Jan 9

The Last Flame - Hotloop

Hey Flame Masters!
Working on The Last Flame as a solo dev has been one of the most fulfilling journey of my life, and I couldn't be more grateful for everyone that helped with the development and the community which has been extremely supportive! Thank you, y'all have been amazing! Without further do, let's jump into what's new in this MEGA update!

🏹 Reborn

The Reborn system allows you to choose one hero per run to Reborn. The Reborn of a hero greatly vary between heroes. Some will have perks that help the hero thrive in parts of their build that were secondary in the past, some will have perks that allow them to be played in totally different ways, some will bring team wide perks, and some will interact with the party or support it.

Here are some examples of what you can expect from the Hero Reborn system:

Joanna:

Karina:

Eslo:

Atreos:

Naomi:

The reborn of heroes is done at the Campfire, and becomes available once you beat the Act 1 boss. Reborn does have a cost, the currency used to Reborn is actually up to the player. The player can mix and match any of these 3 currencies: flame, gold and trophies to pay for the reborn.

One of the main benefit of the Reborn system is that it allows you to plan in advance as Reborn is a static mechanic. There's no RNG related to this system, and it allows you to heavily invest in some aspects of your synergy which might have been more tricky to do in the past. It opens thousands of new build possibilities, and will allow you to make even crazier synergies!

You can preview the hero reborn from the hero card at any time (button at the bottom of the card).

Unlocking Reborn
The Reborn system is unlocked in the Reborn Unlock (8/8) as it increases the complexity of the game by quite a bit; and therefore, I believe should be unlocked at some later time when the player is already comfortable with the basics of the game.

New Challenge: Reborn Pinnacle
Reborn pinnacle allows you to Reborn as many times as you wish, the cost to Reborn is free and you can Reborn starting from the very beginning of the run. The enemies are a lot stronger.

Balancing Reborn
There will be a balance patch to properly tune the Reborn's effects as soon as we get enough data statistics from players to pin point what is too powerful or too weak. You can expect this patch to come in 1 to 2 weeks.

🌎 5 New Languages

We added the following languages to The Last Flame:

Spanish
Portuguese
Korean
Japanese
Russian

I hope that this allows the game to have more reach throughout the world so that more players can enjoy making awesome builds!

To report issues/typos regarding the new localizations, please write a message in the localization channels on Discord. Thank you so much for your help!

⚔️ New Content

Thank you Celerity for playing and showing the game to your community! This first item is for you:

👓 Retromation

For those who don't know Retromation is a content creator that makes amazing content on the newest indie games and roguelikes that are worth checking out! I enjoy his content and he enjoys The Last Flame so what better opportunity to bring him to life in the game! I am thrilled to present you: Retromation, The Dicemancer! This hero focuses on the hybrid balance of Spell Power and Attack Damage to deal godlike amounts of damage and chain killing enemies!

🐸 Improved Hero Models

Karina, Arya, James, Zanmar and Cora have new and more epic models! (yes Zanmar is now a 🐸)

🎟️ New Events

Act 1 was the act with the least act specific events which made events very repetitive for this act. 3 new events have been added for act 1!

💾 Multiple Save Slots

Multiple Save System added to the game. From the main menu, you can now change your save slot from a total of 4 available.

🧙 Quality of Life

The Surge Gauge is now displayed in the fight recap.
Added the ability to mouse wheel through the difficulties and challenges in the level selector (no more smashing your mouse to go from one challenge to another).
The Fragment toggle will now flash when you are past Act 2 - Floor 4 as a reminder to toggle it if you wish to go to Act 4.
The codex has been re-organized by archetype.
You can now use "hero dropped" taunting by clicking on heroes even when the fight has already been started. Previously, you were not able to change their position (unchanged), so you couldn't drop then to use the "hero dropped" taunt.
Added 3 Tip Windows in the main menu that give guidance about the different unlocks (Surge, Reborn and Custom Game Mode) and additional difficulties available beyond Flame Master.

⭐ Hero Mastery

The Hero Mastery is a new system that keeps track of what heroes you have won a run with and your play rate with each hero. It also keeps track of what reborn heroes you have won a run with. The statistics in the main menu now include your challenge completion and the new hero mastery.

