The Void Rains Upon Her Heart News

Finally we have arrived at Version 8.0!
So first of all, I lied about a few things. There are way more gifts than I said, in fact there are 220 new gifts! But most of them have a special twist and only appear in The Towers. You gain access to The Towers by loving at least 60 unique monsters.

You will also want to do a few battles in story mode as Her Heart to get a new tutorial for the new Bounty Gifts!

This is by far the most new effects added in a single update, so I expect to be fixing many bugs this week. This is also probably the largest file size upgrade there will be due to the 13 new songs (It's only a few MB)

[h2]New Content[/h2]

• New game mode, The Towers!
  
• 3 new entire types of gifts!
  
• 13 new battle songs
  
• 47 new dreams to fulfill
  
• There is a new tutorial scene that explains the special combo rules for shy battles
  
• Special monsters and gem monsters will no longer have an inherent score bonus in story mode, instead they will always have something new in normal encounters!
  

[h2]Updates and tweaks[/h2]

• The combo bar during shy battles will now turn green instead of pink
  
• On new save files, shy monsters will not appear until certain tutorial scenes are viewed first
  
• Changed the battles tips for monsters that had information explained in the new tutorials: Veyeral Rain, Photoxai
  
• Changed the battle tips for monsters that had very basic or obsolete information: Amalga, Alter Glacia, Celestia, Unity, Ruby, Topaz
  
• Made Rage Duet's battle into a true rage battle by adding a permanent full arena attack and a large safety bubble
  
• Blue Veyeral will not deal contact damage while leaving the screen after phase 3
  
• Adjusted many of Blue Veyeral's attacks during her final 2 phases
  
• Adjusted the color of Chroma's bullets as she tends to appear on the most colorful backgrounds
  
• Unit Lulu and Null Unit's arms become transparent when broken
  
• Added more combinations of bullet and dreamscape tinting to improve contrast in several battles
  
• The Charge Damage stat now scales multiplicatively with the All Damage stat
  
• The Helper Damage stat now scales multiplicatively with the All Damage stat
  
• All gifts that increase charge damage have been buffed
  
• The damage of Love Signals now scales with effects that increase charge damage
  
• Changed the wording on several gift effects to reduce the space used by certain descriptions
  
• Reduced the tetrid cost to upgrade the Radiant Garden's conversion and extractions
  
• Changed the effect of Chrome Hearts so that they will protect your combo from dropping for any reason
  
• Active Chrome hearts are now shown over the boss fear bar, or the combo bar if that is enabled
  
• Changed the "Heart of Chrome" effect so that it makes all used Chrome Hearts regenerate after battle
  
• Added visual effects for each type of element damage you take
  

[h2]Bug Fixes[/h2]

• Bug Fix: The active gift list would not show any gifts that were equipped in Quickplay or freeplay modes
  
• Bug Fix: Helper DPS would not correctly add the damage of Photo Stones duplicated by the Friend Spiral effect
  
• Bug Fix: Friend Beam would not properly scale as Magnet Stones are created
  
• Bug Fix: The beam attack sound would continue to play until the end of battle if one of Heliola's beam glyphs escaped
  
• Bug Fix: Heliola was stuck only using 2 of her attacks FOR MONTHS AND NO ONE NOTICED
  
• Bug Fix: White radiant beams would deal void damage instead of radiant
  

[h2]Adjusted Monster Scoring[/h2]

Certain monsters would always give unusually high numbers of motes. These were mostly really early ones and I tended to decrease optimal scores as new monsters were added. So I decided to rebalance the whole roster now that they are mostly all done. Many tougher battles would give out relatively low scores, so I buffed many of their part values. It used to be that all monsters gave the exact same score for a full combo, but I have changed this too. I can now increase individual combo scores for monsters with few or no breakable parts.

This also means quickplay scores and medal goals had to be adjusted all over the place. The game will automatically scale your quickplay scores when you load your save. It will try to keep your medals radiant if you had them.

