Novus Orbis News

0.5.4 Update

[p]As I keep working on the new class (I'm over 60 cards, so I'm about halfway through, tho balancing is being trickier than I hoped), I keep making changes, balancing, and fixing bugs, so I want to push stuff at least once every two weeks.[/p][p][/p][p]There are two main things in this update:[/p][h3]Retry:[/h3][p]The game will now offer you the option to "Retry" when losing a fight (it will reload the game as it was in the room before the fight you lost). At the same time, even when going back to the main menu, your save file for the run will still be loadable. The only time a save file is reset is when you win a run.[/p][p]Basically, free save scumming. While testing I realized that it makes the whole game less stressful and more enjoyable this way, and I could make an "hardcore mode" (maybe as a challenge) in the future, where you can't retry (and I'll also make it impossible to save scum then :P).[/p][h3][/h3][h3]New Music:[/h3][p]Added non final version BGMs for Sky Archipelago and The World boss fight.[/p][p]The World boss fight has been in the game since the last update, but I forgot to announce that.
With this, the only two remaining tracks are for Echo Tower and Sky Archipelago's bosses.
All recently added tracks are non final, and play with lower volume compared to final tracks, I apologize for that.[/p][p][/p][p][/p][p]As for changes and bug fixes:[/p][h3]Changes:[/h3]

[p](General) Changed the chances and types of cards you can find during fights.[/p]
[p](Enemy) The World "seasons" will happen a little slower (the speed made what was happening too difficult to understand). Also, its power up actions will now happen after attacking, avoiding times when it would power up just before an attack, changing the actual damage value from what was shown in the intent.[/p]
[p](Status) Electrified now states that the damage coming back happens only when attacked with an attack card (meaning it won't activate when damaged by a blessing, pet, item or special card).[/p]
[p](UI) Enemies statuses will now position expanding to the left when the more than 4 are present. This should eliminate any current or future risk of having statuses overlap with adjacent enemies when they too many at the same time.[/p]
[p](UI) The "Loading..." text in the bottom right corner is now more consistent in all parts of the game.[/p]
[p](Blessing) Risk Of Poison will now poison for 3% of your HP (from 2%). It will also stop increasing your max HP when you have more than 2000, and will only heal you instead.[/p]
[p](Visual) Very small change to the Marking Machine sprite.[/p]

[h3]Bug Fixes:[/h3]

[p]Fixed missing interaction between Paper Airplane card and Renunciation blessing.[/p]
[p]The game would show just a black background when showing a card made by another card when checked for the first time in one session from inside your deck. Fixed.[/p]
[p]Fixed Bouncy not synergizing with Fragile damage.[/p]
[p]Adjusted some AoE cards art background to be consistent with each other.[/p]
[p]Fierce Cuteness Blessing would make the next turn start before waiting for the repeated pet action, leading to issues in some cases. Fixed.[/p]
[p]Fixed a bug that would leave the shop music on after exiting a shop.[/p]
[p]The recent change to item cards being affected by statuses (for example Rock's damage) wasn't properly displaying the values colors (like green if the damage is more than base). Fixed.[/p]

[p][/p][h3]Remember, if you like the game, each single positive review helps me a lot![/h3][p] If you have any feedback or want to discuss about the game, join my Discord server. [/p][p][/p][p][/p]

0.5.3 Update

[p]A pretty small update that I'm forced to make because I realized there was a pretty major bug while I was working on some important changes.[/p][p][/p][p]The major change concerns the Mage class: I have come to the realization that, while dividing all the elemental cards to be obtained only when you have the relative Grimoire, this meant that, especially when owning only one, the card pool would be significantly limited (especially evident with Legendary cards).[/p][p]Because of this, I've decided that now all cards will be available regardless of the Grimoires.[/p][p]This may require some further balancing down the road, but hopefully will make the mage feel more varied.[/p][p]Linked to this, I decided to make two changes to the Grimoires (now that they don't serve as element finders anymore):[/p][p]They will give you 2 charges of each element instead of 1
They will allow you to increase their specific element to 100, from 50. There is no additional passive benefit when going above 50, but increasing the limit should allow players to make even big numbers with elemental manipulation.[/p][p][/p][h3]Changes:[/h3]

