Hi!

Today we're releasing a big update featuring a number of changes to the game aiming to make it more engaging and fun, as well as adding new content to unlock. We've also done UI changes to improve readability and added a few screens with useful information on unlock progression.

The main features we're adding today are hero skins, that are basically new characters with their own starter weapon, skill and passives, and the Special Bosses feature, which are the way to unlock them. Special Bosses are placed in a really far away point from your position, so getting there will require some dedication, but these bosses will grant useful rewards when defeated.

We're also adding Elemental Overload as an unlockable feature that grants increasing boosts when picking several trinkets of the same element. This offers a new way to get additional power, and may even become a nice alternative to evolving weapons.

As we shared in an earlier newspost, we were thinking of changing the game's pace and made a poll to gather what people thought of the standard pace and Turbo mode. The results were very evenly distributed between the 4 options shown, so we decided to increase the standard pace a bit, while keeping Turbo mode a separate, faster option.

We also did important changes in the trinket balance to shift away some power from the +Damage trinkets, and reducing enemy health in the later stages. This allows for a greater range of options when choosing trinkets, and while additional damage is always going to be useful and even required in very advanced stages, at least you're no longer "forced" to pick two or three of them just to keep up with enemy health increases.

Changelog of the full list of changes:

New features:

• 6 New characters and 5 new weapons to unlock.
  
• Special Bosses feature: Enemies that show up in a far away position and can yield powerful rewards.
  
• Elemental overload feature: Stacked elemental trinkets give increasing stat boosts.
  

Gameplay changes:

• Shifted around some of the unlocks in previous updates with the new ones (this means some weapons from the previous update will unlock at Ruin level 2 instead of 1).
  
• Increased standard(non-turbo) player and enemy speed by 20-25%.
  
• Reduced health increase of enemies in Ruin mode and later stages.
  
• Slightly decreased power of trinkets increasing damage or fire rate.
  
• Ruin challenges will now be unlocked when playing in a higher Ruin Level too.
  

Improvements:

• Done some UI changes to the Pause menu.
  
• Split Unlocks section by item category.
  
• Minibosses will now show a health bar.
  
• Enemy status effects that deal damage (poison and burn) are now applied independently of the other effects, so for example you can poison (or burn!) frozen enemies.
  
• Added a new screen after the stage result showing the unlock progress and some information on challenges remaining to be done.
  
• A popup is shown when minions get stronger in the boss battle.
  
• Replaced Ctrl and Alt menu keyboard shortcuts with F1 and F2 to prevent Alt-Tab issues etc.
  
• Fire and Poison damage numbers are now shown.
  
• Locked challenges will now show a tip on what is needed to unlock them, such as a missing feature or character.
  
• The game can now be paused with the mouse by clicking on the timer.
  
• Added Regeneration to the pause menu stats.
  
• Added some leeway for the "Poison" Ruin modifier hitbox.
  
• Locked skills will always be shown in the Upgrades section (along with the unlock condition).
  
• Added a button in the pause menu showing the amount of challenges available.
  
• Damage from character skills and trinkets is now listed in the mission result screen (Armor of Thorns will count as player damage due to how it's calculated).
  
• Added icons on the Level up screen showing how a trinket or weapon choice affects/is affected by the current equipment (huge / minor / mixed improvement).
  
• Increased a bit minimum size of tracking arrows.
  
• A save backup is now done after finishing a mission.
  
• Done some additional save data path checking when launching the game.
  

Bugfixes:

• Fixed Cog of Battle causing severe performance issues while the game is paused.
  
• Fixed "Earn X stars" challenges not unlocking at the point that star amount is earned.
  
• Fixed Health bar not updating when picking the Elixir of Health with no Regeneration stat.
  

PS: Here's the Roadmap with scheduled future updates: