem For a Lost World has always tried to be presentable on all kinds of displays (not 4:3, I'm sorry)

After getting a wide monitor, I finally got to tweak all the menus to look presentable on such screens, up to 32:9 aspect ratio

New Main Menu Theme

As per usual, new version means a new main menu background.

I've heard on at least two occasions that the old one scared players into thinking their GPU was dying. This one won't glitch to avoid those scares :^)

Feedback and Tutorials

I've removed the feedback form from the bottom right. I think it served its purpose, and the preferred method now is to voice your opinions, concerns, or report bugs on the Steam discussions or if you want to reach out directly you can contact me via [email protected]

The tutorials from the bottom left have also been migrated to the online wiki that any of you can contribute to: https://requiem-for-a-lost-world.fandom.com/wiki/Requiem_For_a_Lost_World_Wiki

Custom Settings Preset

Until now presets were a bit confusing: you could set a preset, then modify it, then change the preset and if you go back all your modifications were gone.

In version 2.0, any changes made in settings will be saved into a Custom preset. If you swap to any other preset to test it, you can always come back to the Custom preset to restore your previous settings

Settings Performance Impact Color-Coding

Settings are now color coded based on my observations. Green means little performance gain/loss, while red means a big performance gain/loss

Of course, many of these settings will have different performance costs depending on the map and which features are used. For example, the Environment setting is marked as red, but the underground map does not use it, so it won't affect performance there. Similarly, shadows will have a much higher performance cost in the underground map compared to the open-world maps

Compare View

Settings are also getting a compare window!

Sometimes it's not clear what each setting changes and how it affects visuals, with the compare view you can inspect precisely what changes and tweak the visuals to your liking

Shard Screen Changes

Locked shards will now also have the corresponding background grayed out.

In addition, players will now have to manually unlock character shards (this can be changed in settings)

I just felt like manually unlocking shards is more satisfying than having them passively unlock in the background

I even added a bit of a notification for doing so

Highest Finished Difficulty

Highest finished difficulty has been changed to text format instead of stars; it's more readable and allows me to expand it without worrying about the number of stars clogging the character card

New Gacha Results

Gacha system for Requiem For a Lost World got a bit of an overhaul both for visuals and mechanics

I've been a bit unsatisfied with the gacha aspect so here are the tweaks

• Players will receive character fragments for the active banner character in the form of 50 fragments, which can then be converted into a character unlock or a shard

• Off-banner rewards will include character fragments for any character instead of direct unlocks

• Gold and Gem rewards have been removed from the pool

• Lowest-tier rewards are now guaranteed to be relics of any rarity

Additionally, on the result screen you will be able to see the relic stat, character fragments, and shards available for unlock

Leaderboards

Players can now filter the leaderboard scores to only include top scores (the default so far), scores around the player scores in case the list becomes too long, and scores only set by your Steam friends

Additionally Leaderboards will now also include the stage background for selected leaderboard

Character Tuner

When hovering over the weapon type icon, it will display the text variant too

Relic Changes

Relic color coding

Lets get into the Relic QoL changes

Sometimes it wasn't obvious which relic fit into which slot. From version 2.0, players will be able to tell by the background of the relic

The color corresponds to the slot

Relic filtering

In addition to the advanced filtering that was available until now, a text search function has been implemented. Players can search the stat name, relic name, or even relic slot title to quickly filter relics

Relic list default sorting

Relics in the inventory will now be sorted by slot type first, which should group all offensive, defensive, and utility relics together

Discard warning

Players will also be warned when attempting to discard a relic to avoid accidental deletions

Relic Loadouts Improvements

Similar to relic list, the entries in custom loadouts are also color coded now

Additionally, the same filtering has been applied to the stat selector

And to make automatic selection less annoying, loadouts can also take a minimum rarity so that the system will no longer force-equip low-rarity relics whenever you run out of higher-rarity ones

Balance Changes

RES-PEN

If an enemy is weak to an element, RES-PEN will significantly increase damage against that enemy. If an enemy is resistant to an element, RES-PEN will instead reduce that resistance by a set percentage

This change is intended to help RES-PEN be more effective in scenarios where enemies have their resistances significantly buffed by higher difficulty modifiers

Life Steal

Life steal effects now apply every second, cumulatively healing the character over that time.

This change prevents immortality due to high life steal. The character will be healed every second, which leaves a small window for the player to die

Disintegration

Nerfed the base execution threshold of the Disintegration reaction to 50%, but the threshold now scales with Elemental Reaction Effect. Every 100% of Elemental Reaction Effect pushes the threshold by 5%

This will allow Disintegration to benefit in the same way as any other elemental reaction

New Save File Format

Requiem For a Lost World will now use a different save format.

I would normally list it under minor changes, but I think it's better to let you guys know. In case something goes wrong with the conversion please reach out via Steam forums so we can work any issues out.

Anyhow, this format should save and load much faster, especially with large inventory of Relics, AND should take significantly less space

Minor Changes

• New skill tree node with a slowing effect upon afflicting enemies with DoT

• A default game cursor

• Setting for multiplayer port configuration when self-hosting outside of Steam

• Added achievement descriptions to the achievement pop-up

• Added support for HDR-capable devices

• GPU Instancing is now on by default on supported hardware

• Minimap is now enabled by default on new installations

• Moved to DirectX 12 on capable devices; older devices will continue to run on DX11

• Octi's attack indicator will now stick out of the ground

• Equipped relics will no longer display an Equip button if the relic is already equipped by the current character

• Added a close button to various submenus of the Relic screen

• Using a Dark-damage weapon will no longer play the damage sound

• Enemies should no longer spawn on top of other players in CO-OP

• Menu windows will now fade in and out when switching between them

• Added hover animations for settings and collection entries

• Separated shadow quality and shadow distance settings

• Errors when saving configuration will now display text in a popup for the user

• Improved the quality of David's skin card

• Added LOD support to 3D+ grass (only works with GPU Instancing enabled)

• New post-processing pipeline that can be enabled in settings

Bug Fixes

• Incorrect behavior of Relic Loadout menu when no Loadouts are present or when the last loadout has been deleted

• Incorrect back button placement on the result screen

• Incorrect layout for relic synthesizer UI scaling on ultrawide screens

• Sand Storm projectiles will no longer prevent other VFX from rendering behind them

• Fixed slowdowns caused by an error in projectile code when playing CO-OP

• Star Fall weapon missing its projectiles

• Bug that caused the game to end prematurely when the player died in CO-OP

• Adjusted scroll speed on some lists that moved too fast or too slow

• Disintegration damage now counts towards damage dealt by weapons instead of being a simple execute

• Fixed a bug that caused Relics to duplicate upon unequipping them after the relic page has been saved

• Fixed a bug that caused GPU instanced objects to not disappear when Yami-no-Tokiya's ult was activated

• Fixed enemies not spawning on elevations higher than the player's

• Projectile created by the Key of Despair would not fully despawn, which could lead to performance issues

• Game will no longer attempt to load, leaving the player in the void, if the port is occupied by another application when using a Self Hosted CO-OP option

• Blood Dept weapon could be missing the VFX

• Saves containing an incorrect resolution will now correctly fallback to the last viable resolution when opening the game or saving the configuration

• Stage effects would not apply in CO-OP

• Fixed Luck relic rewarding health regeneration instead

Afterword

So that's about it. I will continue to release updates for 2.0 before I commit to a full release. The story is coming along nicely, albeit every time I look back at my writing I can never quite give it a pass — one time I'm satisfied, the next time I trash it completely (┬┬﹏┬┬)

Per-character achievements have stagnated due to my current implementation, which needs deeper improvements to facilitate something more interesting than 'do an action X times'

CO-OP is also holding me back in terms of design in some places. I wonder how important it is for all mechanics to sync between players?

