Hi everyone!

The Last Clockwinder has been chosen as the *best game* of 2022 by Meta! It came as a surprise this morning and to be honest, we’re still letting it sink in. So for now, we’ll just say that it means a lot to receive this recognition, and we’re so proud of our small team and grateful to our community of supporters.

We’re also very proud to be a part of the “Best Narrative Games” category, so we want to specifically shout out our writers, George Lockett and Olivia Wood.

---

Patch Notes

• Fixed an issue where the default mouse sensitivity would be set at 0.

---

And as always, please post any issues you come across or feedback you may have in the The Mirror Forge Bugs and Feedback Thread or on the relevant channels on the DREADXP Discord.

Today is an important day for all of us!

After such a short time, joint efforts you were able to destroy 2 000 000 monsters, which means that we have crossed another line, we hasten to remind you that as soon as the number of monsters killed reaches 10 000 000, we will give away the keys to the main game on our Discord server!

Invite your friends and acquaintances and together you will definitely be able to overcome this line, because the more heroes the less minions of the king of lich!

We thank you for your time to our project, only for you we wake up every day and bring all our ideas to life!

You can see the count of monsters killed at Web site


you can chat in our Discord channel!


Follow us on Twitter as well!

Hey, Oracles!

We’ve been a little quiet recently! And while that generally means we’re taking our time with development, I did want to take a minute to share some cool details about Astrea with you here and now! So, without further ado, let’s talk a little about every Oracle’s favorite robot companions, shall we?

Sentinels are good little buddies you can buy at the sentinel shop and after defeating bosses! Each unique sentinel has their own unique die which you roll every turn. You can only have two sentinels active at the same time so picking the sentinels that fit your strategy is a must! Sentinels can take corruption damage and if they lose all their health, they are destroyed, causing you to lose access to their die until the next battle. You can also upgrade the sentinel which will increase the sentinels health and improve the die the sentinels roll!

But let’s get down to some specifics, shall we? The die faces in the images below will be from level 1 sentinels, so the dice can be upgraded and be even stronger! I’ll take you on a deep dive on some of the sentinels that can get a sense for the power and utility that sentinels offer.


Armillary Sphere is the ultimate reroll Sentinel. All the faces of the die have a reroll symbol where you get a do over on either one or two dice in your hand. This is really great for making your dice more consistent and rerolling dice with unwanted die faces. Knowing that you’ll always have access to a reroll means you’ll be able to feel safer picking some of the riskier dice, since if they come up with harmful outcomes, you can try another roll.

You can also use the rerolls on your enemy’s dice to give them a less powerful action for their turn.


Adapted Courier allow you to choose a dice to draw from the discard pile! Something fun with Adapted Courier you can do is play the same die twice in the same turn. You can play a die use the adapted courier to bring that die back to your hand to play again. This sentinel can search out that much needed die to really pop off and hold your build together!


Astrolabe is a sentinel that allows you to turn bad rolls into purifying damage to an enemy. If you roll the correct face, then you can discard a die to deal purifying damage to a random enemy. This sentinel is a very safe sentinel to pick as the other faces are all purify.


Colossus Hand is a die with 2 corruption faces and 4 purify faces. Each corruption and purify face can be a random 1 to 6 in power and will change every time you draw the die. So the best you can roll is 6 purify and the worse you can roll is 6 corruption.

This is a great die to have in the early game and allow you to deal loads of purification or to soak some corruption to activate your virtues.


If you thought Colossus Hand was random, you haven’t seen Unknown Device! Each of the faces has a chance to be any die that is available to you with a 25% chance of becoming an epic die. If this die becomes an epic die, it has the chance to unleash havoc on your enemies!

Also, at the start of each turn this sentinel will do 1 purify to all targets thanks to the passive discharge ability it comes with.

There are many more sentinels in Astrea that I could dive into. If you would like me to dive into more sentinels then let me know!

Here are a couple more sentinel designs from the Astrea Twitter!
https://twitter.com/PlayAstrea/status/1599172397734952961
https://twitter.com/PlayAstrea/status/1596669909324423169

-Riv Otter

The latest official Rolling Line map is here!
And this one is special, since I'm currently living in Wellington!
I ride the bus past these exact buildings all the time, and it's been an absolute joy to create them in-game.

