I'm finally done with this!
It took me way more than I wished, I apologize.

This is, visually, the level I've wanted to make since I started this project.
Like I said in the previous small update, astrophotography was one of my hobbies before I started developing Novus Orbis, and I wanted to put my love for space into the game. Some of the background elements I've made for this level are strongly inspired from pictures I've taken myself.

Visuals aside, this level goes to conclude the second path, with the second ending to the game.

With this conclusion, five more challenges have been added, with relative unlockables!

There is a ton of new stuff, a ton of balancing, and as always, I've been working to remove as many bugs as possible.

Note: there have been delays regarding the game's music. I wish things were moving faster, but it's out of my control. For now I am reusing music from the first path (which do not really match the levels' vibe too much), but they're all going to come, at some point.

With this update I decided with the publisher that we're raising the game's price to 14.99.

As a parallel announcement, I'm going to become a dad in January!
While this is a happy moment, it also means that development may become a bit slower.
I also need to consider how I'm going to wrap the game up leading to 1.0. The original goal was to add two more levels after this one, but depending on schedule and reception, I may need to cut those, and add the intended last boss(es) as additional bosses, without adding new levels.

That being said, the third class is coming for sure, and it's the next big thing I'm going to work on.
I haven't made a new class since forever, I'm looking forward to it, while being a bit scared about it ahah.

Now, to the update's content:

Additions:

• (Level) Outer Space. Accessible from Sky Archipelago (and Abyss once cleared). Clearing it once will unlock five new challenges, as well as the raising difficulty for the Hell-Outer Space pair.

• (Enemy) Auric Vorid

• (Enemy) Cobalt Vorid

• (Enemy) Crimson Vorid

• (Enemy) Viridian Vorid

• (Enemy) Grinder

• (Mini Boss) Hive

• (Mini Boss) Subterra

• (Boss) No Spoilers :P

• (Challenges) Five new challenges that appear once you beat Outer Space for the first time.

• (Achievements) 12 new Achievements for clearing Outer Space, and for winning the game with the five new challenges (6 for each class).

• (Blessing) Acid Blood

• (Blessing) Risk of Poison

• (Blessing) Goosebumps

• (Blessing) Summoning

• (Card) Gamble

• (Card) Book Rewrite

• (Card) Soul Cannon

• (Card) Steel Copy

• (Card) Bookmark

• (Card) Hell

• (Card) Mysterious Rice

• (Card) Mysterious Tooth

• (Pet) Onigiri

• (Pet) Mory

Changes:

• (UI) Slight change to the font style for the dialogue boxes.

• (General) The new game reward will now have two versions. The one that was in the game so far is untouched. The game will now give you a reward even if you haven't reached the first boss. In this case, you'll be offered only 2 options, and they will be less impactful.

• (General) Reduced the number of rooms for some levels, and set both level 3s (Abyss and Sky Archipelago) with only one Mini Boss. It's a quite big change that aims to both make runs more varied, as well as spreading difficulty better between levels (I felt like difficulty would always peak at level 2-3, and then fall at level 4).

• (General) Removed Mimic and Pond as random events in Hell. They will now be found only as forced events in pre-set rooms if Great Mimic and Pond's Monarch have not been defeated yet.

• (General) Tweaks to the anti stall system.

• (General) Mark rooms now also have a chance to have a damaging pixie on them (same chance as treasure rooms).

• (General) Clearing a level at difficulty 3 will now make the level unavailable for the next run, and reset it to difficulty 0. This is implemented because the difficulty system is supposed to give more reasons to a player to choose one or the other path during different runs. But as things were, for skilled players it would mean they would only choose the highest difficulty path to maximize rewards, nullifying my original intent.

• (General) Minic, Onigiri and Mory pets added to the possible pet cards you can get from the initial reward (once unlocked).

• (Pet) Genryuu's single target attack now deals more damage.

• (Enemies) Magma, Ice, Current Elementals now have a limit to the amount of "elemental" moves they can perform, after which they'll switch to only attacking (some interactions would make fights unnecessarily long or difficult).

• (Enemies) A few changes to some recent enemies' death sounds.

• (Card) Demon Form damage decreased to 25% from 50%, and changed its description to specify you lose that amount of HP, instead of "taking damage".

Bug Fixes:

• Removed the possibility to access the menu during the post end boss dialogue.

• Fixed a bug that would need you to click twice on the buttons on the score screen before they would actually work.

• Fixed the game win dialogue repeating the last line if you spam click.

• Fixed some issues with dialogues repeating the first and/or last lines.

• Fixed the "You beat the last boss" text disappearing if you click when it's on screen.

• Fixed an issue with High Conductor card not updating its damage properly.

• Solved a small visual issue where you'd get a darkened background covering a new run reward card for a few moments after it appears.

• Fixed Fuel Hate card giving you negative Strength when used with no Affliction cards in hand.

• Fixed the game showing pets' actions tooltips for a moment when loading a saved run.

• The game was not saving the fact you had encountered a Sanctuary or not, making it possible to find more than one per run when exiting and reloading. Fixed.

• Fixed some possible bugs that could happen when enemies died from effects not coming directly from cards.

• Fixed a bug where Risk of Beginning could leave you with negative SP when under the effect of the SP Sanctuary Sprite.

• Tentative fix for a somewhat rare issue that would make portals appear during events that should not have them.

Remember, if you like the game, each single positive review helps me a lot!

If you have any feedback or want to discuss about the game, join my Discord server.