New

• Rare boon cards glow as you win them
  • A card won on the wheel glows in its rarity's colour, and the rarer it is the more it glows
  • Rare cards get a soft halo, epic cards sparkle, and legendary cards shine with turning rays
• Water is thrown in globs that leave puddles
  • Held, water throws little globs that splash on the first monster in their way or drop a short way out
  • Each leaves a puddle that slows whatever wades through it and puts out fire
  • Lightning runs through everything in a puddle, fire boils one away, and frost freezes what stands in it
  • Water's special is now a ring of orbs that spins round you, knocking monsters away, then flies out as globs
  • Water's boon cards are new to match, and any you'd won carry over in their place

Fixed

• Ghosts' eyes stay neat as they turn
  • A ghost's eyes keep their shape at every angle, instead of breaking up into slanted slits on diagonals
  • They turn smoothly toward you rather than flickering between directions
• Opening the game no longer gives a free spin of the boon card wheel
  • The wheel only turns at the end of a voyage you actually set out on
• The book of boons lets you move down to the next row of cards
  • Pushing down now goes to the row below, and up comes back
  • From a column the row below doesn't reach, down picks its last card

New

• Two boon cards now work on every spell
  • Sharpened gives every spell's blow 1 more damage. It replaces each spell's own plain damage card
  • Quickened makes every spell cast 25% faster. It replaces each spell's own faster-casting card
  • If you'd already won one of the old cards, you have the new one instead
  • The book of boons has a last page for the cards that work on every spell

New

• Any spell seals a rift a step
  • A rift takes three hits to seal, whatever their element
  • Its own element no longer seals it in one hit
  • The hint by a rift no longer names an element
• Dev mode can try a greatsword in place of the spells
  • Settings has a "Sword" row while dev mode is on
  • The hero carries a big sword on one shoulder and heaves it round onto the other with the right trigger
  • It hits whatever the blade actually sweeps across
• Monsters flash white when a hit hurts them
  • Every monster, from slimes and ghosts to skeletons and bats, flashes white for a moment when it takes damage
• Monsters hold their attacks while the hero can't be hurt
  • Just after a hit, monsters keep closing in but don't start a new attack until the hero can be hurt again
  • Shooters hold their shots for that moment too
• Monsters waiting their turn strafe round the hero instead of wheeling
  • They no longer run in and all circle the hero clockwise together
  • Each keeps its own distance and strafes its own way, going round the others rather than through them
  • Turning back, a monster slows to a stop and speeds up the other way
  • Now and then one pauses or changes direction, so the crowd mills about naturally
• The Lantern Moth now lives in a dark cave on a Spring island
  • A mossy mound with a dark arch turns up on the Lamplight Isle, which is no longer a night island
  • Inside, a maze of boulders winds through the dark, different every voyage, with a few dim lanterns to light along the way
  • In her chamber she only comes down to feed when all four lanterns burn at once
  • The lanterns burn down, and little moths flutter in from the dark to put them out
  • Boulders in the chamber block your spells, so you have to go round to reach the lanterns and to hit her
• Boon cards won on a wheel at a voyage's end replace the skill trees
  • The skill trees are gone. Every upgrade they held is now a boon card, common, rare, epic or legendary, each with its own picture
  • A voyage ends with a wheel of locked cards turning, slowing past a frame with a tick, until one stops and is yours. You get a spin, and one more for each leg you reached
  • Cards you've won can turn up among a level's boons on any voyage, whatever your hands hold. The rarer the card, the less often it turns up
  • A boon card you take lasts that voyage. Seeking fireballs and the wandering geyser are legendary
  • Start opens your settings
  • A book stand by the path at home holds the book of boons. Read it to see every boon card for each spell, the ones you've won and the ones still to win
  • The mailbox and the book stand are solid, so you can't walk through them
• Little ponds on the Spring isles
  • Now and then a Spring screen has a pond or two, well away from the sea
  • Wading through one slows you to half pace
  • Rings ripple out as you push through, and the water comes up round your legs
• Monsters are spawned by count and weight, growing denser through a voyage
  • Every room of a voyage gets a number of monsters that grows the further into the voyage you are
  • Which monsters come is picked by each region's own weights, with more kinds joining as candles are lit
  • The first island is no longer the same every time
  • Lighting more candles no longer gives monsters more health (bosses still get tougher)
• Skills for the voyage on the level-up cards
  • Now and then a level offers a skill for one of the spells in your hands as one of its three cards
  • It is yours for the rest of the voyage, on top of the skills you have learned
  • It does not use any of your skill points
• The Slime King has an immunity instead of a weakness
  • Only his current shape's own elements do nothing to him, and every other spell hurts him
  • Your spells never heal him
  • His bar shows every element that can hurt him
• The way into the Lantern Moth's cave is barred by a candlelit stone door
  • A pair of thick stone doors with a moth carved across them shuts the maze's way out, with a candle on the wall beside it for each of the maze's six lanterns
  • Each lantern you light lights its candle red, and once all six burn the doors swing open
  • The maze is a column wider and evenly spread, and its boulders can no longer be walked into
  • Fewer little moths come to drink the lanterns in the moth's chamber, and they're slower about it

