This update is mainly about two things: making runs feel more worth chaining, and pushing performance further. The new Sin Remnants system lets you pick one of three on death or when continuing to the next run, and some of them can completely flip how your next round plays. The idea is to make the next run feel tempting instead of starting over from zero.

On the performance side I hit a lot of the obvious wins across blood, projectiles, foliage, hit detection and lighting. I still want to bring RAM down more and I am still not happy with Steam Deck performance yet, so that remains a priority going forward.

New Feature — Sin Remnants

• New system that appears only on death or when continuing to the next round

• These twist the next run in a strong way and push runs toward distinct paths

• Added 40 Sin Remnants

Performance and Optimization

• Upgraded Unity version to fix a security vulnerability

• Optimized hit detection performance

• Optimized blood effects with pooling

• Optimized projectiles with pooling

• Optimized lighting performance in various rooms

• Optimized foliage in the forest area for a large performance gain

• Optimized various systems to avoid allocations when not necessary

Gameplay and Systems

• Essence now moves to the center of the screen before routing to the UI so its source and destination are more clear

• Fixed a bug where you could run back through the Trial of Resolve start gate before it closed and get stuck

UI / UX

• Polished the death screen UI

• Added a loading indicator for first time level entrance loads when starting the game

• Fixed an issue where the main menu saved session selector could not be navigated with a controller

Audio

• Lowered crit and gunshot SFX volume slightly

Sin Remnant List (40)

Defensive leaning

• Anchor — Reduced damage and combo timer is paused while standing still

• Crush — Parry makes your next slow power strike very strong

• Deprived — More damage while you have no health potions

• Dryfire — Gain speed while you have no wizard oils

• Frostskin — Taking damage can freeze the attacker

• Reckless — More damage with reduced invincibility duration

• Shatter — More damage to frozen targets

Offensive leaning

• Ascended — All normal enemies are elites and elites can drop skill chests

• Bloodlust — Speed scales with missing health

• Brood — Standing still fires a slow skull

• Commit — Block becomes a slow power strike that deals increased damage

• Cruciform — Each combo level summons a rotating cross

• Doomroll — All attacks critically strike but you cannot become invincible

• Dropkick — Knockback kills cause explosions that scale with kick damage and knockback strength

• Execution — More damage to bosses and elites

• Focus — More damage when firing a single projectile at a time

• Graviton — Charging pulls enemies and grants damage per nearby enemy

• Haunt — Each combo level summons a piercing spirit

• Hexrush — Gain speed for each unpurged curse

• Imbibe — Health potion causes a fiery explosion and oils freeze nearby enemies

• Jackpot — Next drop is guaranteed unique and rare chance is increased

• Jolt — Critical strikes shock nearby enemies and scale with hit damage

• Lunge — Crouch attacks always thrust and deal increased damage

• Primed — Standing still fires a delayed blast once per combo level

• Resonance — Consuming gold stuns and damages, consuming vital explodes, consuming magic freezes nearby

• Retort — Parrying fires an energy beam

• Rhythm — Attack speed scales with combo level

• Ricochet — Hitting surfaces spawns a delayed blast at the impact point

• Rollback — Each combo level can reset your ability cooldown

• Skyfury — Kick jump anywhere (at reduced height) and deal more airborne damage

• Tempo — Damage scales with combo level

• Trailblaze — Running fires a fireball

• Trigger — Healing makes your next attack a whirlwind

• Wick — Dashing summons a fiery wisp

• Impulse — Every critical strike reduces your ability cooldown

Run economy and carryover

• Carryover — Retain some passive skills in the next run

• Greed — Start with extra gold essence and gain more gold

• Rush — Speed boost in the first area

• Stacked — Carry one skill into the next run with high stacks

• Windfall — Selling items causes a large explosion and enemies can drop loot crates

Thanks again to everyone still playing and supporting the game. If you enjoy the updates, a review genuinely helps more than anything right now. The Overwhelmingly Positive rating stays on a razor edge and every big sale wave brings some snap negative low playtime reviews, but the core players always manage to pull it back and I really appreciate that.

Let me know what you would most like to see next. I try to read everything.

👁