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
Content Added
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)
Updates and tweaks
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
Specific Gift Adjustments
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
Bug Fixes
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!
Version 8 Roadmap!
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.
New monsters
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.
Gifts
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.
Endless Nightmare
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.
New Events
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.
A Little Bit of Story
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
How long will this take?
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
v8.0d
Unless another crash is found, this is likely the last small tweak patch for 8.0
v8.0d - November 16th, 2023 -You can now see the amount of battles each tower has before choosing one -You can now see all tower medals for each character on the character select screen -Moved the mid boss chapter in Taller Tower to be one chapter later -You can no longer equip a quick gift that your character is unable to use due to not having enough activation slots -If you select a song in the music room, it will be remembered and continue to play in all hub menus for the rest of the session -Songs that play during scenes triggered within hub menus will no longer stick temporarily after the scene ends -Bug Fix: Loading a suspended tower run with any 4 battle chapter would fail to load
v8.0c
v8.0c - November 14th, 2023 -Increased the monster level scaling rate for all towers except Tiny Tower -Increased the medal goals for all towers except Tiny Tower -Further increased all tower medal goals for Alter Twin because she performs well in this mode -Reduced the duration of most stymie helper related burdens -Reduced the amount of panics given by Forma's burden -Panicked Mess burdens will not appear if you have 8 or more panics (That makes them too blessed) -Stymie and burdened helpers will stay a minimum distance away if helpers are in ring formation -Reduced the small pause when entering the save file select screen -Bug Fix: burdened helpers could hit you before a battle started if you had ring formation -Bug Fix: You can now check dreams that have blessings as rewards for real this time -Bug Fix: It was possible to soft lock the game by accidentally unbinding menu keys. If the game detects this on the title screen it will reset to default bindings.
v8.0b
v8.0b - November 12th, 2023 -Increased the score goals for most towers except Tiny Tower -You can now check dreams that have Blessing gifts as rewards in the Unlock New Stuff category -Added a sound for when charge, focus, or panics are disabled -Rage Prisma's burden only lasts 1 battle now -Bug Fix: Checking the tower medal progress on the boss select screen always showed the goals for Tiny Tower -Bug Fix: Some Blessings and Burdens were missing their radiating costs -Bug Fix: Moving against the screen borders would count as moving fast to drain burning hp faster -Bug Fix: It was possible to get a "Don't Panic" challenge while having a burden that automatically panics over time -Bug Fix: The Bounty tutorial scene was missing name and description text in the scene collection menu -Bug Fix: Some tower dream icons were incorrect
v8.0a
v8.0a - November 11th, 2023 -Bug Fix: Shiny Knot Knott's blessing was missing tetrid cost values to radiate -Bug Fix: Rerolling the final boss of a monster family tower would delete any offered upgrade gifts -Bug Fix: Game would crash a few battles into a randomized tower if you had no radiated shiny battles -Bug Fix: Game would crash during some events if you were playing as an alter character -Fixed some typos
Cardiac Event Recorder - Update #76
Finally we have arrived at Version 8.0! So first of all, I lied about a few things. There are way more gifts than I said, in fact there are 220 new gifts! But most of them have a special twist and only appear in The Towers. You gain access to The Towers by loving at least 60 unique monsters.
You will also want to do a few battles in story mode as Her Heart to get a new tutorial for the new Bounty Gifts!
This is by far the most new effects added in a single update, so I expect to be fixing many bugs this week. This is also probably the largest file size upgrade there will be due to the 13 new songs (It's only a few MB)
New Content
New game mode, The Towers!
3 new entire types of gifts!
13 new battle songs
47 new dreams to fulfill
There is a new tutorial scene that explains the special combo rules for shy battles
Special monsters and gem monsters will no longer have an inherent score bonus in story mode, instead they will always have something new in normal encounters!