Fixed

• Dust, dropped things and gold look the same everywhere
  • Puffs of dust and smoke are soft, lit balls, from the chicken's poof to the Sandworm bursting up
  • Everything waiting to be picked up bobs the same way, sits on a soft shadow and glints now and then
  • Gold is one gold, in the world and in the menus
• Islands are laid out a little differently
  • Trees, rocks and props stand in new places, and shores have new rocks in the shallows
  • At home the raft and Pell wait further along the shore
  • The odd islands are set out afresh, still with every secret within reach
• The shrine and the Furies' torches burn the same glowing fire
  • A relit shrine's flame is a glowing ball of fire rising out of its bowl, smaller as it burns down
  • The Furies' standing torches and the candle on their desk burn the same way, inside their cages
• A skeleton's blow lands when its blade sweeps through the hero
  • Its slash comes as it lands its hop, the blade straight ahead at touchdown
  • It hurts only as the blade actually passes the hero, not mid-air from a distance
• The Slime King's courtiers no longer get stuck in a bush
  • No tree or bush grows on or right by the trapdoors in his court
  • His courtiers always come up out of them to fetch his crown
• The Slime King's crown scramble is a moment to stop his courtiers
  • When his crown falls off he leaps back to his throne and waits there, untouchable and not attacking, and his slimes hold off too
  • His courtiers come up out of trapdoors either side of the throne, hop slower than the hero walks, and go round the braziers
  • A hint says what to do as the crown comes off
  • Bumping them makes them drop the crown and flee back down the trapdoors, and he can't heal
• Golems throw the stone they pick up
  • The rock a golem rips out of the ground and holds up is the one that flies at you
  • Ice and flame golems throw their own tinted stone too
• Snails strike from above and below, not only from the side
  • A snail that crawled up to the hero from above or below used to sit there without ever attacking
  • Now it rears up and lunges from whichever side it's on
• The Lantern Moth's cave is pitch black, and you walk straight in
  • Inside the cave, only what a lantern or fire in your hand lights can be seen
  • Walk up into the arch to go into the cave, with no button to press
• The Lantern Moth's lanterns only go out when little moths drink them
  • The lanterns no longer burn down on their own
  • Any spell knocks the little moths out of the air, not only fire

Fixed

• Lamps, torches and bonfires burn with the same glowing fire as the braziers
  • Lamps on dark islands glow behind their glass, the Smugglers' Cove's wall torches and the bonfires burn as a glowing ball of fire with smaller balls welling up off it

Fixed

• Every brazier burns with the same glowing fire
  • The braziers in the Smugglers' Cove, on the gates' pillars and on dark islands burn like the Slime King's, a glowing ball of fire with smaller balls welling up off it

Fixed

• The Slime King's court is fought by daylight, and his avenue draws properly
  • His court is no longer dim at dusk, so the fight is easy to see
  • Tall trees, braziers and banners on his avenue no longer vanish early off the bottom of the screen
  • The slime prince kicked off the bottom of the avenue bumps the edge instead of popping out at the top
  • His braziers burn as a big glowing ball of fire with smaller balls welling up off it
• The islands no longer adapt to how well you're doing
  • Each voyage is as hard as the candles you lit, from the first island to the last
  • Survival islands no longer speed up when you deal lots of damage

A quiet release. Small fixes and polish, nothing to shout about.

Nothing new to tell, just a fresh coat of paint on the raft.

New

• Ghosts drift slower and bob as they float along
  • Ghosts move at half their old speed, so you have more time to deal with them
  • A ghost on the move bobs gently up and down, its shadow shrinking as it rises
• Snails crawl like snails and leave a slime trail
  • A snail's head and foot reach forward, then its shell slides up after them
  • Its eye stalks sway as it goes
  • Snails leave a faint silvery trail that fades away behind them
• Snails face every way and spit their own slime
  • Snails turn to face the way they crawl, and rear up toward whoever they're after
  • A snail's lunge goes straight at you, on a slant too
  • A spitting snail throws a wobbly glob of its own slime that splats into a sticky patch
  • An ice snail's slime is icy blue, and a fire snail's is hot orange goo
• Monsters take turns, keep their distance and find their way round
  • Only a few monsters close in at once while the rest wait in a ring round you
  • Only one slime jumps on you at a time, and monsters back off after striking
  • Monsters step round trees, rocks and each other instead of bunching up
  • Big monsters like golems get their turn too, rather than waiting at the back behind the slimes
  • Monsters strike from beside you rather than standing on top of you
  • Slimes squash down before a big leap at you from further off, landing with a splash of slime, and headbutt you when you stand right beside them
  • Ghosts rise up and swoop down through you, coming out the other side, then back off before the next one
  • Golems stomp heavily, rip stones out of the ground to throw at you from afar, and step in front of you to shield the monster you cast at
  • Golems and shield bearers block your spells: waves break on them and frost stops at them, fireballs burst on them and lightning stops chaining at them
  • Bats hang in the air with their wings spread and eyes flashing before they dive, then swoop round in a curve to bite you and flap away
  • From your very first island monsters take turns and circle you instead of all charging at once
• Skeletons climb out of the graveyards
  • Cute little skeletons with swords walk the graveyards from three candles
  • A skeleton crouches with its sword drawn back, shivering, then springs in with a hop and slashes it sideways as it lands
  • Up close it swings where it stands instead, and after a strike it backs off for its next leap
  • Earth spells crack their bones for double damage

Fixed

• Skipping stones aim at the monster ahead instead of only bending toward it
  • Each skip now turns the stone straight at the nearest monster in front of it
  • A stone strikes a monster it passes close beside, not only one dead on its path
• The Cloud Isles wait until bats come
  • The raft only offers the Cloud Isles once bats are about, from two candles
  • Before that the last leg goes to the Underworld or the Deep

