Happy Holidays, MicroKnights!

Today there\'s just a quick patch to fix a rare case where you could become out of bounds and get soft locked from progression.

The fix happens when loading a save file, and if the your location is detected as not within a room, you will be placed at the game\'s starting position instead.

MicroKnights, you may now pet the Shnail!

Hi MicroKnights, in today\'s update I\'ve added a major new feature and incremented the version number +0.1 to mark the milestone (*).

You can now pet the snail!

• Added ability to pet the snail. To do this, stand on Snail and hold the Aim button until you crouch. Then while the Aim button is still held, press any direction to do the various petting poses. NOTE: this will prevent you from shooting any weapon, so release Aim to exit petting mode.

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• Shnails will now give a reward after some time of being pet.

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• Enemies are no longer is \"blocked\" by pickups. This fixes seeing them flicker when a pickup is in front of them and they were trying to move.

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• Incrementing version number to 1.1.x, to indicate significant improvements over previous versions.

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(*) In all seriousness, the version number increase is more about stability in the game and all the Quality of Life improvements over the launch version. Though, being able to pet the snail does seem worth the celebration :).

Greetings MicroKnights!

Today\'s patch fixes a couple of nasty bugs, and adds some Quality of Life improvements:

• Fixed: Being stuck in a menu while game was playing in the background, if your controller disconnected while you were in a menu. Thanks to Toma for reporting this one! :)

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• Fixed: Button remapping menus broken. Thanks to FrancisVace for reprint this! :)

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• QoL: The in-game Keyboard and Controller config screens will now also show the alternate actions for the button, if you\'ve obtained the corresponding upgrade. The config screens in the Main Menu are unchanged.

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• QoL: The Secret Sensor Microcard will now flash its icon on the bottom left of the screen when detecting an item in the room. This should help if you\'ve got sound turned down, since you won\'t hear the secret chime. Thanks to pgc82 for reporting this! :)

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• QoL: The Secret Sensor will chime (including flashing icon) again after obtaining an item, if there\'s still another item in the room. If there\'s not, then the icon will hide and no chime sounds.

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Greetings MicroKnights!

Today\'s patch fixes the 100% item bug in Demo world, and some Quality of Life improvements to Fire Worm boss battle:

• Fixed: Demo scene showing 97.6% instead of 100%. Thanks to ProNerdy for spotting this!

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• Fire Worm boss now pushes the player away with a scream when transitioning to the next phase. This should help avoid being hit by the sub-sections if you were too close. Though note that if you\'re positioned in the corner that you may still be hit (so avoid the corners!).

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• Fire Worm boss will now destroy any current fireflies when doing its cinematic or when turning vulnerable. This should resolve the annoyance of weaving between them to try and land some hits on the head.

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Greetings MicroKnights!

Another quick patch, where I finally figured the pesky quiet music in boss fights.

• Fixed: Music going quiet during Boss Fights.

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• Fixed: Bug where Recharge Station didn\'t refill empty pips if Healthbar was full.

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• You can now use the Claw on the targets in the same room you get the upgrade.

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• Mecha Scorpion\'s weakpoint covers now bounce projectiles away like how grey doors do.

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Greetings MicroKnights!

Just a quick patch today with some minor QoL improvements:

• Fixed Health Pips, Missiles and Bombs ammo to be correct when loading the save file. This won\'t take effect until after your next save of the file, so the first load of the file in this build will still have the refilled bug ;).

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• Mecha Scorpion\'s weak points will now bounce projectiles off when they\'re armoured.

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• Ending Cinematic will now show the player in the Lava suit if it\'s obtained in this run.

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Greetings MicroKnights!

In today\'s quick patch, I\'ll try addressing the confusion with how Microcards and Microcells work. As well as sorting out a few bugs:

Some Microcards and Microcells explanation

• When picking up a Microcell item, the description text will say \"... need more for Microcards\", as a hint that you should find more of them. Once you\'ve obtained enough to equip 1 Microcard, it will then say \"Can now equip Microcard!\".

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• When opening the Microcard Equip screen, any full red bars will flash for a moment, to help indicate a card can now be equipped.