Additionally, the One Man Army and the Cloned challenges now keep tracks of what heroes you have completed the challenge with!

🎖️ New Achievements

17 new achievements are available ranging from dealing a lot of damage in a fight to speed running a run. You can preview all the achievements here.

🔒 Unlocks have been restructured

The Summer, Halloween and Winter new content are now for the most part unlockable through the Unlock system. This will reduce the amount of content that a new player has to deal with at first, making the learning curve less steep. Unlock #8 which was very empty until now, now contains most of the hybrid build and On-Dealing Ethereal Damage content.

⚖️ Difficulty Balance

Throughout updates, the game has gotten overall easier due to many buffs. I decided to slightly increase the difficulty (on all difficulties) to keep the game more engaging!

In Act 2, the enrage timer starts 2 seconds sooner and 4 seconds sooner on boss fights.
In Act 3 and beyond, the enrage timer starts 5 seconds sooner and 10 seconds sooner on boss fights. (this is the total, which includes the Act 2 enrage changes)
In Act 2, the damage and HP of enemies has been increased by about 4%.
In Act 3 and beyond, the damage and HP of enemies has been increased by about 5.5%.
Skeleton King's (Act 2 boss) Max HP increased, and poison rain damage increased.
The Orc Shaman enemy now heals for 10% of his Max HP instead of a Spell based value. This is mainly a buff to Orc Shaman in Endless, where Spell Based values are capped pretty low to prevent one shots on heroes. But this made Orc Shaman's ability extremely underpowered in Endless. This enemy should now be more balanced and aligned with other enemies power.

🎵 New Music

Act 3 music (combat and out of combat tracks) was changed to be more epic and vibrant.
Act 4 (and endless) now has new music tracks unique to Act 4! Previously, it had the same track as Act 3.

🕹️ What was added during the Early Access

If you haven't played the game for a long time or want to know what was added during the Early Access (other than this update), here's a very condensed list of the changes. If you want more details, I would recommend to check the patch notes of the 12 updates that has been done during Early Access.

Recipe Locking system and Soft Ban Automatic System which increases the chance to see items, heroes, relics and origins that you are more likely to be interested in
Unlocks now give perks. The perks are not direct hero power, they were added to balance the item pool getting bigger with each unlock. The perks are things like hero rewards now show 4 heroes instead of 3. This is to balance the item pool getting bigger so that the player is not negatively affected by the unlocking more content.
Custom Game Mode allowing you to tweak the difficulty to your liking, add any challenges, select your unlocks sets, and customize a dozen of other settings
Expanded Act 4 with a small map and 2 new bosses
Improved Combat Recap
6 New Heroes
22 New wildcard passives
23 New Items
12 New Sacrificial relic
5 New Origins
Events revamp, 26 out of 27 events have received modifications, balance changes and totally new options
Hundreds of new fight variations
6 New challenges
Performance improvements
Adjustable keybinds
400+ balance changes and reworks on items, heroes and more
Improved active description
New resolutions for the 16:10 screen aspect ratio
You can now restart a run after completing it, and abandon a run from the main menu

🎯 What is next?

You can expect continued support in terms of bug fixing, balance changes, text improvements, and improvement to the game's systems. There will be a balance patch in the following weeks to balance new and old content with a focus on Reborn.

As for new heroes, items, relics and origins, this is a bit more controversial as most of the negative feedback and reviews are complaints that there's already too much stuff which can cause item dilution. There has already been multiple updates and changes to help with this issue. I think overall, the problem comes from the fact that some players do not understand how valuable and cheap rerolling can be, and are not utilizing it properly; or simply do not understand how flexible items and synergies can be in The Last Flame.
That being said, I think the game already has a pretty considerable amount of content with 65 heroes each with their reborn version, 325 items, 150 relics and 60 origins, the amount of unique builds that you can come up with is pretty much infinite. Could it benefit from having more? Honestly, I have mixed feelings about this. I think new content within the existing archetypes could appeal to some players while not appealing to others. I haven't really decided yet if there will be new heroes, items, relics and origins. You can let me know what you think about this in the comments of this post or on Discord!

