Corrupted Saviors Version 1.01

With this update, we're moving into a phase of polishing and minor tweaks in order to make up for all of the little scuffed spots that have become apparent during the push toward the end of campaign mode.  There are parts of the game that will require full-fledged overhauls (like the difficulty factors in later campaign loops, item balance, and the slow save management system), but charging recklessly into those will just let more of these small issues accumulate and compound upon each other.  It's important to clean up after the last push before moving on to the next one.

Among the features added during this campaign mode cleanup is the last of the Boss Forsaken lines they use when talking about each other.  The "Other Forsaken" lines in the Forsaken menu are a minor thing that you can safely ignore during regular gameplay, but it does expand on the lore a little bit, so players who are interested in that can see how the lines change depending on whether the bosses' relationships are positive and negative, and on how their corruption values match up to each other.  It'll be easier to explore this part once you have more ways of managing relationships between Forsaken, but at least the lines themselves are all in the game now.

The other main content improvement is one that's been requested for awhile now.  During custom sex scenes, characters who can't properly speak (either due to being gagged, being in the middle of a kiss, or being incoherent during orgasm) will now show their thoughts alongside the disrupted dialogue depending on a toggle in the options menu.  By default, characters will show their thoughts only while their mouths are actually blocked (leaving their incoherent orgasming dialogue untouched), but you can enable thoughts being printed during orgasm or disable thoughts being printed entirely depending on your preferences.

This update also has a few minor balance tweaks.  The Distortion-affecting items are probably going to be mostly untouched by the item balance overhaul, so it felt safe to tack on an extra effect to the Anaphrodisiac (the Aversion-related item) in order to bring it in line with the others.  It now provides some bonus Punisher progress to offset the difficulty of getting Aversion Chosen to use T3 moves (similar to what Propaganda does for Negotiation).  Activating warp routes has also become a bit easier, as Reign no longer blocks the Angel warp route when it lines up with her Loop 21 encounter, and facing Wisdom or Reason before Loop 30 now automatically enables the following warp route in order to make up for the fact that they don't give you a new species warp route to attempt.

Finally, I've added a link to a public source code repository for the game.  This way, in addition to supporting mods which can be loaded at runtime, Corrupted Saviors will also support entirely separate forks with their own balance changes or feature additions.  The code isn't well-commented, but I'm here to answer questions for anybody who's interested in maing something!

Click here to download.  Mirror.

• Content: Completed the "Other Forsaken" lines for Boss Forsaken talking about each other depending on corruption and relationship.
• Content: Added settings toggle to display Chosen thoughts during custom sex scenes when their mouths are blocked or their speech is incoherent due to orgasm.
• Balance: When defeating Victory in Loop 20 and facing an Angel Chosen in Loop 21, the loop warp condition will ignore Reign's corruption.
• Balance: When defeating Reason or Wisdom before Loop 30, the following loop's warp route will automatically open.
• Balance: The Anaphrodisiac item now provides bonus Punisher progress to catatonic Chosen.
• Interface: In the campaign loop where the warp condition is based on the number of battles fought, the current number of battles fought will be displayed in the Info menu.
• Interface: In campaign mode, the profiles of Chosen who haven't arrived yet will still be shown.
• Bugfix: Resolved a crash when fighting Reign.
• Bugfix: Setting campaign custom Chosen as guaranteed partners will no longer cause them to become their own guaranteed partners.
• Bugfix: Campaign custom Chosen being set as their own guaranteed partners will no longer cause buggy behavior.
• Bugfix: The bonus Punisher progress from the Propaganda item will now be properly reduced for Reign.
• Other: Added a link to the public source code repository in the resources.txt file.

Release 75: Finale

This update finally adds an ending to campaign mode.  I say "an" ending rather than "the" ending, because this is only the first and easiest ending to achieve.  Simply playing until Loop 35 will bring you to your final confrontation with Reign, and while the fight does have a slight twist in that Reign shares some of her power with her partners (and you can choose whether you want those partners to be Mechanical or Elemental), I think that most players who make it this far won't find it to be too difficult.  It might even be a bit of an anticlimax.

