Under a Desert Sun: Seekers of the Cursed Vessel News

[p]Alright! Immediate bugfixes coming from demo play have started to tone down, and I’ve begun picking up normal tasks from my work board again.
All of these updates are still relevant for the demo, but they also improve the game in general.
For now, I’ll continue pushing these updates to the demo as well, since they either improve convenience or fix smaller issues I’ve noticed myself.
This update focuses on monsters, menus, and saves![/p][p]Improvements[/p]

• [p]Increased the difficulty of the 3rd boss.
  (Not telling you which one — spoilers, man!)[/p]
• [p]Added functionality allowing enemies to ignore certain hits in terms of animation, preventing their attack states from being interrupted. This is especially useful for bosses — you can no longer cheese your way to victory by making them constantly stagger.[/p]
• [p]Used the new system to make several bosses tougher to fight, and gave some common fast enemies a chance to ignore hit reactions — way cooler when they charge straight at you! 😎[/p]
• [p]Made small menu adjustments — for example, the Exit button now says Save and Exit, so you don’t feel the need to hit save separately.[/p]
• [p]Adjusted conversation indicators to appear a bit earlier, so they’re visible when walking past NPCs or points of interest.[/p]
• [p]Improved the save system to reduce the risk of corruption if a crash or interruption occurs during saving.
  (It now uses multiple layers of backups to make it much less likely for players to lose save data.)[/p]
• [p]Made it clearer when an auto-save occurs during gameplay — a small icon and loading object now appear to show when saving is in progress.[/p]

[p]Bugfixes[/p]

• [p]Fixed an issue where some torches would not turn on — now they do! 🔥[/p]

[p]Kind regards,[/p][p]Raymond[/p]

[p]It’s never a good time to receive news about a security issue in the Unity engine — but getting it right before Next Fest is especially rough.
I had very deliberately planned to wait with upgrading Unity until after Next Fest to ensure a smooth ride for all demo players.
However, security is nothing to take lightly and must always remain a top priority.
That’s why I’ve chosen to upgrade now to the version containing the security fix. Fortunately, Unity provided all the means needed to upgrade to a safe version.[/p][p]Any feedback on potential new bugs introduced by this upgrade is greatly appreciated.[/p][p]Security[/p]

• [p]Urgent fix: Due to Unity Security Advisory Sept-2025-01, the project has been upgraded to Unity 6000.2.6f2.[/p]

[p]Security first! The demo should continue to run smoothly, but if you spot anything unusual, let me know right away.[/p]

[p]And again I am very happy I released the demo early to squish as many bugs as possible before nextfest![/p][p][/p][p]Improvements[/p]

• [p]Improved various texts and removed spelling errors.[/p]

[p]Bugfixes[/p]

• [p]Fixed an issue where, in certain cases, returning to the main menu and starting a new character could cause some world states from the previous playthrough to carry over. This should no longer occur.[/p]
• [p]Fixed an issue where some quips would not fire — they should now trigger correctly.[/p]
• [p]Resolved a bug where the player would continue moving in the last input direction after respawning from death or conversations.[/p]

[p]Thank you Cetor (Discord nick) for finding these bugs — especially the world state one, which was an important one to squish early![/p]

[p]There I was, completely ready for the press presentation of Next Fest.
A demo ready to be played by millions… no… BILLIONS of journalists!
(What!? A person can dream, ok?)[/p][p]And then… I noticed… the Adventurer class could one-hit kill bosses starting at about level 5.
Oops.[/p][p]So I did some serious maths, adjusted things, and everything is fixed now.
I think. Likely. Probably… maybe? Dear god let me know?[/p][p]Jokes aside, here come the notes![/p][p]Bugfixes[/p]

• [p]Fixed improper scaling of health and melee damage. Classes would increase too fast, making the later game too easy.
  (This was a math bug — so technically I did not nerf our classes, hah! 😉)[/p]
• [p]Some statistics were unclear in the skill menu. The melee and health indicators should now better reflect the actual health and damage values you see.[/p]

[p]Special thanks to Jack Walljumper (Discord nick) for pointing this out![/p][p]Kind regards,
Raymond[/p]

[p]Proudest bit here is that my artist found the time to finish some important art to replace the temporary art. Just look at this![/p][p]This is but a small taste of it but you will see it updated in various areas with this update![/p][p][/p][p]Additions[/p]

• [p]Added all current Adventurer voice acting. Both classes are now complete for the demo.
  (Please bear in mind that during Early Access and the demo phase not all voice acting will be in place.)[/p]
• [p]New artwork by Francesca Montingelli replacing old AI artwork for cover, main capsule, and related assets. Very proud of these additions — fantastic work![/p]

[p]Adjustments[/p]

• [p]Closed off the inner city with a gate. This area will not be available in the demo to avoid players entering “dead” or unfinished areas without liveliness.[/p]

[p]Improvements[/p]

• [p]Block gates that need to be destroyed with the special weapon now have improved sound effects.[/p]
• [p]Adjusted occlusion areas to avoid pop-in.[/p]
• [p]Adjusted culling in some maps for performance gain.[/p]

[p]Bugfixes[/p]

• [p]Adjusted some audio that was too loud.[/p]
• [p]Fixed a few quip/voice acting triggers that were turned off too soon.[/p]
• [p]Adjusted fire particles on torches to look more realistic.[/p]
• [p]Corrected hue on some torch fires that were colored wrongly.[/p]

[p][/p][p]Once again thanks for all early feedback. It's been super helpful and I cannot thank everyone enough![/p][p][/p][p]Kind regards,[/p][p]Raymond[/p]