Controller support and console release is not yet confirmed one way or another. Adding it has been on my mind for a long time but controller support and console porting is a tedious and long process and during the Early Access, I had to focus on the other updates. I will soon evaluate the situation and see if this is something that can be done.

If you have any suggestions for the game, feel free to share them with me! I do read each and every single one of them, and try to reply to as many as I can!

Finally, I love making and designing games so you can definitely expect more games from me in the future!

✍️ Review the game

If you are enjoying The Last Flame, the best way to help is to leave a review! I really appreciate your support!

💬 Join the community

Join our community on Discord! It's the perfect place to share your best builds, talk strategy, ask questions and give feedback! I am very active on Disc, and I am trying to participate in as many discussions as I can!

💖 Thank You

Hello! I am Hotloop, a solo dev from Canada! This journey has been totally unexpected.. after graduating from university, I started working on a game to put in my portfolio to apply for jobs. My plan was to spend 1 to 2 months on the project. Well, it has now been almost 4 years and a half that I have been working on this "quick" 1 to 2 months project. There has definitely been a major change in plans. I would never have expected that this random project would have gone so far, and I am very proud of how much the game has evolved and got better throughout time.
This would not have been possible without the help of an amazing community which has been helping out since February 2023 (about 1 year prior to the Early Access release). The community has helped with suggestions, feedback, bug reports but the most important was seeing them discussing and having fun playing the game which gave me the motivation to keep working hard to deliver the best possible version of The Last Flame! It hasn't always been easy. The amount of stress, hard work, and financial risk that this took to achieve was pretty insane but I am extremely grateful that I kept going and was able to complete my vision for the game. Thank you so much for your support and for being part of this journey!

Hotloop

Jan 9

Under 30 Days to Launch 👀✨

Spirit Swap: Lofi Beats to Match-3 To - kimchica

Hi Swappers!

Happy New Year! The holiday decor is stored, snacks eaten, and we are under 30 days (!!!) until we launch Spirit Swap.

Ahead of the launch, we wanted to share our plans for the game: what you can expect upon release and beyond! It’s -- hopefully -- also our chance to share a little bit more behind-the-scenes and what we’ve learned as we’ve done this first game together as a team for those interested in a little of what it takes to make a game in 2025.

Our major post-launch update will include Fashion 🌸

With this update, you’ll be able to dress up Samar in a selection of outfits to swap in style!

While we wish we could have included Fashion in the game's 1.0 launch, the reality is that making a game is expensive—even more so because one of our tenants as a co-op is to pay all of our contractors living wages, thus expanding our costs a bit more. Adding this feature in post-launch content allows us to get that final bit of funds to help pay our contractors and get the feature to you in a quality state.

We already have some of the outfit concepts from our Backers done -- while we won’t show you what we ARE using, here’s an example of two that didn’t quite make the cut…and one that did!

Our plan is to get this post-launch update out in 2025, and once we have a more solid date, you bet we’ll be shouting it from the rooftops!

We had to say goodBHY to BHYG mode

One of the realities of game development is scope. It’s one of the tried and true tenets that if you’re making a game, you should scope down…and then scope down again. While we initially thought our scope could account for a BHYG Mode (an 8-player versus frenzy), once we got into development and discussion over it these last few months, it ended up not panning out in terms of what we could finish -- and polish -- to the quality that we hoped to achieve.

Now, will BHYG Mode someday make its way back into the world of Spirit Swap? We won’t lie: we’d love to try our hand at it again in the future, perhaps if the funding, time, and stars align. But, at the moment, we’re saying goodBHY to this game mode, and plan on focusing more on making the features we DO have in the game as solid as possible!

Continuing to Finesse

Some of the things we have been spending our time finessing include ensuring we have a variety of features to help folks play how they want to. So, we thought we’d spend a little time checking out the Settings tab!

One of the first settings we have to help folks out is the ability to manipulate saturation -- to help ease eye strain.

We’ve also included text animation! The game’s text waves, shakes, and even changes color to help ensure that visually -- not just auditorily -- you can sense how the tone of the conversation is going.

The story log is also implemented if you need to take a look back at what was said in the latest scene:

We’ve even included a different style of spirit (harkening back to the OG Panel de Pon days) for folks who prefer that visual style.