Anyway, depending on my motivation, it may take some more time until the release version is ready. I just wanted to push what I have so far since it should be stable and improves the experience significantly

As for the future beyond 2.0, I have a few things planned, but no work will go into actually starting development until 2.0 is ready. A new map for the Capital itself is planned; it will most likely take place around Adam's invasion, and since it's planned for somewhere in 2.x I have plenty of time to work on it.

Another thing I might have mentioned before is a partner system also planned somewhere in the 2.x cycle. Players will be able to pick a secondary character to help in the expedition; what that will entail is yet to be decided — definitely an additional skill, but perhaps I will also let the partner roam and attack nearby enemies alongside your active character

And a third planned feature is some sort of character keystone or whatever I'll call it—essentially a second upgrade path for a character that players will have to grind a bit for, perhaps requiring map-specific resources. To help players gather them, new means of transportation may be introduced

However, these are all just ideas I had that may come in the future (●'◡'●)

Right, and before I go

Merry Christmas!

In this special time I wanted to wish everyone all the best in the coming year. If you're feeling down, I hope better things are especially coming your way! If you celebrate with family, I wish you a lovely reunion time with the ones you cherish. If you spend that time alone, treat yourself to something nice, sit back and relax~

I'm not great at wishes so I hope it turned out well enough!

Anyway, it's been a decent year for Requiem For a Lost World and I want to sincerely thank everyone that stuck around, and the new arrivals as well. It's only thanks to your feedback that I've been able to make the game much better than it was a year ago. Your engagement with the title helped me push forward too; as much as I like working on this little passion project of mine, I probably would have given up by now if it weren't for the few of you that showed your support.

Be it comments, direct messages, suggestions or reviews. All of them kept me motivated.

I've also experienced how difficult and different it is to work as a game developer and all the things surrounding it, because it's rough out there (●'◡'●)

With all that - a heartfelt thank you, and I hope you stick around for a while longer!

On other news, version 2.0 will have to be delayed further. I apologize for the long wait! I could split this patch into parts, but even then it will take a bit more time to get the current version out.

On the bright side, version 2.0 is available on the preview branch so you can play it right now, but it's still a bit rough and the save file is incompatible between 1.9 and 2.0, so your progress will carry over into the new save format at first, but then it is saved separately between these versions!

So the reason for the delay is not me being lazy this time; it's just the scope that got out of hand. Between the new map that I have scrapped and remade a few times already, the new graphics that required optimizations, adding polish to the interfaces and new weapons - it just eats a lot of time.

I moved the changelog to the wiki so I can update it live as I complete features. You can see it here if you are interested in seeing the full changes. It also contains most of the changes from before the Steam release as well, which is pretty cool

Anyway, I think you guys deserve some screenshots to break the wall of text above. Some of them were taken in a different order, so don't mind slight visual differences.

Double sided characters

This is where most of my development time went into, but it was also the biggest pain point I've seen surrounding the game. It's still 2D, but at least you have the view from the back now.

Every character has a front and back view, as well as idle and walking animations. I could do a side view, and I might, but at this point it's better to just have 3D models.

However, I hope this is a good enough change for now. Let me know what you think.

Since this change forced me to touch the sprites, I also went ahead and remade all the past character sprites as well. Here is just one example

Forbidden Zone

I didn't post any screenshots last time, but I'm sure this is the final terrain, so here is a screenshot. It's still a bit empty since I'm still working on various points of interest

Darker grass

I also adjusted the brightness of the grass; it's no longer blinding to look at and blends nicely with the environment

New Recollection result screen

I've also gone back to redesign it a bit. The rewards are also altered to give more relics. I think it looks pretty good now. The pull animation for each character is planned, but I have to test the tools for that first

There are other minor changes like menu animations - some list entries will get larger when hovered over, menu windows will fade between each other, but it's better to experience than watch a gif.

That's all I have for you today. Unfortunately, no Christmas event this time around for obvious reasons. Hopefully I will get to do more themed events in 2026 though!

Hello everyone!

It's been a little while since the last post, and since it's my special day, I wanted to share what's been cooking behind the closed doorヾ(•ω•`)o

Things are still a work in progress, so any and all feedback is welcome!

As many of you already know, I'm aiming for version 2.0 to be the out-of-early-access release. I hope to have it ready before the end of December - whether that works out, we'll have to see. I may delay it if I'm not satisfied with the state of the build by then, but fingers crossed it won’t come to that (●'◡'●)

Okay, let’s get into some notable changes you can expect in the next version. I won’t dive too deep here, think of this as a quick tour of selected features~

Upcoming Character

As you all know, Clara has been in the works for quite a while. I'm happy to announce that she’s mostly ready, with just a few tweaks left!

She’s designed as a hybrid Simple/Pierce + DoT damage dealer!

Upcoming Reworks

Arika has been reworked to bring her up to modern standards — she now has her own unique set of reactions to trigger!

Next in line is base Nishi. He received a new starting weapon and will focus on Dark/Lightning reactions.

Further down the line I also plan to rework Eliza and Alice!

Upcoming Map

Enemies for the Forbidden Zones are done. I don’t want to post screenshots of the map itself yet since I'm still iterating on the overall look, so please look forward to it!

New Weapons

A couple of new weapons will be added. The image above does not show the full set.

Graphics Improvements

Building upon the improvements in 1.9, I pushed things even further for this version!

Requiem For a Lost World now includes Ray Traced Global Illumination and Ray Traced Reflections that should work on any GPU.

Alongside Ray Tracing support, open-world maps will also receive dynamic day/night cycles and weather!

Here are some teaser screenshots:

We sure have come a long way since the first version of the game ┗( T﹏T )┛

While we're on the topic — the Memory Rift left by bosses has also received a new look!

Oh, and 3D chests that you no longer need to break open!

UI Improvements

Expect several UI changes — both in-game and in the main menus. The Shard Screen will get a small glow-up, the Relic Loadouts planner will be improved, and the Level-Up screen will now display weapons affected by upgrades, like so:

Bug Fixes and CO-OP

Version 2.0 also fixes several obscure bugs from previous versions, including some major CO-OP related issues.

