Adds combat sounds, more spell sounds, and directional building entry.

• Changed the town so that buildings can only be entered from the door side. Previously if a location could be entered, it could be entered from all directions meaning that you could walk through some walls. That was a limitation of the map design code that has been overcome.
• All spells now have sound effects, and the spell sound effects have more variety.
• Combat now has hit and miss sounds. Sound effects can be enabled or disabled via the settings menu (escape key -> settings).
• Fixed an issue that could cause the game to freeze in some cases.

Changes:

• Custom portraits have been implemented. You can change a character's portrait by clicking on their portrait on the character sheet. That will let you browse for a file to use. Note that these portraits are NOT saved in the cloud and won't transfer across PCs (though if you have images with the same exact file path for the same image on both machines, they will still load). If a character's image is not found, it will pick a random one from the available character images. Be sure to save your game after selecting character portraits so they're remembered.
• The amount of hitpoints and mana that a character has gained will now be shown in the level up notification message.
• Improved the Thief class's ability to identify and disarm chest traps.
• Saving the game (resting) at an inn will now cure sleep on any characters affected by it.
• Immobilized (sleeping, paralyzed, etc) characters can no longer identify items.
• Fixed an issue with quests being duplicated on the quest log window. Also made some formatting improvements.
• Fixed an issue with losing focus while typing in the feedback form.
• Fixed an issue where quitting to the menu and then starting a new game could start the new party in an incorrect location.
• Some translation improvements.

This is a small update to improve a few things.

• Added tooltips to the spellcasting screen that give a quick summary of what a spell does so you don't have to refer to the manual as often. They'll appear when a spell button is hovered over with the mouse or has keyboard focus.
• Fixed one of the missing miner body recovery quests that wasn't behaving as intended.
• Updated the end-of-combat gold drop message to be accurate (it was still showing the amount of gold per character rather than for the full party).
• Added a message to the demo version that makes it clear that the exit to the second level of the caves is unavailable.

Fixes an issue that caused unique item loot drops to repeat.

This adds shadows and fixes an issue with selling in shops.

• Fixed an issue that could prevent being able to sell items in a shop.
• Added shadows to the game. You'll see objects like trees, rocks, and buildings casting shadows now.
• Some translation improvements.

Changes in the new Into The Inferno version:

• Your group can now have six characters instead of four. If you have less than 6 characters, you can add more at the inn. It's also possible to start the game with any number of characters from 1-6 if you want to start with a smaller party. Feel free to try to beat the game with a solo rogue.
• The character sheet has been redesigned, and items can managed by clicking on them. Mousing over or selecting an item will show its details if it's been identified.
• The status window now has character portraits. For existing parties, portraits will be selected randomly and will probably not be right for your character. They can be changed via arrows on the character sheet, and will save along with your game, so don't forget to save when you change portraits.
• Gold is now party-wide rather than per-character. There's no longer any need to pool or split money.
• Added item statistics to the shop window so you know what you're purchasing.
• The healer can also cure paralysis and disease now.
• Chests have been added to the game. They are very rare and are typically only found after difficult battles. They will have more gold and a higher chance of dropping an item, but are usually have dangerous traps. The skills of a thief, trickster, or mercenary are helpful in disarming a trapped chest.
• Fixed an intermittent issue with selling items in shops.
• Game controllers are now supported. Keyboard and controller mapping can be changed by selecting "Controls" on the escape key menu.
• The graphics system has changed. There is now dynamic time-of-day-based lightning plus weather and clouds.
• The view distance is no longer infinite. You can see 25 map squares at most, although this will only be noticeable in the wilderness zones.
• A belt equipment slot has been added and a few belt items have been added to the game.
• Added a handful of higher-level equipment drops to the Inferno levels of the dungeon.
• A quest log window has been added, and it will show what quests you have in progress.
• Sound effects have been added for casting spells and characters dying, and weather/nature ambience.
• German language support has been added.
• Some translation improvements.
• Improved some map icons, particularly in the city.
• The game's install size has been decreased slightly due to some build optimizations.