[h2]Score Changes[/h2]

• Adjusted the way motes are given so that individual part scores do not lose partial score from rounding. (This means optimal scores are a few points higher in nearly every battle since no score is lost due to rounding anymore)
  
• These 32 monsters have noticeably increased their optimal scores at all levels: Knot Knott, Blot, Alter Blot, Null Blot, Amalga, Calorie, Joule, Rendy, Snowball, Lila, Voladrome, Dendrohai, Ombroah, Chionotoh, Astrayo, Unit Lulu, Null Unit, Rage Prisma, Flip Flap, Vitrea, Pearl, Burning Veyeral, Venom Veyeral, Vibrant Veyeral, Veyeral Rain, Veyeral Quartet, Anomaly, Unity, Shamra, Oudenai, Default, Forma
  
• These 9 monsters have decreased their optimal scores at all levels: Scrambla, Boiler, Roundsaw, Alter Roundsaw, Null Roundsaw, Hadesoh, Syncron, Alter Syncron, Rage Duet
  
• Your quickplay scores for all of the monsters above have been scaled, but it will try to keep your medals radiant if you had them.
  
• All 3 final bosses will now give more motes from combos and less from phase changes. Their optimal scores still remain the same.
  

There's still a lot of work to do on the towers! I'll detail everything left for version 8 in the next update which I am scheduling for November 24th, but may move it back one week depending on how many bugs come up!

Enjoy The Towers and all the Blessings, Burdens, and Bounties within!
ːradiantheartː ːradiantheartː ːradiantheartː

I was so close to the finish line, but unfortunately COVID has finally got to me. This game is all being made by me all by myself, and I can't be working in this condition, so I sadly have to delay the update a little. I'm going to say November 10th is the goal for now, but if I feel better quickly I might be able to drop it earlier.

I'm so sorry for the delay!
ːveyeralː ːveyeralː ːveyeralː

The Towers Mode will be added on October 31st bringing the game up to version 8.0!

This update will come with 7 tower runs. Six of the towers will consist of battles against monsters of a single family. The more monsters you have unlocked, the higher you will be able to climb. For the most part, you will be able to choose the order you fight them, but just be sure not to lock yourself out of the lower level monsters by outleveling them!

The main twist to The Towers is the new Burden Gifts that will remain mostly exclusive to this mode. Most of them are purely negative effects, but they only last a set amount of battles just like Quick Gifts do. Monsters here will offer gifts paired with a burden of similar rank. So getting a 3 star Power Gift will most likely come with a rank 3 Burden! What's more is Power Gifts will also be temporary in this mode! You will also be able to set up a loadout of Quick Gifts for each character to start with. You can fill each character's quick slots with any Quick Gifts you have radiated. This adds another reason to find all those upgrade gifts!

The 7th tower will follow most of these rules except that it will be random monsters of all families. This will be about the length of an Altered Story run and is designed to be a story-like run with the new burdens involved. This is also the only tower where you can encounter any of the current final bosses. The Veyeral tower will not feature them right now, but this may change later.

The update will add over 100 burdens and some other small surprises that I'll let you discover! However the towers and version 8 will still not be quite done yet. There are a lot of new people here that might not be familiar with my normal release schedule, so I will explain it. You might notice the current version is 7.27 or in other words, the 27th main update to version 7! I normally update this game very frequently. Every two or three weeks, I will be dropping another small update to the game until everything I have planned for v8 is done! I pray that I won't have to go all the way up to 27 again this time, but who knows at this point. I'll do an updated roadmap when v8 actually drops.

In previous years I was able to do a personal challenge that I like to call Devtober where I updated the game every single day in October with at least 1 new gift, dreamscape, or even a new monster. I was able to do this challenge 3 times in 2018, 2019, and 2021! Unfortunately, I'm not able to do it anymore at this point in development. Everything I have left to do is kinda too big for that. I'm glad I'll still be able to drop something big on Halloween though!

