Abalon News

1. More Starting Character Choices: Added additional starting character choices for players to choose from. For the demo, this includes the Druid, Pyromancer and Battle Mage. For the full game, this includes (in addition) the Fighter Mage, Ice Queen and Liche King.
   
2. Fixed Bug with language support by adding support for Steam to auto start with selected game language for German and Brazilian Portuguese without having to select it in the language menu when starting the game.
   
3. Fixed Bug where the Brazilian version of Portuguese was not listed in Steam language menu.
   
4. Fixed Bug where the orc shaman was not healing closest ally after inflicting damage with its attack.(Thanks Co0kieL0rd)
   
5. Balance Changed the behavior of Inflict Freeze, Inflict Vulnerable and Inflict Daze so they no longer require melee attacks. This means, if you equip a bow and arrow on an ice golem like Frostilicus, it will now freeze when shooting enemies in addition to freezing with its melee attack. (Thanks Co0kieL0rd)
   
6. Fixed Exploit: If you have a guardian with regeneration you can enter and retreat from a fight over and over again and bring them to full health. The new rules make it so that if you retreat as your first move (without rolling a dice) the life recovered from the first turn regeneration is lost. (Thanks Lord Cameron)
   
7. Fixed Bug where it was possible to use the Hero Doll card to obtain a copy of a guardian already in your party. Since only 1 guardian of each type can be included in a team/deck, this card has been changed to exclude guardians already encountered in your adventure. (Thanks Lord Cameron)
   
8. Balance: Increased damage Frog Demon Heart deals from 1 to 2. Increased its gold cost by 100. (Thanks Lord Cameron)
   

1. Fixed Bug where units revived by Scroll of Resurrection or Raise Dead might vanish after being revived (Thanks PorkDiesel and Dustbunney)
   
2. Fixed Bug where loading a Horde Survival game after having played equipment based satchel cards could result in having a negative mana balance. (Thanks Dustbunney)
   
3. AI Improvement: Fixed reported bug where AI was casting Flash Bomb on its own units instead of enemy cluster. I added a special trait for AOE related actions to improve how the AI uses this heuristic (Thanks Pork Diesel)
   
4. Fixed Bug where player found another copy of unique satchel artifact after having already discovered it in Horde Survival. This unique satchel bug is actually caused by the fact that the space on which the satchel is dropped is storing a shop, so it reuses the same card choices as earlier in the level. The solution is not to store shop property on spaces. (Thanks PorkDiesel)
   
5. Fixed Bug where attacking and killing a Skeleton Captain with a Vampire Lord could result in increasing the remaining health of the enemies’ skeletons. This occurred because the unit was temporarily mind control before death, so I added an additional check not to mind control units with 0 or less life remaining. (Thanks PorkDiesel)
   
6. Fixed Bug where Dreamstealer would cast spells at the closest space (relative to the clockwise order) but not the closest space faced. (Thanks PorkDiesel)
   
7. Fixed Bug where losing on a wave would still count as having survived up to that wave number. (Thanks Dustbunney)
   
8. Balance Increased Death’s power and life stats.
   

Thanks so much to all of our players for continuing to share your feedback and positive support. I take all of your input very seriously, and I want to do the best I can to continue improving Abalon.

This week I'm pleased to announce we've added support for two additional languages: German and Brazilian Portuguese. Additionally, I've added another 5 waves to endless survival mode, new NPCs that should keep quite challenged this round, more balance changes, and addressed a number of other player requests.

Enjoy!


She's well known for her delightful Minecraft Youtube videos, but did you know she also enjoys roguelike deckbuilders? MacNcheese was also the wonderful host of the SIX Online earlier this month.

I'm excited to announce Twitch streamer MacNcheese will be playing Abalon today starting at 12PM (noon) today (just a few minutes after this update went live).

