Novus Orbis News

The main dish for this update is a new mini boss for Hell, Rafflesia!
Now each stage has two mini bosses.
With it there is also the addition of GachiTachi, a buffier version of the bees in the first level.

I'm also adding two new simple blessings and two new cards for the Warrior.

And as always, a lot of changes and bug fixes :P
Thank you everyone for playing and reporting bugs, the game is definitely not without issues, but with your help it's getting cleaner and cleaner :)

Remember, if you're enjoying the game a positive review really helps a lot!



[h2]Additions:[/h2]

• (Blessing) Spikes Repellant
  
• (Blessing) Hearts Attractor
  
• (Card) Warrior - Cherry Picking
  
• (Card) Warrior - Sheathe
  
• (Enemy) Rafflesia
  
• (Enemy) Gachitachi
  

[h2]Changes:[/h2]

• (Card) You won't find duplicates of the same Grimoires anymore. This should make the Academy Graduate achievement more easily obtainable.
  
• (Card) Center of Gravity cost increased to 4-2 from 3-1.
  
• (Card) Distraction now gives 3 Boost instead of 2.
  
• (Card) Deflect now lets you also discard one card to your deck, cost increased to 1-0 from 0-0.
  
• (Card) Overflow cost increased to 5-3 from 5-2.
  
• (Card) Concrete Barrier can be found only starting from level 2.
  
• (Card) Ornate Equipment cost decreased to 1 from 2, and now has Swift ability.
  
• (Card) Shield Bash now costs 9-3 from 4-2.
  
• (Blessing) Hard Bones now reduces damage by 10% instead of 25%.
  
• (Enemy) Raised Zakuro's initial block to 75, to balance the recent nerf to Permanent Armor status.
  
• (Enemy) Necrosphere will start with 1 Reactive poison, and increase it by 1 at every turn (caps at 5).
  
• (Enemy) Necrosphere's countdown increased to 5 from 4.
  
• (Enemy) Decreased the HP for the first form of Pond's Monarch.
  
• (Others) The mirror door pixie won't appear anymore in the first level.
  

[h2]Bug Fixes:[/h2]

• Fixed Yellow Flame not working.
  
• Fixed Shield Throw card not showing "x3" in green during combo.
  
• The changes made to Life Essence enemy were badly implemented, causing issues with its intents. Fixed the issue.
  
• Tentative fix for a bug that could make an enemy appear without its intent.
  
• The fix to the blessing Nothingness introduced a new bug where costs would flicker. Now the blessing should be working as expected.
  
• The recent change to Permanent Armor status made it so Center of Gravity card would only remove half block from enemies with Permanent Armor. Issue fixed.
  
• Fixed the fact that you could use ctrl and shift to show the combo versions of cards while having the menu open (which could lock the game in the "showing combo" state).
  
• Fixed a bug that would allow you to reroll the shop too quickly, causing it to sometimes lock the shop open at the same time of a fight.
  
• Fixed the fact that blessing Thick Air could set enemies' cooldown to 10.
  
• Fixed the fact that Agile Observer event could be found more than once per run when it wasn't supposed to.
  
• Fixed an issue that would prevent you from discarding (or burning) a card if you drew Paper Airplane or Slime with a card that lets you draw and discard (or burn).
  

No new content for this update, but I wanted to push a few bug fixes, together with a few balance changes that are necessary for how the game is evolving.

[h2]Changes:[/h2]

• (Blessing) Gracious moved to the strong blessings pool.
  
• (Card) Overflow cost increased to 5-2 from 3-2.
  
• (Card) Updated Hell's Gaze description to specify the total damage received.
  
• (Status)Permanent Armor (both for player and enemies) will now remove half Block points, instead of leaving Block intact. This status used to work well when enemies decided their actions only one turn before attacking (making it possible for some bosses to react to the player having too much armor), but as the game is structured now, I realized that having Permanent Armor would be a sure way to never take damage. I hope this change will balance things out.
  
• (Enemy)Life Essence will now alternate a heal/electrify turn with a normal attack turn.
  
• (Enemy)The Core's second phase will now have a countdown of 8 (instead of 5) but will also gain Haste status (remove 2 cooldown at each card use instead of 1). This is a change I made to avoid abusing "countdown up" cards, while keeping the amount of playable cards before it attacks roughly the same.
  
