After the first playtest

What the playtest said

Playing it for real surfaced things no simulator could: every melee weapon felt the same, foes backed off too much to catch their breath, you could poke them safely from a hallway, a Knight's mana cards sat in hand doing nothing, and the music needed life-and-death stakes. Each of those became a change, and the simulator measured every one before it stayed.

Every weapon fights its own way

• Each of the eleven weapon classes has its own combo and signature. The axe builds fury with every hit in a row, the halberd ends in a full spin, the bow draws harder the longer you hold, and each throw of the sling winds faster.
• Every class also gets a backstep attack and a sprint attack: a rising cut, a knife fan, a leaping slam, a slide-through.
• Foes press now. A winded foe circles just out of reach and comes back in, and foes chase you through doorways and down the halls, so there's no hiding in a corridor.
• Knock a foe hard into a pillar and it slams: it loses posture and its attack. The room is part of the fight.

Combat that flows

• Stamina comes back while you walk and run, a little behind a guard, and a perfect dodge gives some back. Fights spend far less time standing still to breathe.
• Mana returns on its own up to a third of your pool, so a spell in hand is never stuck there. Past that, flasks and rests still do the filling.
• The rally: part of every blow lingers as ashen health on your bar. Strike back quickly and you win some of it back.
• Fewer sudden deaths. Foes' heavy blows were taking most of a Duelist's health at once, so heavies hit softer now and the blows you can read hit a little harder.

A world after the fire

The game has an art direction now, built on three words: readable, ashen, ember-lit. Each level has a gloom that lifts near light, ash and embers drifting in the air, and a colour grade that leans each biome warm or cold. Blows have weight too: a foe's blade glints as its swing peaks, a struck body squashes and sprays cinders, parries and posture breaks land in a beat of slow motion, and the fallen crumble to ash.

There's music, and the game writes it itself, in code, with no audio files at all. Every biome has its own loop and a combat layer that rises when a foe notices you. After the playtest asked for urgency it went to 120 beats a minute over a heartbeat, and then went gothic: a pipe organ, a low choir, a funeral bell, and an organ toccata when the fighting starts.

Every boss turns

At half health every boss now stops, turns, and asks a new question. The Cinder Warden rings you in fire with one way out, toward the Warden itself. The Vault Sentinel throws a whole tide of frost lances with one lane left open. The Hollow Abbot keeps its line of sigils.

Builds with roads

• Every class has three roads to build toward, each with cards that open it up and a rare that pays it off. Offers lean toward your class's roads, and gently toward the ones you haven't taken yet.
• Rares that were one big hit now ask for something. Heartseeker is a counter stance, Skullsplitter is held high and dropped, Pyre Bolt charges, Arcane Torrent channels, and Last Oath hits hardest when you're below half health.
• Keystones are relics that change a rule at a price. Windstep Vow means you can't guard at all, but rolls cost half and a perfect dodge frees your arts. Each class has one of its own too.
• The Hollow Seer keeps a vigil beside every rest site and upgrades cards for Embers, so what you earn by fighting well always has somewhere to go.

Easier to read

• Cards use symbols for their kind and damage type, show the stats they scale with, and can be inspected anywhere, including at the merchant. A new Symbols page in the compendium explains them.
• The map marks what's in each room you've uncovered (traders, the rest site, omens, foes left) and outlines the rooms ahead.
• Hold a card's button to discard it, so a hand you can't pay for never locks you out.
• Danger no longer relies on gold against red. Blows you must dodge are striped and double-edged, and there's a colour-blind safe palette in the options.

What's next

• The next playtest, with a checklist of the ten newest things that most need a player's hands.
• Rebindable controls and more of the options a release needs.
• A balance pass on the higher Descension levels, where skilled players still win more often than the target.
• Real art. The atmosphere and the music set the mood; the shapes underneath are still placeholder.