Apologies for being a little quiet this week, I’ve been working on an itch.io page for Demon, in hopes of expanding the player base a little bit. Should be finished very soon, then it will be back to work on more important things… like the next build. Cheers!

Here’s the rather extensive change log to give you guys something to read until it is ready for release.

Unity 5 Update
- This is the first version of Demon to use Unity 5, as opposed to Unity 4.
- Significantly improved performance achieved in part thanks to finally having access to profiling tools.

Geminimax Sprite Set Updates
- This build contains a significant number of updates to the Geminimax Sprite set. They’ve gotten quite a bit more awesome as a result.

Revamp: Light and Dark
- The majority of Light and Dark abilities have been significantly changed, and several new ones have been added.
- In general, single-target smite abilities now have few or no restrictions other than brief cooldowns, and multi-target smiting is available under the right conditions, with longer cooldowns.
- There are also a wide variety of passives available which modify Light and Dark attacks based on various conditions being met.
- The hope is that this will make both elements more interesting and fun to use and battle against.
- Relic and demon ability sets, modifier ability sets, and the like have been adjusted as a result of these changes.

Revamp: Credits
- Most Transmutations that involve demons now use the demon’s starting level in the cost formula, rather than the demon’s current level. This includes: Copy Ability, Restore Demon, Fuse Demon, Revelation, and Recycle.
- Several costs have been adjusted directly, in addition to the previous change. Most notably, Copy Ability is *significantly* cheaper.

Balance Changes
- Strength’s bonus now adjusts non-status condition damage taken by characters. (Yes, characters with low bonuses will take additional damage.) Several stat tables for relics and characters have been adjusted to account for this change.
- Enemy bonus MaxHP generated at spawning is no longer random; thus, enemies with the same stats and abilities will always have the same MaxHP and no longer need to be individually inspected.
- Nightengale no longer recovers SP or time-based cooldowns at an increased rate.
- Enemy Sense’s extra encounter now spawns a bit further away from your current position than before in hopes no one else will be trapped in a corner by a surprise extra encounter with an enemy summoner…
- Self-buffs are no longer available from the Blessed and Imbued modifiers.
- SP damage/drain effects now damage/drain more SP.
- Heroic Resistance now applies to SP damage/drain.
- Adjusted the SP costs and cooldowns of Buff/Debuff ”battle cries.”
- Lucky Charm now clears the target’s Luck cooldown instead of reducing it by 1, but has a higher SP cost to compensate.
- Satyr have swapped Might for Alert, making them more annoying, but less deadly.

AI
- The AI is now a bit more selective about using effects that give turns to or stagger targets.

UI
- When the main character levels up, you are no longer immediately forced to spend the points at once. Instead, Level Up is now in the Transmutations menu whenever the player has bonus points to spend.
- Note that Level Up being an option will ALWAYS cause the Transmutations button to glow, even if suggestions have been turned off!
- Cells containing entities that will be affected by an ability are colored differently in targeting UI now. This is most useful when using abilities that only affects targets that meet certain conditions.
- Selecting an ability again while you are selecting a target for it will be treated as an attempt to confirm usage on the currently selected target. This applies whether you are clicking on the ability’s hotbar button or pressing it’s hotkey button.
- If you end up with too many or duplicate demons, you are now forced into the Transmutations menu until you resolve the problem (as opposed to being forced to delete one immediately.)

Bug Fixes
- Effects that check % of HP rather than dealing direct damage or healing now work as expected on heroes or those under the effect of Heroism. The same is also true for Minions.
- Draw Wounds no longer reduces bonus MaxHP when used.
- Target area glow is no longer erroneously darkened during some uses of the targeting UI.
- Fixed a centering issue in the Your Score display.
- Corrected some typos and control labelling errors in the manual.

BTW, the scoring model will be updated next build, meaning a fresh new scoreboard. The Light/Dark changes and the changes to how Strength works alone more than justify it. You can view old scoreboards using old versions, so if you’re thinking you might want to gaze at a certain ridiculously amazing 8 cycle game again one day, it might be worth keeping a copy of the current build stashed somewhere.

We passed 10,000+ games of Demon played today, btw. I admit though, that’s a bit of a slow down in terms of games played per day back from the last milestone. It was 35-ish/day around the turn of the year, now it’s a bit more like 25-ish/day. I’m still happy with it, though it does mean I probably need to step up my “advertising” (if you can call it that for a freeware game) a little bit.

Thank you everyone for the support and feedback. I appreciate it. Onward to 20,000!

With all these new abilities that only affect characters who meet certain conditions, I figured it would be annoying to have to guess/remember/figure out which characters do and don’t meet the conditions. So, starting with the next build, cells containing characters that will be affected by the ability in question will be colored differently than ‘empty’ ones within the area effect.

In the example below, only one goblin is designated as an actual target, because only that one is both within Humble’s area of effect and meeting both the “affects enemies” and “whose HP is at or above their base maximum” requirements.