Tune in here: https://www.twitch.tv/macncheesep1z



We've got a special event planned for tomorrow with Twitch streamer, AlchemistJoker! We met at the Seattle Indie Expos where I'd showcased Abalon, and Alchemist also covered the SIX Online feature earlier this month. He's super energetic, charismatic and brings a lot of positive energy that reminds us all of the joy video games bring to our lives.

Tune in to his Twitch Channel: https://www.twitch.tv/alchemistjoker


When: Tomorrow - Tuesday, November 21s from 6PM-8PM (PT) where he'll playing Abalon. I'll also be on the stream (voice only) to answer his viewers burning questions about the development of the game and provide morale support as he explores Abalon and pits his wits against the monstrous hordes that await in his journey. Maybe we'll even play a PvP battle to showcase our upcoming game, Abalon Arena...

1. New Language Support: German
   
2. New Language Support: Portuguese
   
3. New Language Support: Updated translations for Simplified Chinese, Traditional Chinese, Japanese, Spanish, and Russian. Korean and French updates will be added soon.
   
4. Horde Survival: Added 5 additional waves to Horde Survival and new achievement.
   
5. New NPC Unit: Flesh Giant
   
6. New NPC Unit: Golden Death Reaper
   
7. QoL: Added “Rest at camp to shuffle discarded cards back into your deck” to the Cards tip prompt. Additionally, made the Cards tip prompt act as a regular tooltip so that it will now surface whenever drawing a card (regardless of whether or not you play the tutorial) provided that you have not selected the “Got it” button or “Complete all Tips” in the settings menu. (Thanks TART Raisin)
   
8. Demo: Changed the demo so that instead of ending at the start of the boss fight, playtime is unlimited but the portal to next chapter cannot be used until the full game is purchased. (Thanks TART Raisin)
   
9. Balance: The status effect applied from Polymorph is now considered a Debuff rather than a buff. This is so that units like the Fairy Queen will not remove the Polymorph applied when attacking. It also makes it easier for victims of Polymorph to remove the spell and change their unit back to its original form. The ideal combo is to polymorph and then immediately defeat the squirrel to remove the enemy unit (similar to how Smite requires damage before it can defeat a unit). (Thanks mr.kitty)
   
10. Balance: Units that have been created as the result of morphing into something else are no longer considered as added to the defeated unit stack. When a unit that has been morphed (ex: into a squirrel or into a copy of another unit) is defeated, it will revert back to its original form upon defeat. This means, if you defeat a polymoprhed Barbarian, then use a Raise Dead spell, you will now raise the Barbarian instead of a squirrel.
    
11. Fixed Bug: where mutating a unit polymorphed into a squirrel with Animal Growth would remove the polymorph instead of changing the squirrel into a squirrel mutant. The squirrel will now become a mutant with a permanent status applied, meaning that the mutant cannot be transformed back into its original form until it is defeated. (Thanks mr.kitty)
    
12. Fixed Bug: where a battle could lock up after winning if a unit had been polymorphed into a squirrel. What was happening was that, after the battle ended, the polymorphed squirrel would run away, but the enchantment would be removed, recreating the original enemy that was transformed and initiating an unplayable battle. With the additional changes to the morph mechanics, units of defeated players will not revert to their original form upon status removal when the battle ends. (Thanks Lord Cameron)
    
13. Fixed Bug: where Barbarian would attack nearby brambles summoned via a spell after defeating an enemy instead of moving and attacking the closest enemy as indicated by his ability. (Thanks dieszy)
    
14. Fixed Bug: in Russian translation where canceling a biome choice acted the same as confirming the biome choice. (Thanks Chopper Dave)
    
15. Fixed Bug: where two Frog Demons stacked on a single character were only dealing 1 damage back to enemies instead of 2. (Thanks PorkDiesel)
    
16. Fixed Bug: where Fairy Wings could be removed by the Auramancer or Fairy Queen’s ability to remove buffs. (Thanks PorkDiesel)
    
17. Fixed Bug: where Guardian Heart removed friendly buffs. The artifact now correctly removes “Enemy Buffs” such as Mind Control. (Thanks PorkDiesel).
    
