Vengeful Rites
The Hidden Forest is now playable on the test branch!
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To opt into the test branch, right click on the game in your library and go to the properties window. From there, go to the betas tab and select the test branch from the dropdown menu. Once the game updates, you'll be good to go. As always, if you'd like to keep up to date or help us shape the game going forward with your feedback, you can do so in our discord. Happy adventuring, everyone!
New Devlog! Check out the reveal of the first new zone coming with chapter 4!
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As always, if you'd like to keep up to date or help us shape the game going forward with your feedback, you can do so in our discord. Happy adventuring, everyone!
Optimization, comfort and teleport improvements.
- Enemy arrows now use physics to determine their trajectories.
- Reworked our occlusion culling in some areas to better optimize performance.
- Retextured the trees throughout the game to have more detailed leaves.
- Made it a bit easier to perform the task at the Elemental Mastery spell altar, especially for those not using smooth locomotion. The time limit is also more lenient on lower difficulties.
- The directional attack crystals on the Path of the Swordsman now play an armored sound effect if your slash isn't fast enough.
- The game's logic for deciding where to place you down when falling/ending a climb with the fade to black comfort setting enabled has been improved to be more predictable and in line with the results you'd expect if not using the comfort setting.
- Added an extra 1, 2 and 3 seconds to the timing element of the final magic path puzzle on Godly Island on master, apprentice and novice difficulty respectively.
Corrections and Bug Fixes
- Corrected some improperly tagged terrain throughout the game that was disallowing teleport locomotion when it should have been possible.
Additions and Improvements
That's it for today's patch, everyone. As usual, we'd like to invite you all to join us on the forums here or in our discord to help shape the development of the game going forward with your feedback. Thanks! Happy adventuring, everyone!
Some small balance tweaks.
- Reduced the mana cost of blocking melee attacks with your Illusory Shield from 50% of damage blocked to 20%, making it generally much more efficient to block incoming damage than to heal it afterward. Blocking projectiles consumes no mana.
- Increased the drop rate of apples and mana potions from slain foes substantially.
- Made it possible to cancel a kinetic tug (the quick pull of objects) by extending your arm out to regain normal control.
- Reduced the damage reduction of improved Stone Skin from 50% to 35%.
Corrections and Bug Fixes
- Corrected a faulty invisible wall at the second water wheel puzzle in the Forbidden Mine.
Additions and Improvements
That's it for today's mini-patch. Work continues on chapter 4 and things are coming along nicely. If you've got ideas on ways to improve the game, please don't hesitate to share them with us either on the forums here or in our discord. Thanks! Happy adventuring, everyone!
Achievements!
Many of the achievements will be awarded retroactively, like those for crafting milestones and upgrades collected. Others will have to be earned going forward as there was no way to track their progress until now. So, don't be surprised if you load up the game and find a ton of achievements are awarded all at once as it catches up.
That's it for today. As always, we invite everyone who wants to share their thoughts and feedback about the game to our discord. Thanks! Happy adventuring, everyone!
Tutorial, Magic Selection and Rift S Improvements.
- The magic selection wheel no longer requires you to precisely move your hand/arrow through a spell school. It's more broken into quadrants, so as long as you're in the general direction of one of the spell schools, it will be selected.
- Expanded the tutorial very slightly to inform you of the spell section of your menu for more information on how to better control objects with kinesis.
- The mine near the tutorial merchant will now be locked until you've spoken to him and collected your first bow and elixir.
- The archery minigame near the first merchant will wait until the initial bow information has been presented before becoming active.
- Widened and deepened the waterways in the Forbidden Mine to more clearly present them as impassible.
- Reduced the duration that enemy arrows stick into you from 10 seconds down to 6.
- Added information about scepter ranged attacks to their item descriptions at the shop and in your inventory.
- Teleportation on all Oculus devices is now done by pressing forward on the analog stick instead of pressing it in.
- Improved the throwing precision of fireballs and held objects on the Rift S.
- Changed the way the bow functions on the Rift S to be the same as on WMR, where your bowstring draw distance will be exaggerated allowing you to get a full draw without putting your controllers out of line of sight of the tracking cameras.
Corrections and Bug Fixes
- Fixed a bug where holding a grabbed object like a torch or bomb in your offhand would prevent you from teleporting.
- Arrows embedded in enemy wraiths will now properly disappear when they explode.
- Fixed a bug where you'd occasionally grab your bow despite not having your hand near the bow holster.
Additions and Improvements
That's it for today. Achievements are almost ready! The icons have been made and they're configured on Steam. We just need to make the game actually reward you with them, so that patch should be up within a few days! As you may have noticed, we're currently in a phase of development where chapter 4 is being planned out and assets are being made, which gives us a lot of time make improvements throughout the rest of the game, so if you've got feedback, let us have! You can do so on the forums or over in our discord. Thanks! Happy adventuring, everyone!