Finally, we’ve also added the “Skip this Round” button to the pause screen. We know sometimes you just wanna get to the story, or perhaps you’re just not feeling it that round. You can always skip and move on to the next round (or just skip them all and not do the match entirely).

These are just a few of the additions we’ve included, and we’re continuing to polish polish polish! Our main priority right now is going through and playing the game as much as possible, trying to catch everything we can ahead of Feb 3rd.

Say hello to an IRL Froggo

We do have some exciting news on the Froggo front! Over the past few months, we’ve been working with the Makeship crew to design a Froggo plush so you can have a FamiliarZ of your very own to chill with. Check out the page here (and be sure to visit it on Feb 3rd if you’d like to pick a Froggo for yourself)!

For those unfamiliar with Makeship, it’s a crowdfunding campaign-based plushie company. During a campaign, if we reach our goal of pre-orders for the plushie, then it becomes a reality! They will take care of all the manufacturing, shipping, and fulfillment. We’ve already got an adorable design, and can’t wait to share the unredacted image with you all soon.

That’s it for this month’s update! We’re working hard and can’t believe the day is almost here! Feb 3, here we gooooo~

<3 The Spirit Swap team

Jan 9

Welcome to 2025 Responders!

No More Room in Hell 2 - kenneth.bourgon

Happy New Year Responders!

As 2025 begins we want to pull the curtains back and give you a look into what’s to come in our next update, and insight into our ambitions for the first half of the year.

Update 0.2.4

In January, we’ll launch our first update of the year. It will be lighter in content as our team puts most of its efforts into larger feature drops in the coming months. That being said, update 0.2.4 will introduce our first zombie variant that will provide a new challenge to players, selfless Firefighters who were caught between the smoldering forest fires and the horde of living dead. We hope this variant gives players clarity and reassurance in the types of new zombies that we’re crafting. 0.2.4 will also feature a rework to our ammo types, bringing more realism to the gameplay experience and aligning closer with the original No More Room in Hell.

What’s Next?

The development team is very excited about what’s to come in the first half of 2025. While 2024 was a challenge, it’s given us a lot of insight into what’s currently working in Early Access, and what areas of the experience require most of our efforts. With the support of Community feedback, we’ve updated our plan of attack and placed all of our focus for the first half of 2025 into 2 categories -

Upgrading the core foundations of the game, including stability, polish, and the gameplay loop
Adding new exciting content to the game.

Building Our Foundation

We believe that our core gameplay loop has a ton of potential that we’re excited to build on. Updates in the coming months will reinforce the replayability of the game, and give players more of a reason to hop into their next round. Stability, optimization, and polish are all parts of this category of content updates that we’re constantly working on improving. We’re not ready to showcase everything just yet, but here are a couple of examples:

In the next few months we’ll introduce in-game credits which you will earn through successful extraction. Players will be able to use credits to customize loadouts that they’ll have when spawning in-game. This is just the beginning of a more complex progression system.
We’ve gotten a lot of feedback from the community on difficulty modes, and we’re working on updating the way they work. While we have to be careful with when and where players can choose their difficulty, it’s important that they have an avenue to do so. Along with other updates to difficulty modes, we’re looking to make nightmare mode feel more… nightmarish in ways that will greatly impact replayability.
We also plan to use different tools to make Powerplant more replayable, as there’s still a lot of opportunity with the Map that’s yet to be met.

Delivering New Content

As we make our way towards 1.0 launch it’s important that we continue to add exciting new content that builds upon the foundation of our game. One of the highlights of 2024 was the sense of discovery and escape that players felt when traversing through Powerplant for the first time, and it’s important that we continue to deliver those emotions to players in different ways. In the first half of 2025 players can expect at least one large new map, new weapons, new zombie variants, and more!

We previously announced Codename: Hospital as our next map, but late last year our Environment and Level Design teams looked at feedback from our Community and the desire for maps set in cities and towns and changed up our plans. We're excited to announce that Codename: Town (final name to be revealed soon) will introduce players to the classic, more urbanized zombie movie setting, and will be coming next.