18. Fixed Bug: where the Metamorph would lose base health each time it transformed into another Magiscale type unit while ally Graviton Warriors are on the board. This was caused by the SetAttributeValueCommand not properly calculating the attribute change for base modified attributes. (Thanks PorkDiesel)
    
19. Fixed Bug: where Metamorph would recover health when changing back into a Metamorph while Graviton Warriors are present.
    
20. Fixed Bug: where Cyclops ending its move facing a neutral object didn't pick up satchel cards in its path because the game had considered him as "charging with intent to use his bull charge ability" even though a neutral obstacle is not a valid target for bull charge. (Thanks PorkDiesel)
    
21. Balance: Changed Bloom so it can only target neutral plants (ex: trees/brambles/etc.) if they were summoned and not those already present on the board. Fixes bug where AI might Bloom on indestructible trees (Thanks PorkDiesel)
    
22. Fixed Bug: where Sir Cheezles was not removing debuffs with his send ally to the future ability. (Thanks PorkDiesel)
    
23. Fixed Bug: where the Fennec Fox was triggering a “combo” VFX/SFX when using it’s special ability. The Fennec Fox attacks at full strength after using its support ability. As this is attack is triggered, it cannot be counter attacked like a regular attack.
    
24. Fixed Bug: where a unit protected by Celestial Shield that is attacked by a unit with Pierce would remain “pierce vulnerable” to the next enemy attack, even if they didn’t have pierce. Also made it so that units with shields will not lose lose their block (have their shield go down) as a result of the initial attack since it dealt no damage. (Thanks PorkDiesel)
    
25. Balance: Improved Reflect Damage so that it triggers preemptively upon damage that would be taken. (Previously, it would trigger only when actual life was lost, now it will trigger to prevent damage against damage as well).
    
26. Fixed Bug: where Marauder Warlord would turn to face the direction of a new marauder being deployed when his Rally ability activated.
    
27. Fixed Bug: where Satyr Champion was not giving +1/+1 to enemy animals summoned after he was summoned, despite saying in his card text “All other animals +1/+1”.
    
28. Balance: Hellhound puppy is now a unique unit. Its life reduced from 5 to 3.
    
29. Balance: Reduced Bard’s life from 12 to 11
    
30. Balance: Reduced Ice Golem’s life from 6 to 5
    
31. Balance: Gravomancer no longer pulls as a counter attack against ranged units.
    
32. Balance: Reduced the dice roll difficulty for all hostile weather events and added an additional outcome to clear hostile weather before incurring penalties. (Thanks 杠精混凝土卡比)
    
33. Balance: Changed the Traveling Highrollers event so that it will always reward locked/missing cards from the player’s collection (if there are locked cards for their played summoner available) OR satchel cards if there are not locked cards available. Lowered the gold cost for playing the Traveling High Rollers event from 400 initial gold to 250 initial gold and the gold cost increase from 100 gold to 50 gold. (Thanks Done25)
    
34. Balance: If your hand has less than 3 cards at the beginning of your turn (due to having cards stolen from demons or the Stolen Dreams spell, you’ll now draw back up to 3 at the start of your turn.
    
35. Balance: Increased Swift Strike’s bonus from +3/+0 to +5/+0.
    
36. Balance: Flesh Golem no longer turns to face the summoner when damage is redirected to it.

Some new features in the works for future updates include:

1. Ability to use satchel cards during battle in adventure mode.
   
2. Persistent artifacts on guardians when defeated/removed from party.
   
3. Potential for equip/dequip feature to customize heroes
   
4. Addressing more bugs and QoL requests
   
5. New Game Mode - Fast Adventure
   

Thanks you so much for the surge of reviews after last week's update! We're now just 15 reviews short of our end of year goal of 300 Steam reviews. If you haven’t yet written a Steam review, do please consider sharing your feedback. It means a lot to me (reviews are serious motivation) and it also helps other players discover what you like about the game.

