It's been a crazy month, as could be expected from the first month of Early Access. The community, on Steam forums and on discord, have been incredibly supportive and helpful, for which I will be eternally grateful. Listening to their feedback the game has improved considerably.

A new playable tutorial should greatly help with new player experience, and the messages received each turn are now far more customisable, allowing the players to choose which messages to receive as immediate alerts, and which to leave to be consulted after the most critical issues of the turn have been dealt with. These go along with a set of other UI improvements, which hopefully lead to a much smoother gameplay experience. If your suggestion hasn't made this update, fear not, many are still on the to-do list, and will be implemented in the coming weeks.

Gameplay-wise, the game has added a host of new features. Armies can now do battle on a larger scale, with multiple armies involved on either side, with heroes and agents leading the forces as commanders or directly raiding the enemy's flanks as skirmishers. The Dark Empire grows in complexity with the ability to inaugurate a new Dark Emperor or Empress, using the Dark Coronation event chain, which lets you replace The Monarch should she fall, to carry on the unholy task.

A new agent joins the menagerie, The Trickster (along with her pet monkey Mister Edgar). She tests out a new mechanic, altering the way profile and menace are allocated to the agents when they complete their challenges. In this case, she can place false clues to trick the heroes into believing that one of them is the guilty party, not your agent, and cause widespread confusion and anger while your forces are free to continue their insidious crimes.

Alongside that, interpersonal relations begin their first updates, which will be carried on in the next month. Heroes now have friendships with one another, and grow angered if their friend is killed, creating emergent networks of friends and enemies between agent and heroes, as personal grudges are formed based on your actions. The Trickster can play into this, being able to form friendships with heroes, leading to resentment between them if she is killed.

Next Month's Update

These relations will be continued throughout the next month's development, with the upcoming Bloodlines update, which will focus on families. A huge range of storytelling options open themselves up when the heroes and rulers' motivations are expanded. If a king executes a duke for participating in a civil war, how will their family respond? Would they hate the king along, or his entire family? If a hero is forced to kill their child who you corrupted, how do they respond? Would their sanity survive this, and would the sin corrupt them too? And if a family is linked by shared blood, could this blood itself not become corrupted, leading to entire generations of damned individuals, born under your dark curse?

Changes since last update

Gameplay:

-Armies no longer pursue forever
-Rulers now die when their settlement is razed, and leave human souls behind when killed
-World panic from god now no longer relates to seals, but instead grows by the same amount each turn until the god awakens
-Added new agent: The Trickster, who has a varied set of powers to confuse and deceive heroes
-Added minimum profile and menace values for gaining a nemesis
-Armies, including orcish ones, should no longer path through hostile territory while at peace (if possible)
-Dark Coronation allows new leader of the Dark Empire to be assigned if The Monarch dies
-Orcish Warlords can now recruit a raiding force to act as a small military unit
-Heroes can now spawn with existing friendships
-Heroes can now save one another from shadow. They strongly favour doing this for friends
-The Chosen One can now redeem rulers, curing them of shadow, potentially saving entire nations. Rulers then like the CO, and are more prone to joining the Alliance as a result
-Orcs periodically occupy ancient ruins if adjacent
-Shadow now decays over time in The Alliance (in Strong Alliance mode)
-Characters can now develop hates towards people who kill their friends

Other:

-Events involving a person now give all the person's stats on the side
-Sped up tutorial a bit, and changed its wording slightly
-Added new trait titles (e.g. Exorcist) and made last-acquired trait the title, to reduce spam of 'mediator so-and-so' heroes

Bugfixes:

-Safeguards added to prevent re-joining a battle you are already in, thereby duplicating armies in-battle
-Fixed turn idle message not appearing for corrupted heroes
-Potential bugfix to returning to normal agent mode after being an orcish raider
-Fixed crash involving multiple defender armies vs single attacking army
-Fixed UI crash involving agents involved in battle
-Fixed issue where an army dealing damage an agent could crash the game