• (UI)You can now exit the menu in game both by using the "Back" button and the menu icon in the top right.
  
• (UI)The current level map will expand its hitbox to its whole size once open, to avoid closing it by mistake.
  

[h2]Bug Fixes:[/h2]

• Fixed a bug that would lock the map for the current level with no way of removing it.
  
• Fixed a bug that would break your savefile if you exited the game while in the Enigma room. The game now won't save when in the room, and until you exit the room the savefile will remain as it was before entering it.
  
• Fixed a bug that would need you to click 3 times on the Enigma room when skipping a blessing (instead of 2).
  
• The game now properly asks you if you want to skip the blessing if you try to exit the Enigma room without taking its blessing.
  
• AoE Up status would show "x1" instead of just "1" as value.
  
• Fixed an issue that would let you access the menu during "no input" state, with the possibility to lock the menu open with no way to close it.
  
• Fixed Ebonactite's Death Wish status showing "Stun" as a secondary tooltip for no reason.
  
• Tentative fix for a bug where the game could softlock when clicking on a mimic.
  
• Tentative fix for a bug that could make you find duplicate blessings, and make some stop working.
  

The demo has always had two versions of the dragon boss: Zakuro and Tao.
They became the two possible bosses for the first level, but so far that was the only level with variable bosses.

I wanted to expand the concept to other levels, and I like the idea of having bosses that look similar but play quite differently.

With this update I introduce Necrosphere, the alternative boss for Caves!
It has a brand new status/mechanic, that I'm sure you'll love (hate lol).
It may be a bit too punishing for now, some small tweaks may come in the future :)

No other new content, but a lot of changes and bug fixes:

[h2]Additions:[/h2]

• New Caves alternative boss: Necrosphere.
  

[h2]Changes:[/h2]

• (Card) Crystal Fragment can now be used to gain 2 SP, on top of giving 2 SP when drawn.
  
• (Card) Zap now costs 3-2 instead of 3-1.
  
• (Card) Concrete Barrier now costs 3-2 instead of 3-1.
  
• (Card) Discharge now reqiures 5 Thunder on top of removing 10.
  
• (Card) Increased out of combo cost for Imposing Presence to 6.
  
• (Blessing) Moved Quick Reflexes blessing to the strong blessings pool.
  
• AoE Up status now adds 10 damage per charge to AoE cards, instead of being a multiplier (addition calculated before multiplication from great strength).
  
• The speed up function now speeds the game up more.
  
• Added more info to the Mage's elements description.
  
• Pet item cards are now skippable after clicking on the item on the floor.
  

[h2]Bug Fixes:[/h2]

• Fixed a bug that would make AoE attack cards do nothing if you killed an enemy with a single target attack card before using an AoE card while having Dual Wielding status.
  
• Fixed a bug with AoE Up status and the new Long Arms blessing.
  
• Fixed a bug that let you interact with the firepit after extinguishing it.
  
• Fixed a bug that would let you access the menu (and allow going to the main menu) while having card prizes to pick on screen (leading to breaking the game when going back into a run).
  
• Fixed a bug that would give a wrong cost for zero combo cards, during combo zero, when owning the blessing Nothingness.
  
• Fixed a bug that would give you the Inflammable achievement when extinguishing the firepit.
  
• Fixed an exploit that would let you pass Death's trial by running away from a Mimic.
  
• Tentative fix of a rare instance where the game would stay with a black screen after loading a new level. This is a bug that have been reported by at least two people, but I cannot reproduce myself (seems to happen only when passing from Caves to Abyss). Please let me know if this happens again after this update.
  
• Fixed a bug with Death's Crown status, that would account for your current remaining HP instead of your missing HP.
  
• Fixed a bug where Death's Crown wouldn't be applied to Guardian's Fury card.
  
• Fixed a bug where you could find duplicate blessings under certain conditions.
  

First update post release!

I hope you're all having fun with Novus Orbis.
From what I'm seeing on Youtube, the game is running fairly well, with a few small things I'm addressing with this update.

There was a set of achievements I wanted to implement before releasing, but bug fixes had the priority, so I couldn't make them in time.
With this update I added 10 new Achievements, with related cards and blessings.
There are also a few balance tweaks and bug fixes.
Keep in mind that, especially for new stuff, it's possible it's not extremely well balanced, so changes may come in the future.

