Aura of Worlds News

Greetings Adventurers!

We've been remastering the early gameplay and visuals,
This is in response to feedback from testers that the first area needed to be more on par with the latter areas of the game, especially regarding variety.


[h2]Grotto of Guidance, Glorified[/h2]

[h3]Environment and Terrain additions[/h3]

• Objects lodged in stone, double slab pieces, and transition tiles to mix things up.
  
• Windows - 7 variants!
  
• New statues, etchings and other decorative objects
  
• Scaffolding Towers (see below)
  
• Bronze blocks and shrines (rare)
  
• New platform types
  
• And more...
  

[h3]Other Level Generation Changes[/h3]

• Liquid hazard pools merge better with rooms and are more extensive.
  
• Enemy distribution now draws from a much wider pool of enemies with reworked probabilities.
  

[h3]Tutorial update[/h3]
We've updated the graphics of the 2nd tutorial to reflect the grotto's theme and have reworked parts of it to be more intuitive.

We've added more explicit instructions for players who got confused during the blink ability section toward the end.

[h3]Enemy variant - Spinner Beetle[/h3]
While lacking the venom of its counterpart, the acid beetle in the gardens, living in the Grotto has given them keener senses to hunt in the shadows. If You see something fluorescent and pink glowing in the dark, that's probably its jaws, so beware!

[h2]Further Additions[/h2]
[h3]Spear Combat Sharpening[/h3]
With better animation:


[h3]Cursed Chests[/h3] Rarely, you'll find this guy, who will goad You into taking his contents. There are multiple interactions based on Your choices, but if You want his loot, You'll just have to reach in and bear the consequences! Accepting the challenge will net You multiple items: power runes, gold, and health, but You must endure the curse for the current level and the next..


[h3]New Spring Spike Sprites[/h3]
The old design clashed in some environments, and new players generally found the old design too tame and hard to see. So we've redesigned them from scratch:


[h2]Other quality of life improvements and bug fixes [/h2]

• Crossbow knockback has been buffed by 25%.
  
• Fixed weird one-block tall floating cave stone islands in Grotto of Guidance.
  
• The cast projectiles from Enthrall and Sphere of Influence Powers now move much faster.
  
• The hunter behaves differently on the last level of being cursed.
  
• More rendering optimizations.
  
• Numerous smaller balance changes.
  
• Much more
  

• Improved telegraphing with dragon traps, golden fists and chandeliers.
  
• Added more interactions to cursed chests.
  
• The Hunter's spawn position has been adjusted for each area.
  
• If the player is cursed, the Hunter can spawn during rush levels to.
  
• Fixed glitch where scaffolding towers were only partially supported.
  
• Scaffolding towers can no longer spawn on slab tiles.
  
• Fixed rare pathfinding generation glitch with pre-made templates.
  
• Fixed bug where The Hunter would disappear on the second level of being cursed.
  
• Changed Grenade bounce physics for throwing at point blank range.
  
• Added glitter effect to some light beams in the Grotto.
  

Steam Event

• +12% XP during Steam's summer sale.
  
• Added gift bag on the left of hub.
  
• Added beachball
  

• Updated .Net framework used by the project from 4.5 to 4.7.1
  
• Multiple Optimizations from the Switch version ported over, especially with regards to:
  
  • Rendering
    
  • Object activation and deactivation.
    
  • Physics of background objects.
    
• Swapped out SpriteFontPlus libraries with FontStashSharp for updated text rendering and to enable more seemless transitioning between MonoGame (used for PC) and FNA (used for Switch) ports of the game.
  
• New animations on destroying lanterns and creating fire brands.
  
• Fixed items from chests held in terrain, getting stuck in solid tiles.
  
• Aquatic enemy pools now have an uncommon chance to appear in the Grotto's generation again.
  
• Extended Spring event and fixed glitch with dynamic grass in the hub.
  
• Fixed some issues with generating aquatic pools in the Grotto of Guidance (0.115.14.5)
  
• Skeletal Snakes have a chance to appear at the end of the grotto (0.115.14.5)
  
• Some ground work for terrain decorations for next update (0.115.14.5)
  
• Fixed issue with detection enemy telegraphs not being shown.
  

