Steel Judgment news & patch notes

BIG NEWS!!!

As you can probably tell from the title, Steel Judgment is releasing into Early Access on 31st July 2026!

Check out the release date trailer here:

What's in the Early Access release???

The Early Access release will contain 2 zones for you to journey through which includes the following:

• 8 weapons with unique mechanics

• Over 30 upgrade items with stackable and unique effects

• 12 equipment items with different active effects

• Over 20 hand-crafted arenas to fight in

• 10 distinct enemy types with special attacks you can copy!

• 3 Mini-boss encounters

• 3 Boss encounters

• 9 extra difficulty modifiers for those who want an extra challenge

• A deep combat system with a fun and replayable gameplay loop!

You can check out some of the new content not present in the demo from the videos below!

What's next???

The game's 2 remaining zones' worth of content will be added over time. As Steel Judgment is mostly a solo development effort, this is estimated to take around 2+ years. More info can be found under the "Early Access" section of the store page.

Thank you for supporting this project!

Hello friends!

As Steel Judgment nears its Early Access release, we are currently looking for Playtesters to help us improve the game's quality. To participate, please apply at the game's Steam page and join our Discord so that we can receive your feedback.

You DO NOT need to have any experience playing the demo, please feel free to join regardless!

What's new?

Over the past couple of months, our development team (me) has been hard at work on the game's second zone, Yomi-no-Kuni. You can expect to see new weapons, upgrade items, enemies and boss fights set in a completely new area!

Hello again!

We've just dropped another update for the demo which includes 1 more zone boss, many story/world building-related features, and a compendium containing detailed information about the game's enemies and upgrade items! As usual, please send your feedback if you have any through the Community Hub or our Discord.

What's New?

Major Content

Bahamut may now appear as the zone boss of Yggdrasil Citadel instead of Tiamat.

A Compendium containing detailed info on enemies and upgrade items has been added and can be viewed in the Hub.

Various story-related features such as Daedalus, a new character who provides your upgrades for you during your run, as well as a new event cutscene that plays after clearing Yggdrasil Citadel for the first time have been added.

Minor Content

Combat Changes (Returning players take note!)

• Essence Attacks are now bound to their own button. It should be \ by default and can be changed in the options. This was changed so that holding an essence doesn't lock you out of a regular melee attack.

• The Seeker's essence attack now travels faster and does a small knockback.

• The Chaser's essence missile can now be punched to propel it in a direction.

• Certain enemy attacks can now be disrupted by knockback, causing the attack to be cancelled and the enemy to be stunned.

• The Enforcer Mk.II now has less health as a regular enemy (only appears with stronger waves on).

• Chaser missiles can now be shot out of the air.

• Increased the duration that flying enemies are unable to move after taking knockback.

• The knockback effect of Vajra's alt-fire orb can now be triggered by any source of damage instead of just Vajra pellets.

Gunplay Improvements

• Vajra and Gungnir have been given improved sound effects.

• Enemy constructs now spit out random machine parts when damaged for improved feedback.

• Extra sounds have been added to piercing projectiles like the Faust anvil and Enforcer essence.

• Added screen shake which can be toggled on or off in the options menu.

Relics

Paraglider => Care Package Replicator

• Care Package Replicator: Enemies have an on-hit chance while being juggled to drop a care package that restores stamina.

• The Paraglider's old effect, awarding style points for juggling enemies, is now just a regular style action that is awarded without needing any item.

Miscellaneous

• Relics now have a colored outline in the Tab menu which shows their rarity without having to hover over them.

• Added a new screen effect when the player takes damage for better clarity.

• The death screen has been slightly improved.

• Tweaked the combat results screen to be slightly clearer.

• Increased the max number of Soul Orbs that can exist and their lifetime.

• Enforcer Mk.IIs can no longer spawn with the Heavy modifier as normal enemies.

• Fixed a bug where the final kill style action was not being added to the total score for boss fights and a lot more bugs that I don't remember and you probably don't care about.

• (v1.21) Fixed a bug where dying to the Enforcer Mk2's slam attack would cause it to not use that attack for the rest of the session.

