Phantom Abyss News

Hi everyone. We’d like to give you an update on what we’re working on for version 1.0 of Phantom Abyss.

In our last update we had said our plans are to release the next area the Rift, as well as an ending to the game. These plans haven’t changed - however we’ve also decided to add and change A LOT more.

A summary of these changes were shown of on a recent Twitch stream which you can watch a replay of here: https://www.twitch.tv/videos/1786727754

New Core Ability: Dash
Dash forwards in the direction you’re facing, including up or down!
Short cooldown

The Rift (4th area)
Torn-apart landscape
The Rift is an area slowly being torn apart by the abyss. It features large areas filled with floating debris, whirlpools, and corruption spreading through the walls.

Lasers: Moving, rotating and cycling deadly lasers.

Grapple nodes: Floating nodes that you can grapple-whip continuously without needing to land.

Challenges Adventure mode has been changed to be a series of challenges. Each challenge REQUIRES you to use a specific whip. Beating the challenge will unlock that whip to be used in other modes. It will also progress to breaking a chain and unlocking the next area.

Players can also unlock whip skins by increasing the difficulty via optional curses (see curses)

Curse Revamp
Curses have been removed from whips.
They instead will be modifiers that players can turn on/off.
Turning on curses will increase the chance of what keys you find to purchase upgrades with.
Whip skin can also be unlocked by playing with a high curse level.

Upgrade Well
An upgrade well that provides permanent upgrades can be found in the HUB and in the first floor of temples.
Upgrades are purchased with keys. Rarer keys = better upgrades.

Updated HUB
The HUB has been dramatically condensed.
The portal is much faster to get to, and the HUB now focuses around 4 pillars. Each pillar represents one of the 4 zones in the game (ruins, caverns, inferno, and rift.)

Each pillar has the whips associated with that region, and the pillar lights up as players collect relics from that region. Collecting 3 relics from a region breaks the associated chain attached to Altec, and unlocks the next region.

New Whips The Crowbar
Power: Shockwave
Wherever you whip creates a shockwave, interacting (and disabling) anything it touches.

The Snake
Power: Time Slow
Bound to a button - activate to slow time for several seconds.

Lunar Whip
Power: Super Dash
Dash is upgraded to be…super.

Whip and shrine powers adjusted
A lot of whip powers have been swapped around or added. Powers available at end-of-floor shrines are now always other whip powers.

Heals have been moved to blessing shrines - which are only found in hidden nooks and crannies.

Rank system adjusted
Rank system is still in place - however it no longer determines what temples you play. Players can gain/lose ranks by winning/losing in temples - and the difficulty of a temple determines how it affects your rank.

Retry added to death screen
No more loading the HUB to replay the game. Hit retry directly after you die!

Final cutscene for freeing Altec

Lots of bug fixes

We’ll be showing off a lot more of this content - including the Rift, in our next Twitch stream next month. Stay tuned for more details to come. Thanks everyone!

Team WIBY

Patch notes for Version 0.8.1.x

Hello Adventurers!
We have a bunch of fixes and quality of life improvements incoming in this patch.

Accessibility features
Added the option to customise looking up and down and turning, including speed and sensitivity customization
Add mouse and keyboard support on Xbox Series consoles
Actions requiring button holds can now be changed to toggle instead of hold (Sprint and Wings)
Can now change the default movement mode from Walk to Sprint for keyboard users.
Improve visibility of input key names on keyboard button displays in UI.
Improved visibility of inputs displayed on Powers and Abilities

Temple improvements
Fixed dead-ends in some temples
Improved trap generation
Adjusted early-game difficulty for Adventure mode
Adjusted Daily Mode difficulty
Fixed Z-fighting and holes in the geometry


Character improvements
Updated and optimised Phantom models, materials and textures.
Fixed Phantoms to display correct materials.


