Glimmer in Mirror News

It's been a while since we last announced the development plan for version 0.7. The final decision on the content to be included in the major update far exceeded our initial expectations. It's our traditional holiday these days, and we would like to share the current progress of the update's development with everyone.

[Main Character's Level and Stat Growth, Monster Echo System, Monster Encounter Mechanism]

In our previous announcement, we mentioned the growth of the main character and the newly added 'Monster Echo' system. After numerous experiments, we have iterated on the Echo System, and its framework is now trending towards stability. Each type of monster will have an Echo Skill, which will enhance the existing skills of Shiro. Additionally, defeating monsters will drop materials that can be used to strengthen the attributes and levels of Echo Skills.

Designing Echo Skills for each type of monster is a monumental task. In the 0.7 version, we plan to initially complete the Echo Skills for monsters found in three large maps: Forest of Origin, Fairy Forest, and Prayer Beltower. Echo Skills for monsters in other maps will be gradually added in future updates.

The new Monster Encounter Mechanism is a battle system that players can trigger in the wilderness. It requires defeating a significant number of enemies in a confined area. This tests the player's combat abilities while helping them understand the game's mechanics. Completing these encounters often results in substantial rewards.

[Expansion of Existing Maps, New Challenge Levels]

We have expanded and adjusted the stages of Forest of Origin and Fairywood Forest, adding more than ten small stages. These additions also include a speed challenge level and a durability challenge level, both offering special rewards upon completion. These newly expanded stages require a long development and iteration cycle, but considering the early-game experience, adding this content is necessary.

Draft of new stages in Fairy Forest:


[New Recovery Ability, New Movement Ability, Elemental Skill Refactoring]

To enhance player resilience and playability in combat, we have decided to introduce a new recovery ability and a movement skill. Additionally, in the current version, the elemental skill 'Piercing Light' received feedback from many players regarding its strength and interactive experience. Therefore, we have decided to refactor elemental skills, adopting a concept similar to the 'ultimate ability.' When using an elemental skill, Shiro will briefly become invulnerable, and the skill will provide assistance in terms of damage output or mechanics. As elemental skills have become a crucial component of battles, players will have the opportunity to unlock a new elemental skill in the early stage of the game.

[Other Improvements]

In addition, we have made some optimizations to the game's existing systems and control schemes:

• Integrated the current teleportation mechanism to make teleportation more convenient.
  
• Optimized the difficulty and health of wilderness monsters to avoid the feeling of monsters being both sluggish and resilient.
  
• Increased the difficulty of wilderness monsters, and defeating them will result in the drop of recovery
• items, making combat tension more flexible. We have also adjusted the recovery mechanism of 'Light Surge' by reducing natural light recovery and increasing the attack recovery.
  
• Split the buttons for normal attacks ('Light Surge') and 'Light Shock,' allowing automatic continuous firing when holding the 'Light Surge' button. 'Light Shock' does not need to be charged anymore.
  
• Added customization options for game controllers.
  
• And more...
  

We appreciate everyone's patience while waiting for this update. Version 0.7 includes various aspects that required careful consideration. Due to my limited game development experience and our team's constrained capacity, the development timeline has far exceeded our initial expectations. There is still a considerable amount of new content in production and iteration, and it will take some time before the official release. During this period, some friends even asked if we had 'abandoned this game,' which both amused and embarrassed us.

We will do our best to iterate on the game experience and strive to deliver version 0.7 to everyone as soon as possible. Thank you all for your support and encouragement!

Greetings, dear players and friends! The annual Steam Summer Sale is here, and "Glimmer of Light" is participating in this event, offering an unprecedented 20% discount. We welcome everyone to take advantage of this discount period and wish you all a joyful summer!ːGirlShiroː

Taking this opportunity, we would like to provide an update on the progress of the upcoming v0.7 version of the game:

In our previous announcement, we mentioned the experimental "Monster Echo" system. Let's explain it in detail now:
By battling monsters, players can unlock the monster's "Echo," which has its own numerical value. Players can strengthen the "Echo Level" to enhance Shiro's combat capabilities. Once the Echo Level is maxed out, players will unlock the monster's "Echo Skill." This skill revolves around Shiro's abilities or tactics, allowing players to freely equip it and provide a more personalized branching or enhancement to the fixed skills.