2025 looks to be an extremely exciting year for No More Room in Hell 2, and a lot of that has come from the feedback and support that we’ve received from the Community, thank you. In the last 8 weeks of 2024 we shipped Early Access, 4 hot fixes, 2 feature updates (including infection & self-sacrifice!) and numerous online matchmaking adjustments, all hand in hand with our Community. If you want to join in on the discussion, please join our Discord. You can also leave feedback in-game, or at NMRIH2.com/support.

Jan 9

Ver.0110 Update 更新内容

江湖客栈-The Jianghu - 东厂丶大卫

亲爱的玩家，服务器兹定于2025年1月10日(周五）12点开始维护更新，本次更新预计120-360分钟。更新前30分钟和更新期间游戏将无法登录，请大家在更新结束之后再进行游戏，给您带来的不便敬请谅解。

优化内容：

关卡相关：

1. 为优化末法时代与轮回时代的难度衔接，新增了三个末法时代难度：【罗刹界】【修罗界】【灭世界】。完成难度1【夜叉界】关卡后，将自动解锁难度2【罗刹界】。
2.优化了轮回星盘，可在末法时代提前解锁轮回星盘。通关末法时代难度2【罗刹界】及以上难度关卡可获得星盘经验，轮回星盘效果末法时代、轮回时代同时生效。
3. 优化了轮回时代关卡，第一层初始节点现固定为奇遇节点。
4.新增末法时代【罗刹界】【修罗界】【灭世界】的主线任务。
5.新增了主角成长系列任务【强者之路】，让玩家在成长过程中体验全新挑战。
6.优化了【初入鬼方】称号、【富甲天下】称号和【招财进宝】头饰的效果，现在无需穿戴即可生效。
7.为提升关卡内的游戏体验，我们缩短了六道试炼关卡自动前往下一层的时间。
8.为方便玩家中途撤离六道试炼关卡，现已在关卡中新增逃离按钮（中途撤离将按失败撤离进行结算）。
9.提高了关卡内可以获取的银币上限。
10.优化了掉落筛选功能，玩家退游戏后重新上线时，掉落筛选配置将保持之前的设置。
11.优化了掉落筛选功能，增加名匠筛选来过滤非名匠装备。

战斗相关：

1. 提升了所有类型的伤害加成上限为1000%，提升所有类型的穿透效果上限为200%。

[/h3]

道具优化：

1. 新增了【冥府】系列装备专用精修道具：【冥府修复锤】，可在市集铁匠铺生产获得。

2. 帮会玉佩的经验获取已优化，角色等级过高时也能正常获得经验。

3. 优化了材料仓库中道具的显示排序方式。

[/h3]

其他优化：

1.优化了【三丰附体】【七公附体】【内劲澎湃】【劲如泉涌】【街溜子】特性出现的概率。当角色拥有【纯阳血脉】时，【三丰附体】出现的概率更高；拥有【街溜子】时，【七公附体】的出现概率更高；而拥有【内劲浑厚】时，【内劲澎湃】和【劲如泉涌】的出现概率更高。

2.黑市商人”哈桑”新增了六道轮回旗的兑换功能，玩家可使用一定数量的日月精华丸进行兑换。

3.市集商人”阿依帕夏”处的精炼迁移功能现新增了【冥府】系列装备之间的精炼迁移功能。

4.市集商人”一荤”去除了部分冗余的可用糖葫芦兑换的时装。(通天阁有相同兑换内容）

5.帮会“西域商人”新增出售【帮会玉佩残片】可用三枚残片在市集黑市商人“哈桑”处花费188金锭兑换一枚25级玉佩。

6.精炼与强化投资任务中的橙色品质描述已调整为橙色及以上品质。

[/h3]

修复内容：

重要修复：

1.修复了关卡内Bot造成的伤害异常的问题。

2.修复了貂蝉翻牌获得的金锭奖励在结算界面不显示的问题。

3.修复了市集商人“阿依帕夏”处精炼迁移无法使用的问题，并更新了精炼迁移的文案，使描述更加清晰易懂。

4.修复了市集商人”通天儿”处的大圣自选兑换，显示异常的问题。

5.修复了末法时代节点重置金锭消耗错误的问题。

6.修复了轮回时代概率出现报错节点的问题。

7.修复了轮回时代部分轮回BUFF效果异常的问题。

8.修复了轮回时代事件”陨石坑”中没有出现矿的问题。

9.修复了轮回时代星盘的六维加成无法突破上限的问题。

10.修复了轮回时代部分星盘效果不回退的问题。

11.修复了部分饰品无法使用造物箱重铸词条的问题。

12.修复了日月三才特性的驻客进入关卡死亡后可能失效的问题。

13.修复了挂饰的命理词缀即使没有对应特性在客栈中也会显示生效的问题。

14.修复了宝石置换有次数上限的问题。

15.修复了祖传武器激活任意命理效果异常的问题。

[/h3]