CO-OP mode should work much more smoothly in version 2.0!

Difficulty Settings

I found Deep I+ difficulties to be not interesting or varied enough. In version 2.0, these difficulties will receive random effects (both positive and negative) each time you start a run to keep things fresh and exciting!

Wiki

I’ve also created a wiki for Requiem For a Lost World! It’s currently very bare-bones, but the goal is to eventually migrate the in-game wiki there. The big benefit is that any of you can contribute!

If you have time and want to help expand it, I would greatly appreciate it!

Afterword

Thank you to everyone who has shown their support over the past year of development, it has helped a ton in keeping me motivated to build this game!

As mentioned above, this is just an overview to hopefully get you excited for the next version. There are some changes I haven’t mentioned here, but let’s not rob the future changelog of its content (❁´◡`❁)

I have even more features planned, but they will likely have to wait until after version 2.0 is released:

• Adding a support character that accompanies your main pick and provides various buffs and additional abilities

• Weapon maker — or even modding support — if there’s enough interest

I’m still debating whether to release a small donate-style DLC, since I know some people like to support projects they enjoy. Since the game is free, this would be the best way to do it — and I’d include some freebies as well!

I've also experimented with 3D models for characters, but if it's going to happen it will be much later so no promises there.

Anyway, that’s it from me. As always, if you have any suggestions, questions, or problems, feel free to leave a comment or create a discussion thread — whichever you prefer!

Hopefully I’ll see you all at the successful launch of version 2.0!

Hey everyone!

A quick update from my side — I’ve updated the game’s trailer!

Give it a watch and let me know what you think!

Who knew editing could be so time-consuming @_@

Store Page Screenshots

I’ve also replaced a few of the screenshots on the store page, some were outdated or just not that interesting. Still not perfect, I feel, but hopefully a bit better! I’ll probably revisit them once I have the mental energy to snap some proper shots.

That’s the store page stuff out of the way.

Bug Fixes

I’ve released a few updates to patch up some bugs that slipped into version 1.9.2.

Long story short: the Perk Tree wouldn’t let you pick upgrades, some characters’ specials weren’t working, and a few other things — if you encountered any of these issues, they should now be resolved.

I think there is also an issue with enemy spawning logic — but I'm still investigating!

Component Automation

I’ve sneaked in a small feature that’s been bugging me for a while — you can now automate Component selection when leveling up with a full build.

Components are slow, incremental upgrades that aren’t particularly exciting to pick manually. Of course, if you’re pushing for maximum damage, you’ll probably still want to min-max by hand — but for casual play, it can get a bit tedious.

So yeah, you can toggle it in the game settings!

Stage Backgrounds

I’ve updated the stage backgrounds as well — they should now pair nicely with the character cards!

Enemy Sliding

Enemies will no longer slide off the tiniest slopes! They should now be able to climb areas that they previously couldn't.

This issue was especially noticeable on the new map during testing, since it has lots of slopes and uneven terrain. It had to be fixed — and it should also majorly improve the experience on the Tundra of the North map!

Anyway, just wanted to let you all know about the new trailer and what the recent mini-patches were all about!

Hey everyone!

A little unplanned update here!

I know it’s been about a month since the last one. I’ve been super tired lately, so I haven’t managed to do as much as I wanted ⊙﹏⊙∥

Anyway, Unity had a vulnerability patched recently, and games needed to be updated. I didn’t dive into the details, maybe mine didn’t even need it, but I decided to update Unity just in case and rebuilt the game. It took me DAYS to get everything working again.

The update is live now! If you run into any issues with this version, please let me know ASAP.

The full set of features isn’t ready yet, so this update is a bit half-baked. Please bear with me!

With that out of the way, let’s dive into what made it into 1.9.2.

Peaceful Mode

I’ve been focusing more on graphics recently, but with all the VFX it can be hard to appreciate them. Some puzzles or achievements might also be difficult (or annoying) to complete with enemies around.

With Peaceful Mode enabled, no enemies will spawn. Feel free to explore the map at your own pace!

Elemental Reaction VFX

Triggering elemental reactions/inflictions will now display a small particle effect. The screenshot above shows the Ignition infliction.

Capital Undergrounds Camera

In the previous update I got the top-down camera working somewhat in Capital Undergrounds. This update improves visibility by preventing surfaces (especially multi-floor ones) from covering the view as much.

It may not be perfect from every angle, but it’s playable now!

Also, Clara jump scare.

Stage Effects

Some stages received new effects.

Tundra of the North

Capital Undergrounds

Hopefully this spices up runs on these maps a bit!

Jukebox

This one might be a bit controversial—feel free to ignore it if you dislike AI—but I assume if you play Requiem For a Lost World, you probably at least tolerate it.

I’m planning to add songs that serve as story-conclusion themes for each character.

You can access the music player by clicking the disc icon on the profile bar:

I’ve always loved storytelling through music, so I wanted to try it myself, and I really like how it turned out!

It’s one of those features I didn’t have time to finish before this update, but I didn’t want to disable it either. For now, there are only three themes. Once it’s fully implemented, each song will unlock after completing every character-specific achievement.

Yami-no-Tokiya Skin

There’s also a new skin available in the shop.

This is her original design from the very early version of the game!

New BGM

Tundra of the North got new background music!

The old track was fun during Christmas, but it didn’t really fit the map (or the game) outside of the holidays.

I might bring the old one back for the next Christmas event.

Minor Changes and Fixes

• Elemental Reaction Explosion now deals AoE damage instead of single-target damage

• Fixed attacks that could deal negative damage, causing abnormal results

• Fixed an error that could appear when no enemies were present on certain targeting weapons

• Updated the elemental reaction wiki entry to include reactions added in 1.9

• Optimized enemy detection with access caching—should slightly improve performance with many enemies

• Further grass and tree performance optimization

• Enemy count no longer increases with player count; instead, enemy HP is scaled up further

• Fixed a typo in Divine Judgement’s upgrades where cooldown reduction was mislabeled as damage increase

• Fixed the bug that caused infinite shaking after using Nishi's \ ability

Afterword

Sorry again for the small update!

I’ve been working on the new map, but it’s not ready for release yet. Enemies are done, stage events need more work, and the terrain still needs detailing—but it’s not too far from completion and should arrive in the next update.

Same story with Clara: I’m still finalizing her kit, so she’s not ready to release yet, though all her other assets are finished.

There’s also some fluff left like achievements, upgrades, and lore writing. Hopefully I can wrap it all up before the end of the year!

Hello everyone!

This update is a bit out of schedule. Some survey results pointed to you guys wanting a more alternating release cycle, so here is a small patch for you to enjoy!

I also wanted to gather some feedback and performance analysis for the new graphical features instead of releasing a big patch with everything broken. Saves me headaches later, makes you happy earlier. Win-win situation right here.