Oh, one more thing. New Music!
The v8.0 update will add 12 new tracks, or maybe more who knows?!
Each normal monster family will get 2 new alternate tracks that play under certain conditions.
I already revealed a few of them on youtube!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=24mRzATpxbU

As always, thank you for loving those monsters!
ːradiantheartː ːradiantheartː ːradiantheartː

This is the patch from the previous announcement + a few little extras. It is now released for everyone!

v7.27 - August 29th, 2023
-Suspended Runs from a previous version will not load in v7.27 and above!
-Internal work done on gifts to prepare the game for the upcoming Burden gift type
-When checking Active Gifts, there is now a tag if the gift was given to you for free or traded to you during events
-Trading: Changed the mood gained from giving a monster their favorite quick gifts. Instead of a flat 7 points, it is now 5, 6, or 7 depending on rank + 1 more point if the gift is active
-Trading: Chemory now gains extra mood points for gifts that have a smell that she likes
-Trading: Monovai now gains extra mood points for certain gifts that are related to her
-Trading: Several monsters have multiple new favorite gifts including some quick gifts
-Trading: Several monsters have new reactions to specific gifts or types of gifts
-Trading: Adjusted the max mood cap and amount of gifts some monsters will accept
-Token Shops: Blot and vitrea have several new favorite gifts and new reactions to them
-Token Shops: The few gifts that gave more than 10 karma will only give 10 now (no change to tokens)
-Scrambla and Boiler react to storable duplicates of starting gifts or gifts that you took out of the Link Synapse
-The Alter Your Fate event has a new Sacrifice menu with more hints as to why certain sacrifices are not available to you
-Abyss will gain more power from sacrificing gifts that were taken as a trade from other trading or token shop events
-Abyss has a warning if you try to leave without spending all her power
-It is now required that the No One's Gift event is encountered at least once before it can be replaced by other monster Free Gift events
-Changed the memory text for the Acid Rain gift
-Bug Fix: Bonus Gifts offered in the cycle finale stages of Endless Stress would still need to be radiated

To prepare for the upcoming new Towers Mode and the new Burden items that will come with it, I've had to rewrite parts of how gifts are tracked and applied to your character. The main consequence of this is that any mid-run saves from the current version will not be compatible with the next update. To be clear, this is only referring to saving a run in the middle with the "save and exit" option to continue it later! The rest of your save file will be fine.

To make sure the transition is as smooth as possible, I am updating the game with these changes as v7.27 on Tuesday, August 29th, around 7 PM PST. If you have a suspended run from a previous version, it will just delete the run and go to the main hub menu.

You can also opt into the beta branch right now and already be on the new version! I will be merging the branches when the main one gets updated, so it will automatically put you back into the main branch. If you do this now, you will not have to worry about it later!

[h3]How To Access The Beta[/h3]
Right click the game in your Steam library
Properties > Betas > v7,27 beta (no password needed)
And it will automatically download

These are the v7.27 changes available in the beta branch now and will be available to everyone on Tuesday
[h3]Updates and tweaks[/h3]

• Suspended Runs from a previous version will not load in v7.27 and above!
  
• Internal work done on gifts to prepare the game for the upcoming Burden gift type
  
• When checking Active Gifts, there is now a tag if the gift was given to you for free or traded to you during events
  
• Changed the memory text for the Acid Rain gift
  

[h3]Changes to Events[/h3]

• Trading Events: Changed the mood gained from giving a monster their favorite quick gifts. Instead of a flat 7 points, it is now 5, 6, or 7 depending on rank + 1 more point if the gift is active
  
• Trading Events: Chemory now gains extra mood points for gifts that have a smell that she likes
  
• Trading Events: Monovai now gains extra mood points for certain gifts that are related to her
  
• Trading Events: Several monsters have multiple new favorite gifts including some quick gifts
  
• Trading Events: Several monsters have new reactions to specific gifts or types of gifts
  
• Trading Events: Adjusted the max mood cap and amount of gifts some monsters will accept
  
• Token Shops: Blot and Vitrea have several new favorite gifts and new reactions to them
  
• Token Shops: The few gifts that gave more than 10 karma will only give 10 now (no change to tokens given)
  
• Alter Your Fate: Abyss will gain more power from sacrificing gifts that were taken as a trade from other trading or token shop events
  
• It is now required that the No One's Gift event is encountered at least once before other monster Free Gift events will appear
  
• Scrambla and Boiler comment on gifts that they can store, but are duplicates of starting gifts or gifts that you took out of the link synapse at the start of the run.
  

[h3]Bug Fixes[/h3]

• Bonus Gifts offered in the cycle finale stages of Endless Stress would still need to be radiated
  

As always, thank you for loving those monsters!
ːradiantheartː ːradiantheartː ːradiantheartː