New

• A survival island ends once its last monster is beaten
  • When the time runs out its rifts close up, but the monsters still out stay to be beaten
  • The clock then shows how many monsters are left
  • The first survival island shows a tip that its rifts can't be hurt, but close once the time's up
• Difficulty unlocks spread across the candles
  • The first voyage is no longer a gentle one of its own. The candles you light decide what you meet, every voyage
  • One candle is the gentle start, with plain ghosts, slimes and snails, fewer of them, and the Slime King or the Riftweaver at each region's end
  • Bats, mushrooms and the Lost Folk's camps come at two candles, the newer monsters and bosses, the tide run and the odd islands at three
  • Monsters that shoot, night and storms, and monsters that shrug spells off now come a candle or two later, and challenges grow bigger right up to twelve candles
• Lure the Grave Warden's charge into a tree
  • If his charge runs into a tree, a rock or a wall, he's knocked down with a thud
  • Stars circle his helm while he's dazed, and every hit does double
• Skipping stones bend toward monsters ahead of them
  • Each skip turns a stone 30% of the way toward the nearest monster in front of it
• The Slime King changes shape as you hurt him, and scales with the candles
  • He takes a new shape each time he loses another 20% of his health
  • Left alone he keeps his shape, so you have time to match your hands to him
  • At one candle a single slime splashes off him as he lands, rising to five at twelve candles
  • His landing attacks come one at a time, with long gaps at one candle and less rest the more candles are lit

Fixed

• A survival island's clock no longer runs on while the game is put away
  • Minimising the game on a phone, or leaving its browser tab, no longer counts as holding out
  • Coming back, the island carries on from where it was left
• A wisp's healing threads leave from its lantern
  • The threads come from one place on the wisp (the lantern's mouth, the flame's foot) and reach the middle of each monster it heals
• Burnt long grass leaves rounded scorch marks
  • The charred ground has soft round corners instead of square steps
  • Ash beside long grass that never caught fades out gently
• Cerberus is more dangerous up close
  • His rump wiggles just before he pounces, and landing on you costs a whole heart
  • The thump of his landing and the blast of his bark both throw you back
• Ghosts are blown back the moment a gust hits them
  • Knocked down by air, a ghost now slides back at once instead of hanging still for half a second first
  • Big ghosts stop at the edge of the screen instead of being blown off it
• Home is drawn behind the damage card
  • Coming home, the island, the cottage and the hero now show behind the damage card and its levels
• Pell's slimes no longer light up yellow while he talks you through a step
• Share playtest is now a row on the Settings page
  • The skill menu's Playtest page is gone, and Settings is one step round from the trees
• Short palms stand on a trunk again
  • The short bushy palm on beaches no longer looks sunk in the sand or like leaves on a tiny tree
  • Its fronds fan up from a trunk you can see
• Shrines light from all round them, and the lightning trial is fairer
  • A shrine starts lighting anywhere on its dais or just beside it, not in one spot in the middle
  • In the lightning trial the strikes race between the rods more slowly, and the first rod takes longer to strike
  • The hint by the rift stone at home says to talk to Tamsin to take on a trial
• Spells that aim themselves skip monsters they can't hurt
  • Lightning, the geyser, the magma vein and vines pass by a monster that's immune to them and go for one they can hurt
  • While a raincloud or the Kraken's ink blinds you, those spells go where you aim instead of finding a monster
• The Hoard Mimic's cove shows the sea on wide screens
  • Either side of a wide screen the cove's rock now runs down into the sea, or the kelp in the Sunken Grotto, instead of a bank of cloud
• The Mire's mud no longer follows you home
  • Beaten in the Mire, Pell rows you home to clean grass, not its mud pools and mounds
• The Tide Mother only rises in the Deep
  • The great jellyfish is fought under the water now, never on the Spring Isles
  • The Spring Isles' boss island takes the Kraken and the Hoard Mimic in turn instead
• The chicken's wings no longer spark with magic
  • While you're a chicken, your hands' sparks and flames are gone
• The doghouse fence hides what is behind it
  • A hero or slime behind the garden fence no longer shows its feet under the rails
• The slime prince always gets his crown back
  • Knocked off near him, he now hops over and puts it back on
  • If someone stands on it, it pops back onto his head after a few seconds

Fixed

• Ladybirds, moles and fireflies are gone for now
  • They didn't play fairly, so they no longer turn up on islands or come out of rifts
  • Wisps, ember puffs, mimics and the sea's monsters still do

Nothing new to tell, just a fresh coat of paint on the raft.

A quiet release. Small fixes and polish, nothing to shout about.

New

• The mailbox asks for feedback in the game
  • The mailbox at home now brings up the feedback questions on a postcard, one at a time, without leaving the game
  • Rate how your last voyage went and give its bosses, odd islands and tide run stars
  • Answer an unhappy one and the mailbox offers the full feedback page for a note
• The slime prince always comes home with you
  • The first time you beat the Slime King, his little prince is always left behind for you
  • In co-op each hero gets their own prince on their first win
  • Your first pet follows you as soon as you pick it up
  • Back home, a tip shows you the doghouse, where you choose your pet and how it looks
• Trees shake when a monster is knocked into them
  • A monster thrown into a tree sets it swinging away from the blow and back
  • The harder the crash, the further it swings

Fixed

• The Slime King's avenue comes alive
  • The braziers burn with round, glowing flames and drifting embers, and never stand still
  • The banners ripple in the wind, their folds catching the light
  • The slime-shaped hedges sit whole in their clay pots
  • His throne, braziers, hedges and banners are solid, so you walk round them

