A bestiary, and the first real art

Why this round

Every biome used to field the same five armed humanoids, so after a while rooms stopped asking anything new. So I wrote a bestiary plan: new foes in families, each built around one question. Can you keep two pounces in view? Can you dodge something you can't hit? Will you look away?

Each one was played through 600 simulated runs before it stayed. None of them moved a win rate; they make runs fuller, not harder.

Fifteen new foes

• Hounds hunt in pairs. Each circles you at range, crouches and pounces in a leap you can't block. Roll through it and punish the landing.
• Husks can't be harmed at all. They walk to you, swell under a ring that shows their reach, and burst on everything inside it, other foes included. The Cathedral's Censer Wisp bursts three times, drifting after you between them.
• Wailing Shades let blows pass straight through them. They're solid only while they attack, so strike their window, not their body.
• Bone Reavers fall into a pile of bones and rise again. Finish the bones with a heavy blow, a crushing weapon or sorcery; light cuts only scatter them.
• The Vault Gorgon's gaze turns you to stone if you're facing her when it completes. The answer isn't a roll or a guard: look away.
• The Pit Devil's shadow slides behind you a beat before it blinks there and thrusts. Turn as the shadow moves.
• The Grave Brute shrugs off light swings. Only weight moves it: heavies, arts and sorcery land in full.
• The Drowned Oracle casts in a fixed order you can learn, with the next spell shown over her head. The Plague Doctor throws clouds of rot and mends the foes around it unless you break the spell, so it's the one to reach first.
• Three new elites. The Ash Fiend crosses the room in one bound and slams down in fire. The Vault Minotaur charges down a lane, and if you step aside near a wall, it crashes into it and reels. The Ashen Duelist reads you instead: swing in a steady rhythm and it parries the third blow.

The first real art

Until now everything on screen was a flat shape. Every biome now has textured floors and walls: cracked flagstones in the Cinder Wastes, a laid nave in the Hollow Cathedral, and sunken, water-stained masonry in the Drowned Vault. Characters are modelled in Blender and baked into sprites seen from above, starting with a body of their own for each of the five classes and one for the plain foes.

Both come from the studio's own tools, so the art stays ours. The rule underneath doesn't change: the ground stays quiet and the brightest things on screen are the ones that can hurt you. Attacks you need to read are still drawn in code, so they stay sharp.

The playtest's notes, answered

• Cards you can read. One card view everywhere, with both upgrade paths side by side, less text, and rarity frames that stand out. Class select shows each class's difficulty, stats and starting deck at a glance.
• No empty rooms past the first, and hallways at most about two seconds' walk, so the pace flows.
• Swings with weight. A plain swing now carries you forward through its cut, a little for a dagger and more for a greatsword.
• Quicken. Cards that drew a card barely did anything. Now the card arrives at once and glows, and while it glows it's free.

Ready for more players

• Rebindable controls for keyboard, mouse and controller.
• Display options: window size, a frame cap and a larger HUD.
• A credits screen with the engine's licence and notices.
• Playtest builds for outside testers. They record each run for a report across testers, without handing out the source.

What's next

• A playtest with outside testers, and the new foes in a player's hands.
• More art: a body of its own for each kind of foe, more animation, and light that reaches the new sprites.
• Balance at the higher Descension levels, once the playtest shows how real experts fare.