However, let’s not make the intro longer than the patch notes, so let’s get to it!

New Volumetrics

The last patch introduced a bunch of details to our beloved snowy tundra, and this update aims to take visual fidelity further across all available maps.

Here is a before and after for each map:

Capital Outskirts

before

after

Tundra of the North

before

after

Underground Dungeons

before

after

By default, right after the update, the quality of volumetric effects will be set fairly low to avoid issues on lower-end devices.

Regardless, I encourage you to try setting these options higher and report back with the results.

For snow map you also need a Far render distance to render clouds in the sky.

My 3080 runs a fairly stable 100+ fps with quality settings maxed out, but I’d like to get some feedback from a wider variety of hardware to make sure it performs well enough!

Performance Optimizations

The Capital Outskirts map can be quite resource-intensive with settings cranked up, but this version should improve performance for trees and 3D+ grass rendering. As a result, foliage may look a bit less bushy, but the optimizations allow for higher instanced grass density at the same performance cost.

Just don’t go overboard with grass density if you want to keep over 60 fps!

The Tundra of the North map should also run slightly better on high snow settings.

Underground Dungeons Rework

As you may have noticed from the comparison screenshots, the dungeon (aside from ambient lighting) looks quite different.

That’s because the map has been completely remade!

It’s not fully complete yet. It has all the features the previous one had, but is still missing some decorations. These will come in a future update.

The layout is similar to the old one but much more diverse.

Here are a few screenshots for your viewing pleasure:

Not so much “Underground Dungeons” anymore, so it might need a rebranding.

Top-Down View

The top-down camera was also adjusted to “work” with this map, though some rooms still won’t cooperate due to current technical limitations.

Relic Loadouts

A while back I saw a request to unify relic pages in one of the survey reports.

That did go against the design choice I made when initially implementing relics, but I found a way to implement it that should satisfy everyone.

Loadouts replaced the previous Recommendations tab and can be accessed from the toolbar.

You can create as many loadouts as you want, name them, set relic priorities, limits, and so on, then apply everything with a single click.

You can even make the system reuse relics from other characters (though it will unequip relics from those characters).

All the advanced settings are accessible by clicking the hamburger button on the top right.

You can create a loadout from the currently active relic page by selecting the New From Equipped option.

You can even export your current loadout into a file to share with others!

Loadout Editing

When editing or adding a new relic to the loadout, you can set a limit for the maximum value of a stat.

How does it work?

The inner workings are pretty simple. First, prepare a list of relics you want automatically equipped.

Relics at the top will take priority over those below. In the example above, the Crit Rate relic is at the very top of the list with a limit set to 35%.

The system will equip relics into every Offense and Mixed slot until the combined bonuses reach 35%. Once the 35% crit rate is reached, the remaining Offense and Mixed slots will be filled with the Crit Damage relic defined below.

Then all the Defensive and remaining Mixed slots will be filled with the Health Regen relics, and so on.

You can change the order of relics by simply dragging them around.

Character Tuner Details

Following the previous update, Character Tuner is now getting the missing feature of viewing weapon details.

Hover over an item currently used in your build to expand it. You can view the full description and basic weapon stats such as damage dealt.

You can also adjust weapon level to see how different upgrades affect stats with each level unlocked, as well as view what each upgrade does at every level.

I couldn’t implement the details into the main item list due to technical limitations, but I hope this is enough (┬┬﹏┬┬)

Changes not mentioned in 1.9

I did comment on these under the last post, but I’ll also mention them here.

Enemy knockback

Enemies now take knockback from various attacks. It’s been on my backlog for a long time and I wish I had implemented it sooner. Anyway, it made it into 1.9 without testing (with another hotfix patch), so... yeah.

Pierce projectiles

Another change that slipped into 1.9 is how piercing projectiles behave. I felt they fell short compared to AoE types. With the introduction of knockback, they became much more powerful, but still not quite where I’d like them.

Previously, pierce projectiles internally kept a count of how many enemies they touched. If the counter exceeded the projectile’s pierce count stat, the projectile would despawn.

This had a few flaws.

Firstly, projectiles couldn’t damage multiple enemies even if it looked like they did, because once the pierce count was exceeded, the damage was nullified. Each pierce could only deal one instance of damage and that was it.

With the changes, the internal counter increments once the projectile leaves an enemy collider, allowing it to deal damage to groups of enemies. Hitting 5 enemies will still consume 5 counts of pierce, but now it will also deal 5 instances of damage, even if the pierce count for the projectile is just 2.

Another change (that started as a bug): pierce count is no longer consumed if the target dies.

So yeah, that was a bug I encountered while testing the previous change, but I figured it felt pretty good and made sense, so I kept it. Now pierce projectiles can pierce unlimited targets as long as they die in a single tick of damage.

Bug Fixes

• The character screen displayed an incorrect max count for relics

• When opening Character Tuner for the first time, the default weapon should have been added automatically. However, it wouldn’t be saved and the first slot of the build would get locked.

Launch issues after update

Following a thread that mentioned antivirus software flagging version 1.9 for whatever reason: if you have trouble running the game after the update, please let me know. I’ve had one report that seemed to resolve itself, but I’m curious if there are any other cases.

Could be a one-off case, could be a wider issue — I wouldn’t want people getting locked out like that.

Le Tease

Just so you know, I’ve already started working on the next map. I hope you fw deserts!

Afterword

That’s it for the changes.

I had two weeks off work and decided to cram in as many features as I could during that time.

Needless to say, I got no rest done, but at least the results are quite satisfactory to me (●'◡'●).

I also tallied up the overall cost of development, and man, I spent way more than I initially intended. I blame Unity for that tho. It’s a decent game engine, but the amount of missing features is baffling, and filling in the gaps gets expensive quickly. Anyway, just a rant on my part!

The next update most likely won’t be out too soon. I’ll be back to my 9-5, and the upcoming features will be time-consuming to implement (Clara, new enemies, and the new map). Regardless, I hope you’ll stick around when the time comes :D

Once again, thank you to everyone who continues to support the game (even quietly by just playing). It keeps me motivated to open the project each day!

Also, if you enjoy Requiem For a Lost World, please share it around as it helps massively, leave a positive review too. Or if you’re familiar with advertising, hit me up.

I’m extremely bad at getting this game out there o(TヘTo)

Hello everyone!

Today is a good day for an update, or so I hope!

I'm super excited to finally release it—1.9 has been in the works for what feels like an eternity. Working with a vague deadline has been pretty nice; it allowed me to work on stuff at my own pace without having to cut corners on some features just to push anything out.

I also feel that working when I actually feel like it provides much better results.

But enough yapping, we have stuff to show off! I've prepared a list that I hope is fairly complete, but it's unorganized, so bear with me if the following may be a bit messy. ┗( T﹏T )┛

Aaaaanyway, grab some snacks; it will be a long read!

New Character

Let's get the first thing out of the way, which is the new character I teased a couple of days ago.

