Reality Break News

Hi all! Reality Break is in Bullet Heaven Fest 2.0, and I decided to update the Reality Break demo! This is the final demo update before the game's full launch early next year. I promised to include one more feature from the upcoming full version, and I'm pleased to deliver something new for you in this update!

[h2]Overlord[/h2]
This update includes a sneak peek into the Overlord endgame activity. In the demo version, an ultra-powerful Overlord enemy will now spawn as the target of Excursion missions at Challenge Level 20 or higher. You will have only a limited time to destroy it before it warps away! Be warned: the overlord has a massive health pool and powerful defenses, making it a true challenge to bring down.



In the full version, there's a major twist: The Overlord's current health is preserved across engagements, and even across profile breaks!

If you do manage to defeat the overlord, you will be substantially rewarded. I hope you enjoy this first look!


[h3]Thank you very much for playing Reality Break!![/h3]
~Courtney



Patch notes follow:

Reality Break Demo build v0.17.0 has gone live!

Courtney's Dev Notes: This is the final demo update before the full version releases next year, though if any severe issues pop up I will hotfix them. Enjoy!

[h2]Content[/h2]

• Full version sneak peek: Overlord. This is a first look at an endgame activity where you have to destroy an ultra-powerful enemy capital ship. Once engaged, it begins firing up its quantum slipdrive to escape, and summons a variety of enemies to defend it. If you defeat it before it warps out, you get rewarded substantially! In the demo version, the Overlord has a chance to spawn as the target of an Excursion mission. In the full release, it will be available to pursue via its own mission type. What's more, its health will be preserved across engagements and even across profile breaks! However, it will drop better loot if defeated in a single go, making it a true test of both damage and survivability.
  
• Unique Modifier Type rewrites on Epic items now use the same multiple-choice setup as Affix Type rewrites.
  
• Added randomization to items' Core Multipliers for more variation in item drops.
  
• Replaced the default engine sound for the player ship with more subtle audio and tuning.
  

[h2]Performance[/h2]

• The particle effects spawned when anything takes damage are now metered out at a global level, allowing the game to detect when many are being spawned at once and reduce their spawn quantity. This improves performance substantially when operating at high levels of Haste, Twin Bolt, and various projectile/beam split effects, as well as against high enemy densities.
  
• Reduced the max loot drop spawns from 5 per update to 1 per update, improving performance when many ships are destroyed on the same update and generate large amounts of loot simultaneously.
  
• Don't update the ship dialog while it's not visible.
  

[h2]Quality of Life[/h2]

• Improved the clarity of gameplay and reduced the impression of "visual clutter" across the board: (unit layer highlighting, reduced bg lighting, bg objects farther away, bg effects dimmer, destruction debris darker, lower bloom, smaller flares, lower exposure on skyboxes, dimmer stars.)
  
• When a side mission is completed at a rewritten Challenge Level, all other side missions have their rewrite dropdowns set to that same Challenge Level.
  
• Toggle Favorite/Scrap now locks itself to enable/disable based on the first item toggled. (Courtney's note: this lets you sweep the cursor across multiple items to batch enable or disable Favorite/Scrap based on what happened to the first item in the sequence, rather than a per-item toggle like before.)
• Increased the width of the visual tell for the Restored Punisher's Overload Blast ability.
  
• Decryption Key items now despawn when any other copy is looted.
  
• Reduced the game's baseline audio volume.
  
• Affixes that contribute to delta comparison tooltip rollups are now prefaced with an empty bullet point to distinguish them from the filled bullet point used for affixes that don't.
  

[h2]Balance[/h2]

• Reduced the damage of the Restored Punisher's Overload Blast attack by 96%.
  

