Hello again for yet another monthly update full of new features and bug fixes! Continuing on with the party system introduced with the last update, I've gone ahead and done what I said I was planning to do: Redesign the Boss Fight combat system.

Boss Fight Redesign

I've already uploaded a screenshot to the store page that shows the new layout of things, but there's been some modifications to the way it's played. One of the key aspects now is Dice roll persistence. When you or the boss defends, the rolled value persists on them until their next action. Any attack done against the opponent will act according to that stored value. If you roll the same value or less, your attack will do nothing, unless of course you do a manual attack. Manual attacking, now called Braving, is the same as before where you have to time your hits to do any damage. To do any damage at all you'll need to match more of your hits than how many of the enemy's you missed. For example: If you roll 4 and the enemy has a 3 roll on their defense, you'll have to time 4 of your hits and 3 of theres. If you match 3 of yours and 2 of theirs, you'll score 2 hits. If you match 2 of yours and 1 of theirs, your attack will be blocked. Matching all 3 of their hits will give you a clean shot at them. Going on with dice persistence, when you attack your dice roll will not persist, leaving your defense wide open. This works both ways, where if the boss attacks its defense is left wide open too. The AI is a bit more complex now, balancing who to attack and when to defend. It'll purposely attack allies who aren't defending, and it also has a slight preference to attack allies instead of the main character. Additionally, if you're holding "C" (default: Tab) when a party member becomes ready, they'll act according to AI as well that's teamwork oriented. So AI in boss combat is not just for the boss! Stacking modifiers onto the boss is no longer a mechanic, as the assistance of party members should be more than enough to compensate for it. Sacrificing to heal is still available, though. It should be noted as since sacrificing still costs items in battle, the amount is still relative to how many times you sacrificed in your dungeon run. AI execution also will never sacrifice, so if you need to heal someone, you'll need to do it manually.

Other fixes

There were a few other bugs found throughout testing the new combat system. As such, returning to the dungeon after a boss fight should be working a-okay now. Additionally, on deeper dungeons where there's a 100% chance of encountering lore, you will now actually encounter lore. In fact, before this update it was mechanically impossible to see any of the game's lore without using the cheat code in debug mode, so sorry about that! On top of that, I finally got around to fixing a logic bug with input, so now you can hold down a direction button to move in dungeons, instead of having to repeatedly click or press buttons. Feels good to have that back again, it's been almost a year since that was last possible.

Shareware/Demo version

Over on itch.io there's been a shareware version of the game available with limited features. A lot has happened in the steam version and I haven't gotten around to building a new version of the demo in quite some time. In order to encourage more people trying the game without having to buy it, the Demo will be available here on Steam as well, and it'll be updated to the latest build features. The itch.io versions will also be updated soon, too, for people who enjoy getting games through that platform. Thanks again for the feedback, bug reports, and supporting development with your purchase. Be sure to tell your friends, too, if you like the game. Enjoy the new features!