The biggest news for this entry is that Faith in Despair has a new cover by Marcela Bolívar, who already created the cover for my album Still Leben. I've added the new image to all store pages, the presskit, and the in-game title screen. The old splash screen had its charm, but opening the game feels much better now. I will use the old "black rain" effect for despair effects later on, so it's not entirely gone.

Why is a new cover important? Well, I can show it to people and the new image will make it much more presentable and recognizable. But for me personally, it feels like it informs the game as well. Everything I do from now on has that image in mind, which is exciting. The image was inspired by the game (as general instructions/guidelines), and now it inspires the game right back.

The new update also includes balance changes. Most importantly, all blessings, curses and bosses now come in three variants, depending on the current chapter. This lets me easily fine-tune all the values, and I think it feels a bit better to play now. Especially the offered blessings make more sense in the third chapter.

I've also added more detailed run statistics. Every map node now saves current faith, current despair, gold, total cards, etc. And it also saves the highest damage done per round, which lets me check how the game scales after a while. All these statistics I can now evaluate, and I think this will improve the game even more from now on.

Overall, feedback is good and there are always new players trickling in and finding bugs and suggesting new features. One thing that is missing now is more cohesion between runs, some kind of progression, and more "cutscenes" with Death.

I have a plan that should solve this: The difficulty circles of hell will receive an update that is similar to the Final Fantasy X sphere grid. Basically it will be a disc with sockets, and each socket will contain a difficulty modifier. You need to fight your way through each modifier to unlock adjacent ones. But to reach the outer edge, you need to string together modifiers starting from the center. You can still build your own difficulty by going different paths, for example if one modifier is giving you trouble, maybe you can go around it, something like that.

And of course, more starter decks. I'm still planning to add 20 starter decks in total, as long as they are mechanically different enough.

Since it is finally cooler outside, I'm also planning to stream more and work on the game live. It has brought in a lot of good suggestion previously, so I'm looking forward to getting back into the rhythm again. As long as I'm not occupied with attending gamedev meetings and talks, I should be able to stream every weekday. So, maybe I'll catch you there.