Nishi - The Duskbringer

As per usual, let us go over the kit and some design decisions.

The Duskbringer does not have his own archetype; as such, you can build him however you want. We are going back to the roots with this one!

His signature weapon, Divine Judgement, is an AoE Light-type weapon summoning down divine swords from above.

But since his weapon is nothing special and his kit does not reward a specific archetype, isn't he just a simple DPS character?

Well, his ultimate is what makes him stand out! Until I Save You is an ability that allows Nishi to turn back time while retaining part of the power obtained before the time has been reset.

Now a few notes on this ability since it ties to his passive. Whenever Nishi enters the Memory Rift (the boss drop), he will obtain a Core. When he owns at least 5 Cores, the ultimate can be used to reset the stage timer, acquired weapons, items, gold, and gems in exchange for Elemental Damage and Elemental Cooldown buffs depending on the number of Cores owned before the reset.

You can read the in-game description to learn more!

Now, as per usual, let us get into some design decisions!

I wanted to make a character that felt unique in terms of gameplay loop. New characters tend to come out with a new gimmick: Natalie introduced DoT, Mucha made it crit, Amelisana innovated the way I do passives, Nyxaria introduced Elemental Accumulations, and so on. I went back and forth between wanting the last form of Nishi to be playable or not, but the kind of kit I had in my head was just too perfect for him: a character able to grow stronger indefinitely. So I went ahead and tied his kit to the story, and I think it turned out quite well, from the collection of Cores to the screen fade with text into a new cycle. The journey is also reflected on the shards, but the text itself won't be available to read until I'm done with all the other characters.

I fully expect the leaderboard to become a complete mess because of him, but we'll see how it goes.

Character Reworks

As announced earlier, I started working on the older characters to step away from the traditional "level-up increases" into something more interactive. In version 1.9, two characters got their kits reworked.

Adam

Adam was one of the first characters introduced into Requiem For a Lost World back in 2023.

He was supposed to fit into the role of a farming character, allowing players to gather currency more effectively, and it worked back then. I wanted to keep his function while bringing his kit up to more modern standards.

Adam will now properly scale with Luck and Greed stats, allowing him to build into his original farming role while retaining enough damage to actually clear stages.

Chitose

I always kept Chitose in mind as this lively girl running and dashing around. However, the gameplay did not reflect that.

In the spirit of the original idea behind her, she will now properly scale with movement-based stats. She also got her own Special bar that can be filled by dashing or sprinting and provides additional bonuses once full.

Chitose will now be available as a starting character for new and existing players.

New Weapons

We've got plenty of different weapons in the game, but it doesn't hurt to add more!

There are 9 new weapons and 1 new item.

I won't go into big details here (this changelog is long enough as it is).

These new weapons focus on either dealing heavy damage infrequently or empowering elemental reactions!

Read the rest of the changes and go check them out!

New Elemental Reactions

Speaking of empowering elemental reactions. Here are a few new ones for you all to trigger~

• Quanta (Cosmic + Lightning)

  • Enemies take 100% more damage; additionally, deal an instance of damage if the enemy has a Lightning weakness equal to 200% of damage dealt.

• Dilation (Cosmic + Ice)

  • Apply ice-type DoT equal to 50% of damage dealt every 0.5s for 3 seconds.

• Corruption (Cosmic + Dark)

  • Deal a random instance of damage between 100% and 1000% of damage dealt.

• Dilation (Cosmic + Ice)

  • Apply ice-type DoT equal to 50% of damage dealt every 0.5s for 3 seconds.

• Blessing (Light + Wind)

  • Heal all player characters for 10% of damage dealt.

• Invigorated (Light + Fire)

  • Increase damage dealt by all player characters by 30% for 2 seconds.

As you may have noticed, there are plenty of new cosmic-related reactions.

I always intended the Cosmic element to be reaction-focused. Yami-no-Tokiya boosts elemental reaction effects, Nyxaria heavily implants Cosmic onto enemies, and even Cosmic accumulation boosts elemental reaction effects. But Cosmic itself had no useful reactions, especially since RES PEN was introduced. As a result, you would never build Cosmic to do reaction-based damage.

So it's time to change that. With the new reactions, you can build Cosmic and deal major reaction damage in one go!

Elemental Resonance

Let's continue pushing the elemental topic, shall we?

Version 1.9 introduces a new elemental mechanic that favors single- or dual-element builds.

Elemental Resonance activates after a player obtains three weapons of the same element. Different elements will provide different effects; some of these effects get stronger the more weapons of that element are equipped.

So players can choose between running mono element for increased benefits or dual element to activate two Elemental Resonances at the same time.

As of version 1.9, the following effects can be triggered:

• Fire Resonance

  • Increases health and damage dealt.

• Lightning Resonance

  • A low chance to trigger an additional projectile with each attack; the chance increases with the number of Lightning weapons equipped.

• Ice Resonance

  • A high chance to deal additional damage; the additional damage increases with the number of Ice weapons equipped.

• Physical Resonance

  • Increases crit damage and crit rate.

• Wind Resonance

  • Increases stamina regeneration, movement speed, and DoT dealt.

• Light Resonance

  • Increases healing effects and shard pull distance. Additionally, kills have a chance to spawn a light orb that grants EXP, gold, and gems on pickup.

• Cosmic Resonance

  • Team-wide elemental effect increase and all-type RES PEN.

• Earth Resonance

  • Generates a shield over time; the shield charges faster the more Earth weapons are owned.

• Dark Resonance

  • Grants flat healing per hit and additional life steal.

I hope this will be an interesting mechanic for you all to mess around with!

Northern Tundra Map Overhaul

Ever since the release of this map I felt like it was lacking in the visual department (snow tracks didn't pull their weight). So as part of 1.9, I went ahead and added some detail to the map:

• New trees

• Rocky mountains

• Overhangs

• Frozen Lakes

Just to name a few!

Power Monoliths

While on the topic of maps, let me quickly introduce new rocks that will spawn around the Capital Outskirts and Northern Tundra.

You can interact with them during gameplay to obtain stat increases that last until the end of the run (or time rewind).

A limited number of them will spawn around the map, but they can be activated multiple times after a set cooldown, of course.

Tutorial Stage

A new tutorial stage will be available, introducing the game's basic mechanics.

Initially I added a bunch of tips on the screen during normal gameplay, but later I figured a dedicated tutorial stage would probably be a better decision.

The tutorial will explain how elements, combat, and leveling up work.

UI Stuff

As per usual, the update will also bring a few changes to the UI.

New Shard Graphics

As mentioned in my previous post, I spent a substantial amount of time redoing every shard graphic for each character to get rid of the signature AI-generated look. I will let you all decide if it's an improvement!

You can also inspect each one by clicking the little magnifying glass or pressing the Enter key while highlighting a shard.

New Character Cards

Alongside the shards, I also updated all the character cards to match the same style.