[p](Mage) Reworked how elemental cards are obtained, and the role of Grimoires.[/p]

[p][/p][h3]Bug Fixes:[/h3]

[p]Fixed a bug introduced with the last update that made it impossible to increase your HP.[/p]

0.5.2 Update

[p]Good news, I've been working on the third class, the Mechanic![/p][p]So far I've made 30ish cards, with some new core mechanics. It feels pretty fun, but I'll need a lot more cards before I can actually release it.[/p][p]
In the meantime I've collected enough changes and bug fixes that a small update was needed.
No new content, but there are a few important changes (the biggest one is a rework of the "First Draw" Mark).[/p][p][/p][h3]Changes:[/h3]

[p](General) Because of the mechanics for the upcoming new player class, Item cards that deal damage are now affected by statuses (currently Bomb and Rock cards).[/p]
[p](General) Cards that generate other cards will now show the generated card together with whatever tooltip they may have.[/p]
[p](Mark) First Draw will now, in addition to drawing the card on first turn, set its cost to zero and give it a Swift effect during the first turn.[/p]
[p](Shop) Price increase for rerolling decreased to 10% from 25%.[/p]
[p](Shop) Changed the Shop last text prompt from rerolling to be more menacing.[/p]
[p](General) Rare treasure chests now contain 2 cards instead of 3.[/p]
[p](Enemy) Magma Elemental won't start a fight with an automatic Strength Up status to everyone.[/p]
[p](Enemy) Ice Elemental won't start a fight with an automatic Evasion status to everyone.[/p]
[p](Enemy) Elemental Cluster will perform in turn an attack + an elemental action, then only an attack, and repeat (when not summoning more elementals).[/p]
[p](Enemy) Darkness Elemental won't give you a Darkness card on fight start anymore. Instead it will give you one as its first action.[/p]
[p](Mage) The Mage will now always find at least one not owned grimoire from equipment chests.[/p]
[p](Pet) Onigiri set to increase your HP at most once per battle, then it will still either heal you if you don't have max HP, or give you evasion.[/p]
[p](Card) Soul Cannon damage multiplier reduced to 5x from 10x.[/p]
[p](Card) Chain Attack now sets all your attack cards to cost 0 (instead of 2 less SP).[/p]
[p](Card) Levitate now gives 2 Evasion and 2 Wind.[/p]
[p](Card) Deep Breath now gives 1 Evasion in addition to 2 SP.[/p]
[p](Card) Heat sacrifice used to stay in the middle of the screen while overlapping with the card it's burning. It now moves to the side before placing the burned card in the center.[/p]

[p][/p][h3]Bug Fixes:[/h3]

[p]Fixed a case where you could get a non working portal pixie on Firepit portals.[/p]
[p]Fixed Wind Dance card not being usable with the alternative input system.[/p]
[p]Solved a rare issue that could lead to icons and buttons in the shop to not work as intended.[/p]
[p]Fixed a recently introduced bug that would leave the shop music overlapping with the map one after leaving a shop room.[/p]
[p]Fixed a bug that could lead to the shops' tentacles to stay on screen during its fight.[/p]
[p]Fixed left over issue with the interaction between blessings Risk Of Heat and Afterimage.[/p]
[p]Fixed Better Idea and Chakram reducing enemies' countdown by two if used together.[/p]
[p]Fixed the game giving a blank "unlocked" prompt when finding the Marks Sanctuary Spirit.[/p]
[p]Hopefully removed the few edge cases when tooltips would hang on screen despite exiting what they're referring to.[/p]
[p]If for any reason you lost your save files and don't have Steam cloud active, the game was supposed to retrieve data from the Steam achievements and use those to remake your save file. It wasn't working as intended, and it's now fixed.[/p]

0.5.1 Update

[p]A small but hopefully significant update!

