Hello Community,\n\nFirst and foremost, a heartfelt thank you to all participants of the closed alpha. Your feedback has been invaluable in helping identify bugs, inspire new features, and shape the direction of the game. This major update has taken longer to prepare, as I wanted to carefully integrate your suggestions while also expanding the game with fresh content. I am excited to finally share it with you and look forward to your continued support.\n\nWith this update, the demo and the closed alpha will now share the same version. The demo gives you a focused experience in the Transylvanian Dungeon, throwing you straight into a mission, while the closed alpha continues to offer the current range of content, mechanics, and progression.\n\nAnd now, let\'s dive into the massive changelog and explore everything this update brings.\n\n\n

ANIMALS

CHANGES

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• Changed animals to be able to walk on very flat rocks.\n
• Optimized path-finding for animals.\n

FIXES

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• Fixed animals to prevent them from walking under water.\n

AUDIO

NEW

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• Added audio occlusion so that sounds become muffled when they are behind walls or closed doors.\n
• Added an option to enable or disable AI-generated voices. When disabled, only characters with real voice actor recordings will be used.\n
• Added an option to toggle heavy breathing sounds from the player on or off.\n
• Added example sounds in the audio volume settings so players can hear the volume levels for ambient, music, SFX, and voice.\n

CHANGES

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• Changed player footsteps SFX to spawn slightly ahead in the walking direction to avoid the perception that someone is following behind.\n
• Reduced the volume of the player\'s out of breath sounds.\n

FIXES

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• Fixed audio volume settings so that values now correspond accurately, e.g., 5 of 10 truly sounds half as loud.\n
• Fixed player item sounds so that they are slightly louder on the right speaker when held in the right hand, and vice versa.\n
• Fixed a bug where the winning music played alongside the failed music when the player successfully completed the demo and immediately interacted with the horse cart again.\n
• Fixed torch audio when fire is lit and extinguished multiple times.\n
• Fixed ladder footsteps sounds that previously played based on ground level instead of ladder rung.\n
• Fixed missing footsteps at the castle entry when stepping on the edges of the carpet.\n
• Fixed missing echo sound effects inside the castle when corridors were far from the center.\n

BLACK MARKET

NEW

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• Added new purchasable equipment to the merchant.\n

FIXES

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• Fixed the size of newly created mission sheets on the bulletin board.\n

CHARACTERS

NEW

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• Added additional voice lines for the butler.\n
• Added additional voice lines for the museum director.\n
• Added a new voice line for the museum storage worker to clarify that collectibles should be placed on the table for donation.\n
• Added a new voice line for the museum guard to give a final warning before escorting the player out.\n
• Added a new voice line for the black market innkeeper to clarify that mission sheets and items should be placed on the counter to submit them.\n

CHANGES

\n
• Changed the voice of the butler.\n
• Changed the voice of the museum director.\n
• Changed the voice of the innkeeper. Special thanks to Squishy_0511 for the voice dubbing.\n
• Changed the voice of the museum storage worker. Special thanks to TheChaoticKirby for the voice dubbing.\n
• Changed the voice of the museum attendant. Special thanks to RandomBritishDude for the voice dubbing.\n

CONTROLS

NEW

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• Added double-click functionality in the inventory to quickly equip or unequip equipment.\n
• Added PlayStation input symbols when using a PlayStation controller.\n
• Added that opening the Steam in-game overlay will pause the game and block input.\n
• Added that disconnecting the current GamePad will pause the game.\n

CHANGES

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• Changed mouse/gamepad sensitivity increments to increase in 5-step intervals instead of 10.\n

FIXES

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• Fixed display of interaction keys when changed to a NumPad key.\n

CREDITS

NEW

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• Added artists and voice actors to the credits.\n

ENCYCLOPEDIA

NEW

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• Added source links to all artifacts.\n
• Added new artifacts.\n
• Added artworks to the encyclopedia.\n

CHANGES

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• Updated the table of contents for the encyclopedia.\n

