Hi everyone!

Over the past week or so we’ve been testing the next major update in the beta branch of the game. I’m glad to announce that all of these have been compiled into the game’s main branch, meaning everyone can play it now! I’ve put the patch notes below, which is a combination of new changes/fixes, and the previous beta branch updates.

I’ve also made a devlog that compiles all of the changes/improvements/additions and gives some context to the development process so check it out!

• Overhauled the map system and generation algorithm to make the choices much more interesting.
• Shops no longer include both weapons and trinkets, there are now dedicated weapon shop and trinket shop nodes.
• Shops no longer allow you to upgrade your weapons or heal, there are now dedicated campfire nodes.
• All characters have a much higher regeneration stat to offset the fact that campfires are seen less often.
• Adjusted the visuals for the campfire, weapon shop, and trinket shop screens to have more graphical variety.
• Added a new character, Hanubat – A Wanted Shadow from another world. Dodge stat gains are multiplied by 2.
• Added a currency that is kept between runs – Souls (metaprogression!).
• Added the ability to buy weapons and trinkets to start with with souls.
• Added the ability for each character to start with any weapon or trinket as long as you have bought it with souls.
• Changed the previous starting weapons/trinkets to being “recommended”.
• Changed the victory and defeat screens to include soul gained information.
• Reworked the whole game’s spawning system to vastly improve performance by an estimated 40%. The new spawning system is used by enemies, coins, and damage numbers. The update will be applied to projectiles in the future, so there’s even more space for performance improvement.
• Extended all songs to run at double their previous runtime so as to reduce repetition.
• Overhauled the character select and achievement menus to have character-specific artwork for more expressive design.
• Lowered Ace’s character unlock requirement.
• Lowered Needle’s character unlock requirement.
• Increased the Burning Blade weapon’s extra critical damage from 25% to 100%.
• Slightly decreased the range on the Spell Swipe weapon.
• Slightly increased the cooldown on the Axe Gale weapon.
• Adjusted rendering settings and slightly improved performance.
• Added a new logo to the main menu, and we now have new key art!
• Fixed a bug that caused one enemy sprite’s to incorrectly go in front when they should not.
• Added the achievement that allows you to unlock Hanubat.
• Reduced the HP of elites and bosses across the board in acts 1 and 2.
• The “Contract” Trinket now costs 75 souls to unlock instead of 50.
• The “Flying Gold” trinket is now categorized as 2 star difficulty instead of 3.
• Healthy heart now also increases Max HP. It now costs 2x more gold to buy at shops, and costs 60 souls instead of 25 to unlock as a starter trinket.
• Lil’ Knife’s damage increased from 7.5 -> 20.
• Steady Blade’s damage increased from 20 -> 40.

Anyways, that’s it for this update, and as always, I would really appreciate it if you left a review! It’s the best way to support the game! Hope you all enjoy Beta 1.2.1 because it’s by far the hugest update to date 🙂

https://store.steampowered.com/app/1714240/Soul_Stalker/

– Conrad, Lead Developer