For Shiro, we have also introduced a leveling system. As Shiro levels up, her combat strength will correspondingly increase. In combination with the Monster Echo system, when players encounter unbeatable enemies, they now have clearer avenues for improvement. The combat style can also be customized through the combination of Echo Skills, adding more variety and preventing battles from becoming monotonous.

Additionally, we are working on improving the game's combat mechanics to ensure that players can intuitively grasp the combat system and gameplay loop from the beginning, making the battle process and decision-making more engaging and enjoyable.

These new additions and improvements require extensive development and testing iterations. Although we have experimented with numerous approaches, we must confess that while we can sense the game experience improving, we are still far from satisfied with the current version. Further polishing and optimization are still necessary.

According to our current development plan, if everything goes smoothly, we hope to start the Alpha testing phase in the latter half of July. Once we ensure stable and viable results from the Alpha test, we will begin preparations for the public Beta test. Interested players will be able to participate in the Beta test by switching to the Steam branch, and there will be no player limit for the Beta test.

We would like to express our gratitude for your continuous support. We will strive to further iterate the game to provide you with an even better experience. As soon as there is any progress in the preparations for the Beta test, we will inform you through announcements. Once again, thank you all for your support!

Hello everyone! The annual Steam Spring Sale has begun, and Glimmer in Mirror is participating in this sale, bringing the same 10% discount as it's first release. Welcome to buy it during the sale!

We have supported Steam Cloud, and have completely re-translated the localizations. Hope the new localization text will be better for you. If you encounter any problem or mistakes in the new localization, please contact us ([email protected]), thank you!

In addition, let us share some development progress on the major update (v0.7) of the game。

We are experimenting with iterations of the game's growth system, to try to improve the player's lack of a sense of reward during gameplay.

At present, Shiro can only rely on collecting collectibles in the map, gaining new skills, and leveling up the sprites to improve their battle abilities. There is too little sense of growth and gain throughout the game. There are also very few items in the store, resulting in no place to use the source crystals gained from fightings. These problems lead to little difference in the experience between the early and late stages of the game, and lack of rewards from fighting.

We are trying to add a "monster echo" collection system, so that defeating monsters can get more player growth, and skill branching changes. We are also trying to add a leveling system to the character so that there will be more ways to improve abilities and stats to overcome the obstacles, instead of only training game skills.

Because of the many modifications involved, the next major update will require more development and experimental work, and eventually the actual content will change with our experiments. Maybe it will not be exactly the same we metioned above. Thank you for your understanding!

Even when the development is completed, we still have to do enough player test, to ensure the system is balance and fun. Then we will have the confidence to publish the official update.

We have not released any minor updates recently, because our team of one full-time, two part-time is too small. We can only focus on one thing. We are moving forward step by step. Thank you for your understanding and support!

1. Support Steam Cloud.
We recommend that you run the game once on a device that already has existed save data, to ensure that the Steam Cloud files are up to date.

2. Better localizations.
We have completely re-translated the localizations. Hope the new localization text will be better for you. If you encounter any problem or mistakes in the new localization, please contact us ([email protected]), Thank you!

Hello everyone! It has been almost three weeks since the launch of "Glimmer in Mirror". During this time we have received a lot of feedbacks. Base on these feedbacks, we are planning for the up the next optimization goals.

At present, the game has relatively large deficiencies in the growth system, freedom of combat, maps and guidance. The next major update (v0.7) will focus the game iteration on these parts:

1. Try to iterate the game's growth system and gameplay loop, and adjust the monsters' numerical and AI balance to make the game's combat and growth more interesting and rewarding.
   
2. Optimize the readability and information of the world map, and allow players to mark the map.
   
3. Integrate and optimize the teleportation points of each map to give players a more convenient way to teleport.
   
4. Add mission interface to help players remember the current progress of the game and next targets.
   
5. Support Steam Cloud.
   

The first part of the update (try to iterate the game's growth system and gameplay loop) is a very risky decision. This iteration may bring revolutionary changes to the game, but it also requires a lot of development work and a lot of trial.

It is a challenge we are willing to and must take on in order to make the game more fun. The iteration of this system is still in the planning and experimentation stage, and we will share it with you when we have some results in the future. We hope you can give us some more time.

The release date for the major update is hard to estimate for now, but we will do our best. Thank you for your understanding.

Meanwhile, because this major update involves a lot of changes, we will do Beta testing to ensure the stability of the new version before the official update in the future.

If you have any comments and suggestions, please feel free to share them with us by sending an email to [email protected].