The cards are not 100% finished and will be gradually improved over time as well!

While we are here, a quick change to the character selection screen:

• The passive box is now bigger to show more of the passive description.

• The stat view has been simplified to show only the essential stats.

New Character Tuner UI

I confess I put the previous Tuner interface in as a last-minute requested feature and have hated it ever since.

I finally got around to doing it properly this time. You can switch between weapons and items, filter them based on element, and see the summarized description right there on the screen.

A more detailed view will come later once I figure out exactly how I want it to look.

Improved Leaderboard UI

It's a small change.

You can't see it on the screenshot since only new scores will have it, so you have to trust me on this.

The leaderboard will now display the player's name card on the entry as well

This is the name card, btw:

And top scores now glow a bit.

New Name Cards

A little bit of a side quest while we are on the topic.

I've added a few new name cards to the game with plans to add even more in the upcoming versions!

Here is one of them

New Recollection UI and Rules

So I also touched the Recollection UI. It's not like I had anything against the old one, but I decided to get it up to the standards as well.

The new screen now displays the kit overview for the current banner character, including all the rank-up buffs as well.

The previous three additional boosted characters are now gone and replaced with additional banners. Players can now choose which character they want to pull for from the three active banners.

So as we all know, the gacha in Requiem For a Lost World is purely for fun, and the rates guarantee you a character or couple with each 10 pull.

But if you are masochistic, I've also added an option for you:

This is of course off by default, but if you crave the real gacha experience, then this is for you —it lowers the rates to current standards (0.6% for the main character and 5% for side characters respectively).

Do with this option as you please.

Improved Result Screen UI

A few new stats are being displayed at the summary:

• Elemental Reaction trigger count

• Elemental Infliction trigger count

• Total damage taken

• Total healing received

The damage summary will now also display decimal places because precision is important.

The weapon damage summary will now also display DPS on top of total damage dealt.

There is also a toggle for Effective Damage, but we will get into that later.

Improved Level Up UI

When leveling up, players will be able to see basic weapon stats such as damage dealt (non-crit and crit), attack cooldown, and projectile duration. If the upgrade changes any of these stats, the change will also be displayed.

In addition to stat display, weapons that don't scale with attack count, size, or duration increase will also get an appropriate indicator.

New Pause Screen UI

This is a big one, so buckle up.

The new pause screen displays way more information now. Including active effects coming from weapons, skills, or other players.

Similar to the character selection screen, the stats have been simplified but you can view the full list by clicking the magnifying glass button.

This window displays all stats, including hidden stats unavailable for viewing before.

You can filter stats by searching up the name. The new stat system that we will touch upon in a bit allows for per-element boosts, and that menu also accommodates those.

But that's not all the pause screen provides.

When hovering over a weapon or item, a summary will be displayed, including current stats and total damage/damage contributed by this weapon.

The weapon bar can be toggled between weapons and items by clicking the icon above it.

To top it all off, you can toggle the stats and kit display to view a character's kit in case you forgot what they do.

Relic Page Stats UI

In the same fashion as the pause screen, you can view stats modified by equipped relics.

Low Health Indication

When health becomes low, the world will start losing colors, and only red hues will remain. This can be toggled in settings.

New Stats System

This may not impact you as a player, but the entire stats system is now being calculated differently under the hood, which allows me as a developer to do more fancy stuff with it (which I didn't).

The new system allows for per-element, per-weapon-type stat modifications, which wasn't practical with the old system.

I'm mostly outlining it here as a fun fact.

Anyway, back to non-technical stuff.

Effective/Overflow Damage

I've been struggling with balancing out damage numbers for the sake of leaderboards, and I've noticed that the most effective difficulty to play when considering leaderboards is the classic Normal difficulty.

The reason being that enemies were easy to kill and farm damage against.

So by nature of this system, the players capable of beating the harder difficulties were actively punished for playing them.

Starting with 1.9, damage will be split into Effective Damage and Overflow Damage (this is what the toggle in the result screen is for). Effective Damage is the damage used for leaderboard scores; it caps out at a mob's max health, so if the weapon deals 100 damage but the mob has only 5 HP, the leaderboard will add only 5 to the resulting score instead of the original 100.

Higher difficulties give enemies more health, which in turn will allow for higher scores, rewarding the commitment to completing those.

As a result, leaderboard submissions will again accept scores lower than a million for easier submissions! That means old scores will be easier to beat, but there is no need to wipe them away this time.

By default, floating damage numbers will display Effective Damage; you can toggle this in the settings.

Post-Processing Settings

You can now disable and enable specific post-processing effects from the settings screen.

Damage Numbers

There are some minor changes to the looks of damage numbers.

Gradient

Damage numbers got a little bit of a gradient going on; you can toggle this in the settings if you want the single-color ones back.

Reaction Merge

Elemental Reactions/Inflictions triggered by the attack will now display alongside the damage number instead of being a separate text instance.

New Achievements

There are a few new achievements added to the game. Nishi The Duskbringer and Chitose got their character-specific achievements; more character-specific achievements will come in future versions!

Perk Tree

I'm not going to stall the release any further. Can't say I'm too happy with it, and things will probably change in the future, but it is functional enough in the current state.

You obtain one skill point every time a character levels up (the character level, not the in-game levels!). And those can be used to unlock different nodes that provide a variety of specific buffs.

Characters get more difficult to level up over time, so it should nudge you to play other characters for a change. (●'◡'●)

The Beginner's Blessing

Version 1.9 will also introduce an additional effect to the Normal difficulty.

I figured unlocking new weapons can be difficult or not obvious for some players, and to make the early experience a bit more interesting when playing the Normal difficulty, players will randomly unlock 3 locked weapons for that run!

Weapons unlocked this way have a special indicator on the level-up screen.

New Main Menu Theme

As for every major version of the game. The main menu theme has also been updated. Reminded that you can always switch back to the old ones from the settings!

New Steam Assets

As you may have noticed I also updated the Steam banner and game header to match the current aesthetics! It's old, but new!

Minor Improvements and Bug Fixes

• Memory Rifts will now reward additional gold and gems upon entering them.

• Previously selected stage will now be remembered

• Added option to quickly reset filters in Collection and Achievement menus

• Added back the STPP upscaling method to the settings (should work correctly now)

• Added dot shadow at enemies' feet

• Renamed game speed settings to closer reflect their meaning

• Removed unreleased maps from various menu filters

• Removed AI narrator when selecting characters (it was annoying)

• Fixed scrolling in settings that only worked when hovering over a setting entry

• Discarding relics via the recollection popup will now correctly grant relic pieces

• Added pop-up notification when trying to perform Recollection without sufficient amount of gems

• Fixed Amelia's title that didn't match the achievement text

• Fixed elemental reaction events not triggering when damage numbers were disabled

• Fixed a bug that prevented players from closing the character list with the Escape button

• Fixed a potential bug that could cause screen controls to show up on PCs with no touch support

• Fixed UI text blur caused by anti-aliasing

• Fixed incorrect orientation of the Lightning Spear projectiles

• Fixed an error occurring when exiting the run

Afterword

I spent a long time working on this update—4 months if I'm not mistaken—and I still failed to deliver everything I intended to. For that, I'm very sorry (┬┬﹏┬┬)

Unfortunately, it turns out writing is not my strong suit. As much as I had the bigger picture of the story in mind, I failed to fully patch up and tie together all the smaller plot points—which, in the end, turned out to not be so minor after all.

