Reki here. I like to release updates around the winter sale to show my appreciation to everyone who's playing the game. Didn't have as much time this year, but I've managed to put together an update with a fair amount of content, quality of life, and some endgame stuff. Please enjoy, and let me know in the discord if I broke anything! https://discord.com/invite/DWz6kxt

NOTICE: Linux version will be delayed. Keep an eye on your Steam downloads for its release.

FEATURES

- Added character classes you can get from special fights across the world.

- Added daily quests to level up your class.

- Added a second aux slot. Quite a few of those items, so only having one slot was a bit of a waste.

- Added a new endgame boss with customizable difficulty and random drops.

- Added a character to the top of Grom Wall Ascent who increases your storage space by 2.

- Added 8 passive weapons that have replaced weapon-specific auxiliary items across the world.

- Weapon-specific auxiliary items can now be obtained from vault codes, which are usually found near the weapon they're from.

- Added 8 new prizes for tokens at arena.

- Adventurers Backpack no longer increases storage space. Instead creates random potions for you when you collect a lot of ammo.

- The Curse Shrine now gives Curse Sprouts, an edible item that gives you 5 curse charges when consumed.

- Added more terrain to lower Flooded Passages.

- Added a consumable item that drops off a certain moon's enemies that triggers your blessing.

- Added some events that have a chance of happening for the day.

- Added food items that augment your regen with various effects. Obtained from a very rare random event.

CHANGES

- You can now view and select the cards you've collected without having to be in their area.

- Curse Charges now drop ammo when they are destroyed from you getting damaged.

- Chests now open when you open your inventory nearby, and close when you close your inventory. You can still whack them with melee, which forces them to stay open or closed. Splight heart chest is unaffected by this change.

- Monster spawn limit now only applies to ecosystem spawned monsters. Ghost builds should feel a lot better, as well as certain battles against numerous foes.

- Trigger twice on swap attack once a minute is now Trigger ten times on swap attack once a minute. Thats still only a rate of 6 triggers a minute, which is nothing compared to even the basic trigger types. Hopefully it fills a reliable niche now.

- Trigger on life regen is now Triggers three times on life regen. Even at max regen, its situational on top of having a timer. More triggers per regen should make it more rewarding.

- Passive melee weapons no longer count as projectiles. Sorry monkey build.

- Survival mode in the arena now begins with double spawns, and gets harder every 5 waves or so. Ever wanted to fight 10 bosses at once? It's a lot of fun.

- Replaced lock blocks at garden exit with boss blocks. Hopefully will result in less players getting stuck in the starting area.

- Bosses are now protected against being instakilled by certain things, such as touching other bosses.

- Living Walls no longer drop their item directly. Instead, they tell you how to get it.

- Tweaked vault to open faster and clear the code once it gives an item.

- Nerfed Ancestor of Dust down to 10 luck. Its high luck was a carry over from when it was quite weak in the past.

- Cathedral ghosts now count as enemy projectiles.

- Copper monsters now get double life.

- Eckles are now visible above terrain.

- Golem Chain now holds items a little closer to you.

- Fool's Cannon swap attack now stuns. Hopefully will make this slow weapon a bit more versatile.

- Propellor bomb explosion radius and damage increased.

- God of Rats is now level 1-2.

- Added descriptions to gunner items.

- Attacking heart anchors no longer removes hearts.

FIXES

- Giant blob daily boss can no longer spam its jump noise if there's no room to jump.

- Fests now drop items from any modifiers on them properly.

- Added a failsafe for save-corrupted auxiliary items.

- Fixed a crash that happened if the first frame of your first melee attack after booting the game hit something.

- Fixed an exploit with Puffing Leech allowing for unlimited flight. You can still fly with it using certain methods, but this one was too easy.

- Fixed an issue with some finishing moves where you'd get locked in place for a bit after changing areas during them.

- Gunsmith workbench item slot is no longer visible when workbench isn't.

NOTES

The biggest thing you'll likely notice with this update is the class system. Classes can be leveled up indefinitely using points earned from daily quests, improving a stat associated with the class. None of the classes actually improves your damage directly, it's mostly just effect durations or non-combat stats. Nonetheless, they'll probably be pretty wild if you get a really high level.

In general, a lot of this stuff is testing for the sequel to Blessed Surface. In case you haven't heard, I'm making an open-world fps that builds on the character building elements of bsurf, hopefully bringing it to another level and offering more accessible gameplay. With this bsurf update done, I'll be turning my attention back to that. Stay tuned for updates on that next year!

Reki here.
I recently completed my own playthrough of Blessed Surface. I hadnt really been able to do a full playthrough before because I was always testing individual sections of the game. I found a couple things that I never fixed, so I fixed those broken things, added new content, and did some balance.

Welcome to the Gunsmith Update.



[h3]FEATURES:[/h3]
- Added 13 new heart trigger types you can get from a special event in Skungus Wilds.

- Added gun crafting parts obtained from the same event as above.

- Added a new random event to mines.

- Added a new goddess.

[h3]TWEAKS:[/h3]
- Greatly increased the crit chance of rage. Hopefully this will buff pure melee and make rage more useful beyond spending it on finishers.

- Balanced the levels of several gods to be more useful or less punishing.

- Attack movement Calamity Card gives more speed now.

- Poison Curse Charge Calamity Card now consumes charges, but gives you some to start with.

- Rapid attack Calamity Card now instead simply damages all nearby enemies.

- Transformation Calamity Card now always transforms you into a beast, and does not require that you have a transformation item. Its bullets are also slower.

- Lamonte Calamity Card only deals knockback to you now, and the life cells dont vanish constantly. However, it gives life less frequently now.

- Stun gong Calamity Card now also damages when it stuns.

- Rain Calamity Card now makes rain damage enemies. However, it only produces any rain close to the end of its effect, so youll need to invest elsewhere to take advantage of its devastating ability.

- Spinning fire sword Calamity Card now also damages when it burns.

- Luck boost Calamity Card now stacks luck on you a lot faster.

- Speed on rage Calamity Card now also autocrits nearby enemies based on rage. Instead of transforming enemies on hit, enemies now sometimes call for help when hit.

- Spell sealing trident from Calamity Card now follows you after 3 seconds if you go out of its range. Its bullets are also a little less numerous and are cleaned up after the cards effect is over.

- Malser Heart now summons ghost fish.

- Potions are now a potential reward from the Giga Machine.

- Getting wet from rain now puts out burns.

- Increased rain hitbox.

- Drubub Heart and Twilight-Devil Heart minions now work with the standard target picking system, and should be more reliable.

- Zhiqi armor plates now self destruct after 10 seconds.

- Plonker heart now gives its ammo over time to avoid infinite loops.

- Factions now display how much gold is required for the next rank

[h3]FIXES:[/h3]
- Fixed Scaithe Heart turret crashing the game.

- Fixed a bug that prevented Giga Pistol from gaining xp with its regular attacks.

- Stopped Mines boss from entering Giga mode in the arena.

- Fixed Scrapheart Heart creating invisible minions with no corpse in slot.

- Fixed shield circle from showing up after death.

- Cleaned up the damage crack effect on final bosses.



[h3]NOTES:[/h3]
Ive wanted to do gun crafting for a long time, and finally took a night to implement it with this patch. I was a little worried itd be a disaster, but it actually turned out pretty well. The guns certainly can be janky, but if they are, its your own fault for putting a pistol grip on a gatling gun. Course, you can use the recoil from a pistol grip gatling to send yourself flying, so maybe someone will like it. Im always surprised by the obscure items that turn out to be the cornerstone of someones build.

There are a lot of new and really weird blood types this patch too. Ive tied them into an event so there arent an overwhelming amount of types in the regular drop pool. Trigger on standing still is my favorite. Should be a lot of potential for some really busted builds.

Also did a bunch of balance on Calamity Cards in particular. During my playthrough, I found myself wanting to engage with the mechanic more, but not all the cards were fun to use, the risks being too great. The really powerful cards though, were pretty fun. So I rebalanced the ones that needed it to the style of a quad damage pickup. Not just a negative and a positive effect, but a powerup that puts you on a rampage through a difficult encounter.

Thats everything I have to say on the patch. Hope you have fun with it. Stay safe.

By the way, Im currently making a first-person shooter sequel to Blessed Surface. Its early in development, but you can follow progress at the discord: https://discord.com/invite/DWz6kxt

Reki here. Originally this was supposed to be a bugfix update, but working on bsurf relaxes me, so I added a lot of stuff. Update includes a pantheon of over 20 gods, endgame content, and more. Patch notes below, dev notes and images below that.

FEATURES:
- Added god shrines scattered all over the world, each with a unique new passive.
- Giga bosses now drop giga coins, which you can trade in for prizes.
- Added a scavenger hunt.
- Added an endgame scavenger hunt.
- Added a new random event to the Passages.
- Comets now drop orbs that summon another comet of the same color when consumed.
- Theres now an option for attack direction to be based on cursor position.

