Apollyon: River of Life News

Many Tests have had their difficulty changed, and some very difficult cards erroneously shown at the very beginning have been moved back to the end.

Stay closed, Guardian Gates!

Well fellow occultists, roguelike lovers, fantasy addicts, and more, we're here! After an EA period that took much longer than I thought it would, as things often do, Apollyon is in a finished and polished state, with all the 600,000 words of story and descriptions and lore and so on that I wanted to put in the game from the very beginning!

From an offhand idea to a passion project during a certain world pandemic to a fully published game has been quite the journey, and thank you to all of you who have followed the sporadic development cycle of this game.

Here are a few things you can do in the latest version:



Delve into memory to uncover the lost secrets of a mysterious witch!

Be hunted by the Wild Hunt of the winter court of the fey!

Convene your cult of Apollyic practitioners and plan dark (or good!) deeds.

Journey into ancient necropoli in search of artifacts to change the world!

Upgrade the starting character to be on par with the themed, named, and storied characters!

Find one of five endings with massively different consequences. See if you can find them all!



The latest update has significant content, surely, but Apollyon has been steadily growing for the entire 4 years of development. This latest update finally polishes off the entire story and unlocks the latter half of the game, giving somewhere from 30-60 hours of playtime!

Is this all for Apollyon? Probably not! After so long with this game it is unthinkable to never touch it again. With the full release will come many new players, and with their suggestions and ideas, just like those from long-time players, we might see many more spirit cards or choice-based interactions... And if there is interest, full additional Intentions!

As a last note, modding Apollyon is still possible, but the Workshop tool requires some polish to not be nightmarish for new users. Join the discord if you're interested in adding your own spirit cards, self aspects, effects, lore pages, characters, or even full intentions!

Hello practitioners! Normally I do not post very small updates (1.3.2.x) as these can be very often and small, but this one is interesting! First, though, I'd like to note that every update Apollyon receives strives to ensure backwards-compatibility with all saves. This has been the case since Early Access launch. As always, if there are any errors or bugs, be sure to ask on the Steam Community or (preferably) the Apollyon discord!



First off, for those who struggle with the first stages of Apollyon, there is a new setting in the settings menu to show the position of the Tokens large, in the center, and in the proper direction. This can be turned on for the entire game, but by default, it will be shown in the tutorial and hidden through the rest of the game. Hopefully, the core gameplay mechanic of 2 axes is learned quickly enough, as I believe this UI element breaks the atmosphere.

Next up, art!



By now, nearly all the placeholder art from the first stages of nonserious development has been replaced. We have passed 700 pieces, and all placeholder art is now replaced, save for a couple towards the end that will only be present in the final update (2.0). These pictures above is a preview of some new ones!



The "The Seeker Returns" spirit card and arc that follows has been changed to an invokable card. In this case, you can choose when to take on this grueling challenge, rather than it coming randomly throughout your playthroughs and ending them. It will be required to complete at some point, however.

Intention; Talon, the Machine City, is getting some updates, including a new train of spirit cards dealing with Ryo'shyr, and a brand new market in the Carnelian that you can make purchases at!

1.3.3 is coming very soon, with big content updates to Past Sacrifice and Lore pages, as well as the new right-click self/invocation feature!

Welcome back once again, practitioners! This update has a number of issues specifically requested by members of the community, and some brand new ones! Also, bugfixes. Always bugfixes.

Here, you can see the new way to select the tokens... just hover and click on the names!

• New players will be sent immediately to the tutorial!
  
• Tutorial has a new musical intro, as well as animation
  
• Select tokens by hovering and clicking the names
  
• Removed a limitation in my own coding base for Apollyon... letting the story now have quotations, like it should! Formerly it was just single quotes or two single quotes.
  
• All popups now include images! Selecting Effects shows their image in a larger size!
  
• RIGHT CLICKING any Invocation or Self card will also show it larger, and will provide some small information about its use! Many cards are missing text, the next update will send me going back to every Invokable spirit and Self card and adding this text.
  
  
  
  
• Moved tokens will now pulsate from darker to lighter than they were before. Being bright but unmoving caused them to be missed, and the player should be able to easily see what tokens they've moved!
  
• Removed the flickering in the chatbox when the game has gone on a very long time
  
• No longer does the game kill players in between moving tokens and the Invocation Set beginning. This can significantly change the use of player abilities. It aides the pacing of the game and removes and chance at a player invoking a card that only they could interact with, then dying.
  
• The Effect sliders are reworked and no longer have extraneous visual errors
  
• Server will authorize and reject invokes in addition to the client, rather than just relying on the client's condition testing
  
• Ryo'shyr will now aide you spy upon the Lords of Jeria
  
• Aedan can now no longer heal mercenaries he doesn't have
  
• Braxen now is not allowed to take over the Guardian Faith
  
• Dying and winning at the same time no longer causes ui errors
  
• Dead players cannot invoke story cards while Sutier is banished and spiritual
  
• Removed a bug that made untyped physical and mental tests receive the augments from the tokens twice, making Torfield and Medicopia absurdly powerful.
  
• You now cannot buy a charm you already possess at the Arcane Carnival
  
• Wandering spirit is more stable and less expensive
  
• Changing the intention selection will properly "un-ready" players that have readied up.
  

Coming up next, the removal of the last placeholder art, additions to the Talon Intention, a change to the Cistern battle, updated Past Sacrifice, and more lore!