Today is the day that the public will finally get to see all the effort we have been putting especially on the level design for the past two months!

A while ago we have completely redone the looks of the open world, it took us a while to get it to work as stable as possible and today the general public will finally get to see the results of all this effort!

The road until today was very long. Changing where things are placed means that when we have a cutscene, we need to also update the position of the characters and many times also change a bit of the timing of animations since objects and walls are no longer where they used to be. It took us a very long time to get everything in place and then we ran into some performance issues that delayed the game development for almost another month. But now, after a long, long time of tweaking and patching, we can finally say that the looks of the explorable first area of the world are pretty much done. Now in terms of level design, what we will be doing most of the time is adding new areas, new dungeons and other nice things that we are very excited about…. Like a new snowy area that will soon be explorable!

So here is the full changelog of version 0.16 for the ones that did not get the past 6 updates we’ve done on the game in the past months:

Fixes

• Fixed character getting stuck on transition animations from hands-on-hips animation to others during dialogues;
• Fixed Jessie's invisible chair at the Infirmary;
• Some back end stuff to make some quest triggers more reliable;
• Fixed the lights and landscape on Gallery scenes;
• Fixed issue where Merishya wouldn’t be interactable while fighting so the player couldn’t help her to stand up;
• New attempt on fixing breast simulation problem;
• *Fixed Kalyskah sprinting endlessly even though her stamina was over. Now when her stamina reaches 0 she will stop sprinting until she recovers up to 30 stamina again;
• *Fixed NPCs not attacking after Kalyskah helps Averion;
• *Fixed the logic on buttons of the pause menu that should be disabled\enabled according to different conditions so now they are no longer a bind, they only have their functions when the player actually focus on the pause UI;
• *Fixed NPC health bar not showing the right value until they got hit;
• *Fixed logic on dialogue widget where cutscenes wouldn't be properly skipped with spacebar;
• *Fixed empty spaces before the text in Boris dialogues
• *Fixed Boris not properly redressing during the cutscene with him
• *Fixed the infinite loop on the branch where Kalyskah can fight Boris and Travert
• *Fixed fog switcher when the player enters the creepy forest
• *Fixed trees that didn’t have shadow colliders
• *Fixed guards not being able to open the door of the guardhouse

Enhancements

• Compass will now work for all the quests of the open world so you can more easily track where you should go;
• Added audio to some interactions with Akrasiel;
• The ambient music will get 50% lower when the dialogue starts;
• New facial expressions that will blend with dialogues;
• Improvements on troll locomotion;
• Several improvements on the save\load system for ambient music. So if the player saves the game inside of the new cave the music won’t go back to the default one of the open-world;
• Several optimizations on AI, textures, the sky(that now updates only once every 5 seconds), individual objects, etc. Disabled Kalyskah's collision at the beginning by default to prevent her from triggering cutscenes if the player saves the game on top of triggers;
• Improvements on the way rats move around town. They won’t accumulate in a single area anymore, they should be moving randomly which will help to make sure that they are more well spread around Millhaven.
• Finally: If you are playing on a controller, the key to interact with things will now be LB, which is handy because it's the same key to use mist form when Kaly has a weapon equipped and without a weapon, it didn't use to do anything. So now you can talk with people without attacking them by accident;
• Improved swimming animations, sound effects and particles;
• *Added quicksave when the player presses f5 and quick load when player presses f9;
• *Pop up message when Kalyskah tries to cross running water for the first time;
• *Kalyskah can now push and pull allies and neutral NPCs, which will help you to ‘gently’ move them out of the way when they get you stuck inside of a room;

Features

• Millhaven, Kelhold and the whole flow of the open-world beginning was redone together with all of its cutscenes!
• New spell for Kalyskah, a dash attack that is similar to the one the acolytes have and that she will get once she is done with the City of Thieves questline;
• Wrinkle maps! Kalyskah’s facial expressions should feel more realistic now that she will have wrinkles around her mouth or forehead depending on how her facial muscles are moving;

• New areas on the map (especially at the creepy forest) that will soon be filled with some side quests and other nice content;

• Started to build the Puppeteers manorhouse in Milhaven;
• New character on gallery mode (Rosália) eventually she’ll have some storyline on the actual game;
• New quest: An Alchemist Antics. Speak with Jessie and then get back to the market so you can see the trigger for it;

• New type of Enemy (Crystal Hound). You can find them at the new cave;
• New sword: The Daughter of the Dragon.

• You can now navigate on dialogues using the controller (pressing up and down) and also the keyboard arrow keys. Pressing the spacebar will skip dialogue sentences without you having to click on the skip button all the time.

Known issues:

• The NPCs will flicker and behave awkwardly in the distance, that’s normal for now because we are still working on all the right parameters to get them looking good but also working in an optimal way;
• There might be some fps drop from time to time while entering the city because of the new way the rats are spawning;
• On my last test the troll at the cave were attacking but not running after Kalyskah even though the crystal hounds were. This might be a one-time issue or could be something worse. Please let us know if this is happening on your side as well.

Hint:

• Kalyskah can deflect projectiles if you time your parry correctly…. The window you have after pressing block is what those sparks on her weapon mean. This might be something you will want to remember =)

* To our patrons: the items marked with a * are what’s new ever since version 0.16.6, since this one is version 0.16.7!

Download

If you are not a patron, you can download the public demo by following this LINK. But we recommend you to get it through the itch app since it will auto-update the game when you have a new version to download.

Follow these instructions if you are a patron, you can download it through these links.

• First, you need to create an account on itch.io.
• NEONATE: Link your account HERE, and download the game HERE.
• VAMPIRE: Link your account HERE, and download the game HERE.
• ROYAL BLOOD: Link your account HERE, and download the game HERE.