First of all, Novus Orbis has reached 50 Reviews, 94% positive, with the tag Very Positive!
Thank you everyone who helped me reach this small but significant milestone![/p][p][/p][p]The game's BGM tracks for the new locations are starting to flow in. They're still not final, so composition may change a little and volume/mixing/quality is still not the best, but I'm really happy with how they make the new levels feel, so I wanted to add them to the game already. More to come!

Then, with the new additions from update 0.5.0, after feedback and testing, I realized I needed to re balance quite a few things.
As always, the game is being shaped little by little, nothing is ever set in stone, and I'm working hard to make the final product as good as I can.
In general I think the game was getting too difficult (to the point I was struggling myself to win runs), as well as the fact that I felt difficulty wasn't evenly spread through a whole run.
Two major things that I think can really change how a run goes (especially, them happening by the end of level 2), are the ability to find a pet and increasing your max HP.
The more events I add, and the more blessing there are, everything is getting diluted, making the balance towards the end of a run trickier.
Because of that, I have made it so it's easier (almost guaranteed) to have ways to find a pet and at least some kind of HP boost calculated around which level you're on.[/p][p]As a side note, winning the game with 10 challenges on is a REAL challenge. Unless you get a very lucky build, you will really need to take advantage of all the game's mechanics to be able to win against the last boss.[/p][h3][/h3][h3]Additions:[/h3]

[p](Music) Added a non final version for the Echo Tower and Outer Space BGMs.[/p]
[p](Music) Replaced the BGM for the Sanctuary event.[/p][p][/p]

[h3]Changes:[/h3]

[p](General) Removed the anti stall system. It was being to difficult to properly balance, keeping track of all possible reasons the player would be stalling, and in the end, if a player wants to stall and play boringly, it's on them lol[/p]
[p](General) Decreased chance to find negative portal pixies (stronger enemies and damaging ones).[/p]
[p](General) Decreased damage from damaging portal pixies to 10%.[/p]
[p](General) Increased healing from healing portal pixies to 20%.[/p]
[p](General) Stronger enemies pixies will now give slightly less strong enemies, and blood given will be 3x instead of 2x.[/p]
[p](General) The game will now make it easier to find a Fancy Bottle card if you don't have one, or a pet, starting from level 2 (from item chests).[/p]
[p](General) The game will now favor finding a Platinum Melon card if your max HP is too low for the current level.[/p]
[p](General) Healing Springs now heal 50% max HP from 33%.[/p]
[p](Challenge) Challenge 3 now gives 15% more HP to enemies instead of 25%.[/p]
[p](Challenge) Challenge 4 now gives 15% more damage to enemies instead of 25%.[/p]
[p](Challenge) Challenge 5 (the one that gives you one Affliction card) has been completely changed into one that gives bosses 1 Strength status per level.[/p]
[p](Challenge) Challenge 9 changed to have bosses start at 3 Countdown on their first turn.[/p]
[p](Player) Warrior starting HP increased to 60.[/p]
[p](Player) Mage starting HP increased to 50.[/p]
[p](Card) Fire Arrow damage increased to 5-9.[/p]
[p](Card) Fire Ball damage increased to 7-14.[/p]
[p](Card) Slash damage increased to 6-9.[/p]
[p](Card) Kick damage increased to 3-6.[/p]
[p](Card) Spinning Slash damage increased to 5-8.[/p]
[p](Card) Bird Feather now gives you 10% more max HP instead of flat 5.[/p]
[p](Enemy) Zakuro's Desperate Bite attack (when without a tail) is now less powerful.[/p]
[p](Enemy) Eye of the Storm's "Storm" attack is now a 4 hit attack instead of 5.[/p]
[p](Enemy) Eye of the Storm's "Electrify" amount decreased to 5 from 10.[/p]
[p](Enemy) Necrosphere multiple attack is now a 2 hit attack instead of 3.[/p]
[p](Enemy) The World's initial Protection charges decreased to 7 from 10.[/p]
[p](Enemy) Luna Ignis and Luna Aegis Countdown increased by 1.[/p]
[p](Enemy) Grinder now performs 1 action, then 2 actions, alternatively.[/p]
[p](Event) You can now find and store 4 Sanctuary spirits at the same time at most.[/p]