GAMEPLAY

NEW

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• Added player slipping when walking on steep slopes, preventing hovering in midair or climbing rocks with angles greater than 60.\n
• Added visibility mechanics where lights and player movement affect how visible the player is.\n
• Added that animals and monsters can hear the player when taking damage, huffing, or completely exhausted.\n
• Added an endurance leveling system.\n
• Added a vitality leveling system.\n
• Added an objective to speak with the butler at the beginning to help new players understand their starting tasks.\n
• Added automatic activation and deactivation of holiday-specific events.\n

CHANGES

\n
• Changed dungeon difficulty scaling. Losing items within a dungeon level now makes it easier, while successfully transporting collectibles outside increases the difficulty of that dungeon level.\n
• Changed trap distribution so that the number of traps now depends on both dungeon size and difficulty.\n
• Changed trap mechanics so that all characters and objects can now trigger traps. This can create multiple cascading effects. Players can throw objects at trap triggers to activate them or lure small mobs, which will be available in future updates, into these to defeat them.\n
• Changed the objective description for introducing yourself to the museum director to clarify that the player needs to travel to the historical museum first.\n
• Removed the introductory exploration mission on the Nordic Island to get straight to the dungeon action.\n
• Increased the trigger area for the objective to find the dungeon on the Nordic Island.\n
• Changed main artifacts to spawn in rarity order until all have been discovered once. Subsequent spawns are completely random.\n
• Changed world travel so players can now move directly between any locations instead of being forced to return home first.\n

FIXES

\n
• Fixed an issue where the player could get stuck on rough walls, causing accumulated fall velocity and abrupt drops when moving away.\n
• Fixed a bug where picking up a collectible started an unfinishable objective in the demo.\n
• Fixed a bug where temporarily non-interactable objects could still be interacted with.\n

GRAPHICS

NEW

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• Added a system where initial graphic settings at first launch automatically match the player\'s GPU capabilities.\n
• Added settings to adjust brightness, contrast, and saturation of the game scene independently from the UI.\n
• Added settings to adjust the level of detail.\n
• Added settings for foliage density and visibility range.\n
• Added wind simulation for foliage.\n

CHANGES

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• Changed the aurora borealis illumination reflection to dynamically change over time instead of being static, without impacting performance.\n
• Changed Global Illumination to display a warning when activated, and a red warning at the highest setting due to its high performance demand in certain scenes.\n
• Changed player starting endurance and vitality in the Demo to higher levels.\n
• Reduced the intensity of headlamp reflections to make it easier to read text.\n

FIXES

\n
• Fixed a bug where lights would turn off when they were behind an open door.\n
• Fixed a bug where lights would turn off when they were behind transparent glass.\n
• Fixed wrong lighting on debris that made areas appear unnaturally dark.\n

HOME

CHANGES

\n
• Changed wood textures at home to appear less shiny.\n
• Changed display cases at home to properly hold player findings. However, these are still temporary and will receive full interactable glass cases in a future update.\n
• Removed existing artworks from home.\n

FIXES

\n
• Fixed a bug where drawers could not open or close if an object blocking them was removed to inventory.\n

HISTORICAL MUSEUM

NEW

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• Added room signs in the museum.\n
• Added informational signs for certain artworks.\n

CHANGES

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• Changed museum attendants second position to the museum entry to make interaction intentions clearer.\n
• Changed material properties for numerous museum objects.\n
• Changed free equipment provided in the museum.\n
• Removed pre-existing artworks from the Historical Museum.\n

FIXES

\n
• Fixed occlusion problem inside the museum storage room.\n
• Fixed a bug where lights would turn off when the player pressed their face to a museum wall.\n

ITEMS

NEW

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• Added new equipment: lighter, resin torch, and snow goggles.\n
• Added noise effects to certain equipment when used.\n
• Added artworks as collectible items, which can be kept, donated, or sold like artifacts.\n
• Added coin bags as interactable objects to collect money.\n
• Added the ability to start item placement directly in the world by holding the interaction key without first putting items into the inventory. If placement is aborted, the items return to inventory. Stacked items can now be moved and placed as a whole, e.g., drop a stack of 10 coins from inventory, then hold the interaction key to move and place the full stack.\n