GAMEPLAY TWEAKS:
- Improved autotargeting of numerous projectile sources to not target your pets or friendly ghosts and be a bit more intelligent in general.
- Ancestor of Dust finisher now creates a stationary rune instead of dealing contact damage
- Adjusted Salt Dagger speed, timing, knockback, and hitbox to be more usable.
- Luck now displays any bonuses to itself in inventory.
- The Ancient Peach now removes status effects when consumed. Just to give this tutorial item a little character building potential.
- Marked a bunch of non damaging status inflicting stuff to count as player projectiles.
- Luck buffs last longer now.
- Magnetic buff is removed from your pet if it happens to get it, since its horribly annoying and not uncommon with a certain new feature.
- Sleep is also now removed from pets so they dont get stuck somewhere.

FIXES:
- Fixed an issue with luck not counting itself properly for a certain encounter.
- Fixed an item that was accidentally left at level 1000 by default.
- Fixed some issues with chests not saving item level properly.
- Fixed animations bugging out when swapping corpses during a secret finishing move.
- Grass no longer wiggles when you stand at its edge.
- Fixed certain blocks clipping the player and sending them through the ceiling on game load.
- Fixed bugs and crashes with dialogue and sleeping.
- Improved frozen debuffs ability to slow certain creatures.





DEV NOTES:
Its been real nice to come back after finishing and releasing my other game, Ufflegrim. After working on a turn-based game like that, going back to my roots feels good. I like how Ufflegrim turned out, but theres just so much more you can do when you arent limited by grid based movement or turns. Its literally having a hundred times the space and time to develop mechanics with.

The focus of this updates content is on making the world worth exploring again. There were already systems like monster hearts to keep you searching around, of course, but this update features a lot of stuff placed in specific locations. There are a lot of odd little nooks in Blessed Surface that dont normally get visited because theyre out of the way. This update attempts to put a little something in all those neglected spots.

Theres a new character building element in the form of god shrines, there are new secrets to find, lots of new endgame content, and a good amount of balance, tweaks, and bugfixes. Including one fix that was preventing a somewhat significant piece of endgame content from being accessed. Oops.

Anyways, I'm not sure where things go from here, but I'll probably continue to make games as my hobby, whenever I find time. After Ufflegrim, I'm pretty tired and I don't think I'm going to release anything for a while, though. On top of other life matters, I'd like to take my time to learn 3d game dev. My next major release will likely be a first-person successor to the ideas I explored in Blessed Surface. But who knows, there could be something before that.

If you'd like to keep an eye on my progress, feel free to join the discord where I post fairly frequent updates in the news section: https://discordapp.com/invite/DWz6kxt

Take care of yourself.

Reki here. I think of the titles for these updates on the spot as I write the patch note announcements. So don't get your hopes up, there isn't a pantheon of 20 immortals with complex, multi-phase boss ai for you to slay. There are a lot of new items and achievements though!


This is the development cycle of bsurf. As I fix issues from the previous patch, I can't help adding some more content, and thus more issues, inflating what was meant to be a small bugfix patch to a larger one. This way, even though the game isn't very popular, it can get some frequent content updates, depending on how long it stunlock combos me into developing more. I think I'm breaking out of the combo for real this time, though.

Thanks very much to anyone who's had fun with the game. While some may say it's not even worth 50 cents, I know that's not remotely true thanks to those who loved it and swapped stories about interesting things happening in their world. I designed this game to give the player stories to tell, so nothing makes me happier. Of course, there are actual critiques out there I'll always accept as valid, but for now, the game should be in pretty good shape for players capable of mastering it.

That's all outa me. Enjoy the update.

[h3]PATCH NOTES:[/h3]
- Added brand new items to many chests that only contained monsters.
- Added a new item to the area above Wilds.
- Added Calamity Card challenges and achievements to endgame areas.
- Calamity Cards now drop as a pickup you have to touch before they draw a card. These drop more frequently than the old system.
- Fixed behavior of a few held-down weapon attacks with directional attacks off.
- Replaced Belphs Urn swap attack.
- Gate Staff no longer does damage or is destroyed by enemies touching it.
- Toned down knockback of Fools Cannon normal attack.
- Improved Demon Bulwark normal attack mobility.
- Fixed Pound Chains knockback direction.
- A certain secret corpse now refreshes the duration of its effect when cast again.
- Spines now have various damage thresholds, some have had their effects changed, and they no longer spam up the bottom textbar.
- A few hints have been added to the ending to make sure the player knows a couple things have/will happen.
- A certain tree no longer disappears if you move too far in one direction. [Youll know what this means if youve encountered it. Otherwise, dont worry about it!]
- Nerfed Moldgut health a little.
- Curse Hive second attack pattern is now shorter.
- Fire from burning status now lasts shorter.
- Fixed Mine robot not dropping its item. [Its a fairly high effort item too, so please feed that robot a battery and get it.]
- Rapid attacks Calamity Card now only allows regular attacks and not swap attacks, since it prevented you from swapping weapons.
- Fixed creature transforming Calamity Card from making creatures despawn due to being nocturnal.
- Fixed some incorrect collisions in Skungus Wilds.
- Fixed a crash with Scaithe Heart passive.
- Fixed a crash with Foomie Heart passive.
- Foomie Heart trigger can no longer clip you through to different areas, and possessed creatures target picking is a bit better.
- Fixed incorrect description of Globin Heart.
- Amu Heart trigger can now give more than one tentacle.
- Fixed freeze and stun effects bumping around targets.
- Serpent of the Wall now drops a bunch of keys.
- Calamity Card bullets now count as enemy projectiles.
- Buffed a certain orange masks effect to last longer. It also now has a sound when it triggers.

Reki here. Like last patch, I've sniffed out more bugs and added a couple new items.

In other news, Blessed Surface is now on itch.io, DRM-free. The version of Blessed Surface on Steam is also technically DRM-free, but due to certain Steam related functions, won't run without it. The itch version is a good option for anyone that has issues running Steam for any reason. Just a simple zip containing the game.

https://ckrekii.itch.io/bsurf

Same price and Operating System support as the Steam version. Only differences are that achievements, cloud saves, and multiplayer are not available, since they all use Steam.

[h3]PATCH NOTES:[/h3]
- Added a very rare drop to living walls.
- Squid in Passages now drops something very good. Please try to kill him and get it.
- Garden boss no longer drops its gunner the first time you kill it.
- Calamity Card deck now properly clears when creating a new game.
- Fixed area travel bugging out after creating a new game.
- Fixed Foomies becoming unkillable with hp buffs.
- Fixed bosses respawned with souls not dropping items.
- Fixed issues with Mine boss battle in the arena respawning its non-arena counterpart.

See ya next time.

Reki here. Got fixes and stuff for the big update the other day, as well as one new item. I messed with the save directory a bit, please let me know if it freaks out and deletes your save or anything. Also, Steam Cloud saves are now active on Linux.

Discord: https://discordapp.com/invite/e73QHcX

PATCH NOTES:
- Old One-Eye now drops something pretty good.
- Increased rarity of magnetic and loaded on ravenous creatures.
- Fixed loaded status effect bullets shooting far from their origin.
- Added a tooltip to explain the Calamity Card system when hovering over a card to toggle.
- Fixed a crash with Hunter of Eyes finisher.
- Fixed a crash with Foomie Heart passive.
- Reduced population of Globins in Skungus Wilds.
- Added fullscreen options.
- Fixed windowed resolution going greater than display.
- Resolution and fullscreen options now initalize at start menu.
- Put save files in their own folder so they arent in a big mess next to the exe.
- Set up Steam Cloud for Linux.

As mentioned in a previous update, the game's price has increased. I hope the support I've given the game is enough to warrant it. If one is to judge value by playtime, the longest playtime I've seen anyone have of Blessed Surface is over 200 hours. Most definitely won't play that long, but it's totally possible, with the sandbox elements of the game.

If any more bugs comes up, I'll do my best to fix them. Hopefully will have other news to share soon. Focusing on Ufflegrim and other projects for now.

Till next time!

Reki here. The Linux version of the Exchange Update is out! Sorry for the wait. Its important to me to keep a this version up to date, as I use a lot of open source software myself. I worked day and night to fix the very strange Linux specific issues with the update.

Patch notes are here.

If any issues persist, please visit the discord for help: https://discordapp.com/invite/e73QHcX

Ive also noticed on my 10 year old Linux machine that performance is much better after the optimizations I did. If youve had issues maintaining a stable 60 fps, I hope this helps.

See ya next time.

Reki here. Its a pretty big update. Theres a new item type, overhauled npc dialogue system, a new boss, a new miniboss, a new creature, tons of new effects on existing items, etc.

As usual, the Discord is the best place to go for technical help or discussion: https://discordapp.com/invite/e73QHcX

NOTICE: The Linux version of this update is having crash issues. I will do my best to release it at a later date. Apologies.



