First thing I want to address is the changes in regional prices. We mistakenly set all the prices to the new values that steam proposes. Unfortunately, we are unable to change any prices for a certain amount of time, we are also unable to participate in a seasonal sales for some time after a price change. That’s what caused this game to be locked out of participating in the Autumn Sale last week. We will be setting all the regional prices back to their original lower values right after the Winter Sale ends. This mistake caused the game to lose so much momentum it gained since this summer, and missing 2 sales in a row would kill it completely, so I can’t afford to fix the prices until after the Winter Sale. (I’m using vague time frames because I am not allowed to share all the details, I am also restraining myself from using harsh and unprofessional language to call out steam’s unwillingness to make any exceptions for a good faith indie dev that can explain their case)

If you are from a region that got a huge price increase and you have been waiting for a sale for this game, it might be best to wait for Spring so the discount is actually on the lower price that I intended.

I also just want to take a moment to really thank Youtuber Olexa, for helping skyrocket this game by orders of magnitude from where it was back in June. I hate that we have to appease the almighty algorithm here to survive, but he kickstarted a positive feedback loop that was very good for me. I can’t thank him enough! ːradiantheartː

Having said all that, this update is very light on new content, but I had a lot more bugs to fix. In fact, I believe this update has the most individual bug fixes ever. I also laid out some groundwork for upcoming content that I will explain in the roadmap below

Early Access updated game version to v8.1

• 3 new bounty gifts + 4 converted from quick gifts (Total: 13)
• Converted Stardust, Prism Flake, Prism Shard, and Full Prism from quick gifts into bounty gifts
• Gift memory text added to the first 5 categories of both blessings and burdens
• Added a page in Stats for The Towers and Tower Medals (A few stats were not tracked in v8.0)

• When starting a battle that offers a bounty gift, there is now a full screen prompt that displays the active bounty gift
• Highlighting a gift that is covered by a challenge will now automatically hide the challenge instead of needing to hold a button
• Monsters must be loved at least once before they are able to offer a bounty gift
• Mite helpers now fire at a slightly faster rate but with reduced damage keeping the same 3 DPS per mite (This was also shown incorrectly as 2.5 DPS in the card details)
• Any helper following a Stymie helper in the chain will stay a minimum distance apart, so effects that move helpers close together will not overlap them with stymies
• The 3 gift rerolling dice that can increase monster levels will no longer drop during tower runs, but they can still be equipped at the start
• Quickplay will now hold your current loadout until you go out to the title screen
• The Hard Focus and Hyperfocus bounty gifts must now unlock by dreams on new save files
• Increased the amount of extra motes that Hard Focus and Hyperfocus give
• You can no longer cheat the monster amnesia effect by using the Check Heart Dream List menu to see the hidden monster’s dreams
• Adjusted the effects and durations of several blessings and burdens

• Blessing: Sunshine duration 3 -> 4
• Blessing: Sentinel 0X duration 4 -> 6
• Blessing: Ventra duration 3 -> 4
• Blessing: Pearl duration 3 -> 5
• Blessing: Anomaly rank 3 -> 2
• Burden: Dot duration 2 -> 1
• Burden: Shamra trauma hearts 7 -> 8
• Burden: Ruby combo bleed 1.5 -> 3
• Burden: Guardian Soul combo bleed 2.5 -> 4
• Burden: Hematoren combo bleed 2 -> 1.5
• Burden: Shiny Syncron only gives you 1 panic instead of 1 per battle
• Burden: Null Glacia will not appear if some effect will fully heal you after battle
• Burden: Citrine bleed hearts 3 -> 4
• Burden: Echo bleed hearts 5 -> 6
• Burden: Stella burn scars 7 -> 4

