Hi contenders!

The new demo version of Chains on Sand is now live!
We want to be clear: This demo is not a fully representative slice of the finished game, but it is our way of opening up the project for real feedback—like an “Early Access,” but free and focused on core combat and systems. We don’t want to charge for feedback, but we do want your honest thoughts and bug reports!

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Chains on Sand is a tactical arena roguelike where every choice matters—from building your fighter to surviving brutal battles. The full version will have much more content, variety, and polish, but we’re opening up the core now to collect your experiences and impressions. The game is far from done, and what you play here is just the beginning.

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• Tactical Arena Combat with stat-driven mechanics, injury, stamina, and active defense.

• Character Creation with multiple races, traits, skills, and equipment choices.

• Loot, Quality & Durability: Equipment can be found, looted, equipped, and has quality and durability that actually matter.

• Special Bosses & Legacy Bosses:

  • The demo features early versions of a "bosses" system, and the start of the legacy boss system—where common enemies that defeat the players are "promoted" and can come back in later runs.

  • These systems will be massively expanded in the full game, with more unique boss personalities and more ways for your own legacy to shape future runs.

• Highscore, Progression, and Popularity:

  • Survive, climb the ranks, and see your name in the arena’s records.

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• Major bugfixes to stat/race systems—Orc and Goblin bonuses are now consistent.

• Extra Attack feat is working.

• Interface to show ammount of movement and attacks left before the end of the turn.

• Hit location selection by mouse improved (locks in like keyboard).

• Trait/XP exploit bugs fixed; secondary stats always update.

• Weapon and spell visuals polished—sprites now point the right direction.

• Visuals and paperdoll updates for character and equipment in all screens.

• Improved AI behavior - expect smarter enemies.

• Some minor comestic polishing.

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• The demo is NOT the full game.

  • No story content, limited bosses, and some unfinished features.

  • Legacy and special boss systems are only lightly touched on here—the finished game will have a much deeper, more “persistent world” feeling where your victories (or defeats) echo for future players.

• Saving/loading is experimental: Not fully implemented yet.

• Bugs or confusion? Please let us know! Steam forums, Discord, or wherever you prefer.

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We believe the best games are built with the community. If you enjoy deep tactical combat, brutal choices, and leaving your mark on the arena, give the demo a try and tell us what you think. We’re listening!

Chains on Sand will only get better with your input—
Wishlist, play, share, and let us know where you want the arena to go!

Our Discord: https://discord.gg/w89ERG8X4t

Unlighted's 30th day update is here! This update improved the overall game performance, fixed several minor bugs and enabled controller support ;)

General update listing:

• Removed some Memory Leaks that were slowing down the game performance.

• Improved camera settings to maintain quality and improve performance.

• Added several light guides and visual elements to improve the UX after appearing in certain places in the final path of the Umbral world.

• Fixed multiple minor gameplay bugs.

• Fixed multiple minor UI bugs.

• Compatibility with controllers!

As requested by "onasintetica", Catalan has been added to the list of supported languages.

After some reviews and constructive feedback, I decided to slightly lower the starting science costs: Total Damage now costs 2, and Click Damage costs 3. This should make early progression smoother and help players reach higher levels more easily.

Please remember I'm a solo developer, but I’ll do my best to keep the game updated and fun for everyone supporting my journey as an indie dev.

Thanks so much for all the support!
You can connect with me on X:
👉 https://x.com/RaulVRamos

Cheers,
ColmilloEstelar

This update brings a full audio overhaul to the game!

-Vehicle and footstep sounds have been completely reworked and fixed for a more immersive experience.

-Drone and robot sounds have been redesigned to be smoother and less harsh on the ears.

-All other game sounds have been improved for better clarity, balance, and overall audio quality.

Put on your headphones — your ears will thank you!

Added support for new languages:

Updates/Additions:

• New class system added to game: Cosmic Cradle -> Discover character class cards by performing activities in the world (ex: saving travelers with specialized skills, mining meteorites, harvesting blue sand from the beach). Once unlocked, class cards can be crafted, this makes the class available. Selecting the character class comes at a cost but provides unique weapons, armor, spells and items. Some class cards will provide items required to progress in the game.

• Classes provide unique game play styles but the player is free to mix and match with previously selected classes to create unique builds of their own.

• Initial Class Cards: Guard, Pyro Guard, Cryo Guard, Healer, Miner, Iron Knight, Copper Knight, Gravity Knight, Cerulean Knight, Mage, Fire Mage, Ice Mage, Hunter, Bowman, Goblin warrior, Demon Hunter. Extra added for fun and experimentation (ex: cupid). Still needs work to balance and create art work.

