Spellmasons News

It's been a over a year since Spellmasons was released publicly and it's been a wild ride! I'm so grateful for the community - tons of suggestions (and bug fixes) from Discord have been implemented in the 33 updates that have been released since launch!

This is the biggest content update to date. Enjoy all the new spells and madness!

Here's the full change log:

New Boss!
Goru: the Corpse Warlock

New Spells!
- Alchemize
- Execute
- Merge
- Meteor
- Polymorph
- Recall
- Shatter
- Soul Bind
- Soul Shard
- Stomp
- Target Curse
- Target Injured
- Empower
- Enfeeble
- Bolt
- Dark Tide
- Blood Bath
- Fling

New Music!
2 new songs in the soundtrack

New Trailer!
https://youtu.be/NNAzAQcNUXc?si=PsdDjUjowZFW0B1a

Other changes
- content: Remove cursed mana potion
because it is anti-fun.
Thanks to Kyte from Steam Community
- i18n: Save dialog, modifiers, undying
- menu: Deduplicate previousCustomUrls
- ref: Allow purple portal to be used mid-game (#653)
- fix: Upgrades work in the + levels
- fix: shadows overlapping newly spawned units
- fix: Prevent units disappearing when too close to Wall
Thank you @Viz for reporting
- mods: Remove broken explosive archer mod
- fix: Protect against MessageQueue softlock
Thanks @JCDreamz for reporting

There's a big content update coming on April 27th, and this update contains all the fixes and improvements that SoulMuncher and I have been working on over the past few months while developing the new content.

Please let me know in Discord if you encounter any issues and thank you for your continued support!

Change log:

- art: Add particles to skyBeam
and reposition it slightly to better cover the player's feet
- art: Default to 1px unit outline
Unit outline can be modified or turned off in Accessibility settings.
I initially added the outline to help colorblind users distinguish between
enemies and allies (you can change the color and thickness), but I found it to be
very useful for me too as it helps distinguish units from the background so I've turned
it on to a default.
- art: Add shadows below walls
so they feel more connected to the environment.
- art: Update animated tombstone
Tombstone appears instead of a dead body when gore is turned off in settings
- art: Spellmasons play the bookIdle animation
when viewing their inventory.
Fixes bookOpen from playing every time a spell is cast in multiplayer
even if no other player is casting
- fix: poison bug
- fix: clone
Too many stacks would break the game due to the
absurd number (limit to 10 - which is still enough to practically cover the whole map).
Fix clone prediction badges, it now shows the actual number of
cloned units because they no longer overlap
- fix (IMPORANT): Synchronization bug
This one, I believe, is rather significant. It should dramatically reduce desync issues after casting where you would cast a spell and it would suddenly be "undone" as if it never happened
- fix: forceMove timeouts when multiple (#575)
force moves were added to a unit or pickup
- fix: flamestrike bug
- fix: contaminate extras
* fix: radiusBoost refactor for mods
* fix: Contaminate not spreading modifier "extras"
- fix: Targeting Unspawned Players
Fixes a bug that allowed unspawned players to be targeted, which could cause a desync in the game over state, and adds further support for additional universal targeting catches by passing underworld through as a parameter to the add target function
* Fix Target Similar Targeting Unspawned Units
* Added warning for future bug catching
* Fixed prediction discrepancy
- fix: "Good Looks" upgrade filters out Doodads now
So that choosing good looks doesn't explode urns
- fix: Units being removed for being "out of bounds"
when they were just close up against an upper wall.
Unit's center point is the center of their image, and since this game is 2D but
allow's "tile overlap" because it is appearing as isometric, the pathing bounds
are pulled up by 10 (-10) and so when checking if a units' center point is
inside a wall, we need to + 10 (down) to account for the fact that they can overlap
by 10 with a wall that is above them.
- fix: Squiggly force move lines
when multiple forces were applied to the same object.
Now forces get summed.
Also fix prediction and headless fully processing
forcemoves between units dying instead of letting all units die and then
processing all the force moves (like the regular game client always has)
- fix: await endPlayerTurn
This is not in response to a bug, but I noticed that endPlayerTurn
is async and not being awaited.
Based on a visual inspection this only effects hotseat
- fix: contaminate now spreads extra properties of modifiers (curses) such as expanded range
- Thanks to @theytookmysoul aka Wisky
- fix: Good Looks no longer explodes urns
- Thanks @Elvarien
- fix: Game soft locks if whole party is froze
- Thanks @Waterbending Squirrel for reporting
- menu: Add "recent custom server urls"
So that it is easy to rejoin a server with a custom url
- menu: Support quicksave at beginning of level
- menu: Add bookmarks to menu
to help find spells quickly by category
- menu: Style Accessibility menu so it's more organized
Add gore options to a11y menu in addition to
graphics menu
menu: Make actively selected buttons more obvious
- Optimization: makeManaTrail to lower particles
if number of trails gets large
- Optimization: Only run prediction calculations
if the player is hovering over the game space.
If they are hovering over the spellbook or toolbar,
it will not run predictions and thus not bog down
the experience of picking new spells when
the prediction calculation is hefty.
Thank you @Whisky for this idea!
- Localization: Polish
Update Polish translations with Whisky's translation
- Localization: Poison "start" -> "end"

When I was a kid there were lots of games that I wasn't allowed to play and so I empathize with young gamers who face restrictions. Thanks to the request of MrMarblz from the community I was reminded of this and so have added a "No Gore" mode accessible in Options > Video > Blood and Gore.