More Quality/More Life
- Slain enemies will now only respawn if you die or leave the zone (progress through a portal). Otherwise, if you return to a checkpoint or load into a save file, any enemies in the area that you've already killed will remain dead.
- Added a hint system to the game that auto-enables when in the vicinity of a puzzle. After a few minutes in a puzzle area, you'll be prompted on your left controller to ask for a hint. If you choose to take a hint, a message with some useful information will appear. After a couple more minutes, if you haven't solved the puzzle, a new hint will become available.
- Tweaked the difficulty of some of the harder bosses in the game when playing on anything but the hardest difficulty to make them easier as they may have been a stark contrast to the established difficulty curve previously.
- Added a weak response to the growable vines if you attempt to grow them using an inferior spell.
- Both the burnable brambles and growable vines will now tell you if your current magic is too weak to affect them.
- Added a prompt at the Shrines of the Eternal Flame that will remind you how to activate them should you forget.
- Increased the amount of burn damage enemies receive when hit with a fiery arrow(imbued with magic) to be in line with the damage they'd receive from a normally ignited arrow.
- Smoothed out the traversal of slopes to both prevent you from sliding down some of the steeper inclines and keep you grounded while moving down them.
- Relocated the merchant on Godly Island to be a little more central to the different paths.
Corrections and Bug Fixes
- The bells on Captain Ghostbeard's ship can no longer be broken with fireballs.
Additions and Improvements
That's it for today. After this we're looking to get achievements added to the game! Keep a look out for that update. As I said, though, now's the best time to leave your feedback, so please do so on our forums here or in our discord. Thanks! Happy adventuring, everyone!
Quality of Life Improvements
- Reduced the size of the backpack/quiver detection, making it less likely to grab these things by mistake.
- Added a confirmation haptic effect when grabbing onto something climbable, making it less likely that you'll let go with your other hand if you haven't successfully grabbed on with the next one.
- Arrows that come close to enemies will now aggro them even if they miss.
- You can now aggro nearby enemies by banging your illusory shield with your sword or another illusory shield.
Corrections and Bug Fixes
- Corrected some faulty collision and invisible walls in the chapter 3 dungeon.
- Changed the way grabbing a sword from your sheath is handled in the code. There's been an extremely difficulty to reproduce bug that would sometimes prevent you from grabbing your sword. Hopefully this new change will prevent them from happening, but if it does happen to you, especially if you know how to reproduce it, please let us know. Thanks!
Additions and Improvements
If you've got feedback to help us improve the game or need assistance with anything, feel free to leave it on our forums here or join our discord! Happy adventuring, everyone!
Another small hot fix
- The Touch Controllers for the Oculus Quest are now properly recognized as being Touch Controllers so they default to the intended control scheme for turning/moving in game.
- The floating crystals along the mage path in chapter 3 will now be teleported back into the puzzle area where they originated when reloading the scene if they've been moved outside of the area.
Corrections and Bug Fixes
- The floating crystals along the mage path in chapter 3 can longer be moved up or down, misaligning them with the light beams. If you do somehow manage to do that, their height will be corrected the next time the scene is loaded (on death or when returning to checkpoint).
Additions and Improvements
That's it for this one. If you encounter any bugs and would like to help us squash them or if you have any other useful feedback, we'd love it if you joined our discord! Happy adventuring, everyone!
A small hot fix
- You'll now respawn with a full quiver after dying or returning to checkpoint.
- Added a note to the locomotion section of the tutorial explaining that the black vignette that activates by default when moving can be disabled in the options menu.
- Explosive barrels in the Serafin Castle can now be detonated with an ignited arrow.
Corrections and Bug Fixes
- Fixed a bug where ending a climb could set your position to the wrong location if the fade to black option when falling is enabled, potentially causing you to be set outside the house in the tutorial when climbing the ladder.
- Added a potential fix for a rare bug that could prevent you from grabbing your sword out of its sheath. We weren't able to replicate this bug, so we can't say with 100% certainty that the fix has solved the issue. Please let us know if you encounter this one. Thanks!
- Corrected a bug that would prevent you from re-calibrating when at the main menu if you had already loaded into the game and then returned to the start screen.
- Fixed a bug that would allow you to demolish a wall through the floor with the explosive barrels in the Serafin Castle area.
- Corrected some faulty collision that might allow you to bypass the first electricity hazard in The Depths of the Misty Mine if you were persistent enough.
- Properly configured some spell altar platforms to allow you to teleport onto them where they had previously disallowed it.
Additions and Improvements
That's it for this one. If you encounter any bugs and would like to help us squash them or if you have any other useful feedback, we'd love it if you joined our discord! Happy adventuring, everyone!