[h3]FEATURES:[/h3]
- Rewrote most NPCs.
- Gave NPCs unique items theyll give you after going through enough of their dialogue.
- Added keyword hints to NPCs.
- The big bell now does something interesting if you ring it at 12 o clock.
- Added many new things to see throughout the world.
- Transformation items and spines now have a dedicated auxiliary item slot.
- Parasites can now attach to you as auxiliary items.
- Added a new creature shared between Skungus Wilds and Cemetery of Bells.
- Enigmas Corpse finisher has been reworked.
- Sunless Captain finisher now makes you wet.
- Added bone shotgun to Sunless Captain finisher.
- Added an additional projectile to Green Comet Form finisher.
- Increased speed of Red Comet Form finisher.
- Red Comet Form finishers tentacles now count as finishers, and are no longer destroyed by non finisher attacks.
- Ancient Cannibal finisher is now controlled with just the jump button, and can be canceled with the swap attack button.
- Ancient Cannibal finisher is now canceled when you take a hit.
- Ancient Cannibal finisher is now a lot faster and releases worms for every 10 segments.
- Hunter of Eyes finisher now collects eyes from strong creatures.
- Goop Gorger finisher is now slower and shorter.
- Goop Gorger finisher now releases goop.
- Ghost Knights Raccoon now counts as a finisher.
- Archive Scholar finisher now summons a magic scroll.
- Iron Bruiser balls now split into two upon hit, and give you an armor shard. Ten armor shards combine into a guard token.
- Iron Bruiser finisher only shrinks at the end of its duration.
- Ancestor of Dust finisher no longer gets stuck on terrain.
- Ancestor of Dust finisher now releases ghosts.
- Yellow-Weight Prisoner finisher shockwaves now stun, and they appear more reliably.
- Bandit Warlord finisher now has a guaranteed crit. [No other finisher can crit at all, to clarify.]
- Endgame corpse finisher has been made wider to better hit short creatures.
- Taraski Tooth swap attack has been made more consistent on max charge, and it now has a unique sound.
- Shortened Demon Bulwark swap attack.
- Added sounds to wind machines.
- Added a sound to bubble potion.
- Added an additional visual effect to bouncy status, as well as a sound.
- Added more lock blocks to the game to give more use to the recently updated key system.
- Added more chests with monsters in them.
- Improved visuals of starting area.


[h3]GAMEPLAY TWEAKS:[/h3]
- NPCs now leave the area after you talk to them enough to get their items.
- Ravenous creatures can now receive the loaded buff. However, both loaded and magnetic have been made rarer for them to get.
- Random encounter bosses are now limited to one encounter per day now.
- Gunners and Barrels now behave like edible items.
- Added some random variance on barrel firing speed so projectiles dont stack as much.
- Holding down an attack key after finisher now always performs that attack, to make longer finishers more consistent with attack queuing instead of charging another immediately after.
- Changed the sparkles on items to be easier to distinguish between equippable, edible, and temporary weapons. [I think there are barely any temporary weapon items left in the game, but it doesnt hurt to make the distinction. Maybe more in a future update?]
- Chests no longer have a time constraint on refreshing their original contents.
- Adjusted rarity of blood types to make the common ones show up more often, and Pink and Orange less.
- Bosses now heal every 10 seconds up from 30 seconds if you dont hit them for a while.
- Gold Monster Calamity Card now makes monsters Copper instead, to avoid confusion over them dropping gold coins.
- Boibes no longer require a finishing move to kill.
- Status effects are now removed on fast travel.
- Fogroot now removes knockback, so the sleep doesnt instantly get woken up.
- Nerfed tentacles to only give you one tentacle per status applied. However, the achievement is easier now.
- Tentacles now grab high life enemies, so long as they are not knockback resistant.
- Frozen should now slow things more consistently.
- Getting wet now extinguishes fires.
- Getting wet should be more reliable now.
- Plague Shield only applies tentacled to player now, while still applying negative effects to enemies.
- Removed grass from Overgrowth Trimmer swap attack. [Looked weird and theres new stuff this update that it overlaps with.]
- Goldbox Gunner stakes can now be destroyed with melee attacks, and are only solid if you step on them.
- The Oaksbane Rocket is now a lot stronger when its larger.
- Nerfed Chain-Walker heart passive.
- Cornet Heart trigger lasts longer now.
- Drubub Heart passive now keeps you at -85 alignment instead of -80.
- Pokeasite Heart stuns once again, since there are enough sources of poison in the game now.
- Reworked Priko Heart trigger.
- Poison Potion is now called Death Potion, to avoid confusion with the new poison status effect.

[h3]FIXES:[/h3]
- Optimized recent changes to keybinds to greatly improve CPU performance.
- Rage no longer decays while finisher is charged, as intended.
- Removed a conflicting time limit with alignment super modes that was making them last only a short time.
- Fixed some creatures having double the intended Calamity Card drop chance.
- Fixed a memory leak with Grimmit Heart.
- Fixed dropping certain small items instead of putting them in inventory slots.
- Made a bunch of projectiles transfer between areas.
- Several fixes have been made to Scrapheart heart heart heart.
- Airship shouldnt trap you against the ceiling any more.
- Belly boss water no longer stacks.
- Belly boss can no longer be pushed into the wall.
- Chests should no longer get killed by bosses. [Im looking at you, Gob.]
- Boggot Heart should no longer make ghosts of trains, chests, or breakable blocks.
- Stopped monster mods from stacking with the same type.
- Fixed a bug causing sounds of things offscreen to play. [Should fix multiple audio related issues.]
- Enemy Goop Gorger can no longer spam his sound as fast.
- Drubub can also no longer spam its sound as fast.
- Curse Dweller Curse Charge shot no longer spams sound.
- Calamity Card deck no longer carries over to new games.
- Fixed Super Mode Calamity Card.
- You can no longer use your shield or Blue triggers during Unbreakable Guard Calamity Card. [If you be usin this card, youre about to get scarred, yo yo.]
- Stopped Calamity Card text from stacking when you draw two more cards.
- Fixed a crash with Rurus.
- Fixed a crash with bouncy status effect.
- Fixed a crash with Pok Heart.
- Fixed a crash with Belly Calamity Card challenge.

[h3]REKI WRITES:[/h3]
With NPC dialogue and auxiliary items in better shape, I think the only thing Im truly unsatisfied with is the games multiplayer. Fleshing out multiplayer would be a big commitment that I can't really justify at the moment. As always, I'll monitor how well this update is received and make plans from there. Also, after the sale, there may be a price increase to reflect the content that's been added. That's all I've got, please enjoy the update!

Reki here. It hasn't been too long since the Redemption Update, and I've been busy finding bugs and crashes to fix. While I was at it, I took the opportunity to change some other things I wasn't happy with, and it quickly spiraled out of control into another large size update.



This also means that fixes will be delayed till that update is released. If you have any technical issues with the game, please ask other me or other players about it in the discord: INVITE HERE

In the meantime, here are some highlights of what's coming.

[h3]Upcoming Content:[/h3]

• The new spines and transformation items will have a dedicated auxiliary item slot. There will be other new auxiliary items as well.
  
• NPCs will be overhauled to have more gameplay significance. They will receive more dialogue, and in some cases, they will be rewritten.
  

• Many finishing moves will have new properties to bring them up to par and feel more powerful.
  
• There will be tweaks to some Calamity Cards.
  

• A real bad crash with Pok Heart will be fixed.
  
• A memory leak with Grimmit Heart will be fixed.
  
• CPU performance will be improved greatly.
  

Reki here. Todays patch focuses on bringing more weapons up to par, as well as continuing to fix any issues from the big update. Still looking into reports of hearts not giving abilities.

This will be the last of this round of patches aside from any critical fixes or community requests. Im very tired, but happy with how these game updates turned out. Hope you have fun with the weapon buffs from this patch.

PATCH NOTES:
- Souls, coins, and keys all float towards you now.
- Grong-Sages now get mad at you for a while if you hit them with melee attacks.
- Overgrowth Trimmer regular attack has more knockback, and its swap attack creates grass.
- Reworked Gauntlet of Fists regular attack.
- Ink Puncher regular attack greatly sped up and reworked to throw enemies behind you more consistently.
- Seed Alembic regular attack can now be held down to suck in enemies.
- Gave Hungry Bell a passive effect and added a couple more frames to its attack animations.
- Buffed Garden Keys rage gain on both attacks.
- Fixed Key Thief finisher not dealing rage damage properly.
- Sac Shotmallet now poisons enemies with its shots as the item description promises.
- Poi Heart no longer spams your text bar to show key count.
- Moldgut Heart no longer gives life for LOSING a status effect.
- Tweaked Maffpap Heart passive to work better with the timing of certain synergies.
- Fungused status effect should drop health off enemies more reliably now.
- Renamed +gun status effect to loaded.
- Fixed some sources of text that were being hidden under terrain.


As far as game development, Ill be turning my attention to Ufflegrim for now. My development time in general is becoming more limited, but I hope to release it early next year. Please wishlist and look forward to it!

https://store.steampowered.com/app/1072800/Ufflegrim/

See ya next time.

Reki here. This patch fixes a few bugs with the update and makes the key system a lot more convenient. I have more minor fixes and balance tweaks coming, but I wanted to get this patch out earlier since it solves a few key issues. Hope it helps!

Im hearing reports of a bug where eating hearts does not give their abilities. If you have any information on this bug, please let me know in the Discord server, as its proving very difficult to replicate and pin down. Other bug and crash reports are also welcome there.
Join the Discord

PATCH NOTES:
- Keys are no longer tied to areas and are no longer items. They autoequip when near a lock block.
- Poi heart passive has been changed to fit the new key system.
- Kinkin trigger effect now resets timer when triggered while timer is active.
- Calamity Card axe now attacks with you during swap attacks as well.
- Fixed an incorrect Calamity Card description.
- Fixed a softlock caused by teleporting to Garden without killing the Garden boss.
- Hopefully fixed a crash involving Foomies.
- Fixed spiky status effect taking up status effect slots despite having expired.
- Fixed tentacle achievement counting enemy tentacles towards total.