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Fixes

• FIXED: one case of the music staying quiet/off. But there\'s still a few others I haven\'t been able to pin down, so you may still experience this sometimes. Sorry, hopefully next patch I\'ll squash this bug for good!

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• FIXED: Missiles stuck in grey doors. Due to the nature of this, it actually could have triggered some other issues/bugs as well, so hopefully resolving this gives a better experience in general.

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• FIXED: A bug where switching in/out of Ball-Mode in Boss Rooms would push the player a little sideways.

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• Laser Moth now stops firing the laser when doing MidFightSequence.

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• Laser Moth should now keep itself inside the boss room.

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Greetings MicroKnights!

Yesterday\'s release saw the game get into the hands of many people. So many, that of course some bugs we never found earlier were found this time ;). Here\'s a fix to some major ones, including a few others:

New Boss Room Enter Cinematic

When you enter a boss room, we now play a short cinematic where the player character walks in a little as the doors lock behind them. The player will turn to look, and may react to the event as well, before the cinematic ends and control is given back to you.

Fixes

• FIXED: MechaScorpion can no longer push you to outside the room above. I was tempted to allow this when it was discovered yesterday, but it turned out to be much more work (and risky!) to allow it, rather than just preventing it from happening.

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• FIXED: silent crash when respawning from boss, related to musical blocks. This may not have affected anyone (the game would still run), but it was still worth me fixing in case.

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• FIXED: all Ice Rooms now have the correct music theme playing.

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• FIXED: Parrotto boss from being hittable while in its mid-fight cinematic. This prevents a soft lock where you could kill him while he\'s trying to start his second phase. NOTE: Parrotto is only in the Demo level.

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• FIXED: Lava pattern on large lava pools to always display. If you have seen plain solid-colored lava pools, this should fix that.

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You\'ll notice I\'m labelling these posts with the version number from now on, instead of the date. With the release of v1.0, the version number can now be seen in the Settings Menu on the bottom right of the screen. This is a good way for you to verify you\'ve definitely got the latest version.

Attention MicroKnights!

Microvania is now out and ready to play for PC and Mac.

Here\'s a quick reminder of the new features that\'s been aded since the Demo build:

• A bigger world

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• More enemies and bosses

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• Microcards and Microcells

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• Full Lexicon

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• Achievements

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Check this news post for details on the above.

Here\'s a few more additions that just made it recently:

• New Auto Save options, which can be set before the game starts and also from Accessibility settings.

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• The Hint Frequency is now also shown before starting a new game, and also from Accessibility settings.

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• Can now exit game from Boss fights (it will take your last save, which is the room just outside the boss room).

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• Lexicon is largely hidden by default, and will reveal each entry when you see it or obtain it.

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• Windowed Mode can now be resized, including a pixel perfect x1 size if you dare to try the game in its fantasy console accurate resolution.

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I hope you enjoy the game. I\'ve still got a few updates planned, so this won\'t be the last you hear from me :). See you all soon!

Hi Everyone,

Another day closer to launch, and another patch with some updates :).

• After creating a save file and before starting the game, you will now be presented with a \"Set Hint Frequency\" screen. Here, you can see the 3 options (Always, Once, Never), and a short description of what each one means. Many players have found the repeated Map hints to be annoying, but weren\'t aware that they could just change the Hint Frequency to Once or Never to remove that. Hopefully, this makes that a bit clearer.

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• Missiles and Bombs will now stop giving hints after a certain number have been obtained. This is for the Always Hint Frequency. This was done, as there was still a valid reason to want Always for other things, but not for these two most common items.

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• Added some non-gameplay visual details to various enemies. There\'s no gameplay effect here, but it does add some character to some of the creatures in the game.

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• Fixed crash when grabbing the final pickup in Demo level (sorry!).

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• Red Doors now change to White once unlocked. Being Yellow was a little confusing, as some players wondered why these doors auto opened, but other Yellow ones don\'t. Now, it\'s just white doors that auto open (or you can still shoot them too).