NOTE: We've been working on a lot more in the background; we look forward to showing You in the next update...

[h2]Additional quality of life improvements[/h2]

• Added start and dissolve animation to several energy projectiles
  
• Terrain caching has been heavily optimized, leading to faster loading times.
  
• Ice Phoenix fight has been updated to be more challenging:
  
  • She now has more intelligent target tracking during various attack phases.
    
  • A few of her abilities (such as summoning minions) trigger faster as the fight progresses.
    
• Additional level generation safeguards have been implemented.
  

[h3]Other Bug fixes/balance changes:[/h3]

• Fixed spear shadow trail not displaying (though we have an updated animation coming later).
  
• Giant golden fist traps could previously push around flame throwers in the air.
  
• Fixed several glitches associated with recreating previously generated worlds from world property caches.
  
• Reduced Shotbow damage slightly.
  
• Removed spike pit generation from ceiling gas level theme in the Grotto.
  
• Enthrall projectiles are slightly faster.
  

Note: The price of the game will rise in the near future as we draw closer to release

Have Fun & Happy Easter!

[h2]Optimization in update 0.115.X[/h2]

Hi folks,

We've been testing the game on the Steam Deck and preparing the game for porting to Nintendo Switch. In the process, we found ways we could substantially optimize the game. For example, we noticed that the frame rate would flicker on certain devices when exploring a new part of the map and clearing away the fog of war, so we've been reworking the caching algorithm to run much faster.

[h2]Steam Deck related Improvements[/h2]

• Fixed issue with screen scaling cropping off the left side of the screen.
  
• Controller support activates automatically on Linux
  
• Weapon select wheel will not show consumables tabs when there is zero quantity left (outside of tutorial)
  
• A much smoother experience (partly from the abovementioned optimizations).
  

Thank You to Flqtline and Dannz0r for sharing their experiences, screenshots, and test data for the Steam deck.


[h2]Other quality of life and balance changes[/h2]

• Fixed input and texture glitch in fullscreen mode on a widescreen monitor.
  
• Adjusted attack patterns of Golem and fixed bug where it could re-perform the stomp attack multiple times in succession.
  
• Rush themes such as lava ascent, poison gas, and avalanche move slightly faster (red explosive crystals are more common during avalanches).
  
• Added additional lines of attack dialogue to Necromancer.
  
• You can now destroy flamethrower traps in Mantle's Edge with explosives.
  
• Ice Mage and Golems are now more resilient to damage.
  
• Area/run health scaling increased slightly.
  

Enjoy!

[h3]New Class of Enemies: Golems[/h3]

• Different types of these can be encountered late-game, providing a new challenge to even skilled players.
  
• They currently have a shockwave and ranged attack, with the latter varying according to the biome that they're situated.
  

[h3]In game improvements[/h3]

• New Dialogue System This currently applies to the Necromancer's attack dialogue but will be rolled out to more situations. You can also add player speech bubbles to Your screenshots with ~.
  
• New crate destruction animations that vary with biome.
  
• Hazard chase level themes (toxic breeze, rising lava, avalanche) now start sooner.
  
• Stunning and throwing explosive flyers now cause them to detonate on impact.
  
• Several more
  

[h3]Seasonal Bonuses 🌱 [/h3]

• We've been doing some redecorating for the hub world.
  
• Spring breeze also applies to the shifting winds themes of Gnarled Gardens.
  
• New moon variants.
  
• Check the bag at the top-left of the hub
  
• 13% in-game XP bonus.
  
• Taking part in the Steam Sale, the game is on Sale with 20% off
  in addition to the heavy discount in early access.
  
  

[h3]Bug fixes Include[/h3]

• Clockwork turrets (particularly ceiling variants) are now lighter.
  
• Fixed rare dead-end glitch with level generation.
  

NOTE: the price will rise in near future as the game approaches full release.

[h3]Patch 0.114.3[/h3]

• Fixed potential crash where spring version of hub would not load for Mac/Linux (due to it being uploaded to the wrong but similarly named subdirectory directory).
  
• Ice Golem now has its own demise animation.
  
• Golems drop money on death.
  
• Fixed visual tilesheet bug with avalanche.
  

Have fun!