Reki here. Welcome to...


FEATURES:
- It now snows in the Belly of the Comet God during December. Look out for demonic snowballs containing a holiday surprise.
- Heart slots are now generic, able to contain any blood type.
- You can destroy non-anchored hearts by clicking on their slots in inventory now.
- Added many new heart blood types with new triggers.
- Hearts now beat on the players chest sometimes.
- All hearts now state their effects in their item descriptions.
- Calamity Card challenges are now active without picking them up.
- Calamity Card effects have been overhauled and now trigger only after picking up a card.
- Giga bosses are now accessed by beating the game.
- Giga bosses now drop a new item type.
- Added an arena where you can fight many of the bosses and creatures of the game. Includes boss rush and survival mode functionality.
- Added some secret endgame content.
- Added rewards for reaching the final rank of each faction.
- The Strange Radio is now a transformation item.
- New status effect, poison.
- Added a new fruit for poison.
- Replaced combination code that only spawned a Biter with something else.
- Added a little more lore scattered across the world.
- You can now rebind mouse buttons.
- There is now a second set of keybinds in case you need two buttons for the same thing.
- New game now carries over your options settings.
- Replaced Peeplits in Cathedral with a new creature.
- Added a new creature to Passages.
- Re-added some random encounter bosses and gave them loot drops.

GAMEPLAY TWEAKS:
- Lowered Hunter spawn rate significantly.
- Increased Hunters weapon drop chance to make up for the decrease in spawns.
- Hunter life lowered to 12.
- Rowu life lowered to 5 since theyre pretty hard to hit.
- Boofrog death explosion hitboxes dont linger as long.
- Xydrone laser no longer hits as quickly.
- Garden boss projectiles no longer drop bones.
- Made Giga Cemetery boss more unfair.
- Made Giga Garden boss more fair.
- You can now hit lesser enemies in the final area.
- You now have to more actively collect Hex Seed charges to gain a curse charge from them.
- Redfang Returner boomerangs no longer get stuck on solid things, and can be thrown more than once.
- Redfang Returner now cycles between its two attacks.
- You can now move a bit during Taraski Tooths regular attacks.
- Increased Taraski Tooths rage buildup on regular attacks.
- Reworked Cobalt Spears regular attacks.
- Bow of Fortune regular attacks are faster now.
- Its now much easier to let go of Pound Chains regular attack.
- You can now move a little during Demon Bulwarks regular attacks.
- Demon Bulwark swap attack has had some tweaks and can now be prolonged by tapping the button.
- Ghost Knight finisher doesnt lock you in place as long.
- Blue Comet finisher now has an additional section to its attack to put it on par with the other comets and its luck level.
- Curse Dweller finisher can now only launch up to three curse charges at a time.
- Melkrot Assassin finisher hitbox is now larger and also poisons targets.
- +gun now works on monsters, allowing them to shoot their prey.
- Nerfed +gun's firing rate.
- Restored magnetic to its former glory with some tweaks.
- Familiars can no longer be shot with gunners.
- Fruits no longer apply status effects to familiars while you are in your inventory. They are good pet food once again.
- Increase timer for pet starving to death upon loading up the game.
- Energized now heals monsters when applied to them.
- Tentacles now only grab creatures with 10 or less original health.
- Golden and other special monster types now spawn based on luck.
- Finishing moves can now only have their damage boosted by rage once. This stops finishing moves with long lasting projectiles from doing ridiculous damage.
- Finishing moves no longer get interrupted by your attacks landing. This was most noticeable with ranged weapons like the Hex Seed.
- Rage does not fade while youre charging your finisher now, as long as you arent hurt.
- You now stop shooting automatically after dying.
- Transformation items are now visible on your character.
- Transformations are now triggered once every three kills, but can still be maintained by killing once while transformed.
- You are no longer invincible while transformed.
- You can now use your inventory while transformed.
- You can now exit transformations by charging your finisher.
- Spirit portals now have text saying where they go.
- Water from Dubble Heart expires five times faster.
- Nerfed amount of fists generated by Maffpap Heart.
- Sroolu Heart tail now has a cooldown on its damage.
- Bellscum Heart now only has a 1/3rd chance to convert projectiles.
- Pok Heart trigger now destroys the bones when they do damage.
- Replaced stun effect from Pokeasite heart with poison.
- Scaithe Heart trigger now additionally increases rage based on luck during the effect.
- Several objects like the furnace can be destroyed by hitting them.
- Gold, soul, and curse crystals now drop loot based on luck.
- Ghosts no longer follow you. Instead, you must follow them to try to get their riches.
- Shrines now state outright what causes their devotion to decay.
- Adjusted a few sound effects that were too loud.
- Directional attacks are now the default when starting the game, as this seemed to be the common preference.
- Added rage and alignment stats to inventory.
- Removed random tips from inventory and instead added tooltips to all inventory stats.
- Endgame now respawns bosses, sets your spawn point to Kiriki Garden so you dont just go back, and gives you the option to activate Giga bosses.
- Comets and other random encounter creatures now despawn after a while of being offscreen.

FIXES:
- Fixed a crash involving monster target picking.
- Removed a certain embarrassing poem.
- Fixed end song not playing properly.
- Made music player system a bit more robust in general
- Fixed being unable to attack after attacking with too high of a weapon level.
- Items grabbed with gunner no longer mess up when hovering over other items.
- You can no longer use multiple transformations at the same time.
- Fixed Key Thief getting stuck when stealing stuff.
- Demon Bulwark can now be held with either attack button.
- Fixed Xydrone Heart trigger crashing the game.
- Fixed crashes with fungused status effect.
- Energized and rotting should work better now.
- You no longer slide around while attacking with a quick buff.
- Made familiars disappear less after you attack.
- Improved a couple inconsistent room transitions.
- Rain water fades in and out better now.
- Stopped a bunch of things from dropping life that werent supposed to drop life.
- Stopped cells at graves from escaping off ledges as much.
- Fixed gunner crosshair incorrectly resetting its target when target was out of range.
- Damage cracks should now show up on Giga bosses.
- Bosses no longer freak out when you fly past in a portal.
- Belly boss now plays its beam sound effect all the way through its attack as intended.
- Passage boss platforms now clean themselves properly. The platforms, not the pink things.
- You can no longer ruin your game by binding talk to the esc key. It can instead be used to clear a keybind.
- Right shift keybind now works properly.

+ Hundreds of other minor changes.

NOTICE: The new calamity card mechanics might not update properly on all systems. If you have an old save and don't see all three calamity card challenges in each area, please join the Discord server for help.

DEVELOPMENT THOUGHTS:
Theres a decent amount, eh? I wanted to wipe away all the regrets I had when developing this game. All the ideas Ive had but didnt have time to create, with a fresh perspective of the game after having not played it for most of the year. Ive gotten better at a few game dev things at least, after having developed my second work, Ufflegrim.

There was indeed a time when I regretted making this game. It was a huge commitment that ultimately not too many people experienced. The people who did experience it helped a lot in bringing out this update. I developed it, but I wouldnt have done so without the knowledge that there are a few people who might enjoy it. Thank you.

I'd like to talk about the major features of the update. There are a bunch.

[h3]Calamity Cards[/h3]
Keep an eye on the new Calamity Card system. While the other overhauls focus on making old mechanics better with new content and polish, Calamity Cards have been completely overhauled. You'll now have a Calamity Card deck with positive and negative calamity effects. You can randomly draw cards by killing monsters. While these effects are unpredictable and hard to master, they can be quite powerful for the player, and a customized deck will fit in with character building.

[h3]New Heart Types[/h3]
There's a very last minute feature that I only just added last night, new blood types for hearts. This is actually what I'm personally most excited about. The new triggers will allow you to make some quite elegant builds. I really want to see what everyone comes up with.

[h3]Endgame Content[/h3]
To challenge your new builds, there's lots of endgame content as well. Giga bosses have been moved to post-game since they don't work well with Calamity Cards. You'll get a new type of item for defeating them that will help bring your gunner to its full potential. There's also an arena with boss rush and survival mode options, and some other stuff I won't spoil.

[h3]The Future[/h3]
While my todo list for the game is mostly empty, there are a few things that couldn't fit in the update. Improved NPC mechanics, improved multiplayer, more interesting effects tied to corpses, and diseases, to name a few. I'm not sure if I'll be able to update again any time soon. I wouldn't say never ever, but it does depend on how this update is received. The game will be on sale momentarily for a massive discount, so we shall see. Ufflegrim will release early next year.



Thanks for reading. Good luck finding the rare heart blood types. I badly need sleep. See ya next time.

Reki here as always. I've done some playtesting recently and decided that the game needed a few crucial balance tweaks. This patch should make for a less tedious experience overall, as well as adding some interesting encounters in the form of ravenous monsters.


PATCH NOTES
- Added ravenous monsters. They are the rarest of the modifiers, gain a random buff every 30 seconds, have double health, and drop life when hit.

- Less hostile hunters will show up.

- Hunters will properly despawn now after being offscreen long enough.

- Life cells will always appear at any gravestone, and their numbers will not deplete.

- Life cells are no longer solid.