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• Fixed a soft lock bug, where exiting Settings Menu in the Title scene would not show the Main Menu buttons.

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Hi Everyone,

Another quick patch while lots of fixes and changes make it into the main release build (and also do the demo build). Changes below:

• Fixed an issue where the playercould get stuck between a tunnel and the level geometry, causing a soft lock as the player cannot move nor transform to get out.

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• When the game auto-saves, you now see a \"Game Saved\" alert on screen to indicate this happens. This is just before the boss fight, so it only affects the entrance to the boss fight in the Demo (though, in the full game, there are more places this can trigger).

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• While in a boss fight, you can now Pause and Exit the game. Now that it\'s clear an auto-save happened just before entering, the confirmation screen now shows when the last save happened.

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• Fixed seeing the Map hint during a boss fight.

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• Fixed Sound FX volume not using the saved levels during Main Menu.

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• Removed the high pitched click at the end of the UI Move sound effect.

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• Lexicon entries are now hidden by default, and will be revealed when you either see the enemy/boss, or obtain the item/pickup/upgrade. This does mean the auto appearing version from Main Menu can have lots of \"????\" entries. But it\'s overall a better player experience to discover these during play, and also adds some mystery (especially in the full game, where there\'s many more entries in the Lexicon).

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• Lexicon screen now shows the current \"tab\" and also the previous and next tab on top, to help clearer indicate how you\'re navigating through the lists.

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• Added a count to the top right of Lexicon screen, which shows how many you\'ve unlocked for the current category. This should help easier track whether any Lexicon entires are missing.

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Hi Everyone,

As release date gets closer, I\'ve added a few things that also affect the Demo build:

Video

- Windowed Mode (not Fullscreen) can now be resized. If you somehow have a screen that allows you see lower resolutions clearly (ie, the pixels are still visible to your eyes), then this might give you a more \"authentic\" experience - as in, this is what the game could have felt like on a fantasy handheld console from the \'90s. NOTE: if using one of the lower resolutions, it may look better by adjusting the Retro Filter (either Off, or use Coarse mode).

- Hopefully fixed any issues with ultra-wide or portrait mode displays. If you still have issues, please let me know.

UI

- Added Credits Screen, which includes some special thanks.

Attention all MicroKnights!

We\'re in the final stretch - Microvania will be released on October 23rd 2025 (24th for Eastern Hemisphere folks). That\'s in just two weeks!

Testing has been going well (a big thank you to all the testers!), bugs are getting squashed, almost everything is getting a polish pass, and many Quality of Life features are being added (you may have seen some of them in the Demo too!).

Along with more items and more secret passages, here\'s a few things to look forward to coming in the full game:

• A bigger world. The full game has over double the number of rooms than the Demo and is completely new and redone (ie, the Demo and Full game are basically two separate \"worlds\", not physically connected).

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• More enemies and bosses. As well as more enemies, there are also 4 bosses in the full game, all of whom are completely new and not featured in the Demo. Each boss (except the final one) is tied to a specific upgrade, and you\'ll need to use that upgrade in order to defeat the boss.

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• Microcards and Microcells. Microcards will allow you to customise your play style. None are required to complete the game, unless you\'re going for a 100% run. There are many options to choose from, from traversal upgrades like faster speed and double jumps, to utility functions like guaranteeing health drops or detecting hidden items. They require Microcells to power, so keep an eye out for the battery looking items throughout the game.

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• Full Lexicon. You may have noticed the Lexicon in the Demo, in the full game this is complete and fully accessible right from the start. Just open it via the Pause Menu, or you can wait a minute on the Main Menu for it to automatically appear and cycle through pages.

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• Achievements. There\'s a bunch of achievements, all varying in difficulty. Some of the achievement names might even give hints on what\'s possible in the game. Can you unlock them all?

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• Speedrunning. There\'s one achievement I\'d like to highlight, which is the Speedrunner Achievement. This one took a lot of tweaking to feel right, but I think it\'s at a good spot that should be possible for nearly all players. The key is figuring out which upgrades you want to take into the final battle, and then devising a suitable route for your run.