Changes in this release:

• Portuguese translation added.
• Added the "Exit" spell for paladins and healers that will take the party out of the dungeon when cast. This spell is 9th level, costs 10 mana, and can only be cast when not in combat.
• Added letter indicators to the map, so now you'll see "R" for recharger, "S" for shop, "I" for inn, "Q" for quest, "C" for curse removal, and "H" for healer. Not ALL special events or encounters will show up on the map, but this should help quite a bit with knowing what is what in areas that you've already explored.
• Added the "Damage" value to the character sheet after the slash in the "Attack" field. This will show the average amount of damage a character does per hit, which will be helpful for comparing weapons. (implemented a while ago but not announced/released).
• Added some message de-duplication so that if you, for example, spin around on the miners' tombstone in the graveyard, you won't queue up a ridiculous amount of messages that you have to wait for.
• Shamans and Healers now get a slight bonus to healing if they have high wisdom scores (+4% with a Wisdom of 19, for example). There are also a few items in the game that will increase a character's healing power, but you'll have to discover them through observation.
• Items can now give initiative bonuses (or penalties) to make a character act faster (or slower) in combat, and a bug with how initiative was calculated has been fixed. You'll find that a hidden character's "Late Attack" skill is much more useful now.
• Poison resistance now makes a character take poison damage more slowly. Before this change, it would only reduce their chance of initially becoming poisoned. This means that the Resist Poison spell is more useful now.
• When leveling up, characters will be notified if they gain new spells.
• There is now a confirmation popup asking you if you're sure you want to quit to the desktop or menu because losing your progress due to an accidental click on the wrong menu item is no fun.
• Fixed a copy-paste error where Luck and agility drain effects were being incorrectly displayed as "drained of intellect".

Changes in this update:

• In combat, there's a new command "Log" which shows the message log. This could be handy when you want to review what happened during the last round of a fight. To show it, you can click the "Log" button, or use the "L" key as a shortcut. It can be closed with the escape key, by clicking the cancel button, pressing the "L" key again, or "C" for cancel.
• When using the "Trade" or "Swap" commands on the character sheet, the target character's name will be shown below the number used to select them. This could be handy when you're not sure what position another character is in.
• Buy/Identify buttons will be grayed out in shops when a character doesn't have enough money to pay.
• Some small translation improvements.

The following changes are included in this update: - Added pool and split to shops, uncurser, recharger, and healer. - You can now pay to cure poison at the healer. - Spellcasting monsters will now heal injured allies if they can. - When equipping an item in an already-filled equipment slot, the new item will replace the old one if the character has an available inventory slot. - Added colored icons to monster groups that will show their relative health levels and status in combat. - Characters with the hide ability now also have a new "late attack" ability that will have them attempt to attack later in the combat round to benefit from being hidden for longer. - The character sheet has changed so that it shows a character's resistances to different damage types. It also shows a character's "attack" value, which is used for calculating their chance to land a melee attack on an enemy. This should help in identifying what effects various pieces of equipment have. - The battle experience reward has been increased by 50%. Characters will now level up faster.

I released the first demo build of Crossing The Sands on Steam today. https://store.steampowered.com/app/2505100/Crossing_The_Sands/ This is a very early build of the standalone sequel to Into The Inferno and there is a lot more content to add between now and release, but if you'd like to give it a try, it's good demonstration of how some of the game mechanics have changed, particularly the larger party size and new character classes. I plan to update it as development progresses, aiming for monthly releases, give or take. Enjoy. :)

The main focus of this update is healing amount increases for all healing spells, plus various bug fixes.

• All healer and shaman spells will now heal more damage. There are small boosts to the single-target healing spells, and a much larger boost to the group healing spells. As before, a healer's healing spells are more powerful than a shaman's.
• The mana cost of the cure poison spell has been reduced.
• Increased the damage amount for the harm spell.
• Fixed an issue with not having enough spell buttons on the casting window, causing the highest-level shaman area-effect spell to be uncastable.
• Changed how saved games load, so attempting to move while a saved game is loading should be much less likely (hopefull impossible) to cause location glitches.
• Fixed the door direction for one of the miner quest houses in the town.
• Fixed an issue where receiving an item when all characters have a full inventory would cause the game to crash.
• Fixed an issue with winning the game where it would jump to the end credits too fast to read the quest completion message.