That’s it for now. Thanks again for all of your kindness, feedback and support! I hope you’re enjoying playing these updates as much as I enjoy making them for you.

~Ross

v1.29.1 Patch Notes

1. Fixed bug where defeating an enemy hexed with Polymorph could result in a battle not being concluded. This was due to change in previous update, which introduced the lingering status on Polymorphed units so that the Hex could be removed to change unit back into their original form. (Thanks 甜甜棒棒糖 for reporting).
   

I’m very pleased to deliver this next update which is a direct result of collaboration with some of our top players. Survivors of wave 30 shared their strategies with me, and I was amazed to discover so many synergies and quite literally “unbeatable” armies that players had devised. It was clear that simply adding additional waves was not going to provide enough challenge - the system itself needed revision. Special thanks to Kaaz, Dusty, PorkDiesel, Scharlatan, Jear and Diezy for their collaboration with me on Discord and help designing the new enemy NPCs and balance optimizations for this update.

Additionally, our recent PvP tournament and weekly play sessions have helped to reveal and solve additional balance concerns as we move closer to the release of Abalon Arena. If you’re interested in PvP and would like to join our intimate and well mannered test group, you are most welcome. The closed beta for Abalon Arena is currently open to any players who already own Abalon on Steam. Simply join our Discord and fill out the application in our #multiplayer channel so I can add the appropriate permissions.


This week we’re honoring one of our players, Reiga, by naming a card in his honor. Reiga has been a constant champion to the growth and strengthening of Abalon’s community by promoting player collaboration in our discord server, helping us connect with the content creator community and organizing PvP tournaments for our upcoming game, Abalon Arena. The campfire is a symbol of camaraderie and party members bonding together. Henceforth, the Bonfire Elixir card will be known as “Reiga’s Bonfire Elixir”. Thank you for all of your kindness and support this past year, Reiga!


Retromation is a rock-star on YouTube when it comes to roguelike games. His videos are great for introducing new games, and they’re also incredibly helpful for developers like myself looking to improve the experience. I’m honored once again for his recent “Let’s Try” video, this time trying out Horde Survival:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?app=desktop&v=OYfCiYWrRvc&ab_channel=Retromation

Some takeaways for me to further improve the game from this video:

1. Auto-equip passive artifacts (In progress)
   
2. Better explain flying units - (They fly over traps, but still take damage if they end their move on a trap)
   
3. Consider balance such as reducing drop rate/num selection choices (Done in this update!)
   
4. New Gameplay Mode: 1 Hour Adventure - Start with choosing your team, explore a single larger/multi-biome world (Goal: Faster, more diverse runs to encourage more subsequent plays to try out the different teams) - I’m interested to build this!

Support for German and Brazilian Portuguese will be coming soon in a future update. We’re currently looking for volunteers to help us translate our game in Polish and Italian. If you’re interested, please contact me on Discord (@rossd20studios) or shoot an email to [email protected].


Also please note that since I have changed a few card descriptions, these will appear in English text for a few days while our translators are updating the copy. Thanks for your patience and understanding :)

1. Horde Survival: Added 5 additional waves to endless mode.
   
2. Horde Survival: Added dynamic difficulty adjustment that adapts to the top player strategies by adding new elite NPC enemies to existing waves to disrupt standing army tempo.
   
3. Horde Survival: Created a hard-coded a reward drop algorithm to make drops more consistent. Also made it so that only the first spawn encounter in each wave drops rewards, greatly reducing the excess drops seen in previous builds.
   