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So save the date, spread the word and I\'ll see you all on release day!

Hi Everyone. Here\'s another quick patch to keep the Demo build inline with the upcoming Release build.

Most changes are to the release, but a few things do affect the Demo build.

UI

• Fixed button icons to be correct for the current controller. This accidentally broke from the recent Unity Vulnerability Patch.

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• Lexicon pages for Missile and Bomb upgrades now also explain they open certain doors.

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• Fixed UI Sound effect triggering when you press directional inputs during the Item Get popup screen.

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• Fixed bug related to the screenshots in Save Files that was causing issues with playing a cloud saved game. If you\'ve had issues with playing save files from a cloud save, please go back to the original machine, re-save the game, and then try the cloud save again. It should work correctly now.

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Gameplay

• Fixed a minor silent crash due to the timed blocks system trying to update after the scene reloads. This would have been a hard to spot error, but the results would be something like certain things not working after you reloaded from the boss fight.

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• When shooting a door with a weapon that can\'t open it, the projectile now bounces off the door with a clear \"ding\" sound. This is purely visual and doesn\'t change any gameplay. But it felt necessary as an extra confirmation of \"hey, that bullet doesn\'t work here\".

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Misc

• Removed the Linux native build. This has been very hard to troubleshoot, as I don\'t have access to an Linux computer. But also, Windows build via Proton seems to \"just work\" pretty good.

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Hi Everyone. This patch is mostly about Unity\'s recent vulnerability exploit that was recommended to quickly patch. Along with that, there\'s a few other small changes from the full game that are also in the Demo.

• Updated Project Editor to address a Unity Vulnerability exploit.

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• Added short version of \"Item Get\" fanfare, which is used for the \"common\" upgrades (missiles, health, bombs).

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• Added sound effect to Lava Fireballs.

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• Added sound effect to Spaaht enemy when it spits.

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• Added missing hit/death sound effects to enemies that were missing them.

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• Added Cinematic Bars to Parrotto boss\' pre and mid fight sequences.

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Hi everyone. This update mostly brings the Demo build up to parity with the Full Game build. Here are the changes:

Gameplay

• Fixed case where the player could get stuck inside the breakable ice blocks.

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• Changed the 4 crumple block dash challenge (in the green room just outside Ice area entrance), to be 3 blocks instead. This challenge was designed quite a while ago, and well before I knew what the final game would have as challenges. It turns out, that there\'s nothing in the final game that is as hard as the 4 crumple block challenge. At least, nothing mandatory.

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• Fixed enemies flickering when an enemy projectile passes through them. This doesn\'t happen too often in Demo (maybe not at all), but can happen sometimes in the Full Game.

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• Fixed save files to now also save the state of killed enemies in the room. This fixes the issue of loading a game and having to deal with a full room of enemies, when you had killed them before saving the game.

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UI

• The main menu\'s planet (Micronus) is now a spinning 3D sphere, including a cloud layer that sits above the surface and moves independently.

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• Added the Lexicon screen. This will auto play in Main Menu after leaving it untouched for a while. It\'s also accessible from the Pause Menu. The Full Game version contains more entries in the Lexicon.

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• Added the Accessibility Menu, inside Settings Menu. Includes options for fire rate and respawn at boss. The Hints setting is now moved here.

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• Fixed Virtual Keyboard (when naming Save Files) to be correct width. No functional change, just visual correction.

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• Video Settings - Retro Effect now shows when it\'s on/off.

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• Fixed issue where Video Settings - Scanlines could be incorrect when first opening Video Settings screen.

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• Added a Controller Disconnect screen, as recommended by Steam.

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Misc.

• Steam Cloud Save supported.

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• Boss death VFX now uses triangles instead of squares.

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• Fixed Sound FX volume to correctly use the pre-saved level set when starting a new game.

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• Fixed missing transparent player display when moving behind some hidden paths.

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Hi everyone. This will likely be the final patch before the full release, as the main game is now ready and getting beta tested!

Gameplay

- Fixed seeking projectiles to no longer fire while game is paused.

Audio

- Added new original Boss Theme music.