New

• Boss shockwaves roll out over the ground in 3D
  • A shockwave is a front of rocks, a curtain of mist or a spray of sparks thrown along the ground, so what stands in front of it hides it
  • It carries on out over the sea
• On dark islands a lamp stands by each way out and lights itself as you clear the area

Fixed

• Plain capes no longer shimmer like a keeper's cape
  • After unlocking everything at the dev shrine, the red cape and the dyes glowed as if won from a trial. Only capes won from a keeper glow now

New

• A new optional boss on the Spring Isles, the Lantern Moth
  • From the first candle the Spring Isles' shrine island is the Lamplight Isle, a night island of unlit lamps
  • A great moth in deep violet and sky blue sleeps on a screen of its own, its belly a glowing lantern
  • Light a lamp with fire and it wakes, and it comes down on lit lamps to feed, open to every spell
  • It snuffs each lamp as it rises, so keep lighting them to bring it down again
  • Beat it for a little lantern moth that follows you and lights the dark
• Each candle opens the next story boss, and after Hades the gates are a gauntlet
  • Light another candle to meet the next of Hades's household at the gates
  • Once Hades is beaten, every voyage ends in a gauntlet of all six, one island after another
  • After each one the raft waits, so you can sail home early or walk on up the road
  • Pell has a little more to say after Hades, about the folk who chose to stay
• Graveyards are built in the round
  • Headstones, crosses, slabs, leaning stones and obelisks are rounded and weathered, with moss and lichen on them
  • Restless graves have a rounded stone and a mound of earth glowing along its crack
  • Your own gravestone at home is bigger and turns a little toward the island
  • Rowed home after a fall, you'll find the earth in front of it freshly dug, a spade still stuck in it
• No more black bars on wide screens
  • A wide window, a Steam Deck or a phone fills the screen, with banks of cloud either side of an island's screens that lead on
  • The clouds take the land's colours, white over the isles and grey in a storm
  • Home, the rift isle, the bosses' islands and the rift trials carry their own sea, sky, lava or void out to the edges, and the Storm's mountain falls away across the whole screen
  • The hearts, hands and island name sit at the very edges of the screen
  • The clouds drift with the wind and churn in a storm, and on the tide run the wave carries on off the left
  • The Settings page's Wide screen puts plain black bars back, for anyone who'd rather
• The Hoard Mimic is rounder, with a proper tongue, and turns smoothly to follow you
  • Its edges are rounded off and its sides bulge, so it looks less like a plain box
  • Its tongue is broad and round and lolls out over its lip instead of poking through its teeth
  • It turns to face you in sixteen directions instead of eight
• The Keeper of Magma calls its volcanoes to blow one after another
  • With both hands raised it makes every volcano rumble and glow at once
  • Then they blow in turn, half a second apart, while its lava rains down on you
• The Lava trial's stones are volcanoes that erupt
  • One near you rumbles and blows with a mushroom cloud
  • Its lava pours out round its foot and burns, so step away when it shakes
  • Old cooled flows of dark rock spread out from each volcano over the floor
• The Mire trial's island is a proper mud flat now
  • Its island is ringed by a sea of bubbling mud instead of the starry void
  • The ground is cracked dry crust between bubbling pools of mud and steaming mud mounds
• The Slime King is round, with a fuller face
  • It's a dome of jelly now, a big gold crown on its head
  • Its face shows its mood, cross, worried, smug, startled or hurt, and it blinks
  • Its next shape swirls up through it for longer before it changes
• The Slime King loses his crown
  • His crown doesn't shrink with him, so as he gets smaller it sits lower and slips to one side
  • Get him small enough and a landing knocks it clean off
  • That makes him furious. He flushes red and hops at you faster and further
• The Slime King splashes slimes off every time he lands
  • Each landing flings blobs of his gel out in arcs that splat into slimes of his current element.
  • Slimes, the king too, pull round into a ball in the air and flatten again to land.
  • His puddles of gel look raised and glossy, and his landings throw drops of gel about.
• The story bosses have their say, and the islanders follow the story
  • Each of Hades's household tells you why it's come when you meet it at the gates, and has a word once it's beaten
  • Hades has plenty to say about Pell leaving his oar to a helper
  • Pell's neighbours talk about each visitor in turn, and after Hades each one decides whether to cross
  • Ask Pell who he really is, once the Furies have been
  • Your gravestone at home has something new to say once it's all over
• A little doghouse in its own garden for your pets
  • Down in the bottom corner of your island is a little doghouse in a fenced garden with a rough, uneven fence, with a water bowl by the doghouse and a toy
  • Its gate swings open as you come near. Choose who comes along with you at the doghouse
  • The wardrobe is just for capes and gloves now
  • The mailbox has moved a little away from the door, so it's easier to reach
• A rare little slime prince can follow you home
  • Now and then a beaten Slime King leaves his little prince behind, wearing a little crown
  • Pick the element he prefers at the doghouse. Learn more combinations and he takes a shine to more of them
  • He never fights. When it gets dark he screws up his face, then bursts into a little flame and lights your way
  • Under the sea he climbs into your air bubble and holds 50% more air, shown in his own little bar with a crown beside yours. His air goes first, and when it runs out he pops out dazed for the rest of the island
  • Walk into him and he rolls away like a ball and his crown goes flying. Once he's no longer dizzy he hops back and puts it on again
• Rifts are torn open in the round
  • Every rift is a window into its world: embers over molten rock, a sky of clouds, the deep, a crystal cave, and each trial's own realm
  • Their edges never sit still: the air round them warps and cracks of light flicker out of them every way
  • The totems round Tamsin's rift stone are carved standing stones now, their runes and floating crystals glowing in the open rift's colours
  • Tamsin raises her staff in front of her as she casts, clear of her face
• The little lantern moth gathers the XP you leave lying
  • It flits off to XP and turnips lying near you and sends them your way

