Fair tidings, legendary person! Wraithbinder's open beta has begun and runs until Jan 2. Crack out your favorite weapon and prepare to slay some goat-headed demons, space pirate style. If you haven't already, click Request Access on the Steam page and Wraithbinder will be playable in your Steam library. Sharing your feedback on Wraithbinder's Discord server helps to make this game more awesome. Your feedback will also help improve the game for Steam Next Fest this Feburary 2024 and Early Access launch sometime after that.

Exclusive Hair Style

As a thank you for playing Wraithbinder's beta, please enjoy claiming this exclusive hairstyle. Only players of the beta will ever be able to own this item. Grab it now or forever hold your peace. Just visit the Forge on the ship in-game and purchase 'Beta Haircut.' It only costs 1 gold:
Here's part two of all the new stuff in Wraithbinder. There's also part 1 in case you missed it.

New Objects

You'll find many fun new objects to interact with. Exploding barrels damage both you and enemies, so it's best to trigger them from afar:
Watch out for raised floor plates which can trigger arrow traps:
Sometimes you will encounter chests that run away, not wanting to be opened:
Some rooms will lock themselves until you defeat all nearby enemies:

Player Experience Improvements

All enemies you encounter are now outlined in red while friendlies are outlined in green. This helps to immediately clarify who is trying to hurt you versus help you:
Whenever your character or an enemy is low on health, they will glow red. This is a visual indicator to help you notice when you are critically low on health or an enemy is nearly vanquished:
A small health bar appears beneath your feet temporarily when you are hurt. This helps you to catch a glimpse of your health reserves without having to take your eyes off the center of the screen:
Your character now glows white when you have leveled up. This, along with a persistent announcement, ought to help you to notice whenever you have an ability point to spend:

Other Improvements

Several improvements have been made to the game's art style. The shadows are now more smooth & solid. The edges of circular objects are now perfectly circular:
You can now have both hair and a helmet, allowing you to combine the two in your own way:
The Revealer relic has been improved, showing secret blocks as obviously red-colored with an X on top:
Thickets now expand to nearby blocks when re-growing:
Walls can be hit once, releasing a poof of smoke and changing to look cracked:
The boss platform falls away beneath your feet:

What's Next?

Wraithbinder will be participating in Steam Next Fest, Feb 05 - 12, 2024. There's some significant new content you will be able to experience in February's demo that won't be a part of December's beta. Join me as I play Wraithbinder live on the opening day of Next Fest at 1pm PST. In this stream, I will be creating a new character from scratch and starting a run or two. Root for me (or not) as I attempt to beat the final boss on the first run. I will be pausing the game to answer any of your questions as they come up. Set a reminder for the event here. An Early Access launch will follow sometime after Steam Next Fest in 2024. I will be making announcements as soon as the date is locked in.

Release Notes

Here's the full release notes for Wraithbinder's version 0.8.9 beta, in case you want all the details: v0.8.9 : Dec 22, 2023 Gameplay:

• New bosses: Rizoel (dwarf), Gzrel (archer) and Puriel (slider)
• New floor types: dark floor with light switches, chase floor with new Rizoel boss
• New enemies: Mages, Jumping Blobs, Chasers, Elusive Creatures, Floating Mines, Baller
• New relics: Wraithbinder (increase bindable wraiths), Attack Buffer (buff wraith attack), Defense Buffer (buff wraith defense)
• Bosses now have elemental effects & random sidekicks
• Created fog of war
• Enemies are now semi-transparent or invisible if they are covered by fog
• Secret areas are entirely covered by fog
• Created exploding barrels, arrow traps & chests that can run away
• Created locked rooms
• Created secret items hidden in a single random wall block
• Surrounded goal elevator with gate blocks where you have to use the ability you've gained on that floor
• Added a new type of world layout where floors lie adjacent to each other & you walk upstairs instead of use an elevator

Input:

• Separated bindings into in-game versus menu bindings
• Made the sword button X and dash button A to match many other top-down action RPGs
• Made the A/B buttons power up attributes on the Light menu instead of having to press left/right
• Got rumble working on Steam Deck and Mac

Balance:

• Made it possible for rare & epic items to be found on any floor
• Be able to jump over pillars
• Changed wraithbind attribute to boost wraith health instead of increasing amount of bindable wraiths
• Increased experience required per level a bit
• Increased the curve of how much light it takes to power up attributes the more pips you've powered up
• Made Boomerang cost some mana
• Made the Shield last longer
• Made player arrow a little less heat seaking
• Reduced mana per rock a little
• Be able to bind spiders as wraiths
• Disabled bonus runs after victory
• Reduced amount of experience Radruiel grants on death
• Make equipment at the Armory cost more at higher tiers
• Escalated the cost of checkpoints based on character grade

UI/UX:

• Show a small health bar beneath your feet temporarily when you are hurt
• Made all enemies outlined in red & friendlies outlined in green
• Made your character glow white when you have leveled up & have an ability point to spend
• Made enemies & your character glow red when low on health
• Increased the quality of all fonts & all UI elements
• Improved the UI for the Leaderboard
• Made the inventory detail popup not cover the character
• Made character selector a list instead of a dropdown-like thing
• Announce to powerup using the forge on the ship whenever you have light
• Announce on death what the player keeps
• Announce that checkpoint has been depleted

Art Improvements:

• Be able to have both hair & helmet
• Made shadows more smooth & solid
• Made circular voxel edges perfectly circular
• Improved the swoosh attack animations
• Solved high-res models having some garbled voxels
• Solved white pixels left behind when enemies fall off an edge
• Solved some lights becoming really intense
• Made Guardian more noticeable
• Increased the amount of sloshing in the health & mana baubles
• Made item & equipment icons able to be runtime 3d renderings of models
• Made many small visual improvements to animations, models & artwork

Audio:

• Create a sound for when enemies wake up & are alerted
• Solved music stuttering when transitioning between floors

Other:

• Improved the Revealer relic to show secret blocks as obviously red-colored with an X on top
• Created the Vim Nudger (+5 max mana) & Vigor Nudger (+5 max health) mini-relics
• Made thickets expand to nearby blocks when re-growing
• Randomized the order of bosses & floor paradigms
• Placed some secret items on the boss floor
• Created unique art & mechanics for the Wraithbind & Shield gates
• Made revealing a boss announce it's name
• Made walls able to be hit once & change to look cracked
• Made the Blink ability's animation trail red to indicate that it does damage
• Added more variation to the room patterns
• Made the boss platform fall away beneath your feet
• Made the camera rotate during a boss reveal
• Added an menu choice to Exit Game within a run
• Prefer the word "run" to "game" on the main menu
• Made changing the window size on Mac and Linux work properly
• Laid some important foundational work to the game's systems in preparation for online multiplayer

Bug Fixes:

• Made items warp to a good location if they accidentally land inside a wall
• Solved not being able to hold Y to activate a Guardian
• Remove old hair when buying new hair
• Solved buying a scroll sometimes didn't unlock the attribute for powering up
• Solved if you pick up a relic before the others spawn you can get multiple
• Solved being able to pick up covered chest relics again if you leave & return to the dungeon
• Solved closing the equipment menu but character is not wearing new armor
• Solved nearby creeps taking team damage whenever player chains lightning
• Solved sometimes there is a oneway door with the switch on the wrong side
• Solved sometimes there is no button shown when you need to hold Y to interact with something
• Solved shield duration says 120s instead of 1.2s
• Solved a random crash

Performance:

• Increased the speed of rendering shadows

That's all for now. Cheers and happy holidays, Nat Code, Art & Music