CHANGES

\n
• Changed that chalk now draw also on boats, bulletin boards, mission sheets, archways, barrels, bones, books, cages, coffins, crates, firewood, rocks, stones, stone circles, vases, wood beams, and platforms.\n
• Changed the design of the advanced compass by adding scale lines between degree markings for improved readability.\n
• Changed descriptions of certain items for better readability.\n
• Changed descriptions of some mission sheets for improved clarity.\n
• Changed beast repellent to not only suppress the beasts\' scent detection on direct hit, but also to scare them away reliably.\n
• Changed ladder placement pivot point to the ground instead of the center for easier positioning.\n
• Changed placement rotation mapping for all items to make placement feel more intuitive.\n
• Changed object placement so that items can now be offset on a surface using R plus W/S keys. Previously this was only possible in midair.\n
• Changed item drop behavior so items are placed in front of the player for easier donations or selling. However, if no space is available, items will drop to the player\'s feet as before.\n

FIXES

\n
• Fixed an issue where the player has retained equipment in hand after death if items were in the process of being switched.\n
• Fixed a bug where the player still had stackable equipment in hand after death.\n
• Fixed a bug where bandages could not be used if six bandages were already used across multiple runs in the demo. Now all six can be used for each run.\n
• Fixed a bug where light-emitting equipment did not properly cast shadows when placed around while lit.\n
• Fixed a bug where some objects fell through terrain, drawers, or floors if placed in mid-air.\n
• Fixed a bug where mission sheets and wood boards fell too quickly during placement in mid-air.\n
• Fixed a bug preventing items from being placed behind objects to avoid glitches through walls and floors.\n

LANGUAGES

NEW

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• Added mod support for languages. Detailed instructions can be found in the ReadMe.txt inside (Cursed Dungeon Raider/Cursed Dungeon Raider_Data/StreamingAssets/Languages). My dear french speaking players, you can now edit my poor translation.\n

CHANGES

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• Moved the system language setting to the interface options alongside the subtitles language.\n

FIXES

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• Fixed an issue where changing languages repeatedly added extra text instead of replacing it.\n
• Fixed missing translations for some languages for the museum attendant.\n
• Fixed a spelling issue in museum attendant subtitles in English.\n
• Fixed subtitle overlap for the masked man in English.\n
• Fixed translation of the Whispering Hill in Ukrainian.\n

MYTHOLOGICAL MONSTER

NEW

\n
• Added that sleeping monsters can be awakened by very loud noises.\n
• Added that some specific monsters can interact with doors.\n
• [spoiler]Added that Will\'O Wisps can guide the player back to their boat.[/spoiler]\n
• [spoiler]Added the Black Knight to the Transylvania Castle.[/spoiler]\n

CHANGES

\n
• Changed monsters to be able to walk on very flat rocks.\n
• Optimized movement around sharp corners for specific monsters.\n

FIXES

\n
• Fixed a bug where monsters walked under water.\n
• Fixed a bug where monsters would get stuck in place when the player went out of reach.\n
• Fixed a rare bug where no monster spawned in the Nordic dungeon.\n
• [spoiler]Fixed a bug where the Golem roared during its throw animation.[/spoiler]\n

NORDIC DUNGEON

NEW

\n
• Added offering decorations to Nordic stone circles.\n
• Added collectibles to each Nordic point of interest.\n
• Added more boulders on the Nordic island.\n
• Added additional appearance variety for trap triggers, which increases with dungeon difficulty to make traps harder to spot.\n

CHANGES

\n
• Renamed the Nordic Excavation Site to Nordic Island.\n
• Reduced the size of the Nordic Island from 1 km x 1 km to 512 m x 512 m to enhance the exploration experience.\n
• Reduced fog density on the Nordic Island during daytime.\n
• Changed the Nordic sandy beach to a steep, wet, rocky coastline.\n

FIXES

\n
• Fixed a clipping wall that extended into the dungeon entry stairs.\n
• Fixed mushy textures on snowy rocks on the Nordic Island.\n
• Fixed snowfall rendering through the dungeon entry roof.\n
• Fixed lighting transitions while descending the dungeon entry stairs for all weather conditions on the Nordic Island.\n
• Fixed overwhelming lighting inside the dungeon entry when shadows were disabled in graphics settings.\n
• Fixed overwhelming lighting from smoke and poison effects in the dungeon during daytime or evening.\n
• Fixed flickering dirt textures on wooden floors in the dungeon.\n
• Fixed a bug causing leaking torch light in the Nordic dungeon.\n