Fixed

• Burnt grass no longer hurts once the flames have passed
  • Burning long grass only hurts where its flames are, so its ash is safe to stand on straight away
• Complex lighting's firelight sits right and holds steady
  • The candle circle's glow is centred on the circle, and lamps, braziers and burning trees light the ground round their own feet
  • Shadows from a fire no longer swing about with every flicker, and the flicker itself is softer
  • No more stray dark squares at the edge of a fire's light
• Every lantern on a post is the same rounded lamp now
  • Graveyards by day and Lantern Night use the rounded iron lamps you see on other night islands
  • Lantern Night's lamps still light, blow out and draw the moths just as before
• Fights no longer stutter as monsters fall
  • The game used to freeze for a moment each time a monster was beaten or badly hurt, so a quick build beating monsters one after another looked like the game was dropping frames. Now it plays straight on
• Ghosts glow on the clouds and in the snow so they're easy to see
  • By day on the Cloud Isles and the Winter Isles, ghosts are blue-green ectoplasm with a deep glow round them
• Islands no longer sometimes come back with the old lumpy edges
  • Home after a rift trial, and a trial's realm entered twice, had the old bubbly rim round the island instead of its smooth bank
  • Only the clouds keep their puffy edges now
  • The rift trials' islands stand clean over their void, mud or lava, with no foam, glowing seam or rocks round their edges
• Menus no longer leave stretched black bands in a wide window
  • The skill trees' and settings' dimming and panels now carry on across the whole width
• Pell's face shows again
  • Pell wears a woolly hat now, so his eyes aren't hidden under a cap's peak
  • He holds his oar a little ahead of him, clear of his face
• The Market of the Dead looks the part
  • Its stalls are built in the round, their striped awnings over the merchants and their wares on the tables
  • The merchants and the beggar glow green like the other ghosts, so it's plain they're the dead
  • The Boonmonger's jars and the Seer's crystal ball give off a little light of their own
  • Just two lamps, between the stalls, and none out in the sea any more
  • A lamp's light falls round under its lantern, not round its foot
• The Overgrowth's sea of mud no longer froths with white sea foam or has rocky spikes at its shore
  • The island's bank drops away into dark mud, with no waves, foam or rocks round it
• The Smugglers' Cove's way out opens properly once the Hoard Mimic is beaten
  • The rocks shutting the cave's mouth no longer leave an invisible wall behind when they crumble, so you can walk out to the raft
  • Its little mimics crumble with it, so none left lying about keeps the way shut
• The Underworld's lava no longer flickers green
  • Where its bright veins crossed, the lava sometimes showed patches of green
• The raft waits in its usual spot after a rift trial
  • Home again from a rift trial, the raft and Pell are back on the shore below the cottage, not round the far side of the island
  • The rocks in home's shallows are back too
• Wide screens show the sea round an island
  • Either side of a wide screen you see the island's own sea, sky, lava or kelp going on
  • A bank of cloud only rolls in on a side where the way leads on to the next part of the island
• Wide windows run smoothly again
  • The banks of cloud either side of a wide window or the Steam Deck's screen cost a lot of time to draw, so the game could stutter on the islands, most of all in a busy fight. They look just the same and now cost a fraction as much

New

• The Riftweaver's and the wisps' threads hang in the world in 3D
  • They sag between their ends, cast a faint shadow on the ground and pass in front of and behind what they cross
  • Pulses of light run along them, from a rift up to the Riftweaver's hand and from a wisp to the monster it heals, which glows as each one lands
• The tide run's barriers each break their own way
  • Driftwood burns to ash, sand blows away on the wind, burning wreckage is doused and steams, and rocks burst apart
  • Sand blows off away from the side you broke it from
• The walls between screens break up in a cloud of dust when a screen is cleared
  • Beat the last monster and the rocks blocking the way shudder, then sink away in a puff of dust
  • Each land has its own dust, snow in winter, cloud in the sky and ash in the Underworld
• Turn the music and the sounds up or down in Settings
  • The skill menu's Settings page has Music and Sound, each from 100% down to off, 10% at a time
  • They're saved with your progress

Fixed

• The hero stands up straight and looks where it's going
  • The hero no longer leans, from the side or the diagonals
  • Its face turns with it inside the hood, so walking at an angle it looks that way, not down at your feet

New

• Blaze's ward rains meteors across the whole screen
  • After the big meteor lands, more come down all over the island for three seconds
  • Each one shows its shadow first, and every other one lands on a monster
• Lightning lights the ground around it at night
  • At night a bolt lights the ground all along its path in a cold blue-white light
  • The whole island only flickers as it strikes now, instead of lighting up like day
• The chicken is drawn in the round
  • A fluffy white hen that turns whichever way it walks
• The screen shake can be turned off in Settings
  • Screen shake on the Settings page holds the view steady when it's off
  • Each player has their own, and it's kept with your save
• The tide run's barriers are built in the round to match the islands
  • Driftwood lies in a tangle of bleached logs, the sand drifts are rippled dunes, and the rocks are mossy boulders
  • The burning wreckage is a heap of charred planks glowing with embers
• The walls that seal the way between screens are heaped rockfalls now
  • Boulders of every size pile up across the path, with snow on them in winter, puffs in the clouds and black rock in the lava
  • On ordinary islands the boulders are grown over with moss and little flowers