Updates and tweaks
The combo bar during shy battles will now turn green instead of pink
On new save files, shy monsters will not appear until certain tutorial scenes are viewed first
Changed the battles tips for monsters that had information explained in the new tutorials: Veyeral Rain, Photoxai
Changed the battle tips for monsters that had very basic or obsolete information: Amalga, Alter Glacia, Celestia, Unity, Ruby, Topaz
Made Rage Duet's battle into a true rage battle by adding a permanent full arena attack and a large safety bubble
Blue Veyeral will not deal contact damage while leaving the screen after phase 3
Adjusted many of Blue Veyeral's attacks during her final 2 phases
Adjusted the color of Chroma's bullets as she tends to appear on the most colorful backgrounds
Unit Lulu and Null Unit's arms become transparent when broken
Added more combinations of bullet and dreamscape tinting to improve contrast in several battles
The Charge Damage stat now scales multiplicatively with the All Damage stat
The Helper Damage stat now scales multiplicatively with the All Damage stat
All gifts that increase charge damage have been buffed
The damage of Love Signals now scales with effects that increase charge damage
Changed the wording on several gift effects to reduce the space used by certain descriptions
Reduced the tetrid cost to upgrade the Radiant Garden's conversion and extractions
Changed the effect of Chrome Hearts so that they will protect your combo from dropping for any reason
Active Chrome hearts are now shown over the boss fear bar, or the combo bar if that is enabled
Changed the "Heart of Chrome" effect so that it makes all used Chrome Hearts regenerate after battle
Added visual effects for each type of element damage you take
Bug Fixes
Bug Fix: The active gift list would not show any gifts that were equipped in Quickplay or freeplay modes
Bug Fix: Helper DPS would not correctly add the damage of Photo Stones duplicated by the Friend Spiral effect
Bug Fix: Friend Beam would not properly scale as Magnet Stones are created
Bug Fix: The beam attack sound would continue to play until the end of battle if one of Heliola's beam glyphs escaped
Bug Fix: Heliola was stuck only using 2 of her attacks FOR MONTHS AND NO ONE NOTICED
Bug Fix: White radiant beams would deal void damage instead of radiant
Adjusted Monster Scoring
Certain monsters would always give unusually high numbers of motes. These were mostly really early ones and I tended to decrease optimal scores as new monsters were added. So I decided to rebalance the whole roster now that they are mostly all done. Many tougher battles would give out relatively low scores, so I buffed many of their part values. It used to be that all monsters gave the exact same score for a full combo, but I have changed this too. I can now increase individual combo scores for monsters with few or no breakable parts.
This also means quickplay scores and medal goals had to be adjusted all over the place. The game will automatically scale your quickplay scores when you load your save. It will try to keep your medals radiant if you had them.
Score Changes
Adjusted the way motes are given so that individual part scores do not lose partial score from rounding. (This means optimal scores are a few points higher in nearly every battle since no score is lost due to rounding anymore)
These 32 monsters have noticeably increased their optimal scores at all levels: Knot Knott, Blot, Alter Blot, Null Blot, Amalga, Calorie, Joule, Rendy, Snowball, Lila, Voladrome, Dendrohai, Ombroah, Chionotoh, Astrayo, Unit Lulu, Null Unit, Rage Prisma, Flip Flap, Vitrea, Pearl, Burning Veyeral, Venom Veyeral, Vibrant Veyeral, Veyeral Rain, Veyeral Quartet, Anomaly, Unity, Shamra, Oudenai, Default, Forma
These 9 monsters have decreased their optimal scores at all levels: Scrambla, Boiler, Roundsaw, Alter Roundsaw, Null Roundsaw, Hadesoh, Syncron, Alter Syncron, Rage Duet
Your quickplay scores for all of the monsters above have been scaled, but it will try to keep your medals radiant if you had them.
All 3 final bosses will now give more motes from combos and less from phase changes. Their optimal scores still remain the same.
There's still a lot of work to do on the towers! I'll detail everything left for version 8 in the next update which I am scheduling for November 24th, but may move it back one week depending on how many bugs come up!
Enjoy The Towers and all the Blessings, Burdens, and Bounties within! ːradiantheartː ːradiantheartː ːradiantheartː
Version 8.0 Delayed to November 10th
I was so close to the finish line, but unfortunately COVID has finally got to me. This game is all being made by me all by myself, and I can't be working in this condition, so I sadly have to delay the update a little. I'm going to say November 10th is the goal for now, but if I feel better quickly I might be able to drop it earlier.
I'm so sorry for the delay! ːveyeralː ːveyeralː ːveyeralː
Version 8.0 on Halloween
The Towers Mode will be added on October 31st bringing the game up to version 8.0!
This update will come with 7 tower runs. Six of the towers will consist of battles against monsters of a single family. The more monsters you have unlocked, the higher you will be able to climb. For the most part, you will be able to choose the order you fight them, but just be sure not to lock yourself out of the lower level monsters by outleveling them!
The main twist to The Towers is the new Burden Gifts that will remain mostly exclusive to this mode. Most of them are purely negative effects, but they only last a set amount of battles just like Quick Gifts do. Monsters here will offer gifts paired with a burden of similar rank. So getting a 3 star Power Gift will most likely come with a rank 3 Burden! What's more is Power Gifts will also be temporary in this mode! You will also be able to set up a loadout of Quick Gifts for each character to start with. You can fill each character's quick slots with any Quick Gifts you have radiated. This adds another reason to find all those upgrade gifts!
The 7th tower will follow most of these rules except that it will be random monsters of all families. This will be about the length of an Altered Story run and is designed to be a story-like run with the new burdens involved. This is also the only tower where you can encounter any of the current final bosses. The Veyeral tower will not feature them right now, but this may change later.
The update will add over 100 burdens and some other small surprises that I'll let you discover! However the towers and version 8 will still not be quite done yet. There are a lot of new people here that might not be familiar with my normal release schedule, so I will explain it. You might notice the current version is 7.27 or in other words, the 27th main update to version 7! I normally update this game very frequently. Every two or three weeks, I will be dropping another small update to the game until everything I have planned for v8 is done! I pray that I won't have to go all the way up to 27 again this time, but who knows at this point. I'll do an updated roadmap when v8 actually drops.