Nonetheless, it's still an ending, and that means that the development of Corrupted Saviors is moving to a new phase.  From here on, I'll be less focused on rushing new content into the game, and more focused on making the existing content more pleasant to play.  After looking through feedback over the past month, I think the biggest issues that need to be addressed are (1) game balance, (2) load times, and (3) the clarity of the mechanics as expressed to the player.  I'm going to want to at least begin to address all of these before moving on to the Basis route and the Thousand Chosen Battle which will act as the foundation for the later routes.

After leaving a month to iron out any final issues with the game, I'll be designating the next release as Version 1.0.  This will also give me time to polish up the ending a little more.  There's a bit more unique flavor I'd like to add for players who continue on to endless mode.  Reign also still doesn't have a proper Forsaken form, but this is because there are actually serious balance questions that need to be answered before that point - you'll be able to use the Forsaken Reign as a full-fledged member of your roster for the later routes, which means that I can't just give her a bunch of overpowered postgame-only abilities.  At the same time, she needs to be able to compete with Mechanical Forsaken, and Elemental Forsaken are going to be getting some buffs as part of the coming balance rework.  The later endings will basically ask the player to break the game's balance over their knee, but there needs to be some balance in the first place so that breaking it can feel properly satisfying.

The other immediate goal is a proper "multiplier summary" feature.  Right now, it's very easy to get lost in the sea of additive and multiplicative bonuses the game throws at you by the time you reach the later loops.  By next month, I want the game to be able to show the player a comprehensive list of everything that's happening underneath the hood.  This should also help with the upcoming balance work, since seeing a breakdown of all the multipliers will make it much easier to figure out which ones are simply too weak to be worthwhile.  Until then, I hope everyone enjoys the boss fight!

Click here to download.  Mirror.

• Content: Added the final boss fight to campaign mode's Loop 35.
• Other: Reign cannot become Forsaken before Loop 35.  Save files where she had become Forsaken will retroactively return her to being one of the Chosen.
• Other: Added the Loop 28 warp route to campaign mode.
• Bugfix: Resolved some crashes that could occur when traveling between cities.
• Bugfix: It's no longer possible to enter a bugged warp route on Loop 31.

Release 75b

• Bugfix: Creating a new save file will no longer sometimes put the game into a bugged state.

Release 74: Comprehension

This is another smaller release, following last month's new boss battle and leading up to the final battle of campaign mode which is coming next month.  The main new addition is the "Versus Wisdom" scenario which has been added to single play mode.  Because the Wisdom boss fight is about seeing how many iterations of increasing difficulty you're prepared to face, and because scenarios always start the player at the same level of power (based on how many items they give you), Wisdom's scenario works a bit differently from all the others.  After you've completed it once, another sub-scenario is unlocked which makes Wisdom more difficult in exchange for starting you with a few more items.  The items probably won't quite be strong enough to make up for the increased difficulty, which means that beating Wisdom in the base scenario isn't too hard, but the later scenarios will definitely test your skills.

This release also adds a fair number of new Favorite Forsaken smalltalk lines.  The new lines fall into two categories: those which are spoken by Boss Forsaken (replacing lines which didn't make sense for a Boss Forsaken to say) and those which are spoken by regular Forsaken regarding Boss Chosen who have already been defeated.  This is really just a minor update to an optional feature which some players might not even use, but players who care about the lore might find it interesting.

Among the bugfixes this month is one for an issue with the "To Day Start" retry system which could cause the game to be put in a bugged state where some combat-related variables weren't reset properly.  This would cause strange behavior like Chosen starting the battle Surrounded, and saving the game in this state would cause the bugged behavior to persist even after closing the game and opening it again.  This should be fixed in R74, and saves which were previously bugged should work properly, but please let me know if something like this is still occurring.

