Our second public Astral Arena Alpha update is now live! 

Thanks to everyone who played the previous builds! Your feedback is what drives our development!

We've mostly been working on improving the game progression systems so that the game has a better sense of advancement and to stop players getting overwhelmed by the amount of information the previous build would just toss at them from the get go - that no longer is the case!

Additionally we've made a bunch of QoL improvements and bug fixes, added in save/load, as well as implementing the first stage of our own shiny system! The shinies themselves are all placeholder as they are just hue-shifted from the original colors, but we plan on being much more deliberate with them in future!

We're incredibly grateful for your ongoing feedback and support! Keep it coming—we’re listening! 🎧

Change Log

🆕 New Features and Additions

• 🆕 New Save/Load System: Added the ability to continue a run later on.
• 🆕 Status poster: Updated to unlock information as the player encounters it, reducing the potential for overwhelm at the start of the game.
• 🆕 Main menu: New main menu & splash screen.
• 🆕 Weather System: Introduced a new weather timer so players can plan around it better.
• 🆕 Shinies: SHINIES NOW EXIST. The current system is a prototype; in the future, the shinies will be much more purposefully colored rather than simply hue-shifted from the originals.
• 🆕 Crowd: The crowd actually exists now.

🎮 Gameplay Changes

• 🎮 Self skills: Self skills no longer exist; they may make a comeback in the future.
• 🎮 Buffs/Debuffs stack: Buffs/Debuffs now share a stack to reduce status icons; debuffs display negative stack numbers for clarity.
• 🎮 Skill unlocks: Unlock skills over time rather than having them all at the start. This helps reduce the overwhelm players faced in the previous build.
• 🎮 Enemy scaling: Refactored enemy scaling and rebalanced it to improve gameplay.
• 🎮 Core frequency: Core frequency now based on wins.
• 🎮 Performance: Enhanced performance. On the Steam Deck, maintaining combat FPS above 30 in most scenarios.
• 🎮 Status effect poster: Moved the status effect poster to make it more noticeable.
• 🎮 Keyboard controls: Adjusted default keyboard controls. Still a work in progress.

🔧 Bug Fixes

• 🔧 Enemy stats: Enemy stats are now calculated correctly.
• 🔧 Growth status effect: Fixed the growth status effect to display correct numbers.
• 🔧 Cold skills: Cold skills now last longer, ensuring they can hit.
• 🔧 Astrals healing: Astrals can no longer heal via growth if below 1% HP, preventing them from reviving after a fight.
• 🔧 Skill equipping: Fixed skill equipping the wrong skill. This issue may still occur in some cases.
• 🔧 Game reset: Fixed issue with the game not resetting correctly after a game over.
• 🔧 Item & Skill descriptions: Fixed all descriptions.
• 🔧 Status info: Fixed status info display.
• 🔧 Player location: Fixed the bug where the game saved the player location, which could lead to escaping the world.
• 🔧 Skill equipping cancellation: Fixed the issue where equipping a skill would proceed even if canceled.
• 🔧 Elevator mechanics: Changes made to how the elevator works to fix a number of related bugs.

⚖️ Balance Changes

• ⚖️ Core stats: New cores now use a different method for determining their stats.
• ⚖️ Core distribution: Adjusted how cores are distributed to be more abundant early on and less abundant in the late game.
• ⚖️ Skill rebalance: Rebalanced the skills & eliminated redundancy.
• ⚖️ Item effects: Rebalanced item effects and effectiveness.
• ⚖️ Difficulty curve: Rebalanced the difficulty curve.
• ⚖️ Enemy scaling: Rebalanced enemy scaling.
• ⚖️ Synergy: Synergy no longer reduces energy costs.
• ⚖️ Goal wins: Reduced the goal wins from 30 down to 18, shortening the length of a run.