[p][/p][h3]Bug Fixes:[/h3]

[p]Fixed Paper Airplane card not working on pet item cards.[/p]
[p]A recent change in how the game is loaded when launched made it so changing font would make the game crash or act weird. Fixed.[/p]
[p]Fixed Goosebumps blessing not working on Tick.[/p]
[p]Fixed error in Discharge card text.[/p]
[p]Fixed a bug that would let you select Lava Flow again after using it, making it possible to use it multiple times without burning cards.[/p]
[p]Fixed a bug that could lead to the game forcing you to pick 3 more Affliction cards when loading a run with Risk of Skill or Risk of Assault.[/p]
[p]Fixed the shop room music disappearing when accessed after a special fight (Mimics and Monarch).[/p]
[p]Fixed a bug that could make portals appear in event rooms that should force you to interact with them.[/p]

0.5.0 Update

[p]I'm finally done with this!
It took me way more than I wished, I apologize.[/p][p][/p][p]This is, visually, the level I've wanted to make since I started this project.
Like I said in the previous small update, astrophotography was one of my hobbies before I started developing Novus Orbis, and I wanted to put my love for space into the game. Some of the background elements I've made for this level are strongly inspired from pictures I've taken myself.[/p][p][/p][p]Visuals aside, this level goes to conclude the second path, with the second ending to the game.[/p][p]With this conclusion, five more challenges have been added, with relative unlockables![/p][p][/p][p]There is a ton of new stuff, a ton of balancing, and as always, I've been working to remove as many bugs as possible.[/p][p][/p][p]Note: there have been delays regarding the game's music. I wish things were moving faster, but it's out of my control. For now I am reusing music from the first path (which do not really match the levels' vibe too much), but they're all going to come, at some point.[/p][p][/p][p]With this update I decided with the publisher that we're raising the game's price to $14.99 USD.[/p][p][/p][p]As a parallel announcement, I'm going to become a dad in January!
While this is a happy moment, it also means that development may become a bit slower.
I also need to consider how I'm going to wrap the game up leading to 1.0. The original goal was to add two more levels after this one, but depending on schedule and reception, I may need to cut those, and add the intended last boss(es) as additional bosses, without adding new levels.[/p][p]That being said, the third class is coming for sure, and it's the next big thing I'm going to work on.
I haven't made a new class since forever, I'm looking forward to it, while being a bit scared about it ahah.[/p][p]Now, to the update's content:[/p][p][/p][h3]Additions:[/h3]

[p](Level) Outer Space. Accessible from Sky Archipelago (and Abyss once cleared). Clearing it once will unlock five new challenges, as well as the raising difficulty for the Hell-Outer Space pair.[/p]
[p](Enemy) Auric Vorid[/p]
[p](Enemy) Cobalt Vorid[/p]
[p](Enemy) Crimson Vorid[/p]
[p](Enemy) Viridian Vorid[/p]
[p](Enemy) Grinder[/p]
[p](Mini Boss) Hive[/p]
[p](Mini Boss) Subterra[/p]
[p](Boss) No Spoilers :P[/p]
[p](Challenges) Five new challenges that appear once you beat Outer Space for the first time.[/p]
[p](Achievements) 12 new Achievements for clearing Outer Space, and for winning the game with the five new challenges (6 for each class).[/p]
[p](Blessing) Acid Blood[/p]
[p](Blessing) Risk of Poison[/p]
[p](Blessing) Goosebumps[/p]
[p](Blessing) Summoning[/p]
[p](Card) Gamble[/p]
[p](Card) Book Rewrite[/p]
[p](Card) Soul Cannon[/p]
[p](Card) Steel Copy[/p]
[p](Card) Bookmark[/p]
[p](Card) Hell[/p]
[p](Card) Mysterious Rice[/p]
[p](Card) Mysterious Tooth[/p]
[p](Pet) Onigiri[/p]
[p](Pet) Mory[/p]

