Hey Flame Masters!
Working on The Last Flame as a solo dev has been one of the most fulfilling journey of my life, and I couldn't be more grateful for everyone that helped with the development and the community which has been extremely supportive! Thank you, y'all have been amazing! Without further do, let's jump into what's new in this MEGA update!

🏹 Reborn

The Reborn system allows you to choose one hero per run to Reborn. The Reborn of a hero greatly vary between heroes. Some will have perks that help the hero thrive in parts of their build that were secondary in the past, some will have perks that allow them to be played in totally different ways, some will bring team wide perks, and some will interact with the party or support it.

Here are some examples of what you can expect from the Hero Reborn system:

Joanna:



Karina:


Eslo:


Atreos:



Naomi:



The reborn of heroes is done at the Campfire, and becomes available once you beat the Act 1 boss. Reborn does have a cost, the currency used to Reborn is actually up to the player. The player can mix and match any of these 3 currencies: flame, gold and trophies to pay for the reborn.

One of the main benefit of the Reborn system is that it allows you to plan in advance as Reborn is a static mechanic. There's no RNG related to this system, and it allows you to heavily invest in some aspects of your synergy which might have been more tricky to do in the past. It opens thousands of new build possibilities, and will allow you to make even crazier synergies!

You can preview the hero reborn from the hero card at any time (button at the bottom of the card).

Unlocking Reborn
The Reborn system is unlocked in the Reborn Unlock (8/8) as it increases the complexity of the game by quite a bit; and therefore, I believe should be unlocked at some later time when the player is already comfortable with the basics of the game.

New Challenge: Reborn Pinnacle
Reborn pinnacle allows you to Reborn as many times as you wish, the cost to Reborn is free and you can Reborn starting from the very beginning of the run. The enemies are a lot stronger.

Balancing Reborn
There will be a balance patch to properly tune the Reborn's effects as soon as we get enough data statistics from players to pin point what is too powerful or too weak. You can expect this patch to come in 1 to 2 weeks.

🌎 5 New Languages

We added the following languages to The Last Flame:

• Spanish
  
• Portuguese
  
• Korean
  
• Japanese
  
• Russian

I hope that this allows the game to have more reach throughout the world so that more players can enjoy making awesome builds!

To report issues/typos regarding the new localizations, please write a message in the localization channels on Discord. Thank you so much for your help!

⚔️ New Content

Thank you Celerity for playing and showing the game to your community! This first item is for you:

👓 Retromation

For those who don't know Retromation is a content creator that makes amazing content on the newest indie games and roguelikes that are worth checking out! I enjoy his content and he enjoys The Last Flame so what better opportunity to bring him to life in the game! I am thrilled to present you: Retromation, The Dicemancer! This hero focuses on the hybrid balance of Spell Power and Attack Damage to deal godlike amounts of damage and chain killing enemies!

🐸 Improved Hero Models

Karina, Arya, James, Zanmar and Cora have new and more epic models! (yes Zanmar is now a 🐸)

🎟️ New Events

Act 1 was the act with the least act specific events which made events very repetitive for this act. 3 new events have been added for act 1!

💾 Multiple Save Slots

Multiple Save System added to the game. From the main menu, you can now change your save slot from a total of 4 available.

🧙 Quality of Life

• The Surge Gauge is now displayed in the fight recap.
  
• Added the ability to mouse wheel through the difficulties and challenges in the level selector (no more smashing your mouse to go from one challenge to another).
  
• The Fragment toggle will now flash when you are past Act 2 - Floor 4 as a reminder to toggle it if you wish to go to Act 4.
  
• The codex has been re-organized by archetype.
  
• You can now use "hero dropped" taunting by clicking on heroes even when the fight has already been started. Previously, you were not able to change their position (unchanged), so you couldn't drop then to use the "hero dropped" taunt.
  
• Added 3 Tip Windows in the main menu that give guidance about the different unlocks (Surge, Reborn and Custom Game Mode) and additional difficulties available beyond Flame Master.
  

⭐ Hero Mastery

The Hero Mastery is a new system that keeps track of what heroes you have won a run with and your play rate with each hero. It also keeps track of what reborn heroes you have won a run with. The statistics in the main menu now include your challenge completion and the new hero mastery.


Additionally, the One Man Army and the Cloned challenges now keep tracks of what heroes you have completed the challenge with!

🎖️ New Achievements

17 new achievements are available ranging from dealing a lot of damage in a fight to speed running a run. You can preview all the achievements here.

🔒 Unlocks have been restructured

The Summer, Halloween and Winter new content are now for the most part unlockable through the Unlock system. This will reduce the amount of content that a new player has to deal with at first, making the learning curve less steep. Unlock #8 which was very empty until now, now contains most of the hybrid build and On-Dealing Ethereal Damage content.

⚖️ Difficulty Balance

Throughout updates, the game has gotten overall easier due to many buffs. I decided to slightly increase the difficulty (on all difficulties) to keep the game more engaging!

• In Act 2, the enrage timer starts 2 seconds sooner and 4 seconds sooner on boss fights.
  