- You can no longer be damaged by a friend when playing online.

- Grong-Sages are now peaceful to the player since they were too strong for an early game monster. They are also diurnal now.

- Magnet status effect now pulses larger and smaller, and also doesn't affect its own host.

- Creatures shouldn't spawn on top of each other now.

-

Small patch today, but I hope that makes a good difference!

I've also updated the store page for Ufflegrim with a new gameplay trailer and new screenshots. It's turning out really well, check it out: https://store.steampowered.com/app/1072800/Ufflegrim/

And finally, join the Corpse King Discord server, I'll be distributing any alpha keys for Ufflegrim there in the future: discord.gg/e73QHcX

Reki here as always. Just a quick notice that there was an issue with achievements for the Wall area that has been fixed.

If you've already done those achievements, you can simply toggle your corresponding Calamity Cards on and off and you'll be granted them.

Sorry for the inconvenience. Cheers.

Reki here as always. I got a lot to go through today, so here's a table of contents. Pretty wild.

• 1. Announcements
  
• 2. Revival Update Patch Notes
  
• 3. Contests & Giveaways
  
• 4. The Future of Blessed Surface
  

Reki here. I've been busy, but bsurf ain't dead just yet.



The Revival Update is nearly ready. The idea is to cram as many of the things that didn't make it into the release patch as possible into the game. We're talking new content, balance, fixes, and polish.

Along with that will come a Linux version. As someone that uses a lot of open-source software, it's good to finally be able to support operating systems of the sort.

Finally, you can expect other announcements about the future of Corpse King Games, and some other events to liven things up.

I'm aiming at sometime next week for all of this.

Until then.

Reki here, at last. It's arrived, the final version. Ahh, what to say...

Note - Saves are stored in a new location. If you'd like to use your old save, you can rename the folder "AppData\Roaming\Blessed_Surface_Early_Access" to "AppData\Roaming\Blessed_Surface". Very old saves will likely have some bugs though.

With this patch, I consider Blessed Surface to be complete. You can still expect fixes, little bits of polish and balance, possibly optimization where needed. I'd still like to port the game to Linux/Mac if possible, though that is proving difficult. As for content updates, I'd like to do more if I'm able to. It'd be my dream to create a large expansion out of all the planned areas I had to scrap, as well as improved multiplayer... I'll give word on whether it's possible or not in the future.

This release update is meant to complete the game. Everything from sound effects, to consumable monster hearts, to the giblets that fly out when you hit enemies. A lot of odds and ends that just needed something to be complete, but it's not slacking with brand new content either. There are some new random events, new bosses, new weapons, new armor. And of course, there's an ending.

I'll shut up for now and stop pushing the patch notes further down. Will probably be streaming the release version at https://www.twitch.tv/rekiiiiii at some point, with a key giveaway!

CONTENT:

- Added shrines and devotion system, and made old and new content work with it.
- Added all remaining monster hearts.
- Added some chests with nasty surprises inside.
- Readded some old friends.
- Added new random events.
- Added a new NPC.
- Added soup to Belly.
- Added new attacks to all giga bosses that didn't have any.
- Added boss parasites.
- Added secret new weapons.
- Added new traps and mechanisms.
- Added many sound effects.
- Added unique giblets to most creatures.
- Spiced up Passages with some new tiles.
- Spread creatures from the final area across the world in favor of some better fitting challenges.
- Added Steam achievements for all Calamity Cards, and one for reaching the ending.
- Added an ending.


GAMEPLAY TWEAKS:

- Smoothed jump physics.
- Heart abilities now show up in inventory.
- Melee attacks will now phase through pets.
- Pet inventory slot color now changes to match the pet's ribbon color.
- Adjusted the rate at which you gain light or dark alignment.
- Zhiqi armor plates no longer drop health.
- Adjusted level design between Cathedral and Basin.
- Bosses now heal one damage per thirty seconds if they don't receive any damage during that time.
- Added water to Kiriki Garden's well.
- Rotting debuff now stops enemies from healing when applied to them.
- Increased attack cooldown of upwards melee attacks, to prevent flight with them at low levels at least.
- Particles released by Seed Alembic now do some knockback to enemies.
- Chain-Walker Heart trigger ability changed to only break after a certain amount of time.
- Added shadows to many sources of text.
- Edited NPC dialogue.
- Bell-Worm Heart no longer requires equip mode.
- Meat-Imp Heart trigger ability now does damage.
- Plague-Blocking Shield can now inflict rot debuff.
- Nerfed Watt Gunner damage speed.
- To prevent certain unlucky events from happening early on, you now start with 50 luck instead of 0 upon game start.
- Knight's Bloodsword sprites tweaked slightly.
- +gun should no longer stack, instead refreshes duration when multiple are applied.
- Fruits can now be eaten by wild monsters.
- Balanced several overly difficult calamity cards.
- Added text when someone connects to or leaves your game.

FIXES:

- Fixed monsters unintendedly being golden and key-holding at the same time.
- Fixed monster healing not removing damage visuals.
- Fixed keys being dropped from monsters despawning offscreen.
- Set types on creatures that were not correct (size/hardness).
- Heart abilities that give you status effects should leave effects gained without the ability alone now.
- Fixed Belly Calamity Cards 2 and 3 appearing after collecting only 1.
- Fixed certain Calamity Cards instantly completing.
- Fixed Monster Heart names not updating with blood type when you take them out of storage.
- Main menu music adjusts to the volume you set in options now.
- Fixed bugs with Curse Hive phase change.
- As a failsafe to ecosystem, monster populations are now capped to 20 in case it ever goes berserk and tries to add hundreds of creatures that it shouldn't.
- Sroolu ai tweaked to get stuck less often when changing between ground and flying modes.
- Fixed Fest Heart not dropping.
- Fixed Garden-Drone Heart passive not working on controller.
- Fixed Maffpap Heart fists not being limited properly.
- Fixed Melkrot Assassin finisher not doing damage.
- You can no longer quit the game upon dying to save your location. It was useful for testing, so it was kept in till this point.
- You can no longer charge finishing moves while dead or fast travelling.
- Fixed music playing twice.
- Fixed music starting and stopping when dead.


AND A LOT MORE STUFF REKI PROBABLY FORGOT/WAS TOO LAZY TO WRITE DOWN

Reki here.

Blessed Surface will enter full release on February 27th.

Check out the release trailer:
https://youtu.be/TZThmlvnFfA

I really tried to give an honest show of what makes the game special in this final trailer. It's the 6th trailer I've done for bsurf. Hopefully an improvement over the first one I put together, which had no music, kind of empty, lifeless scenes, and I was embarrassed of even as I uploaded it. Good times. Aaanyways...

I'm done with all essential content for bsurf. There are still a few loose things I need to get done, of course. But it has a beginning, an end, and a decent amount of stuff in between. I will take the time between now and release to polish, balance, and add as much extra content as I can.

Until then.

Reki here as always. It's been a little while since the last progress report. I wanted to write another just so it doesn't look like I'm slacking off or have abandoned the game, so here goes.

First, a reminder of why there are only written updates at this point instead of actual patches. With most of the content completed, release isn't too far off. During this time, I'm working at 200% to cram in every last bit of polish, last minute content, etc. to get the game done in time for the unannounced date I'd like to release on. I'll also need to work on a release trailer, as well as seeing if I can port the game to other operating systems. Lots to do, hence the decision to not update the game more till final release. Can't afford to worry about whether I've left in gamebreaking bugs in smaller patches at this stage, we'll do it all at once.

Content
The Monster Heart system is completed. There are over 50 hearts in the game, one for each ecosystem spawned enemy. With one trigger and one passive effect each, that's over a hundred unique effects to build your character with. Giving a sense of value and potential to the creatures of bsurf was a big goal, and I hope this system has achieved that.

NPCs still have work to do. I'd like to go through and edit all of them. I've never written much dialogue, especially not with an unusual conversation system like bsurf has, so it definitely needs some touching up. If there's time, I'd like to add one or two more as well.

I've added some more booby traps into the game. I actually created quite a few and tried placing them around, but I found that adding too many doesn't enhance the experience. It's cool to have a few danger zones full of them, but otherwise they just become a chore, and annoying. There's already plenty of gameplay created by the creatures of each area.

When I'm done with everything else, I'll add as many random events as I can. I have a fat list of ones I wanna do, hopefully I can get to at least some of them.


Sound Effects
Sound effects are the biggest workload at the moment. All boss and creature sounds have been finished. Currently working on heart ability sounds. Once those are done, it'll be smooth sailing with only a few miscellaneous other things needing sound.

The End
The ending has been fully functional for a while, but I've recently decided to make the buildup more impactful. I moved the creatures from the final area into the rest of the world to make space for some more fitting challenges, which I'll be developing after sounds are done.

After that comes NPCs, and after NPCs, hopefully, a little spare time to add more random events. Then I edit together the best trailer I've ever made, see if I can port to Mac and Linux (no promises), and release the game as finished.

This will probably be the final bit of communication until I have a release date. Please look forward to final release. Once it's all done, I fully intend to write an agonizingly long post reflecting on the development of Blessed Surface, and looking towards the future. But until then, I'll keep working until bsurf is something I can be proud of.

Reki here as always. This will be just a little report to set expectations on what you can expect for the release update, as well as going over the current state of development.

