Patch 0.1.3
Updated Aug 7, 2026
This is a big one. Most of it went into an experimental singleplayer roguelike campaign — which meant building three new game modes to power it (Raid, Survival and Arena) and a mountain of UI work that fought me the whole way.
The campaign itself stays locked until it's ready for testing, but the modes it needed are in now and you can play all three today.
Fair warning: a lot of the architecture changed underneath to make this possible, so this build may well be buggier than usual. If something is game-breaking I'll patch it as fast as I can — tell me and it goes to the front of the queue.
All of this is in service of getting the game ready for a Steam playtest. The queue filled up faster than I expected in just a few hours, so the priority right now is getting the game player-ready and getting people in. There's a ton of other changes in here too, big and small.
Highlights
- New Survival mode — hold out against timed enemy waves, solo or co-op
- New Raid mode — kill as much as you can before the clock runs out
- New Arena mode — buy an army each round and fight it out in the pit
- Arena is now a 2-9 player free-for-all in multiplayer
- Page Up and Page Down cycle camera styles; arrow keys steer the shot
Features
Audio
- Arena rounds have sound cues for buying, locking in and the battle
The buy window opening, each recruit added, a rejected purchase, the last five seconds, locking in your army, the armies clashing and the round result all have their own cue.
Camera
- Page Up and Page Down cycle camera styles; arrow keys steer the shot
Press Page Up repeatedly to walk the battle cam through its camera styles — orbit, slow arc, crane down, push in, pull-back reveal, fly-by, top-down and locked-off — and once more past the last one to return to your normal camera. Page Down does the same for the close-up cam.
[steps backward, so you're never more than one press from stopping. Styles now only ever change when you ask them to. While a shot is running, the arrow keys steer it without interrupting it: left and right orbit, up and down tilt, and the mouse wheel still sets the framing.
Menu
- Custom games can set income speed, wave length, starting gold and an income cap
The create-server menu now controls the pace of a match: how often income pays out (15/30/45/60s), how long a wave lasts (30/60/90s), how much gold everyone opens with, and an optional ceiling on the gold a single income tick can pay. Bots start on the same purse as players.
- Draft and Ultimate collection size is now a match setting
Pick Small, Standard, Large or Huge to decide how many buildings each player ends up with — or open the advanced options and set the one-food, two-food, tower, special and stardust limits individually. Standard is the makeup these modes have always used.
- Draft matches can use up to three bans per player
The ban round no longer stops after a single pass — set one, two or three bans each and the table takes turns until everyone has spent them.
- Poker hosts can set starting blinds, antes and how often blinds go up
Choose your opening blinds, whether every seat posts an ante, and how many hands pass before blinds double. The header now counts down the hands remaining at the current level instead of a clock, so a long showdown never quietly pushes the blinds up mid-tournament.
Multiplayer
- New Survival mode — hold out against timed enemy waves, solo or co-op
Build, spend and fight exactly as you would in a normal match, but the opponent is a schedule of enemy waves instead of another player. Your castle has to still be standing when the clock runs out. Play it alone or with up to two friends on the same side — the waves grow with the number of players. A countdown at the top of the screen shows how long you still have to hold.
- New Raid mode — kill as much as you can before the clock runs out
The lane is already occupied. Enemy camps are dug in at fixed positions all the way down it, and they get harder the further you push — they hold their ground, chase you only so far, and then walk back to their camp. You start with double the usual gold so you can go straight at them, and a light trickle of enemies still marches at your castle while you are away. There is no winning it: your score is how deep you got, shown as a kill count beside the clock and again on the end screen. Enemy structures standing in a camp are worth far more than the guards around them.
- New Arena mode — buy an army each round and fight it out in the pit
Arena is a best-of-lives duel. Each round you get a budget, spend it on any army you can field from your buildings, and lock it in — both sides buy in secret and at the same time, then the two armies spawn on the ring and fight to the death. Lose the fight and you lose a life; the budget rises every round.
- Arena is now a 2-9 player free-for-all in multiplayer
Every player buys their own army and all of them fight at once in the pit. Set the table size with Max Players when you create the server; any seat nobody takes is filled by a composed army using that seat's chosen race and colour. Lose a round and lose a life; run out of lives and you spectate the rest. Last player standing wins the match. Single player is unchanged — still one duel against the composer.
- Campaign marches are now fought for real instead of being declared
Confirming a march at the briefing loads the battle it describes, with the army your court has actually assembled — your buildings, your researches and any boons or curses you are carrying. Winning or losing there decides the march: the spoils, the stake and the days all land back in the throne room, and the year moves on.
Bug Fixes
Abilities
- Shadow Mage saves Drain Life until it is actually hurt
Drain Life is now only cast while the Shadow Mage is below 80% health. A healthy Shadow Mage keeps its mana and its basic attacks instead of opening with a channel it does not need.
- Faction boons in Poker now reach every unit of that faction
Boons like "Grovewarden Fury" could miss units that clearly belonged to the faction, and never applied to units summoned after the battle began. Summoned skeletons, totems, druid animals and death-splits now receive their own faction's boon as they appear, and stealthed units are no longer skipped.
Camera
- Cinematic cameras glide instead of snapping, and hold on a fight
The battle cam no longer flicks between two fights — it settles on one and follows it as the front moves, only leaving for a decisively bigger one. All the motion is now velocity-smooth: the camera eases into every move rather than changing speed abruptly, the fly-by shots reverse without a lurch, and long moves sweep across the map instead of cutting. The close-up cam's framing keeps up with a running unit properly, and its slow-down when your subject dies now eases in.
Multiplayer
- Surviving an Arena round that ends in a draw no longer costs you a life
If the clock runs out with several armies still on the pit, only the players whose army was destroyed lose a life. If nobody was destroyed at all, everyone loses one, so a fight that cannot be resolved still moves the match along.