Greeting, warrior of legend! Wraithbinder is launching into Early Access this Monday, May 27th! Visit Wraithbinder's Steam page and Wishlist in order to be notified when the game goes live. You can get a taste for all the Early Access version has to offer with the playable demo, which has been updated in a major way. Let's take a look at what's new.

Major Gameplay Enhancements

The experience you gain is now permanent across runs, meaning you keep your player level even when you die. Going up a level grants you one Salty Tear, a new currency that allows you to unlock powering up your armor with the new Mystic NPC. Going up a level in experience also means you can wear and find a higher tier of armor. Higher tiers of armor have better base stats. Like a tier one ring might have +6% Melee Damage while a tier 2 ring will have +8% Melee Damage. There are now four NPCs that you gradually rescue within the world who will come to inhabit your home area. They are the Trader, Mystic, Architect and Blacksmith. The Trader sells you the Automap, Compass, Teleporter and can exchange currencies like Gold, Light, Salty Tears, Ability Keys and Metal.
You can meditate with the Mystic to permanently power up your armor, even the new armor you find later. You unlock an armor section, such as Helmets, using Salty Tears. Then you invest light into your Helmets in order to power up all the helmets you currently own and even all the new helmets you will ever find. As you invest more light, more stats get added to the armor and the quality of the stats increases.
The Architect enables you to permanently power up the world. You give them Metal and they deploy their designs into the world. One such power up is Jars of Health I. It costs 50 metal and gives you a 0.5% chance to find 5 Health within any Jar.
Buy and sell armor with the Blacksmith. Peruse his offerings to see if there is maybe a new magical ring you'd like. Or sell him all the equipment you aren't wearing to gain some Gold.

Act I

Wraithbinder's story plays out in a three act structure. Act I is available now and playable in the current demo. Act II will come during Early Access. Act III will come at 1.0 launch. You are the captain of a Sky Sailor ship who must save your child from the clutches of evil... Enjoy the Act I story in the Early Access version this May 27th.

Major Gameplay Enhancements:

You can choose your reward after defeating enemies in each room. Often you will be faced with the choice to improve your character during the current run, like picking up an Ability Point Orb, or to improve your character in the long run, like picking up some Metal to spend with the Architect back home to upgrade the world. The Wraithbind ability is now permanent across runs. Once you discover this ability, you will start your next run able to bind one wraith. Mana Regen has been increased significantly so you no longer need to hit the environment to harvest Mana. You now power up abilities by finding Ability Point Orbs and the maximum ability level has been increased from 3 to 9. Ability levels bring significant gains to your abilities. For example, the level 2 Sword ability does +33% damage. You now keep 100% of the Gold, Light and armor you find during each run. (The game used to drop 50% of Gold, Light and 100% of unequipped armor.) There's also a sweet new animation for when you vanquish a boss.

Translation

Wraithbinder has now been translated into 10 languages in preparation for the Early Access launch: English, Franais, Deutsch, Italiano, Espaol, Portugus-Brasil, , , and .

Release Notes

Here's the full release notes for Wraithbinder's version 0.9.0, in case you want all the details: v0.9.0 : May 11, 2024 Home Area NPCs and Powering Up:

• The Experience you gain is now permanent across runs
• Going up a level grants you one Salty Tear, a new currency that allows you to unlock powering up your armor
• Going up a level in experience means you can wear and find a higher tier of armor
• Higher tiers of armor have better base stats
• Created 4 NPCs that you can rescue who come to inhabit your home area: Trader, Mystic, Architect and Blacksmith
• The Trader sells you the Automap, Compass, Teleporter and can exchange currencies
• Meditate with the Mystic to permanently power up your armor, even the new armor you find
• Give Metal (a new currency) to the Architect to permanently power up the world (like finding Health powerups in Jars)
• Buy and sell armor with the Blacksmith

Story Elements:

• Wrote a three act story. You are the captain of a Sky Sailor ship who must save your child from the clutches of evil.
• Act I is available now. Act II will come during Early Access. Act III will come at 1.0 launch.