In addition to updating the graphics for the Steam store page, here's a list of changes in today's update:

• Added an "overview map" that can be shown by pressing the letter "O" or clicking on the mini-map. This will show a much larger area of the map.
• When casting spells on the party, their hitpoints will be shown. When casting spells on monsters, the number of monsters in each group will be shown. This should aid in targeting your spells.
• Added elephant spirit (group +hp buff) and panther spirit (group +agility buff) spells for Shamans.
• Fixed an issue with the click detection area of the "quit to desktop" button being oversized.
• Messages for group spells being cast or wearing off will now be grouped together into a single message.
• Changed the armor class bonus/penalty for agility to be one point of AC for every 2 points instead of every 3.
• You will now get a small damage bonus when attacking sleeping targets.
• Thief characters will now get a small initiative roll bonus based on their level.
• Equipment operations from the character sheet like identify, trade, equip, remove, and drop will have buttons grayed out for empty slots to make options clearer.
• In combat, the escape key now functions as "previous" when entering commands, and "cancel" when selecting the monster group to attack.
• Fixed an issue with using the "previous" command in combat when the previous character is paralyzed or otherwise incapacitated.
• When starting a new game, you'll be reminded to save at the inn after creating your characters.
• Miscellaneous translation improvements.

There was a rounding error the math for natural mana and hitpoint regeneration that could cause it to stall for some characters. This has been fixed. In addition, the strength and regeneration spells now target the whole party. They have had a slight mana cost increase (+1 for regen, +2 for strength), but there will still be a large mana savings for buffing the whole party.

I just released an update with the following changes: - When the party saves the game at an inn, they will now be granted a "rested" state for a little while. This will cause natural HP and mana regeneration to happen at double speed. In addition, negative effects like poison, disease, or headaches will wear off twice as fast when a party is rested. This does not stack or refresh, so you'll have to wait for it to wear off before you can get the bonus by saving the game at an inn again (in other words, you to get tired enough for rest to help again). Thank you to Norard for the suggestion. - The price to identify items in shops has been reduced by a third (33.3%). The prices vary a little from shop to shop, so if you have something expensive to identify, it might be worth comparing prices. - The resist fire, magic, cold, and poison spells now affect the entire group rather than a just single character. - The armor, greater armor, and wisp spirit spells now give a higher armor bonus. - The bless spell now gives a higher bonus to hit. - Added an option to the escape menu to quit to the main menu. This should be handy for people who want to quit and load a saved game. - Added a volume slider control to the settings menu. - Target buttons for dead monster groups will now be disabled. This will make it less likely that you'll waste a fireball spell on a group of monsters that's already been killed. - The degree to which a character is aflame (number of stacks) is now shown in status. - The PDF manual has been fully translated into Spanish.

The full version of Into The Inferno has just released. Let there be much rejoicing! Saving The Game Changed for Release Based on player feedback, I've made a significant change to how saving works. The demo was designed so that you could ONLY save at the inn. While some people enjoyed the extra challenge, many others found the lost progress frustrating. This mode is now OPTIONAL, and it's called "hardcore" mode. You will be asked whether you want to play in hardcore mode when you create a new party of adventurers, and if you select "yes", it is permanent, and you will only be able to save at the inn. If you don't know what to choose, I recommend "No". In "normal" mode you can now save anywhere in the game by using the escape key menu, which now has a save button. You will need to save your game at an inn at least once so that this quick save knows what slot to store your party in. It will always use the last slot you saved to, and you can change that at an inn. Saved games in hardcore mode will show "(HC)" next to the location on the loading screen so you know what you're getting into. If you have existing saved games from the demo in the Steam cloud, those will come across with hardcore mode disabled. These changes are also in the demo.

Thank you to everyone who played the demo during the Next Fest. Your feedback has been very valuable and I've made a lot of small adjustments to game economics that should make the starting game a bit easier. - Characters now get a bit more starting gold. - Shops in town have slightly better base buy and sell prices by a few percent. This includes the healing temple and mana recharger. - A character's charisma score now has a greater effect on shop prices. It's a good idea to have the character with the highest charisma do the buying and selling. - Enemies of the Animal type will now drop a little gold. It's not much, and Humanoid monsters will drop more, but it should help some. Also keep in mind that any rounding remainders go to the first party member when gold is split. - Some body and leg armors have had their AC bonuses increased slightly, as have helmets and shields. A few more low-mid level armors have been added. - Poison status now shows the level of poison strength a character is affected by.