• Starting area revamped to accommodate the new class system.

• Random Dungeon Generator updated with new feature that allows for a guided random dungeon generation to create dungeons with more structure.

• New weapons added: Ice Spear, Fire Sword, Iron Mace, Fire Mace, Ice Mace, Evil Mace.

• New sliding animation for when using a crossbow.

• Re-factored quest mechanics to maximize flexibility in quest types.

• Updated parry mechanics for maximum flexibility in how parry action is performed.

• Added several colored hoods.

• Crafting now uses ingredients directly from your bank.

I’ve completed all parts of the menu: the layout, the scene, and everything that goes with it. I really hope you’ll like it, because I truly enjoyed creating it. 😊
Now, all that’s left is to finish the scene where the game begins, and the story intro animation or video!
I’ll check in again soon – until then, take care of yourselves.

With respect,
AKNA 🎮

Changelog V.1.4.1:

>Improved National Flags Notebook Layout
>Fixed Punishment Timer Decreasing during Pause Mode
>Nerfed National Flags Final Chase
>Fixed Angelica's door breaking on Puss Mode in National Flags
>Fixed Teleporter in National Flags
>You can no longer use Time Freezer on National Flags Final Chase

🌱 A Little Thank You – New Demo Update & Creative Mode! 🐉

Hey everyone,

Last year, I was laid off from AAA. With the job market looking grim, I decided to take a leap of faith—and after just 90 days of development, Dragon Sprouts launched into Early Access earlier this month.

What’s blown me away is you. The support, feedback, and kindness I’ve received has meant the world to me.

I know it takes a special kind of trust to support a game this early in development, especially when so many early access projects never quite make it. I wanted to say thank you in the best way I can right now.

✨ So here’s what’s new:

• The full Early Access test map is now available in the free demo.
  Even if you’re just checking things out, you’ll get a better look at where the game’s heading.

• A new Free Build / Creative Mode has been added to the full game!
  Craft your dream sanctuary without limits, just you and your dragons.

It’s a small gesture, but I hope it shows how much your support means—and gives you a little something extra to enjoy while I keep building Dragon Sprouts into the cozy magical world it’s meant to be.

With all my heart—thank you.

💖 – Morgan

 

NOTE: This version is only available on the EXPERIMENTAL betas. You need to manually switch to it in Steam.
Right Click on Fireworks Mania -> Properties -> Betas -> "Experimental" in dropdown. To go back to the normal version, change it to "None".

As mentioned previously, I got a bit sidetracked while working on the upcoming firing system.
So I ended up making some pretty major changes to how the mortar/shell system work.
As a player it will work very much like before, but it should performance better and work more solid now.

IMPORTANT NOTE: The major performance benefits will not work for mortars coming from mods, until the mod have been updated. I already worked with Amnestey to get all his mortars updated, however, he can not release that version to the workshop until this version is released.
So here on EXPERIMENTAL, Amnesteys and other modders mortars should still work, but perform more or less as they use to.

For the above reason, it will also be a bit hard for you guys to test things are working - I know, sorry.

However, I just wanted you guys to have a chance to test the version out, see if things work as they use to, or better, in the cases mentioned in the changelog below.

### Changed

- Refactored various scripts and logic in relation to Mortars. In general a big performance boost, but logic around how "other items" is put into a mortar have been changed. Once you loaded in a shell that fits the mortar, so it's loaded properly, you can put more items/objects into the mortar. However, it have to be something you spawn and the size of the object that to roughly fit the size of the mortar. In general it should work pretty much as before, just perform better and mortars being easier to work with in relation to physics. NOTE TO MOD CREATORS THAT HAVE CREATED MORTARS: I will post a video shortly, showing what you need to do to your mortars to optimize them. Your mortars should work fine in this version, but to really get the performance boost, you need to remove some colliders, which I will show in that video. Keep an eye on my YT channel :)

- Shells now dynamically follow the mortar during the "load into mortar" animation

- Changed the UI text showing info about the object you look at, so the font does not auto size anymore. It looked weird in some cases of mortars and shells as they can have long names. Now it does not jump up and down in font size

- Optimized the "PickUp" logic to work more stable

- Updated translations from https://crowdin.com/project/fireworks-mania

### Fixed

- Fixed background videos not playing on SteamDeck

YouTube | Twitch | Twitter | Discord

- Happy testing, enjoy! 🤓🕺

https://store.steampowered.com/app/1079260/Fireworks_Mania__An_Explosive_Simulator/