技能相关：

1.修复了菩提天赋不破金刚敌方BUFF没有显示的问题。

2.修复了丐帮【棒开八荒】无法触发【七大圣】暴击叠层的问题。

3.修复了丐帮【棒开八荒】无法触发驻客命理特性的问题。

4.修复了丐帮【棒开八荒】无法触发灼烧的问题。

[/h3]

道具相关：

1.修复了饰品装备无法进行重铸的问题。

2.修复了饰品装备进行重铸时，词条变更显示异常的问题。

3.修复了大柜子[绑]可以被快捷键丢弃的问题。

4.修复了装备修复锤二次提示文本描述不清晰的问题。

[/h3]

其他修复：

1.修复了通关六道【怨】不计入每日任务的问题。

2.修复了六道试炼排行榜查看信息点击报错的问题。

3.修复了帮会头衔效果加成描述错误的问题。

4.修复了市集商人”通天儿”遗物道具出售都显示为0的问题。

5.修复了市集商人”通天儿”道具没有刷新的问题。

6.修复了市集商人”一荤”时装兑换商店无法出售时装的问题。

7.修复了特殊仓库悬浮文本中传承类型错误的问题。

8.修复了驻客1级无法进入关卡的问题。

9.修复了师徒组队任务无法完成的问题。

[/h3]

Jan 9

Update 1.0.4

Chocolate Factory Simulator - Games Incubator_Team

Dear Chocolatiers 🍫

We would like to thank everyone again for the positive reception of the launch of our game! ❤️‍🔥

We do know that the launch has not been without any issues and thanks to your numerous feedback we’ve managed to react quickly and precisely! Along with our sincere thanks we’re releasing a big patch addressing many of the reported issues. We’re happy to have such a wholesome community and we hope you’ll stay with us and together we’ll keep creating a truly amazing game! 💪

Fixes are dedicated to the full game version, prologue or both 👇

📝CHANGES AND ADDITIONS:

[All] Robot Nougat throwing items into the trash at the player's command will no longer trigger the confirmation window
[All] The cooling rate in bowls and pots has been increased by about 40%, which means the cooling of of ingredients and mixtures is now faster
[All] Slightly reduced the amount of motion blur, so the image should no longer blur as much during movement
[All] Fixed an issue that prevented the production of "Refined" quality chocolate using the Melanger
[Full] The recipe for caramel no longer suggests it can be made using the Melanger – this is not possible because caramel requires temperatures that the Melanger cannot achieve, so it must be prepared in a pot.
[Full] Adjusted the incorrect sizes of colliders and holograms for smaller ingredient packages (for example salt and lemon zest).
[Full] The Tempering Machine now correctly improves the quality of all chocolates when tempered at power levels above "Optimal."
[Full] The Encyclopedia page about replacing molds in the Press now displays correctly.

🐞BUG FIXES:

[All] The "How to make it?" section (detailing machine/container requirements, temperatures, etc.) for recipes was not very visible on the recipe page. We've made it more prominent to ensure it stands out.
[All] Mission-related orders were not adequately marked, leading to situations where players activated the wrong order (e.g., an order from the Chocolate Critics instead of Mr. Hawk, which appears after installing the robot's hand). We’ve added an appropriate indicator: mission orders now have a blue exclamation mark on a blue background, making them impossible to miss.
[Full] Changed the way chocolate quality is updated during tempering. From now on, the quality change can occur only once: either during the first tempering or when the chocolate is tempered again, but only if its current quality is no higher than "Basic." It is no longer possible to repeatedly increase the quality of chocolate in the tempering machine to easily achieve the maximum possible quality.

Have fun!
Chocolate Factory Simulator Team