The story will come out before or with 2.0. That much, you have my word!

Another thing I fell short on (though I at least provided a partial implementation) is the perk tree. I went through a bunch of iterations but ultimately couldn’t find anything I felt was good enough. I even went as far as rewriting the entire stat system (which took weeks of development time) to make the perk tree more flexible, but it still didn’t do as much as I’d hoped.

I’ll continue iterating on that system in future versions. Worst case scenario, we’ll stick with what we have, and I’ll just expand it by adding more nodes.

But enough about the failures!

I shaped 1.9 up to be the biggest update to Requiem For a Lost World to date. Whether I succeeded or not is up for you to decide, but personally I’m happy with it (even if I expected to cram in even more content).

Working on it without a tight deadline was also pretty nice. I’ll admit I took breaks in between features, but I didn’t end up beating myself up over it, which was refreshing.

The new character assets look pretty good as well. There’s still some room for improvement since I cut corners on the backgrounds, but nothing that can’t be fixed later.

Speaking of the future—the next version shouldn’t be too far off, though I’d like to aim for 2.0 right away.

Here’s an overview of what I expect to be working on (not a definitive list):

• A new map: Forbidden Zone

• A new character: Clara

• Shop UI improvements

• Possibly a main menu improvement

• CO-OP improvements

I especially want to focus on stabilizing the CO-OP experience since it’s pretty bumpy right now—and probably only got worse in this version.

In preparation for the full release in 2.0, I’ll also be focusing on smaller additions like more achievements, name cards, and skins. These will take priority over some of the elements listed above.

Of course, 2.0 is still some months off, so we’ll see what makes it into the release version.

For now, thank you all for the support, and I’ll see you around for the next patch notes!

Hey everyone!

It’s been a little while since the last announcement, so I thought I’d give you a quick update on how things are progressing!

First, let’s get to the thing you all clicked for-

Nishi – The Duskbringer

If you follow Requiem For a Lost World on X or have joined the Discord, this may not be news to you. But for those who only keep up through Steam announcements—this one’s for you~

This form of Nishi will provide closure to the story via his shards once those become available to read.

Without spoiling too much of his kit (we’ll save that for the official 1.9 patch notes), this form will feature a built-in optional infinite mode that does not disable leaderboard submissions!

1.9 – When?

The latest update has been in the works for quite some time. Most of the development period was spent on completely reworking the stat system, as well as updating character card and shard assets, as mentioned in a previous post.

Without diving too deep into detail, the update is now nearly finished. It will include a couple of new weapons, items, and elemental reactions; a new elemental system that rewards controlled builds; Tundra map graphical improvements; UI improvements; and several other smaller changes.

I’ll also be taking another look at the difficulty settings, as I’ve received a lot of feedback about the difficulty being too high.

Not everything from the previous announcement will make it into this version. I decided to scrap the relic sub-stats, as I feel they would add too much complexity and micromanagement to the relic system overall. If you’d still like to see them implemented in the future, please let me know!

Not all of the rewritten story will be available in 1.9 either, as it’s taking much longer than I anticipated. I’m not a professional writer, so please bear with me while I work to make it a pleasant read (●'◡'●)

So… when is the update coming? I expect to release it sometime this month. No solid date—just a random day when I feel it’s ready.

Bonus

As a little bonus, here’s an early tease of a character coming after 1.9:

For those who may have missed her mentions in the game, she’s David’s fiancée.

Her kit isn’t fleshed out yet, but you can expect her to be a melee-focused DoT/Pierce character!

Thanks for reading and for continuing to support the game—it means a lot. I can’t wait for you all to dive into 1.9 and see what’s new!

Hello everyone!

Early Access Extension

• What would make Requiem feel ready for a full release in your eyes?
• Are there unresolved issues that need fixing first?
• Is the content lacking, or are there specific features you want to see in the final version?

Shard Asset Changes

Story Changes

Character Reworks

Perk Tree and Meta Systems

Relic Sub-Stats

Roadmap Summary

• New/improved shard art  → Do you like them? Prefer the old ones?
• Shard story rewrites  → What do you think of piecing the story together this way?
• Character reworks  → Adam and Chitose are first in line. Any others you want to see reworked?
• Relic sub-stats  → Are you in favor or against this system?

Looking Ahead

Nyxaria Joins the Battle

Elemental Accumulation

• Ignition – Fire: Deals 5% of the target’s max HP every 0.5s for 5s.
• Overload – Lightning: Stuns for 0.3s and deals 2% max HP every 0.5s for 5s.
• Frostbite – Ice: Slows by 40% for 3s and deals a burst of damage equal to the triggering hit.
• Wounded – Physical: Bleeds for 40% of the hit damage every 0.5s for 5s.
• Burst – Wind: Your next attack after this deals 150% damage.
• Radiance – Light: Reduces a random elemental defense by 20% (stacks).
• Singularity – Cosmic: Makes reactions and accumulations 15% stronger vs. the target (stacks).
• Shadowbind – Dark: After 4s, deals damage equal to current HP. Reapplying shortens the delay by 0.3s.
• Petrify – Earth: Stuns for 0.5s and reduces physical defense by 20%.

Damage Indicators

New Damage Numbers

New Difficulty System

Character Animations

• Eliza
• Oana
• Nishi (Vanquisher of Faith)
• Arika
• Chitose
• Summer
• Amelia (Bearer of Dream)
• Natalie
• Truzi

Menu Extensions

Pause Menu

• Collection
• Tutorials

• Simple - The same as before, displaying only essential stats
• Full list - Shows most character stats available in the game
• Non-zero - Displays only modified stats (affected by items, relics, or character abilities)

Character Selection

Collection Screen

Relic Rewards Pop-up

Relic Discard Notification

Steam Profile Banners

More Minimap Settings

Shop Changes

Amelisana Fragments

Item Seals

Character Tuning

Rebalancing

Difficulty Adjustments

Enemy Relics

Leaderboards

Cloud Save

Minor Changes and Fixes

• Fixed typo in the Infernal Gate series of upgrades for Portal weapon
• Fixed missing description of Darkened Resolve (II)
• Fixed the Recollection pull button accepting clicks even after animation have already started
• Fixed Corina's ultimate cooldown being abnormally short
• Fixed key rebinding during gameplay being retriggered by a space button
• Fixed the recollection menu animation missing animation for the tutorial button
• Dreya's Withering state will no longer grant her additional damage based on character level
• Fixed Kaware's summons fail to spawn in CO-OP scenario