Fixed

• A hit flashes the hero white instead of making it blink
  • The hero jolts and flashes as a hit lands, then stays in view

New

• Pell tells you when a new version of Motes is out
  • Home from a voyage, the game checks for a newer version
  • If there is one, Pell mentions it as you step onto the raft
  • On a computer he can restart the game so it updates itself, and on a phone he can take you to the website to download it
  • He can also show you what's new in it
• The hero is drawn in the round
  • A round hood and a bell of a cape, turning whichever way you face
  • The cape trails behind you as you walk and swings out with each step

New

• A Settings page, with complex lighting to switch on
  • The skill menu has a Settings page, beside Playtest, with Debug info and Dev mode moved onto it
  • Complex lighting makes firelight flicker and cast soft shadows from monsters and trees at night
  • With it on, ghosts glow blue-green in the dark and light up the ground round them
• Dark islands have lamps, braziers and bonfires to light
  • A few burn as you arrive, and the rest light with fire, lightning or lava
  • Light them all and most of the island is lit
  • Graveyards stay darker, with candle vigils by the graves
• The Underworld glows with its lava under complex lighting
  • With complex lighting on, the Underworld is dim and the lava sea lights the rock along its shores
  • Monsters and heroes by the lava are lit from the lava's side
• The boat you sail between islands is now a little wooden rowboat
  • It has a pointed bow, planked sides with a painted stripe, two seats and its oars along its sides
  • Its yellow flag flies at the stern
  • Sailing alone you get a smaller boat of your own, and a bigger one when a friend sails with you
  • It floats clear of the shore, moored by a rope to a post, so you can see where to board
• The islands' shores round over into the sea
  • The grass rolls over the island's edge into a smooth bank of earth
  • Foam laps at its foot and ripples run out across the water
  • The bank's wall carries on down under the water in deep blue
  • Spikes of rock stand in the foam along the shore

Fixed

• Ladybirds are smaller, and moles duck a gust
  • The ladybird is now about your size, not twice it
  • A gust on a mole that's up sends it ducking back under the ground with a "DODGED!", and it takes a little damage as it goes
  • Wind blows straight over a mole's mound

New

• Cerberus's ball rolls when you walk into it
  • The red rubber ball at the gates is round now, and walking or rolling into it kicks it away
  • It rolls across the grass with its stripe turning, bounces off things and slows to a stop
  • Cerberus kicks it about too as he bounds around
• Trees, rides and the cottage are now drawn in the round
  • Trees have round clumps of leaves, pines stack in cones, and bare winter branches fork up in depth
  • Palms' fronds droop over ringed trunks, and the Underworld's bone trees have round spines and ribs
  • The tub, the hot air balloon, the lava boats and the little yellow submarine are all built in 3D
  • The cottage has proper walls, a thatched roof and a chimney

Fixed

• The gates now stand squarely across the road
  • The gate at the end of each story boss's island is centred on its road, and its pillars cover both edges

