It's been a busy week in Hero's Home (the Hero's Hour discord server), and it's been a busy week in game-dev land too! There's been a lot of small changes, balance and polish, and after a full week - more than a few large-scale changes too.

Let's start out with the headline features:

- Duel mode with 30 preset challenges

- Enclave faction mechanic 

- Boss monsters

- Unit and faction balance 

- Spanish levels at 99%

- Ranged units now have a medium-range zone at which they cannot hit

- Micro armies (showing units from armies on the adventure map)

Here you see the micro armies and the boss monsters - the red dragon, to be specific. There are seven boss monsters in total.

FEATURES

• A new mode accessible from the main menu. The Duel mode pits you against an opponent with (roughly) the same army strength as you, meaning that you must use your tactical abilities and ability to plan ahead to defeat the opponents.
  • 30 preset challenges
  • Increasing difficulty
  • Design your own army
  • Test your knowledge of unit abilities
• New Wild town music theme
  • Just one more town theme missing
  • As always, thanks to Tundralaks for the excellent town themes

• More control when giving battle orders
  • Shift to change size of order
  • 1-10 to only select one type of unit
  • Now uses left mouse button instead of right mouse button
• Menu in battle and on main menu
• Necromancy rework
• Microarmies on adventure map
• “Go here” buttons for quick navigation
• Boss units that spawn as alternatives to max-level neutral enemies
• Enclave unique faction mechanic
  • Summons Great Hydra slowly
  • Sacrifice artifact to speed up the process

CHANGES

• All units have been rebalanced
  • I’ve said this often, but I’m now using a better balancing setup and thus really believe it
  • Also figured out a bug causing some units to receive the wrong balance modifiers
• Units summoned by OP units now are nerfed as well (only when summoned thusly)
• Updates to Decay and Arcane town music themes
• Soul Beacon has been buffed (and gains tiny bonus from necromancy skill)
• Larger maps have fewer spots without adventure stuff
• Press numbers to select heroes on adventure map
• Press space bar to set hero to move
• Units in defensive stance no longer spread out as much
• Summoning spells are slightly less powerful
• Summoning spells scale slightly less with skills/spellpower
• Summoning spells now cost more (but are therefore also stronger)
  • (in spite of these changes, summoning can still be the best skill in game)
• Town perks have been changed so that you cannot get perks that:
  • Refer to unbuilt dwellings
  • Refer to buildings impossible to build bc/ of faction special mechanics
• Town perks specializing in units now all give +50% growth
• Sprites summoned by Wild units dying now have twice the health
• Resource bar has grown
• Fixed necromancy raising 100% of undead units - has been reduced to 50%
• Ranged units now use ranged attacks at long ranges, melee attacks at short range, and cannot attack at medium range, instead trying to keep move away so they can shoot again
• Discharging units with the conscription mechanic now only costs 1500 gold (down from 2000) - enlisting will now give 1250 gold worth of units (up from 1000)
• Several units have been renamed
• Wild units that die and summon Anima (earlier known as sprites) now create permanent Anima that remain after battle
• Hellbeasts and Lavabeasts (earlier known as hellhounds and cerberi) now attack in all directions instead of just having wide attacks
• Maps with all three rare mines in the starting area no longer have such a wide gap in monsters to fight
• Reserves come into combat a bit more sparsely
• UI that shows the resources that you gain / spend

BUG FIXES

• Fixed being able to move during enemy turn
• Fixed language setting resetting
• Fixed a crash related to the arena
• Fixed spells not working in Spanish
• Fixed grand army town perk displaying wrong in Spanish
• Fixed crash bug relating to the Clay Tower
• Fixed a bug that would make the AI hang forever when one of their regiments was blocked off by spawned-in resources
• Fixed a bug that would make Flower Fields impossible to purchase if you started a game with minimum development and bought Copse or Hill Tunnels first
• Fixed players defending Decay towns having their towered Necromancers raise skeletons for the enemy instead of their own side
• Fixed a bug dealing with the new micro armies
• Fixed a bug related to the first aid tent not correctly resurrecting units
• Hopefully fixed a bug that sometimes blocked parts of the map from being available
• You may no longer give orders to units on the main menu

Yesterday, I did my first stream on twitch. It was a mad dash to the deadline - the Enclave Faction mechanic to be showcased there was finished in its basic version only two minutes before the stream started. Still, it was fun to try to be the one in the seat controlling the stream - like so many other times, I have been the one to tune in to see streamers and devs showcasing the game.

I'm really proud of the commuity we're building over on discord - of the stalwart itchioians following me here - and the kind folks on twitter. Once more, I am also thankful to the people who helped me translate the game with its 1000+ pieces of text to Spanish within the course of a week. 

From here on out, well, I've kept saying I would try to avoid doing any more features until release. Small features obviously still sneak their way in. Maybe that's for the best. But I'm shooting for v1 now. Give it two to three weeks. I want the 8th faction to join us for release, after all. And for the game to feel as finished as is possible.

Release, and then what? I have some plans for future updates, and people have been clamouring for certain things to be added.

The roadmap I have in my head goes:

v1

• tutorial
• 8th faction
• polish polish polish

v1.1

• campaign
• Island maps and sea-faring
• some sort of map-editor, likely node-based and then utilising the procedural map generation

v1.2

• looking into how possible it would be to add multiplayer
• I want multiplayer, people want multiplayer, but it's notoriously challenging to add even if (as Hero's Hour isn't) the game is built for it from the beginning

Who knows what else the future will hold? I should start looking into what a steam release would take. It's been a question I've received close on a hundred times by now.

Anyway, back to the present, where the game is still 4-6 weeks from v1. I hope you'll like v09.

Continue reporting any bugs you find and I will continue making the game even better. Thank you all for playing

- ThingOnItsOwn out! :D