Afterword

New Characters

Ondines

Kaware

Dreya

Minimap

Leaderboards

Relic Fragments

Relic Shop

Tutorial Menu Rework

Balance Changes

Enemies Removed from Collection

Writing Changes

Save File Changes

Login Event

Bug Fixes

• Fixed scrolling in the settings UI bugging out and not working properly
• Moved spawn location in the Capital Undergrounds to prevent taking damage while spawning
• Fixed passive text not fitting text bubble correctly on some characters
• Fixed damage accumulation and hitbox of Gift Box weapon

Afterword

Development Time

AI Stuff

Future Features

New Collection Menu

Item Bans

Enemy List

Relics

Relics Synthesizer

Daily Rewards

Game Finish Rewards

Component Changes

New Element

• Lightning reaction (Disintegration) - instantly execute any enemy below 50% health
• Light reaction (Nullification) - Cancels damage from the attack but increases the enemy’s elemental reaction effects by 200% (stackable).

New Weapons

New Locations

Bug fixes and improvements

• Fixed Cosmic Affinity upgrades being replaced by Ice Affinity upgrades
• Fixed Wind Affinity missing upgrades
• Fixed Time Blade weapon's behavior
• Fixed a game freeze when skipping a level-up after picking up a big magnet.
• Fixed vulnerability application on multiple weapons.

New Map

New Skins

Winter event

Weapons and Items

Wind Maelstrom

Snowball

Gift Box

Comet

Flame Purge

Shockwave

Frost Breath

Orbital Strike

Black Gloves

UI stuff

DPS display

Menu tooltips

Menu theme settigns

Shop stuff

Stamina upgrade

Bug fixes and minor improvements

• Fixed CO-OP enemy HP scaling (or rather, the lack of it).
• Removed the flat lifetime increase from Amelia’s passive buff. It caused issues with some weapons, giving them permanent uptime.
• Enemies now scale with the number of players currently alive, making it easier to revive teammates.
• Fixed a bug that caused the game to freeze when using Tornado with only one enemy on the field. (This freeze was reported way back in 1.7.3—I finally found the cause!)

Future plans

Rune System

• Runes can now be upgraded (with a chance of being destroyed)
• You can now filter runes by their type, stat and rarity
• Rune recommendations now appear in a separate window.
• Quick rune discard functionality (with the same filters as above).
• Rune pages can now be cleared with a single button.
• Rune limit increased to 5000

Rune cards

Side menu

New characters

Rederith

• Each hit with Blood Debt sacrifices a portion of Rederith’s max health to boost its damage. But don’t worry—it can’t kill him! Instead, it synergizes perfectly with his passive ability.
• Rederith cannot gain Crit Rate or Crit Damage through normal means. Instead, his missing health converts into strength, scaling both Crit Rate and Crit Damage based on how low his health is.
• He excels against enemies with different resistances thanks to his rank-up abilities granting a lot of extra RES PEN.

Madra

• Madra’s Blessing generates a field that boosts RES PEN for allies within its radius, making her a great support in co-op play.
• As a support-oriented character, Madra can choose a damage-dealing weapon at the start of the game.

• Stars Align heals Madra and her allies while granting EXP equal to 50% of the amount needed for the next level, shared among the entire team.
• When paired with Mucha, her passive allows her to redirect a portion of incoming damage to Mucha through their Unison state.

Mucha

• The orb inflicts cosmic DoT in a massive area, though it affects only a limited number of enemies and can summon only one orb at a time.

• Surrounding herself in butterflies she transforms all of DoT type attacks into instant damage.
• When paired with Madra, her passive extends the duration of DoT effects by 50%.

New stuff that are not characters

Aura of Affinity

Runes

New runes

• Rune of Evasion - boosts dodge chance
• Rune of the Titan - increases size of every attack
• Rune of Renewal - reduces ultimate cooldown

Quality of life

Better modal menu

Bug fixes and changes

Changes

• RES PEN can at most increase damage taken by enemies without resistances by 25% (previously no limit) - I did this so RES PEN is more occasional and not just a replacement for damage increase items
• All Follow-Up type weapons got a hefty 50% damage increase on every damage increasing level up
• Further reduced EXP gain, the point is to make EXP upgrade that you can get from shop more useful
• Reduced base HP of end level bosses by a lot (●'◡'●)

Bug fixes

• Fixed a bug that caused co-op host and client to de-sync their level up screen when one of players skipped the level
• When swapping between characters in the character selection screen the calculated stats from runes were lagging behind
• The main menu would sometimes get stuck in an animation or play it incorrectly
• Lightning chain's VFX didn't adjust to chain's length properly
• Boss spawning 7 minutes into Capital Outskirt's gameplay was invisible
• Geode Resonance granted all players armor buff when only one was hit with the wave
• Geode Resonance's armor buff would last forever upon being hit instead of the intended 2 seconds
• Blessing of Light would heal all players when only one was hit with it's burst
• Particle colors emitted from the ultimate icon wasn't tainted with character's theme color
• Particle effects around the ultimate button now correctly stop when ultimate is on cooldown

No new Steam achievements for now

• Players joining the game would not receive damage.
• When one player leveled up and ran out of upgrade options, the game would freeze, waiting for them to make a selection.
• Leaving the game as a client would cause issues with some game mechanics for the host
• Clients could not reconnect to the host’s game, and in some cases, both players had to restart to connect again.
• Damage-over-time (DoT) attacks could crit without the player owning an item that allowed for it.

• Character Selection: Players can now select characters through a list: {STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/45228567/58a9d5ec30310aa83a787fbe4dd17c6419711c56.png The UI will be further improved in future updates.
• Status Buff Display: Active stat buffs will now be displayed on the status bar with icons. I have plans to add timers to these icons, but we’ll see how that goes.

• Status bar will display all buffs present on the character - right now it does not display simple stat buffs
• Simplified character selection screen - current one is pretty, but the more characters there are, the more tedious it becomes to select the one you want to play
• Difficulty rebalancing - I tried to balance out the EXP gain in 1.7.2, but I don't think it changed a whole lot, so I'm still working on it. Balancing is a very touchy subject o(一︿一+)o
• And of course some bug fixes that I find along the way

• Firstly, I would love to get some feedback and start working on anything you might find annoying/unfun/broken and so on - I hope there isn't much bad though.
• A new map is in the works, just as planned for one of the Early Access leave conditions, but it's still early to give any estimates on when and how
• 4 new characters are planned for upcoming versions after release, along with new weapons and upgrades
• Art assets will be steadily improving over time, as even with AI it takes time to make them look decent enough
• In the future, game versions will be available to everyone in 3 branches that you can switch in the Beta tab in Steam: Preview, Release and Fallback (altho I would recommend sticking to the stable Release branch). Just keep in mind that for CO-OP, you all need to be on the same version!