[h2]Bug fixes[/h2]

• fixed loss of input control after opening nav map while jumping to a mission
  
• fixed Epic Sensors item "The Scrambler"'s Virus debuff applying to the player's ship
  
• fixed "skill points available" attention grabber showing even if all skills are maxed
  
• fixed enemies staying on the area scan after they're destroyed
  
• fixed inconsistencies/inaccuracies in area scan uncertainty radius indicators for points of interests that haven't yet been approached
  
• fixed Demolition side missions sometimes marking Colossus Pulsers as their mission target
  
• fixed issue where entities with colliders that prevent damage (such as the Colossus Reactor's armored rings) were still taking damage from certain collisions
  
• fixed various UIs mistakenly continuing to display the pilot's class
  
• fixed "skill points available" attention grabber showing even if all skills are maxed
  
• fixed "on cooldown" flyouts showing in wrong positions for attempted activations of propulsion and ship regeneration
  
• fixed being able to open various dialogs while camera was fully faded out
  
• fixed Chaos Vortex spawning ships the player hasn't seen yet
  
• fixed physics impulses against elites not propagating to their destroyed fx, and lowered impulse strength across the board
  
• fixed not all parts of various numeric dropdowns being clickable, such as for mission challenge level and screen resolution
  
• fixed equipment on clone spawned via the Through The Looking Glass skill not inheriting the source equipment's unique modifiers
  
• fixed certain mission rewards not upgrading correctly or at all with Challenge Level
  
• fixed mission rewards not displaying correctly if upgraded due to increased Challenge Level
  
• improved scrollbar positioning in numeric dropdowns
  
• fixed a bug that made the player ship engine sound play too loudly
  

[h2]Roguelike Celebration Celebration 2024[/h2]

Hi all! I'm thrilled to announce that Reality Break is in this year's Roguelike Celebration Celebration festival and Steam event, just like last year. This is a big deal because roguelikes are my favorite meta-genre and were of course a gigantic inspiration for my game.

Not only that, but my proposal for a "lightning talk" was accepted, so I will be one of this year's speakers! I'll be giving a talk about cheating in games -- by design! It's something I love experiencing in games and love discussing, so check it out this weekend. My talk is on Sunday at 6:30 CDT!



[h2]Player feedback[/h2]

I have been monitoring player feedback from all sources, including Steam forums, social media posts, and others. Thank you for your thoughtful comments and discussions! I'm thinking carefully about good paths forward for aspects of the game like a death penalty (survival bonus), experience gains for high level kill streaks, UI suggestions, design of walled "space dungeon" maps, and demo profile saves in the full version. That last one is covered in more detail below, and I'll give updates on the others (as well as other feedback I have collected and will continue to collect) in the future.

[h2]Demo profiles in the full version[/h2]

I have given this a lot of thought, because there are many competing elements. The plan is outlined below.

[h3]After completing the full version story campaign:[/h3]

• demo players get a 5x RP multiplier until the bonus RP they get has used up the RP they accumulated in the demo, up to maximum of 5,000.
  
• all aptitudes unlocked in the demo become available.
  
• all pilots from the demo version become unlocked for use.
  

I aimed for something that recognizes demo players who have put effort into the game without trivializing the game's full version launch, including new players who might feel like they missed out, as well as acknowledging the fact that demo RP gains were flat out broken at one point.

[h2]Thank you![/h2]

I guess I'm sounding like a broken record by this point, but seriously, I SO appreciate all of your incredible positivity and encouragement as I continue working to bring Reality Break to you all. Solo indie devs don't have teammates, of course, so seeing feedback from players is a wonderful treat. We're getting close!

~Courtney

[h3]Hi all![/h3]

I've been hard at work on the full version of Reality Break, with the complete campaign storyline as well as loot, metagame, and core game features locked down. I have some good news overall, though it comes with a slight downside.

I have a new partner who will help publish the game in more markets, increasing the game's global reach and its chances for success. More details will be forthcoming on that in the future. Putting various pieces into place for this has, however, required some delays - both for development and marketing. And, even a slight delay from Q3 2024 would move the game's launch into Q4, which is basically a death sentence for most indie games due to massive competition from big budget releases and the sheer quantity of games coming out.