This change should also affect other, older conditional abilities, making them a bit easier to use too.

Hey everyone. Wanted to give a brief peek at some of what’s coming in the next build’s Light and Dark revamp.

First, let’s look at the new starting Light and Dark options for Faithful Heart:

Both Light and Dark primaries start off with a “miracle” (a wide radius area effect spell that hits all enemies who meet a certain condition)  and a “mien” (a passive that adds extra bonuses to Light and Dark spells when the targets meet certain conditions.) For Light, the pair is Humble (a massive attack on all enemies at or above their base maximum health) and King’s Mien (adds Guilt to your Light and Dark attacks hitting enemies at maximum health.) For Dark, the pair is Agony (solid damage to all enemies without Agony status, but applies Agony status) and Fool’s Mien (adds Pariah to your Light and Dark attacks hitting enemies who did not use damage-dealing abilities on their previous turn.)

Both pairs are designed to give the player a very major miracle to open battle with: Humble will deal a solid chunk of damage to enemies at the start of an encounter, with King’s Mien throwing Guilt on most or all of them, allowing you and your allies to heal yourselves by making further attacks on the targets. Dark primary’s Agony deals a bit less damage than Humble, but unlike Humble, there is a chance you may get to re-use it during an encounter (since Agony can wear off, leaving enemies vulnerable to it once again.) Fool’s Mien applies Pariah to targets who did not attack the previous turn, thus, if Agony is used as an opening move, you will often get Pariah to apply to at least a couple of targets. Focusing firing on a Pariah’d target will spread damage to its allies, allowing your team to quickly eliminate groups of enemies.

Light and Dark’s secondaries are both 40 Power smite attacks. On paper, they probably don’t look impressive. They’re cheap and can’t miss, but 40 Power is less than even a basic attack. But, since they also deal Light and Dark damage, both can trigger King’s Mien or Fool’s Mien, giving you additional ways to trigger these effects. Additionally, both also make cheap, easy ways to trigger Guilt and Pariah’s effects as well.

Of course, with so many changes to Light and Dark abilities, many enemies who use those powers have had their ability sets changed as well. Let’s look at a few of them!

The meager Easg Saint is a bit more deadly these days: though Censure is weaker than the attack it used to have, it has no cooldown or conditions on its use at all, allowing Easg Saints to chain smite (if weakly) a target with impunity. If the target used a damaging ability last turn, Judge’s Mien will trigger, staggering the target and delaying their next turn. Quiet Prayer is no longer needed since Easg Saints have no cooldown abilities, so it has been replaced with Refresh.

Angels use Smite rather than Censure: a bit higher SP cost, but higher damage too. It does have a cooldown of 1 turn, but that isn’t relevant since the Angel possess no other Light cooldown abilities. Angel’s Mien causes Light and Dark damage to have a fairly high chance to Stun targets if they are adjacent to the caster, together with their healing and defensive buffs, Angels can be tricky to take down with melee attacks.

From the Dark side, let’s look at Shikigami. The main upgrade over the previous iteration is the addition of Malice, the middle tier Dark smite. However, here, unlike Smite and the Angel, the 1 turn cooldown does come in to play due to the presence of Cull: after a Shikigami uses Cull (which hits all enemies at half or less health), it will briefly be unable to use Malice while the shared cooldown decrements. Fool’s Mien from the Faithful Heart Dark primary is also here, causing both attacks to inflict Pariah if they find a target that did not attack the previous turn. Shikigami will often use Malice to inflict Pariah on a target, then attack that target repeatedly in hopes Pariah will drag most or all of their foes into Cull range. Incidentally, Cull can become quite deadly if it hits many targets already affected with Pariah…

Last, but absolutely not least, the Ikiryo. Already a dreaded foe of the upper tower, he now has the top tier Dark smite, Rage. Rage is a 70 Power smite, but has a 2 turn cooldown, and thus can only be used every other turn (and like Malice, would be shut down completely for awhile if a longer Dark cooldown ability was used.) Rage’s presence here gives the Ikiryo a longer range option, and also makes it difficult for low health targets to hide from it, since Rage, unlike the Drain spells, does not require a clear line of fire.

This isn’t a complete list of the changes to creature ability lists by any means: only a small preview. Hopefully the build will be ready relatively soon. Cheers!

The next build is polishing up all sorts of things: Light and Dark magic (currently being discussed at some length in the forums: http://forum.ferretdev.org/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=174  ), currency costs for transmutations, and some UI improvements.

For example, spending bonus points awarded for leveling up is no longer forced on you in the middle of combat: now you choose when to do it from the transmutations menu. Similarly to Upgrade Relic, it only appears in the transmutations menu when relevant, and will blink purple to draw attention to itself (even if you have turned suggestions off, though the transmutation button itself will not blink in that case.) Even when you activate it, you do not need to spend all, or even any of your points, you can back out and continue to wait if you find some reason to do so.

I’ll have more information about what’s in the next build soon. Cheers!