New

• Ladybirds, moles and snails look round
  • They're drawn in the same three-quarter view as the islands now, lit from the top-left, instead of flat side views
  • The mole pops up out of a round molehill, its pink claws resting on the rim
• The Drowned Captain fights harder and shows his weak spot
  • He's a see-through ghost now, drawn in the round, and he turns to face you wherever you stand
  • His mist shrugs off half of every hit, but his overhead chop gets his cutlass stuck in the deck, and then every hit does double
  • He flies into his ship's cannon, anchor and wheel and fights with them. While he's inside one, every hit lands in full
  • Chests lie about the wreck until he calls for his treasure, and then they snap open as mimics
  • He can seal you in a room of the wreck behind barricades your hands can't break. Work out how to get out before his curse falls
  • Low on health he barricades the whole wreck and turns his back to feast on ghostly goop. Hurt him enough to make him choke
  • The wreck's walls stand tall now, smashed and broken, its torn sail streams in the wind, and a cannon at the bow looks down the middle of the ship
• The Mist Gloves, and a new home for the Ember Gloves
  • Sitting out Lantern Night in the dark now gives the Mist Gloves, which strengthen steam
  • The Ember Gloves are now won by finishing off the Drowned Captain with his own cannon
• The Slime King holds court
  • His island begins with an avenue up to his court, lined with banners, braziers, slime-shaped hedges and courtiers who bow as you pass
  • His court has a throne, a carpet and banners and fires in the colours of the shape he's taken
  • His herald hails him as you arrive, and his courtiers flee once the fight begins and come back to bow when he's beaten
  • He starts plain, and anything hurts him until a spell gives him its shape
  • Now and then he forbids an element by royal decree. Use it and he swells back, keep to it and he leaves you a heart
  • When his crown falls off his courtiers try to bring it back. Chase them off and he can't heal
• A mailbox by the cottage door, for telling us what you think
  • Its little red flag goes up after every voyage, as a gentle nudge to tell us how it went
  • Press B by it to open the feedback page in your browser, or show a QR code to scan with your phone
  • Leave some feedback and the flag comes back down
• Boulders shut the cove while the Hoard Mimic fights
  • Wake the great chest and rocks come crashing down into the mouth of the cave, so nothing gets out
  • Beat it and every little mimic, and the rocks crack and crumble away to let you back to the raft
• Every spell looks rounder, with sparks, drops and dust that fly through the air
  • Fireballs are glowing balls of fire with flame streaming behind them, and burst into a swelling ball of fire that rolls up into smoke
  • Lightning strikes in a flash of light with a ring across the ground
  • The inferno throws rolling balls of flame, and steam and sand billow in round puffs
  • Geysers, tornadoes and lava eruptions are round, shaded columns, and the frost cone glints like ice
  • Sparks, water drops, embers and dust are thrown up into the air and fall back, casting shadows
• Island shores are banks of round rocks, big and small
  • Every island's edge is a bank of rounded rocks bulging down into the water, lit from the top left
  • Winter's are snow-capped, the Underworld's dark rock over the lava, and the Deep's and the rift realms' their own
  • The Sandworm's desert rolls in dunes
• The Cloud Isles are made of puffs of cloud
  • Each cloud is a heap of round puffs lit from the top left, with creases between them
  • Its edges round away and its underside bulges down into the sky
  • Small lumpy puffs and big round ones in patches across each cloud
• The Ember Colossus is carved in the round
  • It and its fists now stand in the same three-quarter view as the islands, lit from the top-left
  • Its chest of basalt columns, boulder shoulders and heavy brow catch the light, and its cracks still glow
• The Hoard Mimic waits in a smugglers' cove
  • Its fight is in a torchlit treasure cave by the sea now, heaped with coins, gems, crowns and cups, money strewn all over the floor
  • In the Deep it's a sunken grotto lit by glowing pearls
• The Kraken pours a beam of ink
  • Every other time it comes up it turns to face you and pours a jet of ink that follows you round
  • It turns slower than you can walk round it, so keep moving or roll through it
  • Caught in it, you lose half a heart and the ink blinds you
  • It streaks the sand with lines of oil as it sweeps, so watch your footing
• The Kraken's oil coats the seaweed in the Deep
  • Seaweed standing in its oil turns dark and glossy and hangs heavy, barely waving, until the oil dries
  • Its head now rises up from behind the sand instead of coming up as a box
• The Trial of the Storm is fought on top of a mountain
  • Its arena is a rocky summit, the mountain falling away below it into storm clouds
  • Its standing stones are lightning rods, joined by copper cables across the rock
  • A rod that's struck sends a zap racing down its cables from rod to rod, and each one strikes all round itself as it arrives
• The bosses are drawn in the round and turn to face you
  • Cerberus, the Stone Toad, the Hoard Mimic, the Grave Warden, the Frost Wyrm, the Tide Mother, Sisyphus, the Riftweaver, Hades, Persephone and Hypnos are rounded and lit like the islands' own creatures
  • Most turn to face you as you circle them, in eight directions
  • The Sandworm's maw is round too, its rows of teeth turning in its throat
  • Sisyphus's boulder rolls with its cracks and moss turning as it goes
  • The story bosses' islands are furnished in the round too, with the doghouse, the desk, the bed, the bench and the throne turned toward the middle
  • Hypnos's bed is a proper long four-poster now
• The monsters look round
  • Golems are stacks of lumpy, mossy boulders that look solid from above
  • Mushrooms have domed, spotted caps on round stems
  • Slimes are round domes of jelly that catch the light, and they turn to face the way they hop
  • Ghosts are round see-through sheets whose faces turn to where they're drifting
  • Bats have round furry bodies and stretched wings
  • Ember puffs, wisps, pufferfish and anglerfish are shaded like round bodies
  • Paper-lantern wisps spin like tops
  • Wisps keep behind the monsters they heal, away from you, and dash off when you come close
  • The villagers and the Lost Folk are shaded round too
• The rocks that block a screen's exits are round
  • The walls across a screen's ways out are heaps of round rocks, snow, cloud or coral, lit from the top left
  • In the Underworld small dark rocks sit in lava that wells up between them
• The villagers and the Lost Folk are made in 3D
  • Every person is a little 3D figure seen from the same angle as the islands, with a round head, body, arms and gear
  • They turn to face eight ways, with three-quarter views between front, side and back
  • Their swings, thrusts, blocks and flinches are posed in 3D too

Fixed

• Mimics and morays no longer hold up a fight
  • A mimic left alone wakes up by itself after a few seconds and comes for you, so you never have to walk up to it
  • Morays no longer lurk at the drop in the Deep, out of reach
• Moles can be dug up by any spell
  • Hit a mole's mound with any spell and it's dug up, so you never wait for it to surface
• Moles stay in their molehills
  • A mole that's popped up can't be blown away, knocked back, thrown up or carried off by a tornado any more
• No villagers or Lost Folk up on the clouds or down in the Deep
  • The Lost Folk no longer camp on the Cloud Isles or in the Deep, and nobody waits to be rescued there
  • The Gale's rift keeper no longer calls up its folk on its cloud
• The Kraken in the Deep is seen all the way down
  • Under the sea its head and arms reach right down to the island's edge instead of stopping at a water line
• The Slime King always shows when a spell heals it
  • Hitting it at full health with a spell it doesn't take now says "heals!" instead of nothing, so it no longer looks unhurtable before it first changes shape
• The gates' title no longer cuts off its last words
  • "Its keeper is gone and the way stands open" now shows in full
• You come back out of the rift you went into
  • The rift throws you back out, and it closes behind you
  • Leaving a rift trial at home puts you back by Tamsin's rift stone, not the cottage door
  • Leaving one found on the Rift Isle brings you back to its stone, with the raft waiting to sail on
• You leave clear footprints in the sand and the snow
  • The tide run's sandy strip now takes your footprints as you run along it
  • Footprints in the sand and the snow are bigger and easier to see, a trail of shaded dents behind you
  • They slant when you walk diagonally
  • On a beach the waves smooth them away, softening the dents rather than wiping them at once
• Lightning no longer crashes the game when a monster it was striking is beaten
  • A bolt whose target was beaten could leap to another monster across the screen, and online play could crash
• Monsters and heroes no longer slip behind trees and things they're standing in front of
  • A slime or snail just in front of a tree's trunk, or beside it, is drawn in front of it now instead of behind it
  • The same goes for headstones, lanterns, market stalls, standing stones and the story bosses' islands, and standing up on a dais you're no longer hidden behind it
  • The vines' creeping roots weave in front of and behind what stands along their path
  • In the Smugglers' Cove the rock walls no longer cut into you as you walk along them
  • In the busiest fights nothing vanishes from the picture any more