[h2]New achievements:[/h2]

• Extinguish
  
• Celestial
  
• Immense Heart
  
• Immense Hitter
  
• Overcomer
  
• Audacious
  
• Achiever
  
• Overachiever
  
• Well Well Well...
  
• Sushi Chef
  

[h2]New Blessings:[/h2]

• Gracious
  
• Thick Air
  
• Long Arms
  
• Optimism
  
• Rage
  
• Afterimage
  
• Elevation
  
• Second Stomach
  

[h2]New Cards:[/h2]

• Disaster Recipe
  
• Paper Airplane
  
• Death's Crown
  

[h2]Changes:[/h2]

• Elemental Tortoise will now change into an attack intent if at more than 1 countdown when coming out of its shell.
  
• Mimic will now drop either of its special prizes, plus one more random rare card, and allows for two picks.
  
• Lowered the chance to get Ignite and Burn from the firepit to 5%.
  
• Changed the color for the text AOE to make it more readable.
  
• Imposing presence is now Legendary.
  
• Stamp can now be found from level 2.
  
• Changed Boomerang Effect's description to make it more understandable.
  
• Changed Foresee's description to make it more understandable.
  
• Temporarely removed Italian and Japanese translations for the score screen (it's causing a softlock when language set to Japanese).
  

[h2]Bug Fixes:[/h2]

• Fixed an issue where the game would revert any new score, win/loss counts if in the same game session you'd get a new achievement.
  
• Fixed a crash when you check statuses during the tutorial when playing with a pad.
  
• Fixed a few issues with the alternative font (wouldn't be used in the enemies' names, and would create corruption with cards during the tutorial).
  
• Fixed a bug that had the text for "AoE Up" showing in red.
  
• Fixed some cards not showing their correct type when created during fight (for example Hell's Gaze).
  

Thank you everyone for the support and for playing!
Remember, if you like the game, each single positive review helps me immensely!

If you have any feedback or want to discuss about the game, join my Discord server.

[h2]EARLY ACCESS[/h2]
After 2 and a half years of development, I'm very happy to finally release Novus Orbis in Early Access! A lot of work the last ~6 months has gone into visual improvements, QOL features and general polish. The game is more mechanically sound than ever, with a lot of edges smoothed out, which feels like the perfect time to launch into Early Access!

https://store.steampowered.com/app/2437330/Novus_Orbis/

[h3]CONTENT?[/h3]
The game currently features a set of 4 levels and 2 classes.
The full game is planned to feature 9 total levels and at least a 3rd class.

Please understand that I would love to make more classes, but they're the most difficult part of a game like this to make and implement, making sure that they're interesting enough to be worth being there in the first place. Depending on how development goes, and how well the game is received, I may make more than three, but that's not something I can promise at this stage.

[h2]ROADMAP[/h2]
I felt it would be best to enter Early Access with a plan. Currently ~1 year of early access is planned, with plenty of smaller content updates throughout! Included is a Roadmap of major updates leading to the 1.0 release:



With the game released, I plan on going back having regular updates.
They should come every 1 or 2 weeks, depending on how things go.
There will be two big updates during the year:

[h3]The Skies Update (Q3 2025)[/h3]

• Second set of levels (3 new levels)
  
• Introduction of branching paths in the world map
  
• Second ending
  
• Third class

[h3]The Answers Update (Q4 2025)[/h3]

• Third set of levels (2 new levels)
  
• Third ending
  
• Secret ending

[h3]Throughout Development:[/h3]

• New pets
  
• New cards for the existing classes
  
• New blessings
  
• New events
  
• New enemies
  
• New achievements

I'd like to keep the finer details to a minimum to make the experience more enjoyable :)

[h2]FEEDBACK[/h2]
I'll likely add a beta version of the game where you'll be able to play and see new stuff in advance, knowing that there may be more bugs than usual.

Same as I did with the public demo, I'd love to keep in touch with the community to make a great game.
Remember that any feedback is welcome. I won't be able to follow each single piece of advice I get, but at the same time I think it's important to hear my players' voices.
If you feel something is off, should be added, removed - anything really - please let me know here on Steam, or even better, in my Discord server.



Thank you everyone who has followed the project so far, and all new users to come!
I'll keep working to make the best game I can, in hope it will be enjoyed but as many people as possible.

If you feel Novus Orbis deserves it, please leave a positive review.
Each one really help a lot, especially for an emergent small game like this :)