I just pushed an update to the game with these changes: - The Into The Inferno demo was updated today to contain background music during gameplay. This update adds more than an 80 minutes of music, with different themes for the wilderness/town, Goblin, Orc, Gnoll, Dungeon, and Inferno areas. Sound can be turned on or off in the settings menu that comes up when you hit the ESCAPE key, or via the main game menu's settings section. - Fixed an issue that could cause traversing zones by hitting the spacebar to re-click the last button clicked. This was very awkward, leading to questions like "How did I just cast that healing spell TWICE?"

I'll be loading up a mid-high level party and delving into the mines, caves, and inferno dungeons so you can see some of the late-game content. Watch the party fight terribly dangerous battles, and most likely, die.

I'll be starting the game from the beginning, and seeing if I can keep a party alive long enough to complete some quest battles. View the early game areas, and see what it's like trying to equip and train a party well enough to defend themselves from the many dangers of the world.

The demo of Into The Inferno has been updated. The changes in this version are mostly balance adjustments to make things a little easier for a beginning party and a few quality-of-life improvements to gameplay. Changes: - In character creation, add the option to drop a character and roll that slot over again. At the end of character creation, you are asked to confirm the party. That will be your last chance to drop a character. - Character creation screen now shows descriptions for races and classes when selected. - Added a tent to the eastern wilderness just outside the caves where the game can be saved. - Added a message log, viewable with the "L" key, that lets you see previous combat and popup messages. - Added a "Previous" button in combat that lets you move back to the previous character in combat. Note that combat will begin immediately after the last character in the party gives a command, so be careful with the last character. Note: I'm considering adding a config setting that will cause the game to ask you to confirm commands before combat, but I didn't want to add another keystroke for everyone. Let me know in the comments whether you do or don't want this. - Starting gold for characters has been increased again. It still isn't much. - Many minor balance changes to spells and monsters, including changes to damage resistances for different monster types. - Thief secondary classes Mercenary and Trickster now gain a small additional damage bonus for backstab with each level. This bonus is less than pure Thief characters get. - Casting classes now gain slightly more mana per level. - Added and/or adjusted a few new items. - Natural hitpoint and mana regen have been increased slightly, and the constitution bonus to regeneration has been increased. - A bit more music has been added. - Popup message duration can now be edited, in the same place as combat message delay - the menu that comes up when you hit the escape key. - Fixed an issue with saving the state data for cursed and unidentified items. - Made a huge amount of Spanish localization changes. The game is now 98% translated to Spanish. It still needs another editing pass, but the game will be fully localized on launch. - Adjusted the facing direction of some buildings and added a potion seller to the Gnoll village. Known Issues: - There's some trouble that comes up with drawing the minimap sometimes. That will be fixed momentarily.

I've uploaded an update to the demo that includes the following improvements: - Replaced the font game-wide. - Implemented Steam cloud saves that will be synchronized across computers. Saved games from the demo should now be available to load in the full release version when it goes live. - Changed save system to have three save slots. - When saving your game in the inn, there is now a "quit game" button that's available after you save. - In shops, unusable items will now be shown grayed out. - Characters now start with a bit more gold. It's still not much. - Immobilized (paralyzed, asleep, etc) characters will now have much worse armor class. - Added an overgrown path leading out of the east gate of the city. - Made some basic equipment items available as random drops in the town. Previously, town battles would never drop items. - Lots of Spanish localization progress with interfaces and dialogs. - Fixed an issue with the healer that could cause it to heal a character with a constitution modifer to less than full hitpoints. - Previously, a hidden character who fled battle would remain hidden for the next battle. Now a successful flee will remove hidden status. - Implemented the sound on/off button in the main menu config settings. - Monster groups with long names will now be truncated to a reasonable length on the target selection buttons in combat.