New

• A little yellow submarine carries you off the Deep's islands
  • Your face peeks out of its round glass port as it dives away
  • With a friend aboard it has a port for each of you
• Long grass and the Deep's kelp give way as you walk through them
  • Long grass is trodden flat under your feet and springs back up behind you
  • In the Deep you walk straight through the kelp and sea grass, and each strand parts from its foot as you pass
  • The Deep's islands are fringed with a kelp forest growing up out of the dark
• Motes opens on a title screen
  • Your home island waits behind it, and any button takes you straight in
  • The first time you play, it asks whether you'd like to share your play stats before you start
• Running out of air in the Deep bursts the bubble round your head
  • It swells, wobbles and pops with a "POP!", its drops flung out all round
  • Your hero panics while out of air, the last of its breath bubbling up
• The Kraken spits slippery oil
  • Its ink is black oil now, and each glob splashes a wide pool of it, slipperier than ice, that dries up from its edges in
  • It watches you while it's up, then picks its spot, holds still, draws a breath and spits, so you can see each glob coming
  • Its head is drawn round now, in the same view as the islands, and it turns its whole face to aim

Fixed

• The question about sharing your play stats now comes later and explains itself
  • It waits until you're home from your first voyage, a few seconds after you arrive
  • It says why it's asking, and exactly what's sent and what isn't, before it asks

A quiet release. Small fixes and polish, nothing to shout about.

New

• A new region under the sea, the Deep
  • The raft may now offer the Deep for the last leg, beside the Cloud Isles and the Underworld
  • Kelp swaying in the current, low clumps of coral, schools of fish that dart away from you, crabs and shells on the sand
  • Hold your breath! Your air runs out, so catch the great bubbles rising from the seabed's vents
  • Out of air you lose half a heart at a time, straight off your own hearts
  • New monsters live there. Pufferfish swell into balls of spikes and anglerfish bite away your air
  • Jellyfish and morays lurk there too, and a great bubble carries you away when an isle is clear
• Bosses now suit the land they're fought on
  • The Kraken only comes by the sea, the Ember Colossus only in the Underworld
  • The Frozen Lake and the Sliding Ice only turn up in the Winter Isles
• The Deep and the sky have monsters of their own
  • Under the sea the slimes are sea sponges, the snails hermit crabs, the ghosts jellyfish and the golems coral
  • Water soaks into a sponge instead of hurting it. It swells, hops shorter and rests longer, and fire does it less harm
  • Squeeze a soaked sponge with earth or knock it into something and it squirts its water out, dousing fire and shoving you back
  • Up in the Cloud Isles the slimes are grumpy little rainclouds
• The Deep hides a few tricks
  • Some chests half buried in the sand are mimics, and they burst up out of it when you come close
  • Not every bubble is air. A lure bubble bites when you reach for it and steals your breath
  • Watch for its little eyes peeping out. It slips away as you swim towards it, teasing, before it lets you reach it
  • The Hoard Mimic now guards a sunken hoard on the Deep's boss island too
• The Elder Briar's crows can be shot down, and fire makes it furious
  • A fireball or a skipping stone aimed at a crow knocks it out of the sky, but the tree sends another a moment later
  • Bursts, chains, cones and wards still can't reach the crows, so only an aimed shot works
  • Fire or lava on the Elder Briar makes it furious. It fights harder and faster and shrugs off more of every hit
• The Hoard Mimic, a boss hiding on a treasure island
  • Some boss islands are heaped with gold round a great chest. Open it and see what happens
  • The little chests about the island are mimics too
• The Thunderhead, a new boss for the Cloud Isles
  • A grumpy storm cloud that calls down lightning, sends its raincloud children after you and blows a gale
  • Spells fizzle off it while it's charged, so tear its puffs away with air until it rains itself out

Fixed

• Snails, palms, folk and Sisyphus's hill are drawn whole
  • Snails' shells and hermit crabs' claws no longer lose their tops and backs
  • Palms and kelp keep the tips of their fronds
  • The Lost Folk's raised weapons and staffs aren't cut off at the sides

A quiet release. Small fixes and polish, nothing to shout about.

New

• The wiki has a changelog
  • Every release has a version number like 1.4.2, shown by the wiki's name at the top of every page
  • New features move it on to the next minor version, fixes alone to the next patch
  • A banner says when a new version is out, until you dismiss it or read what's new
  • The Changelog page lists every release, the newest open and the rest folded away
  • The front page shows what came in the newest release

Something happened here. The slimes saw it, but they aren't telling.

Pell used the notes for this release to light the candles. They burned beautifully.

This release is lost to the fog. Try blowing it away with air.

Hester was meant to keep a record of this one. She swears she did. The record disagrees.

A crow took the notes for this release. It hasn't brought them back.

The ferryman's ledger has a coffee ring where this release should be.