[p][/p][h3]Changes:[/h3]

[p](UI) Slight change to the font style for the dialogue boxes. [/p]
[p](General) The new game reward will now have two versions. The one that was in the game so far is untouched. The game will now give you a reward even if you haven't reached the first boss. In this case, you'll be offered only 2 options, and they will be less impactful.[/p]
[p](General) Reduced the number of rooms for some levels, and set both level 3s (Abyss and Sky Archipelago) with only one Mini Boss. It's a quite big change that aims to both make runs more varied, as well as spreading difficulty better between levels (I felt like difficulty would always peak at level 2-3, and then fall at level 4).[/p]
[p](General) Removed Mimic and Pond as random events in Hell. They will now be found only as forced events in pre-set rooms if Great Mimic and Pond's Monarch have not been defeated yet. [/p]
[p](General) Tweaks to the anti stall system.[/p]
[p](General) Mark rooms now also have a chance to have a damaging pixie on them (same chance as treasure rooms).[/p]
[p](General) Clearing a level at difficulty 3 will now make the level unavailable for the next run, and reset it to difficulty 0. This is implemented because the difficulty system is supposed to give more reasons to a player to choose one or the other path during different runs. But as things were, for skilled players it would mean they would only choose the highest difficulty path to maximize rewards, nullifying my original intent.[/p]
[p](General) Minic, Onigiri and Mory pets added to the possible pet cards you can get from the initial reward (once unlocked).[/p]
[p](Pet) Genryuu's single target attack now deals more damage.[/p]
[p](Enemies) Magma, Ice, Current Elementals now have a limit to the amount of "elemental" moves they can perform, after which they'll switch to only attacking (some interactions would make fights unnecessarily long or difficult).[/p]
[p](Enemies) A few changes to some recent enemies' death sounds.[/p]
[p](Card) Demon Form damage decreased to 25% from 50%, and changed its description to specify you lose that amount of HP, instead of "taking damage".[/p]

[p][/p][h3]Bug Fixes:[/h3]

[p]Removed the possibility to access the menu during the post end boss dialogue.[/p]
[p]Fixed a bug that would need you to click twice on the buttons on the score screen before they would actually work.[/p]
[p]Fixed the game win dialogue repeating the last line if you spam click.[/p]
[p]Fixed some issues with dialogues repeating the first and/or last lines.[/p]
[p]Fixed the "You beat the last boss" text disappearing if you click when it's on screen.[/p]
[p]Fixed an issue with High Conductor card not updating its damage properly.[/p]
[p]Solved a small visual issue where you'd get a darkened background covering a new run reward card for a few moments after it appears.[/p]
[p]Fixed Fuel Hate card giving you negative Strength when used with no Affliction cards in hand.[/p]
[p]Fixed the game showing pets' actions tooltips for a moment when loading a saved run.[/p]
[p]The game was not saving the fact you had encountered a Sanctuary or not, making it possible to find more than one per run when exiting and reloading. Fixed.[/p]
[p]Fixed some possible bugs that could happen when enemies died from effects not coming directly from cards.[/p]
[p]Fixed a bug where Risk of Beginning could leave you with negative SP when under the effect of the SP Sanctuary Sprite.[/p]
[p]Tentative fix for a somewhat rare issue that would make portals appear during events that should not have them.[/p]