Major Gameplay Enhancements:

• You can choose your reward after defeating enemies in each room
• Made the Wraithbind ability permanent across runs
• Increase Mana regen so hitting the environment to regain Mana is no longer necessary
• Made it so you keep 100% of the Gold, Light and armor you find during each run (used to drop 50% of Gold, Light and 100% of unequipped armor)
• You now power up abilities by finding Ability Point Orbs
• Showed how much each Ability Point improves an ability (like bonus damage for your Sword going from 0 to 33%)
• Increased the maximum ability levels from 3 to 9

Artwork & Visual Clarity:

• Created a sweet animation for when a boss dies
• Made damage numbers to or from yourself bigger so you are more aware
• Moved health and mana baubles to the edges of the screen for clarity
• Created a high-resolution, anti-aliased font that scales nicely to any resolution
• Used camera stops along the edges of floors so it naturally hides secret rooms
• Improved the artwork and aesthetic of the main menu
• Made all enemies have glowing eyes
• Improved the aesthetic of background colors
• Made the fog of war less dark, nearly transparent
• Make blocks in other areas darker

Character Creation:

• Expanded character color choices from 8 to 28
• Added an option to change character clothes color
• Expanded character skin color choices from 1 to 5
• Your child is show by your side; you can name your child

Other Gameplay:

• All the boss sidekicks die when the boss does
• Created two new mini relics: the Speed Nudger (+5% move speed) and Haste Nudger (+5% attack speed)
• Made chests locked until you defeat enemies
• Made floors flow effortlessly just to the right areas with minimal backtracking (especially floors 1-6)
• Created safe connector floors where you gain new abilities, learn how to use them and sometimes trigger story elements
• Created secret bridges that allow access to secret rooms
• Allowed holding ranged attacks to repeatedly fire as long as you have Mana (used to be a limit of 16 total attacks)
• Allowed holding Grenade attacks to repeatedly lob
• Allowed using the Shield use as long as you hold the button; Changed Shield Duration stat to Shield Damage Block
• Made relics have prerequisites so you won't find something like Wraithbinder if you don't yet have the Wraithbind ability
• Changed Gold & Light Retention stats to Gold & Light Multipliers
• Made Radruiel boss do damage when they land on you
• Guarantee the minibosses you find on the next run will be different than this one
• Increased the size of rooms with enemies
• Increased the amount of locked rooms
• Placed enemies randomly within rooms
• Created clutch defense: below 1 health you take less damage
• Reduced the Mana cost of Skybot Mines
• Reduced the amount of times you get hit from fire damage from 3 to 1
• Removed Health drops from floor 2 minibosses
• Instead of choosing New Run or Continue from the main menu, you simply Play
• Created the Give Up choice on the pause menu. It takes you back to the home area, similar to the old New Run choice.
• Decreased the size of floor 8

UI:

• Using the mouse, you can now drag and drop to equip armor
• When you gain a new ability, checkmarks are placed on screen to help you learn how to use the ability

Settings:

• Created the Aim Assist input setting which snaps your melee and ranged attacks to an angle matching a nearby foe (enabled by default)
• Created the Attack At Cursor input setting to always melee attack towards the mouse cursor (enabled by default)
• Created the Dash At Cursor input setting to always dash towards the mouse cursor (disabled by default)
• Created the Mouse Lock input setting which keeps the mouse within the window (enabled by default)
• Created a new HUD type in Video Settings called "Extra" which displays FPS, ping time, etc.

Localization:

• Translated the game into Franais, Deutsch, Italiano, Espaol, Portugus-Brasil, , , and

Stats:

• Started tracking some Steam stats like: Minions Vanquished, Wraiths Bound, Swoons, Highest Floor Reached

Other:

• Paused the game when Steam overlay becomes active
• Solved mouse scroll wheel being too fast when using a trackpad
• Make selecting menu choices with the mouse better when you have just used the mouse wheel
• Solved some shadow pixels getting left behind forever
• Animated the menu choices appearing
• Solved Gzrel boss getting stuck not attacking
• Solved being able to spam knuckles and prevent bosses from ever attacking
• Solved boss sidekicks sometimes having gigantic knockback
• Solved a rare issue with native controller support where the left stick would mostly move north or south
• Removed the option for a pixel UI
• Removed the option to skip all dialogue (you can hold B to skip story elements)
• Removed Checkpoints; it's all or nothing, baby
• Solved some rare issues where floors would be unsolvable
• Solved gold thief sometimes not appearing for an entire run
• Solved arrows flipping 180 when hitting target
• Solve mouse wandering on Windows 8; Yes, I actually tested it on Windows 8

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