This means that Reality Break will need one final delay: until Q1 2025. This will also give me the opportunity to incorporate more of the excellent player feedback I've received from recent festivals like Steam Next Fest and Tiny Teams, and ensure that the full version not only meets but exceeds the high bar set by the demo version.

I will be announcing an exact release date as soon as possible, though not before I'm certain I can deliver the game everybody has been asking for. Believe me: I can feel the clamoring! It's tangible! And that's super exciting for me. I'm so grateful that players have been playing and enjoying the demo, and I can't wait to reveal more news about the full version.

One bit of silver lining: sometime this fall, I'll be releasing another (previously unplanned) demo update, and will be pulling in at least one new feature from the full version.

Thank you for your patience as I wrap up easily the toughest project I've ever attempted.

Much heart!
~Courtney

p.s., Below please find some recent hotfix patch notes.


[h2]Reality Break Demo[/h2] hotfix [h2]v0.16.1.4[/h2] has gone live.

Courtney's note: this is a small patch to address the Analysis save file corruption bug, as well as a speculative performance fix for the intermittent hitching encountered by some players; let me know if some of these issues persist.

[h3]Performance[/h3]

• enabled incremental garbage collection
  

[h3]Bug fixes[/h3]

• fixed save file corruption bug if Analysis finished on an item in an Inactive Loadout and the game was closed and relaunched before the item was viewed to confirm its Discovered Affix
  
• fixed a bug preventing items from ever rolling affixes that improve specific weapon types (e.g., "+% Laser weapon damage") as well as affixes that improve weapons by power source (e.g., "+% Ammo-based damage")
  

[h3]Reality Break is in Tiny Teams 2024!![/h3]

As a solo dev working on a massive loot-based ARPG like Reality Break, it feels great to show it off in this year's Tiny Teams festival! Check it out, alongside many other games made by tiny teams!



Thank you,
~Courtney

https://store.steampowered.com/app/1473060/Reality_Break/

[h2]Multiple Reality Break Demo hotfixes have gone live.[/h2]

Courtney's Notes: Thank you to everyone who checked out the Reality Break Demo during Steam Next Fest! I greatly appreciated all the positivity and encouragement as I work to bring the Full Version to you later this year. I got a lot of great feedback about the game, and have released several patches to fix multiple bugs you reported.

[h3]v0.16.1.1[/h3]

• fixed being unable to cycle Rewrite Paths while ship was destroyed
  
• fixed cycle Rewrite Paths input going through in tandem with certain item operations
  
• fixed main HUD slipdrive button not showing input binding
  
• fixed item Discovery fx persisting when certain dialogs were closed and reopened
  
• fixed Dormant Warship fragments not gathering after being scanned
  

[h3]v0.16.1.2[/h3]

• fixed Japanese display string that was causing the pilot UI to be inoperable
  
• fixed Loot Filter ignoring side mission rewards
  
• fixed Loot Filter tutorial popping up before it was unlocked
  
• fixed side mission reward labels going off the right edge of the screen
  
• fixed certain side mission reward items not being auto-added to inventory
  

[h3]v0.16.1.3[/h3]

• fixed crash at high pilot levels in Chinese and Japanese due to translations with malformed markup in certain Pilot Skill display strings
  
• fixed Fate Core showing as a mission target in your inventory immediately after it has been picked up
  
• fixed Analysis Discoveries on equipped items not taking effect until the items were unequipped and re-equipped
  
• fixed being able to save-scum Analysis Discoveries and Item Rarity rewrites
  
• fixed gameplay camera zoom getting into a bad state if initiating warp from the Navigation Map while the Slipdrive was charging up
  
• fixed Loot Filter suppressing item rewards that were mission targets, such as the target item on Salvage missions
  
• fixed attempting to slot a Crafting Resource into the Quantum Frame causing subtle issues