- Lowered volume of ItemGet fanfare, so it closer matches music volume levels.

UI

- Created Video settings sub-menu, moved Fullscreen and Retro Effect to it, and added new Scanlines option to control scanlines thickness.

- Fixed Keyboard Composite Input Binding (the Move inputs) to work. This was accidentally broken in an earlier patch. Apologies for not noticing till recently!

- Added Back tooltip to Settings Screen (now consistent with Video and Audio Settings pages).

- Fixed an issue where some hints were not dismissed when you pressed the appropriate input.

- Fixed HintPopup height so when its bottom aligned, it is correctly visible instead of cut off at the bottom of screen.

- Set the default Music and Sound Effects volume to be 50%.

- Changed Copyright year in Main Menu to 2025

Hi everyone. With Frosty Games Fest now done (hello to our new friends!), it's time for another update. This patch ended up doing more than I thought it would. Most of these are from finalising the main game's world and features. Which btw, is getting very close to releasing!

Gameplay

- Feature: Map Screen now matches its colors to the terrain's colors (instead of generic grey).

- When recharging health at a station, after a few seconds the recharge rate will increase in speed. So total recharge time is now much faster when you have lots of health pips and missiles. This speed increase does not apply for bombs, as there's so few of them.

- When shooting a secret block, there's now a short sound effect to go with the reveal of the weakness hint.

- When a bomb detonates, there's now a short screen shake effect.

- The tunnel enemies will now auto kill themselves if they find themselves stuck for some reason. This mostly effects the main game, where there were some paths that was hard blocked if they got stuck inside a tunnel.

- When you do a moonwalk, there's now sparks. There is no gameplay effect, just a small visual nod to acknowledge the existence of the moonwalk tech ;). I wonder if there will ever be a practical use for it...

UI

- Fixed the navigation between Cancel and Accept buttons in the Virtual Keyboard screen to be neighbours.

- Fixed Virtual Keyboard layout: S and T were swapped by mistake.

BUGS

- BUG FIX: The DEL button on the Save File screen would run every frame.

- BUG FIX: The Map Hint that appears after some time or after fast travel can remain on screen even after the button was pressed.

- BUG FIX: Can't Ball-Dash in lowest grass terrain. This was due to counting that tile as terrain instead of as non-colliding tile.

- Bug FIX: Ball-Dash couldn't dash through pick ups. This is now possible, though note that since it's technically a short-ranged teleport, you don't grab the picks when dashing through them.

- Bug FIX: Potential silent crash when exiting to menu and playing the game again. This was related to a system from the full game that isn't really used in the Demo (though it's possible to trigger).

Hi,

I wanted to let you all know that Microvania will be participating in Frosty Games Fest 2025 this weekend from 8th June!

You can watch it on Youtube or Twitch . See below for times in your region:

• Australia: 9am AEST | 8:30am ACDT | 7am AWST (June 8)
• New Zealand: 11am NZST (June 8)
• Japan: 8am JST (June 8)
• USA: 4pm PDT | 7pm EDT (June 7)
• UK: 12am BST (June 8)
  

- Big performance improvement
There was a system created a few months back that ended up costing a lot to run, which in turn would cause either very low fps and/or inputs being dropped altogether (I can confirm that Jump felt unreliable in this case). I've refactored that system and reduced the CPU cost by 44%. So if you had some performance issues previously, please try again now with this patch.
- Any Map Marker's used in Map Screen will now show up on the top right corner of the game screen when you enter the room.
- Minor resource optimisation for Map Screen's markers.

- Dying on the boss will now respawn player to before entering the room. This was always an intended mechanic, I just hadn't gotten around to adding it till recently. The boss will feel a little harder now, but hopefully you've found enough Health Tanks to mitigate that! :)
- Added back the initial cannon fizzle (before obtaining Cannon upgrade), and instead made it appear more like a short puff of smoke. I recently had a playtester mention "oh, it looks like I have a gun, so why doesn't it work?". Which is a valid point! Adding the fizzle back in was the simplest solution here, as creating a new sprite without the gun is beyond the scope of the project at this time.
- Fixed hidden paths and lava to correctly show the player as semi-transparent when inside.
- BUG FIX: Pause or Map button required two presses first time in a session.
- FIX: Intel Macs accidentally unsupported in last release (sorry!).
- Bullets and Missile have new Physics Mass values. This was required for some features in the main game, but shouldn't have any effect in the Demo.
- Improvement to various systems and features from the full game that aren't in use in the Demo.

