The newest update to Book of Demons game (our hack'n'slash game in Early Access stage) brings, among other stuff, the cursed sarcophagi mechanics, pack of new SFXs and a brand new Spatial Sound engine that allows you to hear from which direction the enemies are approaching.
Cursed Sarcophagi
They are a mixed bag - some contain great treasures but others are packed with deadly enemies. Take a gamble, toss the coin. Who knows, maybe it will be your lucky day. Or maybe it will be Archdemon's lucky day. Either way, it's better to clear the area before opening one, just in case.
Note: When playing on Daredevil on higher difficulties take extra care around Cursed Sarcophagi, they can spawn multiple bosses!
Spatial sound
The game now localizes the sound sources spatially, meaning that when an arrow hits a monster near the left edge of the screen the sound will originate from the left speaker. This required a lot of under the hood changes to the audio system since at time tens of monsters get hit at the same time all over the screen, but the final effect enhances the atmosphere of the game and we think it was well worth the effort. GIF totally not related:
Stop! Hammer time!
Other significant changes
Besides above, this update bundles a lot of fixes, quality of life improvements general polish and tweaks. The complete changelog is available in the game and at the end of this post.
Among many others: Legendary Icebolt and Fireball trigger chance increased from 0.1% to 10%, however it triggers only on the kill, not any damage as it used to.
Magic Robe now damages boulders, has visual effects tweaked and cooldown reduced by 20%.
Meteor now tries to predict where the target will be when meteor impacts and aims there.
Skeleton Belt legendary variant trigger chances increased tenfold.
Holy bolt completely reworked - now can target any kind of monster and damages them for 50% maximum health. However, a monster can be targeted by holy bolt only once. The legendary variant might spawn additional bolts on the hit and target any valid targets in the vicinity.
We also discovered two ancient bugs (there were more bugs obviously but those two were like Methuselahs of bugs) that survived since time immemorable. When card activated a shiny effect passed over it and it used geometry 100 times more complicated than required, it was the most complex render call we had in the game. Performance impact was probably minimal because rest of the game is well optimized but we fixed it nonetheless, obviously. The second one will impact the gameplay - frozen monsters thawed after 16 seconds instead of 8, as was intended. This is also fixed now.
Also, fountains got visually overhauled with animated paper-textured liquids, glowing eyes, and ambient light.
This change will require saved dungeons to be re-generated if there were fountains in them, but we hope that nicer fountains will be worth it 
Official Discord Channel
If you don't feel like posting on the steam community but would still get in touch with other players we have created an official Disord channel.
We will try to hang out in there as often as possible but due to real-time nature of it when you want to make sure we get your feedback please use the in-game widget, shoot us an email at support@thingtrunk.com or post in the forums.
Anyway, without a further ado, here is the invite link: Discord.gg
What's ahead?
We are working on a better way for community translators (who are super awesome, big thanks <3) to translate the game files. The current mode is cumbersome and can get chaotic after updates when a lot of changes are introduced to string tables. Once the new system is up and running we will add currently complete community translations to the game. We estimate that will happen by April.
Then there is the good news, not-so-good news, and good news situation. The good news is that we are toying with an idea for a whole new game mode/core mechanic that would be more CCG (collectible card game) than the current mode. Assuming it works as an internal prototype we will make it publicly available for you to test. Then we will be able to determine if we should develop it further.
The not-so-good news is that in that context we re-evaluated the production and marketing schedule. We used historical performance data to create work time estimates as realistic as possible and it looks like the release we initially planned for around Q3 will get delayed. While this is not a terrible delay it should give us more breathing room not only to prototype the new experimental core mechanic but also to add more cards we planned and avoid crazy crunch that would affect the quality.
That last part is important because the other good news is that one member of the team will have a kid around the time of originally planned launch (again, something we didn't exactly plan for :D). Those of you who had kids or even been around a newborn for longer than 10 minutes know too well how it can turn your brain to mush, so we will have fewer hands on board for a few months. The upside is that in 18 years we might get one more team member!
As always,
Stay safe in dungeons! <3