Monster Hearts
All but five monster hearts are done. Every single monster spawned by the ecosystem will have one. You can possess enemies, grow a long serpent's tail that drags along behind you with physics, cast bonestorm spells, equip cursed and illusory weapons, release an additional blast attack when you unleash your finisher, grab your own bullets out of the sky as items and eat them for ammo... There's a decent variety.

Factions and Covenants

The faction system was an unexpected feature I suddenly thought of and wanted to add. Save up those gold coins, they'll finally be actually useful. You'll pay coins at various shrines to rank up with the corresponding faction, and gain various perks. Some old content has been converted to work with this system, and there's new content as well. I think there are... 7 at the moment? With two more I'd very much like to do if I get the time.

The Ending
The ending is now complete, but there are a couple things I'd like to add to make it as good as it can be. The current final area of the game also needs some love to properly build up to this ending.

Sound Design
To focus on refining bsurf's mechanical systems, I've had to largely save this part of the game for last. I'll begin working on it in a big way very soon, with the goal of giving nearly everything decent, unique sounds.

Polish and Balance
Since many systems have been developed extremely quickly, there is no doubt a fair amount of balancing required. This will come as the very last thing, with whatever spare time is left over after feature development is complete. Calamity cards and monster hearts in particular I'd like to work on a bit further. I'd also like to add a few extra bits of content to various areas.



That's pretty much everything I'm promising for release. I'll end things here with a few choice pieces out of the patch notes.

- Melee attacks will now phase through pets.

- Pet inventory slot color now changes to match the pet's ribbon color.

- Added boss parasites.

- Smoothed jump physics.

- Some old friends have reappeared...



p.s. goblins suck

Reki here. As promised, the Overhaul Update is here. My army of imps gave their lives to deliver this update. Every single one of them. But it was well worth it. Bsurf is in better shape than it ever has been. ... I mean, it should be after every update.

Check out the update trailer!
https://youtu.be/HgYbVeDN8zI

The focus of today's patch is on combat, adjusting it to be easier to learn and less punishing. There is also a new tutorial that should make getting into the game a breeze. Of course, that's not all, there's lots of new content too. Among other things, every boss now drops a weapon and a gunner, perfect to test out the combat changes. One thing to note, bosses will be a bit harder because armor points are no longer a thing. I intend to add a few minion creatures to each boss that you can kill for health to resolve this.

Before today's patch, I would have been hesitant to recommend bsurf. "Wait until the Early Access is a little further on", I would've said. Now, I think it's reached that "further on" state. I really hope everyone has a good experience with it. Thanks to everyone who's supported the game and helped it improve.

Unless anything comes up, this will probably be the last update before final release. You can expect a big patch on that final release, adding the rest of the monster hearts, many more sound effects, any loose bits of content or polish, and the ending.

Please enjoy the update. There's still a bit more to come.


CONTENT:
- The tutorial has been redone for the fifth time.

- Added a main menu.

- All bosses now drop weapons, and Garden boss's weapon has been given improved sprites.

- Rewrote most of the nail message text in the game, and added new ones.

- Added unique insults to all spirits, and unique descriptions to all graves.

- Added background tiles to all areas.

- Added a new creature and its heart, shared between Cathedral and Mine.

- Curse Charges now make a sound when destroyed or used.

- There is now a sound for eating things.

- Added a few living wall spawns to all areas.

- Enabled boss music.

- Added a death sound.

- Added sound to Bloodsword projectile.

- Added gameplay tips to inventory.

- Added option for controller vibration.

- Added new secret passages to a few areas.

- Added an unused weapon to Belly.

- Added a new random event to Belly.

- Monsters now have a visual effect for healing.

- Added the Madman's Monument.

- Added a secret... Good luck finding it.

GAMEPLAY TWEAKS:
- Single weapon mode is now standard.

- Autoaim gunner mode is now standard, with improved accuracy.

- The cooldown for missing an attack has been removed. Weapon levels still allow you to attack a tidbit faster.

- Finishing moves no longer cost health. You can now simply hold the attack button to charge and release them.

- Blocking no longer costs health, and now has a shield animation. It has a cooldown if you use it and block nothing, however.

- Almost all enemies now drop health.

- There are no longer armor points. Health has been increased to 5.

- Light and dark modes are now triggered by regenerating health, or blocking.

- Stemmie Heart passive nerfed.

- The limbless skeleton's limbs are no longer restricted to appearing in October. They have been given a different, secret timing restriction.

- Fungused debuff now drops health for the player.

- Moved some pieces of content to different areas.

- Burning debuff can now only spread by contact to things that aren't already on fire.

- Nerfed Relic Sword swap attack movement abilities. It was fun, but too good for too little effort.

- Lowered Green Comet health.

- You can now choose not to chain stomp with Plonker Heart by holding down jump.

- Bellscum Heart trigger sleep gas is now stun gas instead.

- Pingpi Heart passive nerfed to only work with significant knockback.

FIXES:
- Fixed gamepad binds not saving properly.

- Fixed Pudon spike throw not doing any damage.

- Fixed Taraski Tooth displaying itself twice.

- Fixed a crash when dying.

- Fixed some bugs with the Wall boss split phase.

- Fixed that your first attack after dying wouldn't work.

- Gave Skungus Wilds creatures the white outlines that all creatures have.

Reki here. While the update isn't quite ready yet, I wanted to jump in and give a quick report on the state of things.

Combat Overhaul
I've experimented with many ways of making the combat more intuitive, and gutted the tutorial, adding a better spaced out one that gives the player more freedom.

The changes relevant thus far are as follows:

- A new tutorial has been added.

- Single weapon mode is now standard.

- Autoaim gunner mode is now standard, with improved accuracy.

- The cooldown for missing an attack has been removed. Weapon levels still allow you to attack a tidbit faster.

- Finishing moves no longer cost health. You can now simply hold the attack button to charge and release them.

- Blocking no longer costs health, and now has a shield animation. It has a cooldown if you use it and block nothing, however.

- Almost all enemies now drop health.

- There are no longer armor points. Health has been increased to 5.


I believe these changes are the best I could achieve without destroying combat balance. I hope the game will click much better for new or returning players. It'll definitely be less painful to learn.

The Update
The update containing the combat overhaul and new tutorial is planned to launch next week. However, that's not all that'll be included. Look forward to many new weapons, new gunners, and more.

This upcoming update will be either the last or second to last Early Access update. I'll try to squeeze in as much content as possible. Of course, there are still a good amount of missing creature hearts, giga bosses with no extra moves, and other bits of content that will be developed before final release. Not to mention balance and polish. However, the more core features take priority, and at this stage of development, it is smoother and easier to deliver content en masse.

Thanks for the support, please look forward to next week's update!

Reki here.

Please click here to take the Combat Overhaul Survey

Combat has been an issue in Blessed Surface, for a long time. It's a system that I was satisfied with, but is simply too unintuitive to teach new players. I believe it to be the number one thing holding back Blessed Surface from being enjoyed by many. After all, it doesn't matter how many new features, it doesn't matter how much fun stuff I add, if many players open the game and instantly despise the way combat works.

I want to save this game I've worked so hard on. I don't want people to regret spending even the cost of a lunch on it. I don't want to be worth that little.

Thanks much for taking the time to fill out my survey. After this, once I've made adjustments, I'll see where we're at, and if I need to make further changes.

Reki here. I've been setting booby traps all over my house for the holiday season, but finished that in time to release an update here. It's been a while, but don't think for a second that I'm not working on the game, even if updates are no longer weekly. That decision was purely so I could deliver fatter updates like this one, that complete a feature.

Getting into it, the meat of this update is the completed Curse Card system. They are now called Calamity Cards, with each having a unique challenge to complete. Once that challenge is complete, you'll be able to toggle them on, activating a difficulty modifier and granting you a boost to your luck level.

Other than that... invasive species have been tweaked to make for a better late-game experience, there's a new monster heart, a few new random events, various polishing tweaks. The soundtrack is now in stereo, so the file size will be a lot bigger.

Please enjoy the new challenges. Plenty more content and balance to come before the game's end.


CONTENT:

• - Added two additional Calamity Cards (formerly called curse cards) to every area for a total of 20 new unique challenges.
  
• - Fossil's Basin boss now has some sound effects.
  
• - There is now a different footstep sound for stepping on softer terrain.
  
• - Holy Cathedral of Dust boss now drops a gunner.
  
• - Added Fire-Puff Heart.
  
• - Added new random event to Sootyhag Mine.
  
• - Added new random event to Belly of the Comet God.
  
• - Added new random event to Skungus Wilds.
  

• - Calamity Cards now give you +5 luck when active.
  
• - The soundtrack is now in stereo.
  
• - Invasive species now have a chance to overwrite each other when the area's monster species slots are full.
  
• - Time of day tint now changes color more smoothly.
  
• - Curse Charges now disappear when you are hit instead of over time.
  
• - Luck now gives you a better chance to find rare random events.
  
• - Boggot Heart trigger ghosts will now attack enemies for you.
  
• - Secret buttons are now much smaller.
  
• - Rurus and Fests are now native to the Holy Cathedral of Dust in addition to their other locations.
  

• - Fixed a bug preventing Grong Sage from dropping its heart.
  