BUG FIX: Ball Dash can dash into the terrain, or through a pipe's borders.

There was a known "bug" where you can ball dash through the corner of a pipe to get inside it without using a proper opening, and also you can ball dash through a 'checkerboard' terrain pattern. This was kept in, as I thought it would make a fun exploit for speed runners (and I can always do the level design around this knowledge, so it wasn't too game breaking or something).

But recently someone found that you can also dash into a pipe from anywhere, AND also you can dash into the terrain (very bad, and definitely unintended steammocking).

So this patch fixes dashing into the terrain, and also fixes dashing through any pipe's borders. This unfortunately does mean the corner pipe exploit no longer works, but the corresponding 'checkerboard' terrain exploit still does. In the demo there was only one place this worked anyway, but in the full release I'll try to add a few spots where this can help speed runners.

Removed the "fizzle" effect, that is replaced once you obtain the Cannon.

This was an effect I added early in development after some play tests, because some players thought the button was broken as it didn't do anything yet. But it seems now it causes more confusion, so I've removed it.

A minor patch to add a QoL addition that just got implemented for the main game.

The Map Screen is polished up a little more, with nice movements to each room (instead of snapping to it), and a little bump when trying to move off the edge of the map.

Also, I've hopefully fixed the dreaded undetected controllers issue for good! [cross fingers]

EDIT: This patch has been disabled for now, as it broke controller support. Will bring this back in when we can confirm controller support is working again. For now, these below changes are not yet live. I'm really sorry for the inconvenience this has caused!
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- Revised Enemy Health values so they're less tank-y.
I'll list the tier values here, but hide them in a spoiler tag in case you don't want to know:
[spoiler]1, 2, 3, 5, 10, 15, 20, 25[/spoiler]
Also, I'm not listing which enemies use which tier, but that's fairly easy to figure out.

For reference, the player's attack values are:
[spoiler]1, 2, 4, 6, 16[/spoiler]

NOTE: not all these tiers are used in the Demo (but will be used in the full game).

- Fixed missing projectiles on the two horizontal Wall Plant Enemies in the upper middle Grass Room.

UX FIX: Xbox Controllers (and some others) not being detected.

Xbox Controllers (360 & Series X/S) should now work. Possibly, this fix may also apply to generic controllers, and maybe even the Steamdeck (hopefully).

If you're playing on desktop, please disable Steam Input in the game's Steam settings. We have native controller support in the game already, and we've found that Steam Input may produce unwanted results.

• Reduced the Player's Knockback duration, so you are now spending less time out of control.
• Increased the Player's Invulnerable duration, so it's now actually much longer than the Knockback duration (over x2!).
• Reduced Enemy push force, making it less impactful but more fair to Player (allowing them to move through enemies, sometimes).
• When respawning, Player is now invulnerable for 1 whole second. This avoids player getting stuck on an enemy while respawning.
• BUG FIX: Player was still hittable while in Invulnerable state (flashing).
• Horizontal Spike's hitbox reduced, so they're now a little more forgiving to Player.
• Greatly reduced the high pitches in Door Open/Close sound effects, which were grating to some ears.
• Fast Travel colors are now marked on the map.
• Hints are now auto-dismissed if the hint itself has appeared before (eg, Missile Upgrades) and the player has entered 3 rooms since the hint appeared.
• BUG FIX: Map Screen's Set Marker button was BallMode button. It is now the Menu Confirm button (A for Switch/Xbox, X for PlayStation)
• BUG FIX: It was possible to lose the Selection Cursor when pressing up/down on Save File screen.
  

BUG FIX: Previously obtained Upgrade Icons appear as un-obtained in the Map Screen, when loading a save file.