• (v1.21) Fixed a bug where Gungnir could sometimes pull or smite enemies with no spears.

What's Next?

This update will be the final batch of free content for the game's demo, and we will be moving on to work on the game's second zone which will be released in Early Access. Thank you for playing our demo, and please stay tuned on our socials for more updates on the game!

Hello again!

What's New?

• Excalibur, the Trenchant Minigun has been added to the arsenal.
• Many existing relics have been revamped together with the addition of the Infernal Engine, Ethereal Magnet and Soul Furnace. More detailed info can be found below.
• Enemies will now drop Soul Orbs on death that can be destroyed to steal their essence (which was previously only accessible by countering enemies).
• A random vendor (relic trader, relic upgrader, gun muncher or refuel station) now appears at the end of each floor.
• 2 large rooms have been redesigned to feel less awkward to play in.
• Various balance adjustments (mostly buffs) to some existing weapons have been made.
• Various bug fixes and QoL improvements have been made.

Weapons

General

• The Combat Data cost to unlock weapons now decreases with the amount you earn while using them during a run. This means the more you use a weapon, the less it will cost to unlock (it will eventually become free).
• You can now view tips on how to use every weapon in the details section of the loadout station.
• All weapons with alt-fires that recharge over time will play a sound when becoming fully charged.

Excalibur (New!)

• Fires a volley of swords while primary fire is held down.
• Alt-fire summons swords to juggle enemies around you and can be redirected towards enemies as well.

Vajra

• Projectiles from other sources can now also trigger alt-fire’s absorption effect.

Gungnir

• Increased projectile speed to make the gun more effective at longer ranges.

Faust

• Added a Meteor to alt-fire’s item pool that rains down on nearby enemies, damaging and igniting them.
• Faust’s display now shows which item alt-fire will fish out so you know what’s coming beforehand.

Muramasa

• The overheat bar now goes down instead of up to hopefully avoid confusion with alt-fire’s charge display.
• Overheat threshold has been slightly increased (meaning you can fire the gun for longer before it overheats).

Relics

General

• Added more visual and sound effects to relic effects for better clarity and feedback.
• Updated relic descriptions to hopefully be clearer.
• Examining a relic in the tab menu now tells you what collecting more stacks of it does.
• Hephaestus’ unlock store now tells you what the unlockable item does so you can make a more informed purchase/reservation.

Infernal Engine (New!)

• Grants a small chance to ignite enemies on hit. Hitting an ignited enemy grants you a small bonus to fire rate.

Ethereal Magnet (New!)

• Increases your pickup range for health packs.

Soul Furnace (New!)

• Hitting an ignited enemy has a chance to spawn its soul orb.

Lightning In A Bottle

• Chain Lightning has been replaced with a Shock debuff that zaps another nearby enemy whenever the shocked enemy is hit.

Dodge Cape ⇒ Afterburner Cape

• Now ignites the next enemy you hit after dodging through an attack instead of doing bonus damage. The number of hits the buff lasts for increases with stacks.

MP3 Player

• Now provides a small heal and is triggered everytime you earn a certain amount of style points.

256 Volt Battery

• Improved visibility of the battery and made it automatically fly towards the player like a regular health pack.

Steel Jetpack ⇒ Propulsion Jetpack

• Stack effect changed from lower charge threshold to extra stackable charges of the air jump.

Seismic Soda

• Now has a chance to spawn cluster bombs on explosions instead of a critical explosion.

Unstable Matter

• Now triggers an explosion around you after gaining an essence from any source, not just countering.

Sadism

• Now grants a burst of movement and attack speed after killing an enemy. The buff lasts longer with more stacks.

PG’s Fidget Spinner ⇒ Beano’s Spinner

• Is now a rare relic because it’s pretty strong.

Shattering Mallet

• Is now a rare relic and lets you do bonus damage to enemies for as long as the debuff’s duration, which scales with stack count.