• Score medal goals for Rage Prisma and Tox Polyps have been reduced as they were incorrectly set higher in v8.0
• The Nap and Snooze gifts can now actually reduce monster levels in The Towers
• Ever since v7.0, it became impossible to ever receive Lovely Hearts as any character in any mode
• Ever since v7.0, Tiny Wings was incorrectly removed from the pool if you had active star shots
• With the Indecisive effect, your first charge attack type in each battle would not always match the basic shot type
• On the Tower character select screen, medals would appear misaligned or invisible if certain towers were still locked
• Challenges for a full combo and radiant score did not display their in-battle hud trackers
• A specific alternate sprite for bouncing void bullets did not rotate correctly or deal any damage
• In the collection, individual gift stats for Endless mode were showing a duplicate of story mode data
• The effect of shot spread burdens was intended to be less severe on helpers, but it was unintentionally worse
• Shot spread burdens did not affect any orbital helpers
• Charge Attack type D would sometimes charge and fire an extra shot after holding a shot (This one is elusive and might not be completely fixed)
• Player boundaries on the edges of the screen where completely uneven distances on all 4 sides and I never noticed and no one told me until now, 6 years later!

As always, this is my plan, but I must warn you that I am a notorious scope creeper. I like to joke about it, but I won’t ever add anything huge and frivolous.

I’m saying it right here. Exactly 14 new monsters will be added in version 8. I am not hiding any surprises this time. The total will be 113 after this!

1 is a new common Veyeral to even out the maxed out towers. The maxed Veyeral tower has 1 less battle than the other 5 family towers right now, and that just kinda feels wrong. So this one will be added to balance that out. This will be that last common battle ever, I swear this time!

There will also be 6 new thorned monsters! One for the top of each family tower. Right now you simply fight a buffed version of the newborn again at the top. Those are just placeholder battles.

As for the other 7, they will be another set similar to Nova and Gems that will be unlocked within the towers mode. They will also extend the family towers and Torrential Tower by adding 1 battle to each.
These will neither be thorned nor common. They sit in the special tier that shiny battles are in. This will make more sense once I get one finished.

These monsters will be released as soon as I finish them in whatever order I feel like working on them.

The category of gifts that will grow the most is the Bounty Gifts. I expect the total to end up around 40 to 50. I have a bunch planned, but I’m sure I’ll come up with a few more along the way.

Obviously 14 new monsters means 14 new blessings and 14 new burdens. They probably won’t be added simultaneously with the monsters, because I’ve got too many pieces of content to check off with each new monsters now. There will also be a few more Unique Blessings and Burdens with some simpler effects compared to the wackiness of all the character inspired ones. There will only be a few of these though.

The only other things planned are a Power Gift that grants the new mite helpers. And a few more Power gifts for Star shots and Feather shots. I also have some vague ideas for more quick gifts especially ones that will be more useful in The Towers. Anything else will be random gifts I come up with on the spot.

There will be a 3rd endless mode with the blessings and burdens structure similar to The Towers. Probably called Endless Tower, who would have guessed!

Endless Nightmare as a whole will also get it’s true unlock dream condition as it has something to do with the towers.

This is definitely the category that has the most potential to scope creep. It’s hard for me not to want to give every unique common monster an event! The only 2 planned events are Shanx and Hadesoh that somehow deal with Burdens. However I have an idea for an event type with blessings, and those would go to some other monsters that don’t have events yet.

The Towers will get a few scenes added as they are actually part of the main story plot. I have to decide if it will be too spoilery still, but I think this part of the plot can be shown as it’s designed to be seen anytime after the first few runs with Her Heart reveal the whole rain thing.

I will be finishing the real scene for Defect’s Totaria path ending along with a few other scenes for Defect’s story.

I will also add intro and ending scenes to Altered Story for Her Heart, Defect, Alter Heart, and Alter Defect!

This story stuff will likely be added last as I ramp up to finish all the rest of the story for v9.0

Iunno? I usually space updates out 2 or 3 weeks apart and put in as much as I can finish in that time. Like with all my version 7 updates, I’ll add a simplified checklist of everything remaining at the bottom of each post.

Speaking of that, the next update will be on December 22nd! Let’s see what I get done!

Thank you for playing from the bottom of my void heart!
ːradiantheartː ːradiantheartː ːradiantheartː