4. Horde Survival: Limited the card choice selection to 3 for most pickups and 6 for the satchel dropped from summoners.
   
5. Horde Survival: Added additional drop tier including small potions and weapons.
   
6. Horde Survival: Added Sacrificial Orb, Lightning Orb, Forcefield Orb, Fire Orb and Trinity Orb to survival mode.
   
7. Horde Survival: Added Hellfire Candle and Radiant Amethyst to survival mode.
   
8. Horde Survival: Created several new NPC units for upper tier waves and adaptive strategy
   
9. New NPC Unit: Bringer of Darkness
   
10. New NPC Unit: Greater Magma Golem
    
11. New NPC Unit: Skeleton Barbarian
    
12. New NPC Unit: Elder Gruar
    
13. New NPC Unit: Dark Elf Elite Archer
    
14. New NPC Unit: Vampire Succubus
    
15. New NPC Unit: Death Knight
    
16. New NPC Unit: Death’s Apprentice
    
17. New NPC Unit: Death Reaper
    
18. New Card: Lightning Crystal - Summons a Lightning Elemental
    
19. Balance: Babarian’s ability changed from “Wreck: May move and attack again.” to “Wreck: Move towards and attack the closest enemy.” Note: Movement is not optional.
    I have received a lot of feedback about this character (players love him, but also felt he was too powerful). I believe this change effectively balances the barbarian AND makes him even more distinctive, challenging and fun to play. Effectively, he becomes the incredible hulk, charging recklessly towards the enemy in a blood drunk rampage. Without having explicit control of where the barbarian goes, he will be putting himself at high risk of counter attack. But players who set him up right will be rewarded with a crazy barbarian roaring rampage combo!
    
20. Balance: The “Dreamsteal” ability to steal a card from Summoner hand and cast it, used by the Dreamstealer and Glith of Nithsrott, is now an Inflict ability. This means it will no longer proc for combo attacks. This also means the glyph will no longer trigger twice when attacking with Clik’Clik’. (Thanks Furoggu)
    
21. Balance: Changed the wording of Abysmal End from "Destroy an ally and deal damage equal to its power to visible enemies." to "Destroy an ally. It deals damage equal to its power to visible enemies." This is to clarify that 1) Spellblock ability will not block this damage and 2) Veil and stealth units are protected from damage since it requires visibility. If a Veil unit is adjacent to the destroyed unit, it will take damage per regular Veil rules. (Thanks Scharlatan and mr.kitty)
    
22. Balance: Reduced the cost of Forcefield from 2 to 1.
    
23. Balance: Turn Back time now removes all enemy buffs in addition to its other effects.
    
24. Balance: Melt now removes enemy buffs in addition their equipment.
    
25. Balance: Cleansing Fire, Rust and Deconstruct now say “Any” instead of “Target” to clarify that these spells can now target any unit without line of sight required (including targets with Stealth and Veil). This is intended to help provide options for combating these abilities, as well as providing an option to recover Mind Controlled units. Note however that only Cleanse, Dispel Magic and Turn Back Time have the power to remove enemy buffs on an ally unit (such as Polymorph).
    
26. Balance: Revive spell will now only revive guardians defeated in the current battle. The Scroll of Resurrection satchel card will revive guardians defeated in any previous battle.
    
27. Balance: Reflect Damage spell now prevents damage before Inflict abilities trigger.
    
28. Balance: When a unit is transformed (with the exception of the Metamorph) it loses all status effects and equipment before being replaced with a new unit. The Metamorph will transfer over its health and status effects to its new form when changing shape.
    
29. Balance: Savage Transformation now removes all status on the summoner (buffs, debuffs, equipment) and replaces it with a 4/11 bear (including the health). When the summoner changes back, it will be at the previous health value before transforming.
    
30. Balance: Units transformed into a squirrel by the Polymorph spell will now have a buff applied to them that says “Unit Name is Squirrel”. Spells like Cleanse, Cleansing Fire and Dispel magic can remove this buff to transform the squirrel back into the original unit.
    
31. Balance: Metamorphs (or any unit transforming into a Marauder or Ironclad) will no longer trigger Rally effects associated with its unit type. This is to prevent unintended escalation of these abilities with repeated transformation (Thanks Jear). A morphed unit transformed into a unit with a Rally ability will still use that rally ability when a natural unit of designated type enters the battlefield.
    