General bug fixes and improvements
- Fixed clearance rate not showing correctly in Daily Mode.
- Achievements "Abyssal" and "Binding" are now fixed. will automatically repair achievements when updating to the latest game client
- Added an emergency key combination to manually force a sync of achievements (Ctrl+Shift+Y on keyboard or RB+LB+Y on the Main Menu)
- Improved interaction with light crystal stands in dark rooms and the light it casts.
- Improved Orb key pick up interaction
- Stopped mine traps from entering Relic rooms.
- Improved interaction with Lava. Player no longer continuously takes damage after touching lava while travelling through it by grapple.
- Improved hints in the loading screen to be relevant to the current game mode
- Fixed disconnection handling on the main menu
- Removed infinite Whip Again bug
- Made it more difficult to hack leaderboard entries.

Hello adventurers!
The latest update has landed for your favorite Temple plundering game, complete with a treasure trove of new content.

The update introduces new game modes, such as Classic Mode and Adventure Mode, as well as a new Explorer Rank feature allowing you to earn reputation from completing temples or lose it if you die. Another new addition is the Daily Temple, allowing you unlimited tries for that day's temple. The Daily Temple run unlocks upon reaching the Adventurer level 1.

Check out the full changelog below.

• Classic Mode - The mode players are used to. Unlocks when the player reaches the rank “Adventurer 1”
  
• Adventure Mode - Get a temple based on your “rank”
  
• Wide variety of temple types. Temples range from short & easy to long & near-impossible. Temples matched to players based on their “explorer rank”
  
• Explorer rank - Earn reputation from completing temples. Lose rep by dying. Earn reputation to increase your rank. Higher rank = harder temple pool.
  
• Progress story - Story progresses as players find relics and complete temples in Adventure mode.
  
• Daily Temple - Unlimited tries. New temple every 24 hours. Leaderboards for overall best performance. Unlocks when the player reaches Adventurer 1
  

New Content

• New Rooms
  
• New Trap layouts
  
• New temple visuals
  
• New pots
  

Story Progression

• Collecting relics will break the chains of “Altec”, a giant statue in the HUB.
  
• There are 3 chains total to be broken. The requirements for each chain are as follows:
  
• Chain 1: 1st Ruins relic, 3rd ruins relic, 5th ruins relic
  
• Chain 2: 1st Caverns relic, 3rd caverns relic, 5th caverns relic
  
• Chain 3: 1st Inferno relic, 3rd Inferno relic, 5th Inferno relic
  

Power Shrines & unlocking whips

• New Power Shrines and whip unlocks
  
• Claiming a relic unlocks a new whip that players can use.
  
• Additionally, each whip has a unique power than also then becomes available at a “power shrine”
  
• Powers from a power shrine cost keys
  
• For example, if you own the lightning and Ice whip, you can attain their powers mid-run from a power shrine
  

Updated tutorials

• Updated level
  
• Improved to be closer to a real temple
  
• The old tutorial has been removed.
  

Codex

• Tutorial popups used in relevant places to better explain something the first time the player encounters it.
  
• After you read a popup, it can then be found in the “codex”.
  

The next big update for Phantom Abyss features the new Adventure Mode! This update is based on your feedback so far, and addresses many of your concerns you have voiced about the game. The skill curve is easier to learn and harder to master, and much new content has been added. Plus many quality-of-life issues are addressed (starting with three hearts, etc).

We really want to encourage you to give this beta a try and let us know what you think! This dev team is very receptive to your feedback and ideas, and if there are things you like or dislike, or wish were different, now would be the time to make that known, during this beta period. The devs are open to dialogue on the Discord beta channels, and a lot of fruitful discussion arises from these conversations. It is all an effort to make the game better for everyone.

Please sign up here! Things get underway very soon. And thanks for being part of this amazing community!

https://devolver.typeform.com/to/CSqEWHSF

(NOTE: if you get a response on the form mentioning Feb 22 as the start date, please ignore--that is from the previous beta. You will be registered for the current beta, tentatively beginning August 15)

Thank you for playing and supporting Phantom Abyss in Early Access! We have taken community feedback into account and are working on more features for the game, and we hope you will enjoy them. Phantom Abyss is also part of the Steam Summer Sale, happening now! Here is a look at our revised Roadmap for the rest of 2022: