Heartless & Dreadful : Return By 72 Hours News

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With this update, Enerith becomes playable. Sadly, still no voice acting because someone is completely broke.
I've decided there's no real reason to just wait until then. Releasing him now will at least allow to gather further feedback and to get more bugs fixed, I was hoping to get a mission done, but unfortunately right now is simply not the best time for it. We'll see in the future.
With that being said, I hope you can have some fun with him.

Anyways, now that he's out, I'll be taking a look into:
1) Reworking Sinner Style by a bit, just to make it a bit less ass and more enjoyable to use. Something more than just "one big screen cleaning ability.", but nothing too complex.
2) Finalizing other community requests, mainly I still want to take a look into the stuff in my Trello.
3) Realm Of The Rogue will return, reworked. The biggest issue with the last known version of Realm Of The Rogue is that it utilized a third party plugin for generation, which was not bad, but was quite limited. I think I have a better idea on how to make it now, and I can't wait to experiment.
4) Maybe something else, who knows!

- New playable character - Enerith.
Enerith has a slightly different playstyle from Shamir, but it still should be familiar enough. Utilize his quick movement, super shield, and doppelganger style. Although he doesn't have as much moves nor he is as complex as Shamir, he is quite the powerful character.
And may just be the guy you want to go to for beating Missions quickly.
- Enerith can be picked via Divergence, you can play as him in the main campaign, Tower Of Blood and Practice.

- General - Added Tibolerai Power Tower to the soundtrack on Steam.
- General - Added Endless Chase to the soundtrack on Steam.
- General - Added Great Artists Steal to the soundtrack on Steam.
- General - Added two new achievements.
- General - Added a new visual flinching system for enemies, now the enemies will dynamically flinch based on your attack direction.
- General - Added divergence specific animation for level completion so it's a bit less static.
- General - Fixed a goofy animation when soft lock is enabled for Huntress when she was trying to aim.
- General - Fixed a rare case where the launcher animation would get cancelled mid animation.
- General - Fixed a typo in total result.
- General - Fixed Mission 12 not saving the total result, and instead trying to save it into mission 11
- General - Major improvements to character shading, now characters get affected by dynamic lights and shade better thanks to a new shader.
- General - Optimized the performance of enemies getting hit.
- General - Reduced the "sliding" when holding movement and trying to cancel out the attack by moving.
- General - Floating now has a small particle system attached to the player.
- Huntress - Fixed huntress's animator resetting memorized weapon during jump cancel.
- Huntress - Huntress can now guard with a shield
- Huntress - Reduced style gain for huntress by a bit.
- Mission 01 - Added an image to indicate that the player should interact with the upgrades statue, to make sure it's not easily missed.
- Mission 03 - Performance improvements.
- TOB - Fixed Malice not flying as expected.
- Toothpick - Fixed weird walking animation with toothpick.


Known issues -
Two issues, you can read on the below. In addition, you can always check what is being worked on/what's on the todo list below.
https://trello.com/b/suviZn7g/known-issues-and-bug-tracking

If you find any other issues or have some feedback, please report them to me either on Steam Forum, E-mail, or on the stinky Discord server.
For Discord, it may take time to approve new people due to someone having to sleep. Whichever works best.
https://discord.gg/2ZyurUSbeE

So this update is meant to address the lack of using or utilizing lock on, since so many people didn't utilize it, which is okay, I had decided to rework it so the game can be played much better without utilizing the lock on mechanics much.

I've done a small test with a friend of mine who had a hard time using it and he said it felt a lot better so... Success? Maybe?

Don't worry though my fellow hardcore gamer, all of the new additions related to lock on system CAN BE DISABLED in the game's extra settings, or during a new pop up I had added in the Mission 01.