• - Rain and puddles properly fade away smoothly now.
  
• - Fixed a crash involving displaying text.
  
• - Monsters shouldn't drop their hearts before dying now.
  
• - Fixed a bug with keys pointing the wrong direction.
  
• - Fixed the luck of comet armors not updating properly.
  
• - Fixed many perk related projectiles that were not being counted as player owned.
  

Reki here. I think I'm a weekly update or two behind. The reason for this is that the bulk of content for the game is complete, and the remaining work is mostly stuff that will take longer and require more design work. The holidays have also been a factor in delays. Regardless, I am still working on the game, and will continue to do so until it is finished. From this point on, however, updates will no longer be weekly. They will be released once chunks of content are finished and I am satisfied with them. I'll break down what remains, in the rough order I'm going to develop them in:

• The game will have an ending.
  
• The Curse Card system will receive 2 more challenges for each area.
  
• More secret passages and traps will be added.
  
• A few more creatures may be added.
  
• A few more random events may be added.
  
• Any missing creature hearts will be added.
  
• Sound effects will be added to everything.
  
• Everything will be polished and balanced.
  

Reki here. Just a quick note that multiplayer is now fixed. So sorry it took so long for me to notice it was broken by the removal of the old tutorial. In case anyone does not know how to access the multiplayer, I stickied a post in the Steam Discussions with a quick summary of everything. Hope you're enjoying the weapon level update!

Reki here. Instead of working on more urgent things, I couldn't resist developing some extra features that I've been excited about. I'll get right into explaining those, no centaur jokes this week. Not that I've ever joked about centaurs, they're a very serious threat, after all.

Each corpse now has a fixed luck stat, which affects how often you see albino creatures, golden creatures, and key-holding creatures, as well as a few other bits like eggs. Ones with more difficult to use finishing moves tend to have higher luck to make up for it, while the strongest ones will have very little. Hopefully, this will introduce more reasons to use different corpses.

Weapons now have levels. They start at zero and gain xp every time you hit something with them. Higher levels will reduce the attack cooldown for missing an attack. While that system is in place to reward accurate, high-speed attacks, the levelup system should be a well fitting counterpart to it, rewarding you long-term for landing many attacks over your career, opening new potential. There is no level cap, but the effects of leveling will end at level 100, where your weapon will no longer have any cooldowns.

Lots more cool stuff to come. Please enjoy this week's update.


CONTENT:
- Added weapon leveling system.
- Added corpse luck system.
- Added an unused creature to Skungus Wilds.


GAMEPLAY TWEAKS:
- Text now quickly scrolls in instead of appearing all at once.
- Renamed Dustyhag Mine to Sootyhag mine, to better fit its industrial theme and distinguish it from the Holy Cathedral of Dust.
- Adjusted Garden-Drone's attack.
- Golden and key monsters now spawn anywhere.
- Buffed Demon Bulwark directional attack.
- Priko Heart trigger jars no longer count as monsters.
- Plague-Blocking Shield now displays a goo in the direction that it is equipped to, while blocking.


FIXES:
- Fixed crash involving keys.
- Fixed a couple bugs with tentacles.
- Fixed some crashes and bugs with holding down wield mode to swap equipment.
- Rowus more reliably damage you instead of just changing direction.
- Fixed some bugs with Boggot Heart undead.

Reki here. This update is very late in the week since I've been barricaded in a shed, hiding from the recent centaur invasion. Their hooves were cruel, but I was able to escape at the last moment. However, some stuff for the game that won't be in this update has eaten all my time, so I only had three minutes to cobble together and release this update in its entirety. That other stuff is still ongoing, so there probably won't be an update next week. Anyways, on to this update's features:

The largest amount of work this week went into decorating the world with a tileset of clutter objects. In other words, there is a lot of trash scattered about now. There is still some work to be done with transitions into other areas being inaccurate.

Next up, a bunch of hearts were added or tweaked. There are some truly weird ones that I hope will be a lot of fun. Actually, they're all weird.

That's mostly it this week. I'll go ahead and say what the other stuff I'm working on I mentioned is.
- First off, I have to put together a new trailer for the game since the two I'm currently using are old, and really old.

- Next, I'm planning on adding a weapon leveling system. I've long been jealous of games with levelup systems to encourage you to fight and progress.

- Then, I need to add many more curse cards to the game, each with their own unique challenge and difficulty modifier.

- Finally, I've felt for a long time that the game lacks anything worthwhile to keep collecting long-term. I'm thinking of adding a new type of collectible item you can buy with gold coins. More details on that when I make sure my idea works well. I promise nothing.


CONTENT:

- Added clutter visuals.
- Added a sound for critical hits.
- Added Meat-Imp Heart trigger.
- Added Bellscum Heart trigger.
- Added Priko Heart trigger.
- Added Grimmit Heart trigger and passive.
- Added Plonker Heart trigger and reworked passive.
- Added Dubble Heart.
- Added Scrapheart Heart Heart.
- Added a new random event to Belly of the Comet God.
- Added a light visual effect to various objects.
- Added text displayed when you die, noting the amount of bosses left in the world. This number will not be accurate for preexisting saves, but may be corrected by reviving bosses.
- Updated Skungus Wilds boss battle with new attacks and balance.
- Updated Bakyarl Prison boss sprites.
- Added text to potion delivery cats.


GAMEPLAY TWEAKS:

- Buffed Pudon Heart trigger.
- Bells of the Cemetery now only require 3 hits to break.
- Adjusted Spindle of the Waxing Sun to make it easier to juggle more types of enemies.
- You can now swap out your equipment for those in your storage by holding down wield.
- Gunners on auto-mode aim through walls now.


FIXES:

- Fixed spirits crashing the game if you started the game touching one.
- Fixed a bug where bleed would stop you from jumping temporarily.
- Fixed inconsistent knockback with player melee attacks.
- Monsters that don't require a finishing move to kill no longer die and drop pickups if not damaged by the player.
- Damage that deals no knockback no longer removes existing knockback.
- Tikes no longer damage each other.

Reki here. Last week, I think I promised a new font for the game, and music. Music is here. New font, changed my mind. Changed some colors and stuff of the current font to make it more readable instead. Music is still a WIP in some aspects, in general I think it is too quiet at the moment. Also, the file size will be much bigger because of all the audio files. Next week will hopefully be a fat content update. More curse cards, more monster hearts, more everything. Till then.


CONTENT:
- Added music.
- Added 9 new fruits across the world.
- Added new random event to Fossil's Basin.
- Added new random event to Dustyhag Mine.
- Added new random event to Holy Cathedral of Dust.
- Flooded Passages giga boss is now magnetic.
- Comet God giga boss now does damage with water spouts.
- Added information on various mechanics.


GAMEPLAY TWEAKS:
- Souls now refill your health to three.
- Changed the background and color of game's main font and added shadows.
- Buffed Bell-Mankyu Heart passive.


FIXES:
- Probably fixed NPCs getting lost forever. Saves from before this fix will need manual adjusting, as those NPCs are still marked as in use even though they aren't.
- Souls, gold coins, and other items now come to the player when stuck in the walls.
- Fixed some bugs with chests failing to keep track of which items were in use.
- Fixed native fish in Dustyhag mine not replenishing its population due to a typo.
- Fixed Flooded Passages boss taking up an ecosystem monster slot and being replaced by other monsters when all slots were full.
- Fixed Curse Cards being completed without actually killing bosses.

Reki here. Today's update is the beginning of an effort to give the game some more direction for the player. That effort, I call "Curse Cards". You can find Curse Cards as drops from enemies. You can then view them in equip mode. Each has a unique name, and will list a challenge for you to complete. Once you have completed the challenge, you can toggle the card on and off and it'll add a difficulty mod to the area.

At the moment, there are only cards for killing bosses, one for each area. The difficulty mod of all these is to unlock the "giga" mode of each boss. Giga mode triples the boss's health, gives it new attacks, and changes its color. Only the Krunki Garden giga boss is fully complete at the moment, the rest do not have additional attacks yet. Rest assured, they will all be given a brutally challenging, but fair giga mode.

In other news, I have obtained all the software necessary to make fonts, so expect at least one new font to be added to the game at some point, created by me, one more suitable for the game's small resolution than the current one with weird thick lines. Also, I intend to begin adding the soundtrack to the game next week no matter what, please look forward to it.

Happy Halloween!


CONTENT:
- Added Curse Cards to every area.
- Overhauled all boss text.
- Dramatic screen darkening effect added to all boss intros, and removed the same effect from Bandit Warlord encounter.
- Added Stemmie Heart.


GAMEPLAY TWEAKS:
- Merged all potion delivery cats into one that drops a random potion, as they were simply too widespread.
- Pet now snaps into position upon entering equip mode.
- Pet will now drop the item it was carrying upon death.
- You can now block during regular attacks, or cancel into a finisher.


FIXES:
- Made crosshair collision smaller so it doesn't touch multiple buttons in menu.
- Fixed a crash with Boggot bullets.
- Priko Heart passive tail no longer disappears between areas.
- Updated code involving fire effect spreading.
- Fixed some bugs involving reviving bosses.
- Fixed a bug with bouncy status effect bouncing you while midair.

