Release 51: Benediction

This update is the completion of the latest stage of campaign mode, as the sixth Chosen species, the Angels, have been added to the game!  Angels are the ones in charge of rewarding and protecting virtuous humans, both in this world and in the next.  Their duties don't usually involve battle, and indeed, even the more warlike ones are quite weak in a straight fight.  But their unearthly beauty drives your Thralls mad with desire, and their ability to soothe and comfort their teammates is quite powerful.  For Demons, which rely on trauma and despair in order to induce humans to sin, Angels can be considered their natural enemy.

In campaign mode, Angels will show up after Victory has been defeated, which means that they can appear in Loop 11 at the earliest.  If the player beats Victory in Loop 10 and Splendor in Loop 15 (or vice versa), then Angels and Devils will potentially be appearing together in the Chosen teams you face from Loop 16 onward.  This will only be relevant to players who play deep into campaign mode, but in order to make it a bit easier to do just that, another long warp route has been added which leads from Loop 16 all the way to Loop 20.  Experienced players should note that the Loop 11 warp and the Loop 16 warp both have the same set of conditions - the warp requirement depends only on which boss was defeated in the prior loop.  See the campaign map.txt file for more details.

For players who prefer single play mode or who want to practice before facing them in a campaign, the Angelic Clash scenario has been added, which pits the player against a team of 1 Angel Chosen and 2 regular ones.  At first, the Angel might appear quite harmless in comparison to the Devil, but it should become clear pretty quickly that they're formidable in their own way.

Aside from some balance tweaks, the other major improvement for this release is a one-click option to clean your old campaign saves.  The way this currently works is that it looks for a series of saves which are all from the same loop, then tries to keep just the first save of the loop and the most recent save before the final battle of that loop.  There's room for more options here (like changing which saves you want to keep, or cleaning saves from single play mode as well), but I want to collect feedback about this basic implementation first.

Looking forward, the next major features in the development plan are the next 3 boss fights (the Angel boss, the Devil boss, and a recurring midboss) and the last 2 Distortion paths (Morality/Innocence and Confidence/Dignity).  Before jumping into them, it might be a good idea to do one or two customization- and flavor-focused updates, but overall I expect the pace of development to accelerate from this point forward.  We're getting close to the home stretch.

Click here to download.  Mirror.

• Content: Added Angel Chosen to campaign mode following Victory's defeat.
• Content: Added the Angelic Clash scenario for single play mode.
• Content: Added 16 new faces for Angel Chosen to the default portrait pack.
• Balance: Loops 3 and 4 will now feature at least one Superior Chosen in each city.
• Balance: Lower-tier species won't stop appearing so quickly in later loops.
• Interface: Added "Clean Saves" feature to delete unneeded save files.
• Bugfix: Resolved a crash that could happen after backing out of the pick next city menu in campaign mode.
• Other: Added a new warp route to Loop 16 (and allowed the Loop 11 warp to function even after facing Victory in Loop 10).

Release 51b

• Bugfix: The Loop 15 boss fight will no longer be able to have its members replaced by the species unlocked in the Loop 10 boss fight.
• Bugfix: Custom Angels and Devils created for single play mode will now correctly respect their pre-broken Vulnerability settings.

Release 51c

• Bugfix: Forsaken will no longer benefit from the Personal Paradise trait even when they have no Tempted Angel former partners.
• Bugfix: Corrected the display of the Personal Paradise trait bonus on the affected ally's profile.
• Bugfix: The Forsaken Tempt action will no longer put invalid Tempt targets into a bugged Tempt state.
• Bugfix: The game will no longer allow Forsaken to be spared outside of campaign mode.