- General - 3 Drop System - Now visually looks correct on an ultrawide screen.
- General - Added distance compensation for all attacks. Based on the distance, the game will now automatically adjust the force of each movement. Basically, if you are far away from the enemy, the character will recieve an additional "push" to ensure the hits land quicker and faster. This option can be disabled, but it is enabled by default since this patch.
- General - Enemy's velocity now gets affected the same way the player's does if they are being pushed down into the ground from mid air.
- General - Lock On now has a small animation when appearing.
- General - Reduced air movement when attacking, this is meant to make the combat feel tighter and more stable overall, in addition, that should reduce the Cheese TM. If you utilized lock on before, you wouldn't notice this change whatsoever.
- Huntress Mission - fixed an issue where if you were to start huntress mission with camera mode set to auto, the camera would be detached from the player... Magic problems coming from having more options, I suppose!
- Lock On - Added Soft Lock On, basically this version of lock on will allow you to keep your directional movement and speed, This option is enabled by default now, but it can be disabled in the extra settings, or during the first pop up that happens in the first mission. Directional moves still work with this lock on mode.


- Lock On - Added an option to enable automatic target picking. This option is enabled by default, but it can be disabled in the extra settings, or during the first pop up that happens in the first mission.


- Lock On - The previous invisible lock on now has a proper icon. It is slightly different compared to using proper lock on. This already existed in the game, but this should make it a lot clearer when it's active.
- Main Menu - Fixed an issue where you couldn't change the camera mode from the main menu's settings.
- Mission 01 - Added a missing image in one of the dialogues.
- Mission 01 - Now, before the first encounter you get a notification asking you if you want to use automation or keep it classic. This happens only once, if you wish to change these settings afterwards, you can use the extra settings in the game's settings.
- Mission 01 - Fixed weird shadows on the rocks.
- Mission 02 - Fixed one of the dialogue images having a line not covered properly.
- Mission 12 - Fixed incorrect image showing up in dialogue with Dominika.
- Shamir - Arch. Needles - Now force the lock on state like other weapons.
- Toothpick - Adjusted the timings of pushing the player.
- Tower Of Blood - Huntress - Fixed an issue where she would only get rewarded 20 seconds instead of getting it based on the style meter.


Known issues -
Two issues, you can read on the below. In addition, you can always check what is being worked on/what's on the todo list below.
https://trello.com/b/suviZn7g/known-issues-and-bug-tracking

If you find any other issues or have some feedback, please report them to me either on Steam Forum, E-mail, or on the stinky Discord server.
For Discord, it may take time to approve new people due to someone having to sleep. Whichever works best.
https://discord.gg/2ZyurUSbeE

Hi, new people, hope you're enjoying the game so far.

To everyone else, the Knight's very much complete now. All that remains is to fix one terrible bug that makes his weapons visually disappear, and to likely get voice acting.

Though, I am not sure when that will happen. Kind of broke with all the medical bs. Might just end up releasing him as is after fixing that issue. And maybe making a mission.

I've done some testing, my friends say he's fun, but you know, opinions and all, lol.

Here's the changelog for this patch:
- Divergence - Fixed an issue where the game would try to store the score when playing with divergence.
- General - Adjusted the tilting power a bit to ensure it doesn't look too weird at some very sharp turns.
- General - Game will no longer set the main character into the combat state during the pause menu if you press anywhere other than the expected buttons.
- General - Input Buffer can no longer be buffered when the game is paused or you are in some other menu.
- Grindblade - Grindblade now has Super Armor, meaning you will no longer be kicked out of the charging state/animation when charging your attack. This has been done due to the fact that it is hard to pull off on higher difficulties. While it sounds busted at first, keep in mind that you still can be damaged during the animation, it just wouldn't cancel anything you do while charging.
This has been added to the upgrades menu and is unlocked by default.
- Huntress - Adjusted Huntress's style gain in order to ensure that some specific mechanics work as expected.
- Huntress - Improved CPU performance when playing as Huntress by reducing some specific calls from the camera.
- Tower Of Blood - Has been unified. Meaning that now instead of a specific button to join a different ToB, you just have to pick the character via divergence and they'll be loaded in, that should make it easier to adjust balance stuff in the future as it is no longer separated via a different scene.
- Upgrades - Reformatted the upgrades text once again to make it even easier to read.