In previous years I was able to do a personal challenge that I like to call Devtober where I updated the game every single day in October with at least 1 new gift, dreamscape, or even a new monster. I was able to do this challenge 3 times in 2018, 2019, and 2021! Unfortunately, I'm not able to do it anymore at this point in development. Everything I have left to do is kinda too big for that. I'm glad I'll still be able to drop something big on Halloween though!
Oh, one more thing. New Music! The v8.0 update will add 12 new tracks, or maybe more who knows?! Each normal monster family will get 2 new alternate tracks that play under certain conditions. I already revealed a few of them on youtube! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=24mRzATpxbU
As always, thank you for loving those monsters! ːradiantheartː ːradiantheartː ːradiantheartː
v7.27
This is the patch from the previous announcement + a few little extras. It is now released for everyone!
v7.27 - August 29th, 2023 -Suspended Runs from a previous version will not load in v7.27 and above! -Internal work done on gifts to prepare the game for the upcoming Burden gift type -When checking Active Gifts, there is now a tag if the gift was given to you for free or traded to you during events -Trading: Changed the mood gained from giving a monster their favorite quick gifts. Instead of a flat 7 points, it is now 5, 6, or 7 depending on rank + 1 more point if the gift is active -Trading: Chemory now gains extra mood points for gifts that have a smell that she likes -Trading: Monovai now gains extra mood points for certain gifts that are related to her -Trading: Several monsters have multiple new favorite gifts including some quick gifts -Trading: Several monsters have new reactions to specific gifts or types of gifts -Trading: Adjusted the max mood cap and amount of gifts some monsters will accept -Token Shops: Blot and vitrea have several new favorite gifts and new reactions to them -Token Shops: The few gifts that gave more than 10 karma will only give 10 now (no change to tokens) -Scrambla and Boiler react to storable duplicates of starting gifts or gifts that you took out of the Link Synapse -The Alter Your Fate event has a new Sacrifice menu with more hints as to why certain sacrifices are not available to you -Abyss will gain more power from sacrificing gifts that were taken as a trade from other trading or token shop events -Abyss has a warning if you try to leave without spending all her power -It is now required that the No One's Gift event is encountered at least once before it can be replaced by other monster Free Gift events -Changed the memory text for the Acid Rain gift -Bug Fix: Bonus Gifts offered in the cycle finale stages of Endless Stress would still need to be radiated
Preparation update for v8.0
To prepare for the upcoming new Towers Mode and the new Burden items that will come with it, I've had to rewrite parts of how gifts are tracked and applied to your character. The main consequence of this is that any mid-run saves from the current version will not be compatible with the next update. To be clear, this is only referring to saving a run in the middle with the "save and exit" option to continue it later! The rest of your save file will be fine.
To make sure the transition is as smooth as possible, I am updating the game with these changes as v7.27 on Tuesday, August 29th, around 7 PM PST. If you have a suspended run from a previous version, it will just delete the run and go to the main hub menu.
You can also opt into the beta branch right now and already be on the new version! I will be merging the branches when the main one gets updated, so it will automatically put you back into the main branch. If you do this now, you will not have to worry about it later!
How To Access The Beta
Right click the game in your Steam library Properties > Betas > v7,27 beta (no password needed) And it will automatically download
These are the v7.27 changes available in the beta branch now and will be available to everyone on Tuesday
Updates and tweaks
Suspended Runs from a previous version will not load in v7.27 and above!
Internal work done on gifts to prepare the game for the upcoming Burden gift type
When checking Active Gifts, there is now a tag if the gift was given to you for free or traded to you during events
Changed the memory text for the Acid Rain gift
Changes to Events
Trading Events: Changed the mood gained from giving a monster their favorite quick gifts. Instead of a flat 7 points, it is now 5, 6, or 7 depending on rank + 1 more point if the gift is active
Trading Events: Chemory now gains extra mood points for gifts that have a smell that she likes
Trading Events: Monovai now gains extra mood points for certain gifts that are related to her
Trading Events: Several monsters have multiple new favorite gifts including some quick gifts
Trading Events: Several monsters have new reactions to specific gifts or types of gifts
Trading Events: Adjusted the max mood cap and amount of gifts some monsters will accept
Token Shops: Blot and Vitrea have several new favorite gifts and new reactions to them
Token Shops: The few gifts that gave more than 10 karma will only give 10 now (no change to tokens given)
Alter Your Fate: Abyss will gain more power from sacrificing gifts that were taken as a trade from other trading or token shop events
It is now required that the No One's Gift event is encountered at least once before other monster Free Gift events will appear
Scrambla and Boiler comment on gifts that they can store, but are duplicates of starting gifts or gifts that you took out of the link synapse at the start of the run.
Bug Fixes
Bonus Gifts offered in the cycle finale stages of Endless Stress would still need to be radiated
As always, thank you for loving those monsters! ːradiantheartː ːradiantheartː ːradiantheartː