No Gore Mode
- Removes Blood
- Removes Death animations
- Replaces corpses with Tombstones
- Removes gory sound effects
- Removes gore-containing tutorial and tooltip gifs.

Also in this update:
- Feature: Purify now works on Cursed Mana Potions
- Thanks @Koliostro for this AMAZING idea

- Fix: prevent network messages from old levels from executing
on a new level.
- Thanks @ReddPine, @Raven, @MrMarblz and others for reporting

- Fix: player stamina unexpectedly getting set to 100
- Thanks @Innonminate for reporting

- Fix: Potions spawned from Urns with Last Will from appearing at 0,0
- Thanks @Innonminate

- Fix double decoy scaling

Hello all!

Update 1.28.2 was a pretty huge refactor to stabilize some of the more important systems of the game and there were a few small issues that came with that update. Thankfully they are now fixed!

- UI: Add hotkey numbers to side card holders
Update hotkey numbers of spellbar if they change in controls
Thanks MrMarblz!

- fix: Server Crash due to broken kill switch (#490)

- fix: Ally deathmason not summoning
ally units on levels with Natural blue portal pickups.
Thanks Raven and Isneverthere!


- Deathmason On Death Event Fix (#467)
- Killing the original deathmason will now slay all enemies on the map like it used to
- Killing the original deathmason will now spawn his 3 brothers like it used to

- fix: Waves
- In plus levels, players get full mana before additional waves spawn

- fix: Players suddenly at -1000,-1000

Thanks as always to all the amazing players for your support. Checkout our discord community to be a part of the happenings! https://discord.com/invite/q6sUCreHeJ

Version v1.28.1 lays the ground work for a large upcoming content update with some important stability improvements. Additionally, a new spell has been added along with some balancing and a dramatic boss intro. Stay tuned for our largest content update to date, coming soon!

- Added Spell: Potion Shatter
- Shatters a potion to apply its effect to all nearby units
- The area of effect increases with each stack of the spell
- Mana Vampire Changes
- No longer reduces maximum mana
- Steals up to 40 mana from its target with each attack
- Can spend up to 40 mana each turn to heal itself
- Deathmason
- Spawns after the players have taken their first turn, as to not reveal his location early
- Has a sick intro animation
- Steam Overlay
- Pressing [Shift+Tab] in the Steam verison of the game will open the steam overlay
- Tutorial Improvements
- Players start the tutorial with Target Cone, Slash, and Push
- Stat points earned in the early stages of the tutorial are auto-allocated to Max Health instead of being removed entirely, as to not make players' first sessions more difficult
- Many other Tutorial fixes: Most listed at the bottom of the changelog
- Huge Game State Refactor: This refactor encompases many different game systems and fixes. It should make the game much more stable and prevent softlocks
- The end turn logic accounts for unspawned players, players that can't act (due to being frozen, dead, etc.), and should handle other edge cases more consistently
- Players can end turn without needing to enter the portal and should never have to end their turn multiple times to progress the level
- Fixes an issue that sometimes caused players to choose their classes at different times - Thank you @Moonlighter
- Ally units have their end turn effects applied at the end of their turn, instead of at the end of the enemy turn
- Improved unit turn order. Ex. Ranged units will always complete their action before Priests take their turn
- Smart targeting factors in unit turn order, making it much more predicatble
- Units are much less likely to make targeting mistakes, such as targeting an enemy unit that's already been killed by another unit
- Planning view attention markers consider smart targeting, fixing an issue that rarely caused false prediction markers, especially with decoys around
- Additional waves spawn the turn after all enemies are killed, instead of spawning immediately - Thank you @BrewBreuw
- High scores are reliably tracked in online multiplayer, and for all hotseat players
- Completing a level and dying within the same series of events should favor the player and progress the level, instead of ending the game immediately
- Rework for client ID's, which should
- Improve lobby handling for online lobbies to prevent issues such as duplicated players
- Allow saved hotseat games to be loaded in an online multiplayer lobby
- Ensure spells and network messages always target the correct player in hotseat (I.E. Freeze and admin commands)
- General stability improvements

Other Fixes
- Fixed an issue that allowed players to skip the Deathmason's second phase. Deathmason now enters the second phase via the OnDeath event - Thank you @tennun.
- Fixed an await issue that prevented "Slash" from resolving correctly, which could sometimes lead to desync
- Fixed an await issue that prevented "Arrows" from resolving correctly, which could sometimes lead to desync
- Fixed a pathing issue that caused desync in online multiplayer games where gripthulus or resurrections were involved
- Modifier keys are ignored if there isn’t a bound action. I.E. [Shift+A] will move the camera to the left, unless you have [Shift+A] specifically bound to something else - Thank you @innonminate
- Fixed a bug that caused the some tutorials to not be completed when they should
- Fixed multiple tutorial display issues, such as explain prompts not showing up, completed tasks not appearing, and the tutorial not appearing correctly in multiplayer
- Fixed an issue that caused urn explosions to disappear too quickly - Thank you @blue1760
- Improved debug and logging
- Temporarily removed LoS targeting lines in preparation for an AI Refactor