Greeting, warrior of legend! Wraithbinder's public demo is now released. Crack out your favorite ability build and prepare to slay some goat-headed demons, space pirate style. Just visit Wraithbinder's Steam page to install and play the demo. There's a bunch of new content and features since last time. Let's take a look.

Knuckles

Metal Knuckles are a new type of weapon with a very fast attack speed, light damage and the special feature that you can hold the attack button to keep attacking repeatedly.

Knives

Throwing Knives are a new type of ranged weapon that have a fast cooldown, do light damage and use little mana.

360 Rotation

True 360-degree rotation is now working with both left-stick movement and right-stick aiming. Using the mouse was always 360-degrees but there was a bug in older versions of the game that caused it to sort of snap to 45-degree angles when using a controller. This has now been fixed so proper 360-degree movement and aiming works as expected when playing with a controller.

Rings & Weapon Choice

Wraithbinder is more fun when you get to choose your melee weapon each run. A new type of equipment has been created, Rings, in order to give you this power of choice while still keeping the attributes you get from weapons you find throughout the world. Whenever you find a melee weapon, you will also find a Ring. When you die you drop your weapon but not the Ring. Your next run you get to choose a new melee weapon while keeping the attributes in the Ring you are wearing.

Character Customization Options

When creating a character, there are now separate options for Armor, Hair and Visor. It's more customizable. This amps up the fun of character creation.

Ability Keys

Some abilities are now locked with a new currency called Ability Keys. Using an ability key will permanently unlock that particular ability for the current character, including this run and all future runs. You can earn Ability Keys by defeating bosses. It's pretty fun how the Ability Key system gives you a sense of value around abilities and something to strive for.

Statues Resemble... You

Whenever you encounter a statue, it will take on the likeness of one of the characters of the top players on the leaderboard. Whomever is rank 1 on the leaderboard will be the statue on floor 1 of all the worlds for everyone who is currently playing. Rank 2 on the leaderboard is the statue at floor 2 and so on. Also, when you stand near a statue, it will announce onscreen the name of the player, their rank on the leaderboard and their total amount of gold and light.

Dash Ability Improvements

The dash abilities have been improved. It feels smarter & better overall. Also, the Boots ability now does damage, albeit less than Blink. In addition, when you upgrade your dash ability you also increase how much damage it does along with reducing its mana cost. Elemental damage has been added to the dash ability trails if you have some elemental attributes from relics, armor, etc. Furthermore, a bug was solved where trying to dash near a big boss would fail, generating an invalid sound. This is fixed now so you can dash properly near big bosses and other objects.

UI Improvements

Wraithbinder now uses high-resolution controller glyphs on the UI. Also, custom 2d pixel art icons have been created for all the abilities. This adds some quality to the overall aesthetic.

Demo Limitations

So what's the difference between the demo and the full version of the game? The purpose of the demo is to give you a taste while leaving you wanting more. To that end, here are the limitations of the demo version:

• 1 character
• 1 relic per chest
• 1 maximum pip per attribute power-up
• Cannot equip or sell armor other than the first pieces you find

Feel free to play the demo as long as you like. There are no time restrictions.

Please Share Your Feedback

Have some thoughts or ideas? Find a bug? Please share on Wraithbinder's Discord server.

What's Next?

Wraithbinder will be participating in Steam Next Fest, Feb 05 - 12, 2024. 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 here 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 0.8.11, in case you want all the details: v0.8.11 : Jan 24, 2024 Gameplay:

• Created the Knuckles melee weapon (fast cooldown, light damage, can hold the button to attack repeatedly)
• Created the Knives ranged weapon (fast cooldown, light damage)
• Got true 360-degree rotation working with both left-stick movement and right-stick aiming
• Created the Ring armor type (magical rings embued with attributes)
• A melee weapon is now chosen at the beginning of each run (weapons no longer have attributes -- Rings do though -- and weapons are dropped on death)
• Created Ability Keys which permanently unlock abilities for use in current & future runs
• Improved dash ability in some edge cases (feels smarter & better overall)
• Made the Boots dash ability do some damage (albeit less than Blink)
• Added elemental damage to dash ability trails if you have some elemental attributes from relics, armor, etc.
• Solved getting invalid sound sometimes when trying to dash near a big boss
• Reduced the amount of time you can get frozen by ice
• Ensured that when you are frozen by ice you always have an invincible period afterward so you can never get stun-locked to death
• Removed all gold from pillars so players don't feel obligated to destroy the entire environment
• Made gold thief appear more rarely
• Increased the mana cost of ranged attacks & speed abilities
• Implemented softer pathfinding around obstacles

Characters:

• When creating a character, there are now separate options for Armor, Hair and Visor (more customizable)
• Added a feature to delete a character from the Character Edit menu

Async Multiplayer:

• Made statues have the likeness of leaderboard players

Art / Aesthetic:

• Increased the smoothness of rotating voxels (instead of 8 possible angles per model there are now 40 and it uses less memory overall)
• Outlined all elemental damaging pools with red for enemies and blue for friends
• Created custom 2d pixel art icons for all abilities
• Improved the aesthetic by lengthening the camera angle
• Improved the aesthetic using more contrast in the shading and highlights of voxels
• Increased the quality of the exp bar artwork and made it green colored to match exp orbs
• Used high-resolution controller glyphs
• Enabled motion blur when the camera rotates

Demo Version:

• Created limitations for the demo version: 1 character, 1 relic per chest, 1 pip per attribute power-up

Other:

• Added a message for when you first get some Light so players learn that it is later used to power up your character
• Only rumble the controller if it is being used
• Solved Gzrel boss getting stuck doing nothing
• Solved getting warped beyond the ability item on floors where the ground is falling away
• Solved one of the boss music songs not repeating
• Solved a bug where you could't reach the switch to open gates on floor 5
• Solved a potential crash due to some wayward animation code
• Solved changing window resolution on Windows causes mouse cursor to have an incorrect offset
• Solved main menu didn't have clouds on Windows

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