Next month should bring us to the conclusion of campaign mode!  Reign's boss fight, which is presently in a half-complete placeholder state, will be fully implemented, and the final battle on Loop 35 will be added!  It's taken quite awhile to get to this point, but once the main path through the game has been completed, we'll be free to go around and add side feature and polish without needing to worry about whether later additions will conflict with them.

Click here to download.  Mirror.

• Content: Added the Versus Wisdom scenario to single play mode.
• Content: Expanded the Favorite Forsaken smalltalk system with a bunch of new lines (mostly related to former Boss Chosen).
• Bugfix: Fixed a crash that could happen on the data menu.
• Bugfix: Resolved saves being put into a bugged state after using the "Return to day start" option in battle.
• Bugfix: Forsaken should no longer sometimes crash the game when giving birth in between campaign mode loops.

Release 74b

• Bugfix: Wisdom's loop preview will no longer display incorrect partner species, and the difficulty modifiers of that loop will no longer be generated as though those incorrect species were being used.
• Bugfix: The Dimensional Kaleidoscope will now produce Forsaken with the full effects of the listed Distortion.
• Bugfix: Elemental Forsaken with the Dissociative Identity (Torment Monsoon) trait will no longer allow Surrounded Chosen to escape to the sky early when released by the Forsaken's Capture ability.

Release 73: Wisdom

This release introduces the final of the species-based boss fights: Wisdom, the leader of the Elemental Chosen!  With this, campaign mode is almost complete.  There are no species or bosses to be unlocked after beating Reason and Wisdom.  All that's left is to implement the final battle and the alternative story routes (which will involve a few new unique mechanics and boss fights once we get there).

The battle against Wisdom will begin to appear in campaign mode as an option 5 loops after you've defeated Love, which means that the soonest you can face her is Loop 20.  Of the two boss fights, Wisdom is definitely the easier one.  However, you'll be in a much better position in later loops if you prepare for a tough fight before taking her on.

Without spoiling too much, I can say that corrupting Wisdom isn't a binary thing.  The further you're able to push her, the more you'll get out of her as one of the Forsaken.  In principle, you can make her as strong as you like by corrupting her more and more.  In practice, there aren't currently any further unique mechanics after you acquire the "Energy from Other Universes" Forsaken trait, and everything after that just makes the numbers larger.  Depending on player interest, I might add more stages and rewards to the boss fight, but the fight as its stands is already 'complete' in the sense that there's really no point in fighting her past the current end of content.

Next up, I'm going to be working on the finale of campaign mode, but I'm also going to be shifting focus toward fixing longstanding bugs and balance issues, and improving how well the game runs now that I can be more confident that new mechanics aren't going to spoil any code improvements I try to write.  A bit of this has already made it into the current update (players should find that the shop screen runs much more smoothly now), and I'm hopeful that the game will become much easier to enjoy in the coming months.

Click here to download.  Mirror.

• Content: Added the Wisdom boss fight to campaign mode after Love has been defeated.
• Content: Added Wisdom's portraits to the default portrait pack.
• Bugfix: The "Siphon" Forsaken Defiler action's button will now correctly appear.
• Bugfix: Fixed an error when displaying building costs under Reason's Distortion traits.
• Bugfix: Corrected an off-by-one error when determining the Omelette du Malefice Evil Energy bonus.
• Bugfix: Resolved some incorrect behavior when using the Abrogation Resonator after the first turn of battle.
• Bugfix: Reason's Operation: Extreme Violence Application will no longer crash the game.
• Bugfix: Humanoid Demon Commanders will now display the appropriate portrait for their gender.
• Bugfix: Resolved an error when attempting to progress past Reason's loop in campaign mode.

Release 73b

• Bugfix: Resolved a potential crash that could happen when the Favorite Forsaken was unable to find a valid topic for smalltalk.
• Bugfix: Resolved a crash that could occur when Wisdom would use one of her abilities.
• Bugfix: Resolved a crash when attempting to read data for Chosen who aren't part of an active save file.