32. Balance: To be consistent with the Marauder Metalist and Warlord’s Rally trigger, Legatus Isabelle no longer triggers her Rally when being summoned from the deck - only when starting the battle as a guardian and when another Ironclad unit enters the battle.
    
33. Balance: Metamorph’s life reduced from 10 to 9.
    
34. Balance: Reduced cost of Blue Dragon from 5 to 3
    
35. Balance: Ice Golem’s life reduced from 7 to 6, and cost from 3 to cost 2
    
36. Balance: Reduced Skeleton Reaver from 2/3 to 2/2
    
37. Balance: Ring of Power no longer stacks.
    
38. Fixed Bug where a Metamorph that had life buffs was healing for each point of bonus life status when changing form. The metamorph should always retain its exact health when changing forms. (Thanks Jear)
    
39. Fixed Bug where polymorphing a Metamorph while transformed resulted in changing back into the Metamorph instead of becoming a squirrel.
    
40. Fixed Bug where Metamorph runs away after survival mode if battle ended while it was transformed. (Thanks Jear)
    
41. Fixed Bug where Occuloid Boss [NPC] appeared in the summoner selection screen. (Thanks Divine Sage Mahogany)
    
42. Fixed Bug where Farshot Attack from the Occuloid doesn’t trigger the frog demon heart artifact. (Thanks Scharlatan)
    
43. Fixed Bug where it was possible to clone guardians with the Resurrection Scroll satchel card by first reviving a single guardian at camp, then using the scroll. The game now properly tracks when guardians have been revived at camp (even if not in your party) and when they are encountered again in the world (if using the Lost Guardians challenge modifier). Note: The Resurrection Scroll can be used to revive a lost guardian when this challenge is active until the player finds that guardian again. Lost guardians can only be found again in the next biome choice and beyond within the adventure once lost.
    
44. Fixed Bug where Revive spell wasn't reviving the last guardian defeated in combat, but rather the first. Additionally, Revive spell will only revive guardians defeated in the current battle, unlike the Resurrection Scroll, which can revive guardians between battles or in exploration mode.
    
45. Fixed Bug: Fixed bug where it was possible for players to enter adventure mode while in Horde Survival after clearing a wave in which their summoner had been revived using an ability such as Spirit Recall or Phylactery. (Thanks PorkDiesel)
    
46. Fixed Bug where Wave 27, 28, and 29 didn't have any text show up in the banner when the wave started.
    
47. Fixed Bug where armor was only rendering half of the texture on female armatures.
    
48. Fixed Bug where fire dragons and dragon whelps couldn’t damage units with Immune (Fire) with their melee attack.
    
49. Fixed Bug: Stacked Rings of Power were only showing +1/+0 in the status pane instead of the true amount.
    
50. Fixed Bug: Iron Angel Crest card was showing gain Armor (0) instead of Armor (1)
    
51. Fixed VFX on Abysmal End so it shoots particles at all targets
    
52. New SFX: for Banshee and Psychic Screamer

Some new features in the works for future updates include:

1. Ability to use satchel cards during battle in adventure mode.
   
2. Persistent artifacts on guardians when defeated/removed from party.
   
3. Potential for equip/dequip feature to customize heroes
   
4. Addressing more bugs and QoL requests
   
5. New Game Mode - Fast Adventure (See above in Content Creator Spotlight)
   

I have a goal to reach 300 Steam reviews before the end of this year…and we’re so close! Only 25 more reviews to go. If you haven’t yet written a Steam review, do please consider sharing your feedback. It means a lot to me (reviews are serious motivation) and it also helps other players discover what you like about the game.

That’s it for now. Thanks again for all of your kindness, feedback and support! I hope you’re enjoying playing these updates as much as I enjoy making them for you.

~Ross