Miscellaneous

• Enemies now have an extra visual effect when they are defeated.
• All stun effects on normal enemies have had their duration increased from 1s to 1.5s.
• Reduced the Relic Constructor’s relic cost from 5 to 4.
• The Immolator’s fireball attack now has a sound cue while it’s charging up.
• The game’s music now loops seamlessly (at least I hope it does).
• All essence-related style actions now reward more style points than before.
• The tutorial now has a short portion near the end to teach the player about Essences and Soul Orbs.
• The game’s intro scene now has background art.
• Improved the model used for weapon pickups.
• Core Augment pickups now remember how much charge you had if you dropped one from swapping it.
• Orpheus’ melee hitboxes now come out immediately and linger for a short grace period to make them feel more lenient.
• Added equip sounds for more weapons.
• The first reward choice of 2 weapons at the end of Floor 1 now always tries to give at least 1 locked weapon if possible (so you can use it and make it cheaper to unlock).
• Adjusted the short descriptions for every weapon.
• Various minor fixes and changes that I can't remember anymore and you probably don’t care about.

What's Next?

Balance Changes & Improvements

• Taunt stamina cost increased from 1 to 2 - This was the original cost up until very recently because we wanted to see how it would feel, but it turned out to be way too mashable so we're changing it back.
• You can no longer counter if you do not have enough stamina to perform a taunt - More of a bugfix because it allowed you to just mash the taunt button while at 0 stamina and counter anything
• Countering now has a 0.5 second buffer after each attempt - This just prevents mashing and should not affect regular gameplay.
• Uppercut (taunt-cancel jump) extra stamina cost lowered from 1 to 0 - we don't want to make this move too costly so players can use it more often.
• Charge (Taunt-cancel dash) extra stamina cost lowered from 2 to 1 - we don't want to make this move too costly so players can use it more often.
• Dash Jump total stamina cost lowered from 4 to 3 - We feel this should match Charge’s stamina cost as they provide similar horizontal mobility, so we’re lowering the cost for now unless it proves to be problematic.
• Health Pickup lifetime increased from 6 to 10 seconds - This makes picking up health more lenient, especially at higher difficulties or against the Immolator where health tends to drop into unsafe areas.
• Healing factor for all style ranks above D increased slightly - This will give a slight buff to overall healing unless you are stuck at D rank, which is meant to feel punishing.
• You can now see relic and core augment names in their pickups - We still plan to keep descriptions hidden until you pick one up, but this will make it consistent with weapons and hopefully easier for players to remember what they do.
• Stamina regeneration delay will reset if you attempt to use a stamina-consuming action too many times while out of stamina - More anti-mash measures that will not affect regular gameplay.
• (Addendum) Added mouse inversion. - We forgor, what do you want me to say

Bug fixes

• The essence release animation no longer has a delay when you immediately release an essence after countering.
• (Addendum) Fixed a bug where mashing on some buttons that cause a scene change would break the game.

Balance Changes & Improvements

• Taunt-cancel fire/alt-fire now resets the stamina regen delay - We received feedback that this taunt-cancel option might be a little too strong, we're still considering increasing its stamina cost but that would require more time on our end to implement and test due to some spaghetti code, so for now we've made it less spammable with this change.
• The info section on taunting in the tab menu has been updated to include info about countering.
• Tiamat's health pool has been buffed slightly - A good number of players seem to be able to defeat her without seeing her full moveset, so we've made her slightly beefier to extend the fight's duration by a bit.

Bug fixes

• Fixed a bug where taunt-cancel melee attacks would trigger pickups twice, allowing you to dupe some items.

Bug fixes

• You can no longer slide while exiting the tutorial and enter combat during the game's intro sequence.
• The dummy in the tutorial stage no longer slowly drifts to the side.

Steel Judgment's 1.0 demo has arrived, featuring its first zone, Yggdrasil Citadel!

What the demo contains:

• 3 floors consisting of 12 randomly chosen rooms.
• 4 enemy types, 2 mini-bosses and 1 zone boss.
• 5 weapons.
• 18 relics with unique passive effects and 5 core augments with unique active effects.
• An unlock system to unlock new items and weapons for your runs.
• An addicting and replayable combat loop!

How to get it:

Feedback & Technical Assistance

Future Content

• 1 more Zone boss
• 1 more enemy type
• 1 more weapon
• 1 more small batch of relics/core augments