This map is called "Slice of Wellington" since it is more of a diorama than a full-on map. It takes a chunk of Wellington city (the capital of New Zealand) and recreates it to-scale.
The goal of this map is to show off the new dynamic roads system in action, and to finally make a map that features some proper modern city scenery!

Wellington is the political capital of New Zealand and features our famous "Beehive" parliament building:



The map also features the top of Lambton Quay (our main business area) and the major bus route through town:



You can explore the real location for yourself in 3D on Google Maps:
https://earth.google.com/web/@-41.27896091,174.77688965,7.92081625a,360.10171601d,35y,-71.18229337h,44.46446036t,0r



You can find the new map in the "new game" map list:




This map also features a new type of bus!
Thank you so much to Shini (a long time community member and fellow New Zealander) who made the model for this bus! It really adds to the authenticity of the scene.



You can find the drivable vehicle version of this bus in the "vehicles -> cars [drivable]" drawer, and you can find the prop version in the "vehicles -> cars [props]" drawer.


Also included in this update is audio for cars! Vehicles now make engine noise and have horns.
There is also a new ambient audio preset for "Birdsong Tui" which is used in this map.
Tui's are a native bird in New Zealand with a very distinct birdsong, and Wellington happens to be full of them!

Another audio related change is that the "random train horns" setting is now off by default. This setting enables/disables the random horns that go off while trains are driving around.
You can find it in the "pause menu -> misc" menu.


During the process of making this map a few minor new props were added, these are:
- stature base
- bus stop and live timetable sign
- unique playground slide based on the one at Wellington parliament grounds
- "center" snap piece for the roof top props




This was actually added in a patch after the previous update, but it was not mentioned in the previous news post so I'll mention it here.
There is now a drawer with some pre-made skyscrapers, you can find it in the "buildings -> city pre-made" drawer:




You can now define areas on your maps where trains & vehicles are invisible.
This is perfect for making cars disappear when they leave the table when you combine this feature with invisible track.

This method was used in the Wellington map to make cars appear and disappear when travelling off the table:





You can set up "hidden regions" using the new pop-up window on the wall "view advanced options -> view hidden regions"



From here you can place region boxes (this is the same system as both "tunnel regions" and "rain regions" added in previous updates).
Any cars/trains inside these "region boxes" will be invisible when passing through them.

From this menu you can also toggle whether this hidden effect is enabled or not, which is useful for figuring out the location of cars when they are invisible:




Here's an album of various HD screenshots of the map, feel free to use these as you wish!
https://imgur.com/gallery/EYaMN2M

Here are some examples:





And that's everything for this update!

Making this map has been an absolute joy, since every update this year has been focused on features and programming, so I haven't had any chances to work on maps.
Making maps is of course my favourite part of Rolling Line, and it always poses a great opportunity to add new props and scenery styles (like cities and roads in this example!).

And since I live in Wellington at the moment this map was extra fun to make.
In fact this might be the first time a video game has officially included Wellington city... If anyone has ever heard of any others please let me know! I would love to see it.

I hope you all enjoy this new slice of city scenery!

Changelog

Improvements
New lobby block
Bonus effects duration reduced from 20 to 18
Respawn delay reduced from 5 to 4

Fixes
Fixed aiming preview not disabling when starting game
Fixed team selection zones not disabling when leaving the lobby
Fixed block colliders not disabling when a player reach the objective
Fixed the lobby block not reappearing when leaving the game
Fixed residual bonuses from players UI
Fixed canon hook deforming itself hence deforming all picked up blocks

added/changed
commas have a distinct color
add a randomize weights checkbox
rightclick on word adds or removes comma after
adding from searchmenu always pinns word

fixed
download locations
search lower case bug

Adjustments

1. The effect when the sword hits the shield is now displayed.

Bug Fixes

1. Fixed a bug that caused the player to fly far when jumping and dashing at the same time.
   
2. Fixed a bug that caused lasers from weapons carried on the back to appear.
   
3. Fixed a bug that caused shields to be generated in mid-air after being destroyed.

The latest patch introduced some critical bugs that need to be fixed. Rolling back to previous version until the startup bugs are fixed.

More minor fixes. Would you notice them? Maybe. But probably not.