One thing that had been overdue for a long time was refreshing the Steam screenshots. The previous ones were over a year old and no longer represented how the game actually looks. With the newer lighting, particles, and general visual polish, the difference is quite noticeable.
I also shared Scaledeep with the r/roguelikes community for the first time. It was great to see people discovering the game, asking questions, and sharing feedback. Conversations have also started appearing on the Steam forums, which is always encouraging to see.
On the gameplay side, several improvements focused on combat clarity and dungeon exploration.
The message system was updated so important events appear more clearly during combat. Major messages are now displayed one at a time, while smaller notifications can still appear immediately. This makes situations where several things happen at once much easier to follow. Informational alerts were also added, such as warnings when you run out of mana or when the character senses something unusual in the dungeon.
Enemy spawning was adjusted so groups distribute more naturally across rooms instead of clustering in awkward spots. Enemy behavior was also improved so creatures properly investigate the last place they saw the player before losing track of them.
Infernal Wargs received some visual improvements as well. They now glow slightly in darker areas of the dungeon, giving them more presence during encounters.
Cave tunnels were also refined. Some generated tunnels were becoming unnecessarily long, so the generation parameters were adjusted to produce more compact and natural-looking cave passages.
A large amount of work also went into overall stability. Many smaller issues across inventory handling, dungeon generation, interactions, and UI behavior were resolved. Individually they were small problems, but together they significantly improved how reliably the game behaves during longer play sessions.
Rune Forge
Work has also begun on the next larger gameplay feature: Rune Forge.
The idea behind Rune Forge is to allow enchantments to be transferred from one piece of equipment to another with a bit of randomness involved. You can sacrifice additional items to influence the outcome. For example, using fire related equipment increases the chance of creating a fire enchantment, while combining certain items may produce entirely new effects.
There are still several ideas being explored for this system, but the early concept already feels like a fun way to experiment with equipment and create unusual combinations.
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