Reki here. Now that a lot of irritating things are finished, it is time to add and polish content. This update is pretty big, I'll try to summarize the important changes... The final area is accessible, there are some new monster hearts and revamped old ones, some new creatures in various areas, changing your color with scraps looks a lot nicer, and the one-button directional attack option now works with dual wield mode. Uhh, I think that's all the major stuff. The game's in a better state than it's ever been. For the future, a soundtrack is still coming, I'm planning on a feature to give proper objectives, and of course, just more of everything. Please enjoy the update.



CONTENT:
- Finished basic level design of Dawn and added creatures. Three of these were repurposed from the old tutorial, two are brand new.
- Added an unused parasite to Skungus Wilds.
- Added an unused parasite to Belly of the Comet God.
- Added a new fish to Dustyhag Mines, and a water section for it to spawn in.
- Rorus now jumps and moves back while shooting.
- Pudon Heart trigger now fires a projectile to apply its status effect.
- Pingpi Heart trigger now creates a projectile destroying circle.
- Boggot Heart undead and ghosts now die after a while. The undead also knock the player and creatures upwards.
- Winged-Ruru Heart trigger and passive overhauled.
- Biter Heart trigger now has a unique visual.
- Added Amu Heart.
- Added Boofrog Heart.
- Added Poi Heart.
- Further improvements to albino visuals.
- Changing your color with scraps now properly hue shifts. This means that those color changes will be as balanced looking as the original colors were.
- Added pumpkins to halloween event areas.
- Tutorial now shows controller prompts when applicable.
- Familiar Shrine now has unique tiles.
- Equipping a key now displays a needle pointing to the correct area to use it.


GAMEPLAY TWEAKS:
- The directional attack option now works in dual wield mode in addition to single.
- Monster projectiles will now hurt other monsters that aren't the intended target.
- Pudons will receive the spiky status effect if they try to grow another spike when all 3 are already grown.
- Items will now disappear after being offscreen too long.
- Maffpap Heart trigger buffed.
- Bootle Heart trigger buffed.
- Wumworm Heart trigger now only deactivates when you press jump.
- Added some measures to stop status effects from spamming sounds and notifications when quickly applied and removed.



FIXES:
- Cornet shouldn't get stuck biting any more.
- Fixed small water puddles not splashing.
- Otimized code for spawning cells as it was some of the oldest in the game.
- Thorns now show status and damage particles.
- Fixed crash when involving pet's inventory being open when entering a different area.
- Made blocking more consistent for both the player and enemies.
- Fixed some leftover code in the tutorial that was sometimes stealing weapons and armor.
- Marked a ton of stuff as enemy projectiles so they work with interactions.
- Fixed Ultimate Weapon Strend getting stuck in the floor after being revived.
- Probably fixed Ultimate Weapon Strend somehow spawning tons of spinning platforms upon death.
- Fixed Priko not dropping its heart.

Reki here. As promised, there was no update last week. There almost wasn't one this week as well, since I was enjoying myself reading my extensive vampire romance novel collection and forgot about it. However, I managed to desperately cobble together something at the last minute. It is the largest update I've done thus far. Lemme break it down.

The main new feature is the new tutorial. The old tutorial area is totally gone. I hated it and I deleted it. You just start in Kiriki Garden now. It explains the basics of combat and item management. It still needs some polish and doesn't go over absolutely everything, but there's more to come in future updates. I hope that new players will at least be able to survive.

The other major thing is the halloween event. It will run through the rest of October.

Other than that, there are a ton of tweaks that I hope will make for a better general experience. A lot of undocumented or background changes. Some of them very major, very secret things. For instance, the final area is starting to be built, and you can even see a little bit of it, though it's been left not accessible for the most part. And a DJ ai is being built to handle playing music in an intelligent way for when the soundtrack is ready enough to begin adding. Very secret.

Anyways, I'm sure there are some bugs with such a big update, so I'll leave it there and get back to work. Please enjoy.


CONTENT:
- Added a new tutorial.
- Added an event for Halloween.
- Grong-Sages were probably the most boring and dumb creature in the game. All they did was walk around and grow grass, but you could barely even tell that was what they were doing. Their ai has been entirely redone, and their sprites expanded upon.
- Added a new armor to Belly of the Comet God.
- Added a new armor to Bakyarl Prison.
- Bakyarl Prisoner renamed to Yellow-Weight Prisoner, finishing move buffed with shockwaves and gravity adjusted.
- Archive Scholar finishing move no longer drops you to the ground, and raises more spikes.
- Comet Green finishing move now throws another needle behind you.
- Bandit Warlord finishing move now damages all through the attack, not just when it lands.
- Added description to Iron Bruiser.
- Added a new NPC.
- Added a random event to Kiriki Garden to re-obtain starting equipment in case it is lost.
- Added a new weapon to start the game with alongside Boon.
- Re-distributed all the items from the old tutorial across the world.
- Albino creatures look a bit nicer now.


GAMEPLAY TWEAKS:
- Sources of status effects have been adjusted to only apply the effect once in some cases, and will emit blue particles.
- Plague Shield goo size increased slightly for better visibility.
- Friendly fire has been removed on most, if not all creatures spawned by the ecosystem. This was mostly a case with projectiles. This will make a lot of creatures much better pets. However, as a side effect, monsters won't be able to hit each other by accident any more. Will be further adjusted in the future to allow friendly fire on other monsters again.
- Player is now damage immune during any finishing move. This may change, but was done because some finishing moves have the player make contact with enemies, not meshing well with contact damaging enemies. It was applied to all of them to set even expectations across the board.
- Boibe population cap increased to 16 because I like them.


FIXES:

- Fixed an issue with delivery cats not dropping potions.
- Fixed some bugs with sleep status effect not resolving correctly.

Reki here. Weekly update as usual. Next week, there will certainly be no update. Some good stuff in this one though. The last area boss other than the finale of the game, for one. Of course, some bosses still need polish, and I can think of one in particular that needs a larger overhaul, but in general I am satisfied with the variety of bossfights.

I hadn't ever created a boss in a game before Blessed Surface. Well, I didn't create any games at all before Blessed Surface. But I think I've gotten more confident at making bosses. The first few times I tried, I wasted my time giving them huge movesets with hundreds of frames of animation, only to scrap most of the attacks. It's much more natural now, just planning a some moves and how the boss flows between them.

Anyways, just polish, new tutorial, more random events and creatures, the soundtrack, and then the finale of the game. And I will consider Blessed Surface complete. There's still a lot, but the end is in sight. The first game I started working on. And other than cutting a few areas during the decision to enter Early Access and race to the end, I think it has become what I wanted to make. Thanks for the support.


CONTENT:

- Added Holy Cathedral of Dust Boss.
- Added one new aquatic creature each to Kiriki Garden, Cemetery of Bells, Grom wall, and Bakyarl Prison, and adjusted level design to include some pools of water for them to spawn.
- Plague-Blocking Shield directional attack has been overhauled. You can now block with it, then attack with your other weapon.
- Battery slot visuals updated.
- Added some sound effects.


GAMEPLAY TWEAKS:

- The falloff of sound effects has been adjusted. No longer should sounds be a huge amount louder when close to you, it's more subtle now. However, many effects require adjustment now, which will be done in future updates.
- Damage is now capped on most things so that they can only deal damage every so often. Hopefully this means that poorly programmed damage sources doing hundreds of damage to creatures within seconds will no longer be a thing.
- Buffed Grachi Heart.
- Boofrog behavior updated.
- Curse Charges now disappear on their own without any special curse equipment.


FIXES:

- Fixed that under certain circumstances, invasive species would get their populations set to 49 instead of being removed from the area.
- Fixed inaccurate visuals when monsters heal.
- Bosses behave a bit better when the player hasn't entered their arena yet.

Reki here. Still sick, but here's an update anyways. Totally gonna take next week off, for real this time. Thinking hard about new tutorial and Cathedral boss, but in the meantime, it's time to start filling the world with more events, landmarks, and creatures, and polishing any subpar existing content. Gotta start working on the finale of the game soon, too. While I do intend to fill this world with plenty of content, the end is in sight. It's a lot easier putting meat on a skeleton rather than creating a skeleton from scratch. There's a lot to do, but the scope has been set and it's very achievable.

CONTENT:

- Added 6 potions, each found in a certain type of random event. A certain one of these potions can be used to remove your familiar.
- Added Blue Scrap.
- Added Yellow Scrap.
- Added Purple Scrap.

GAMEPLAY TWEAKS:

- Adjusted some level design at Cemetery of Bells, Belly of the Comet God, Flooded Passages, Dustyhag Mines, and Holy Cathedral of Dust.
- Added a second gravestone to Flooded Passages
- Hag Lamonte renamed to Crone Lamonte to avoid confusion with Dustyhag Mines.
- Frozen status effect no longer freezes you in place while in water, just slows you like it would outside water.
- Removed some daily bosses for now, to be inspected for visual/mechanical quality. The remaining ones were made rare events, up from uncommon events.
- Removed all but one Well Shrine.
- Vertical, downwards knockback no longer interferes with gravity.

FIXES:

- The effect that plays after eating a heart now releases the correct color of blood.
- Fixed death messages appearing when the player wasn't actually dead.
- Fixed a typo with consuming Red Scrap.
- Fixed an issue causing the player to appear lighter colored than usual.