Known issues -
Two issues, you can read on the below. In addition, you can always check what is being worked on/what's on the todo list below.
https://trello.com/b/suviZn7g/known-issues-and-bug-tracking

If you don't want to check that link above, just know that Sinner Style is going to be reworked. It's just things are done in priority.

If you find any other issues or have some feedback, please report them to me either on Steam Forum, E-mail, or on the stinky discord.
For Discord, it may take time to approve new people due to someone having to sleep. Whichever works best.
https://discord.gg/2ZyurUSbeE

Don't mind this one, just pushing an update here due to a soft lock being found.

Still working on other things, though don't expect the game to change too much with whatever comes next. After the playable knight update they'll be a small announcement of what's to come next, I think. We'll see.

- Fixed a soft lock in Mission 03 on harder difficulties.
- When using divergence, the characters will now have a visible portrait in the menu to make it easier to tell who you are going to play as.
- Realm Of The Rogue has been disabled as it's going to receive a rework later.

In case you missed, a small previous update also did the following, it was added as an edit to previous announcement.

- Upgrades - Reformatted a bit so it's easier to read.
- Upgrades - Fixed a missing Comet video from the claws upgrades.

Initially I was going to release all of this with the playable knight update, but, things happen.
I may have a surgery coming up, so I thought I'll just dump it here.
You know. For... just in case reasons.
Edit: Doctor gave me other things I need to do first and then go visit a different one. so I guess no surgery for now. Good thing I said *may*.


- General - Fixed a rare issue where the jumping animation wouldn't play out or have a delayed animation
- General - Minor performance increase for hit effects, there is now a max amount of lights that can be spawned from a hit effect, which will improve performance in areas with a lot of enemies being hit at once.
- General - Minor lighting improvements, as it turns out a specific shader ignored directional light. The player and enemies are now properly affected by it where needed. This does not cause any performance decreases, as it is simply adds information for the shader to take data from.
- General - Lighting has been re-baked in some levels, mainly where it was realtime before. Expect better performance in Mission 01.
- General - Some missing locale(Language) information has been added.
- General - Mission number now shows up in the pause menu.
- General - Multiple enemies recieved additional LODs to improve performance where possible.
- General - The character tilting system now rebalances the character tilt when the camera is not moving.
- General - Charged shot sounds now stop when switching ranged weapons. (Granted, this is probably a more temporal workaround for the annoying charging sound effect not stopping in some scenarios, I think I should take a look into it a bit more later.)
- Huntress - Fixed an issue where Huntress would have "Dodge mode" visisble on her user interface. This was an unintentional side effect from developing playable knight as he reuses the same system.
- Huntress - Reduced the walking speed animation in order for it to look a bit more natural.
- Shamir - Will now properly aim up and down, the aiming system from Huntress has been ported over. This however, doesn't affect the grenade launcher for balancing reasons.
- Shamir - Grenade Launcher - Reduced the damage output of the grenade launcher itself.
- Shamir - Grenade Launcher - Reduced the damage of the explosive dump.
- Shamir - Grenade Launcher - Added a missing muzzle flash effect.
- Shamir - Grenade Launcher - A new move has been added to the upgrades menu. (You know, I probably should have added a cooldown for it... Oh well, enjoy no cooldown while it lasts.)
Move in question:

- Mission 12 - Small balance adjustments for the enemies for that specific mission.
- Upgrade Menu - Split the collected HP/CT upgrade lines so they are easier to read.


Known issues -
Technically, only the Linux one, but that's outside of my hands. Proton team is aware of it and have a ticket for it.
https://trello.com/b/suviZn7g/known-issues-and-bug-tracking

If you find any other issues or have some feedback, please report them to me either on Steam Forum, E-mail, or on the stinky discord. For Discord, it may take time to approve new people due to someone having to sleep. Whichever works best.
https://discord.gg/2ZyurUSbeE

A small update came out after that, it had only two small changes so I didn't make an announcement on it.

- Upgrades - Reformatted a bit so it's easier to read.
- Upgrades - Fixed a missing Comet video from the claws upgrades.