• In Act 3 and beyond, the enrage timer starts 5 seconds sooner and 10 seconds sooner on boss fights. (this is the total, which includes the Act 2 enrage changes)
  
• In Act 2, the damage and HP of enemies has been increased by about 4%.
  
• In Act 3 and beyond, the damage and HP of enemies has been increased by about 5.5%.
  
• Skeleton King's (Act 2 boss) Max HP increased, and poison rain damage increased.
  
• The Orc Shaman enemy now heals for 10% of his Max HP instead of a Spell based value. This is mainly a buff to Orc Shaman in Endless, where Spell Based values are capped pretty low to prevent one shots on heroes. But this made Orc Shaman's ability extremely underpowered in Endless. This enemy should now be more balanced and aligned with other enemies power.
  

🎵 New Music

• Act 3 music (combat and out of combat tracks) was changed to be more epic and vibrant.
  
• Act 4 (and endless) now has new music tracks unique to Act 4! Previously, it had the same track as Act 3.
  

🕹️ What was added during the Early Access

If you haven't played the game for a long time or want to know what was added during the Early Access (other than this update), here's a very condensed list of the changes. If you want more details, I would recommend to check the patch notes of the 12 updates that has been done during Early Access.

• Recipe Locking system and Soft Ban Automatic System which increases the chance to see items, heroes, relics and origins that you are more likely to be interested in
  
• Unlocks now give perks. The perks are not direct hero power, they were added to balance the item pool getting bigger with each unlock. The perks are things like hero rewards now show 4 heroes instead of 3. This is to balance the item pool getting bigger so that the player is not negatively affected by the unlocking more content.
  
• Custom Game Mode allowing you to tweak the difficulty to your liking, add any challenges, select your unlocks sets, and customize a dozen of other settings
  
• Expanded Act 4 with a small map and 2 new bosses
  
• Improved Combat Recap
  
• 6 New Heroes
  
• 22 New wildcard passives
  
• 23 New Items
  
• 12 New Sacrificial relic
  
• 5 New Origins
  
• Events revamp, 26 out of 27 events have received modifications, balance changes and totally new options
  
• Hundreds of new fight variations
  
• 6 New challenges
  
• Performance improvements
  
• Adjustable keybinds
  
• 400+ balance changes and reworks on items, heroes and more
  
• Improved active description
  
• New resolutions for the 16:10 screen aspect ratio
  
• You can now restart a run after completing it, and abandon a run from the main menu
  

🎯 What is next?

You can expect continued support in terms of bug fixing, balance changes, text improvements, and improvement to the game's systems. There will be a balance patch in the following weeks to balance new and old content with a focus on Reborn.

As for new heroes, items, relics and origins, this is a bit more controversial as most of the negative feedback and reviews are complaints that there's already too much stuff which can cause item dilution. There has already been multiple updates and changes to help with this issue. I think overall, the problem comes from the fact that some players do not understand how valuable and cheap rerolling can be, and are not utilizing it properly; or simply do not understand how flexible items and synergies can be in The Last Flame.
That being said, I think the game already has a pretty considerable amount of content with 65 heroes each with their reborn version, 325 items, 150 relics and 60 origins, the amount of unique builds that you can come up with is pretty much infinite. Could it benefit from having more? Honestly, I have mixed feelings about this. I think new content within the existing archetypes could appeal to some players while not appealing to others. I haven't really decided yet if there will be new heroes, items, relics and origins. You can let me know what you think about this in the comments of this post or on Discord!

Controller support and console release is not yet confirmed one way or another. Adding it has been on my mind for a long time but controller support and console porting is a tedious and long process and during the Early Access, I had to focus on the other updates. I will soon evaluate the situation and see if this is something that can be done.

If you have any suggestions for the game, feel free to share them with me! I do read each and every single one of them, and try to reply to as many as I can!

Finally, I love making and designing games so you can definitely expect more games from me in the future!

✍️ Review the game

If you are enjoying The Last Flame, the best way to help is to leave a review! I really appreciate your support!

💬 Join the community

Join our community on Discord! It's the perfect place to share your best builds, talk strategy, ask questions and give feedback! I am very active on Disc, and I am trying to participate in as many discussions as I can!

💖 Thank You

Hello! I am Hotloop, a solo dev from Canada! This journey has been totally unexpected.. after graduating from university, I started working on a game to put in my portfolio to apply for jobs. My plan was to spend 1 to 2 months on the project. Well, it has now been almost 4 years and a half that I have been working on this "quick" 1 to 2 months project. There has definitely been a major change in plans. I would never have expected that this random project would have gone so far, and I am very proud of how much the game has evolved and got better throughout time.
This would not have been possible without the help of an amazing community which has been helping out since February 2023 (about 1 year prior to the Early Access release). The community has helped with suggestions, feedback, bug reports but the most important was seeing them discussing and having fun playing the game which gave me the motivation to keep working hard to deliver the best possible version of The Last Flame! It hasn't always been easy. The amount of stress, hard work, and financial risk that this took to achieve was pretty insane but I am extremely grateful that I kept going and was able to complete my vision for the game. Thank you so much for your support and for being part of this journey!

Hotloop