PERFORMANCE

NEW

\n
• Added distance culling for animations and models of life forms to improve CPU and GPU performance.\n
• Activated texture streaming to reduce GPU memory usage.\n

CHANGES

\n
• Optimized performance and memory usage for language assets.\n
• Optimized vegetation to run much smoother, cutting CPU usage by up to 80% and GPU usage by 20%.\n
• Optimized general and shadow rendering performance in the Historical Museum.\n
• Optimized overall performance on the Nordic Island.\n
• Optimized memory usage on the Nordic Island, reducing VRAM consumption by 50%.\n
• Optimized memory usage in Transylvania, reducing VRAM consumption by 40%.\n
• Optimized CPU usage for flickering lights.\n

SAVE AND LOAD

NEW

\n
• Added the option to start a completely new game.\n
• Added loading bar quotes for each specific region.\n
• Added a savegame menu to manually save (only at home) and load (from anywhere).\n
• Added F5 Quicksave (only at home) and F9 Quickload (from anywhere).\n

CHANGES

\n
• Changed autosave system to save chronologically across three separate save files instead of a single file.\n
• Changed save behavior so the game now also saves automatically when starting travel, not just at home.\n
• Changed legacy Closed Alpha savegames. Players who already played must now repeat the introduction mission, as missions and their order have changed. If you have done only minimal progress, then I recommend to start a fresh game.\n

TRANSYLVANIA DUNGEON

NEW

\n
• Added random dangers to Transylvania.\n
• Added more flora for a higher vegetation variety.\n
• Added a castle library.\n
• Added forest cemetery.\n
• Added natural rock bridge on Dawncrest Ledge.\n

CHANGES

\n
• Reduced the size of Transylvania from 2 km x 2 km to 1 km x 1 km to improve exploration pacing.\n
• Renamed Transylvania locations Dusken Peak and Dawnspire Plateau to Duskspire Plateau and Dawncrest Ledge.\n
• Removed nearly all books from the village.\n
• Increased the forest density to get a more realistic and atmospheric forest.\n
• Increased slightly the intensity of the ambient lighting.\n
• Changed the texture of signposts to a more moldy, weathered appearance.\n
• Changed the visual representation of flies so that they are no longer flat flying textures, but have a realistic 3D shape.\n
• Changed chests and cupboards in Transylvania to be interactable.\n
• Changed statues in the castle to be destructible.\n
• Changed castle exterior lights so that they are all lit at the start, improving visibility in the dark.\n
• Changed that not only fences but also wooden barriers, ladders, and stairs in Mist Village are destructible.\n

FIXES

\n
• Fixed clipping of chopped wood on the wood cart next to the Mist Village.\n
• Fixed a floor hole next to the castle entry.\n
• Fixed gargoyle statues that were flying in the air next to the castle entry.\n
• Fixed shadow issues with castle towers.\n

USER INTERFACE

NEW

\n
• Added the main menu.\n
• Added buttons to report bugs and share feedback.\n
• Added a visibility indicator option to show how well the player can be seen by others.\n
• Added multiple crosshair customization options, including icon, color, visibility, and size. Players can also import custom crosshair PNGs into (Cursed Dungeon Raider/Cursed Dungeon Raider_Data/StreamingAssets/Crosshairs).\n
• Added a character window next to the inventory to equip the player character.\n
• Added an eyewear slot in the character window (more slot types will follow in future updates).\n
• Added input information in the inventory when hovering over items to show how to drag items and open their context menu.\n
• Added input hints in the bottom-right corner, which can be disabled in the interface options.\n

CHANGES

\n
• Changed player noise icon from a speaker to an ear to clarify it represents in-game noise rather than voice input.\n
• Changed world map appearance from a book page to parchment.\n
• Changed location icons on the world map to make them more distinct and easier to spot.\n