It's Finally Done!
I still remember the first day I opened up this new tower defense project. I thought to myself...this is my first indie game, so I should keep the scope under control and try to finish it in a few months. A year at most!
And, well...somehow it’s been almost 4 years now 😆.
Thank you so much for supporting the game throughout Early Access!
Especially those of you who have been here since the very first demo. When I first started making the game, I never imagined there would be such a big group of players willing to help test it, recommend it everywhere, and give me so many suggestions for improving the game with every update. Hundreds of Youtubers and streamers also introduced the game to even more people. Every one of you played a part in making Emberward what it is today, and I really appreciate all the help. I’ve heard plenty of players talk about Early Access games they regretted buying, so I tried really hard to make this feel more like I was steadily delivering everything planned while also adding new toys along the way. I hope you’re happy with both the Early Access journey and how the game has grown so far. And if you have any thoughts, please let me know!
As for the new fifth region, Void Depths...honestly, it was harder to make than the previous four regions COMBINED. Sealed Citadel was already designed to be the final area, so figuring out how to make something even more challenging without making it feel unfair burned a lot of my brain cells. But I think the final result is really fun! It adds lots of new mechanics and brings the focus back to what Emberward was all about: maze building. This time, simply using blocks to build walls won’t be enough. You’ll need to make good use of different mechanics and portals to strengthen your maze, and in some places you may even have to think outside the box to find the longest possible route for the monsters. I also finally got to add a few ideas that had been sitting in my head for a very long time. Anyway, you’ll see when you play it :P
By the way, a lot of people have also been asking about the plans after 1.0. I put that section at the very end of this post. (And if you don't want to read it: yes, the game will keep getting updates after 1.0!)
Lastly, since it's the 1.0 launch, I have to say: please keep recommending the game to friends, YouTubers, and streamers who might enjoy Emberward! Honestly, I have absolutely no idea what will happen after the 1.0 launch, and my biggest worry is that the game will just disappear off everyone’s radar right away 😆. Some players have suggested making a Supporter Pack, but... I genuinely don’t know what I could put in it. The game doesn’t have a soundtrack or an art book, and simply adding something like a “Golden Sniper Tower skin” feels kind of weird, so...yeah, I decided not to. Please just recommend the game to someone if you have the chance. That will help it far more than buying a Supporter Pack!
That’s all! Once again, thank you for all your support and help along the way! I hope you enjoy everything new in 1.0!
- Refi
TL;DR for anyone who wants to get straight into the game:
New languages: Korean, French, German, Italian, Polish, Brazilian Portuguese, Spanish, and Russian.
New area unlocked: Void Depths
15 new achievements
2 new towers: Volcano Tower and Sentry Tower.
Main menu background system + block skin system.
Improvements to the drawing tool and damage chart.
Lots of adjustments to towers, relics, and characters.
Added “Dopamine Mode” to the Settings menu.
Game Languages
New languages: Korean, French, German, Italian, Polish, Brazilian Portuguese, Spanish, and Russian.
The game only checks your Steam language the first time you launch it, so if you’ve played before, remember to change the language in the Settings menu!
Adventure Mode
After making it through Sealed Citadel, you will enter a forgotten dungeon. Over the course of centuries, the dungeon has been slowly consumed by the Void. Mutated monsters roam everywhere, alongside crystals filled with mysterious energy. You’ll need to use the surrounding void zones, portals, and all kinds of support items borrowed from the Academy to organize your defenses, find the source of the corruption deep in the abyss, and defeat it!
New region: Void Depths
New flame: Void Flame (Unlocked after clearing Void Depths on Normal difficulty or higher)
Please note: Special Event Characters and Infernal Shards are both unlocked after completing the entire game. So if you unlocked them during Early Access, they will temporarily become unavailable now that the new area has been added. Clear Void Depths on any difficulty and they'll be available again!
Achievements
Added 15 achievements (Exactly 100 now!)
Void Depths Traveler: Clear Void Depths on Casual difficulty or higher.
Void Depths Explorer: Clear Void Depths on Normal difficulty or higher.
Void Depths Pioneer: Clear Void Depths on Heroic difficulty.
Void Depths Conqueror: Clear Void Depths on Heroic difficulty with Infernal Shard Level 24 without using a Special Event Character.
Gift Defender: Survive through wave 20 at Snowridge Outpost.
Frontier Guardian: Survive through wave 20 at Wyrmfell Bridge.
It’s Over 9000!: Complete a trial at Enigma Sanctum with a score of over 9000.
Oathkeeper: On Heroic difficulty, make a pact with every element at the altar at the same time and successfully complete the pact.
All In: On Heroic difficulty, defeat the Void Depths boss before the end of round 8.
Mad Genius: Clear Void Depths on Heroic difficulty without using any talents.
Monster Express: Send a total of more than 10,000 monsters through portals in Void Depths.
The Big Five: On Normal difficulty or higher, clear a stage while the Volcano Tower, Froststorm Tower, Thunder Tower, Starfall Tower, and Cauldron Tower are all on the field at the same time.
Abyssal Foodie: Enjoy the full Academy meal during an adventure in Void Depths.
Thinking with Portals: Clear the Chaos Realm on Heroic difficulty using the Void Flame.
Emberwarder: Without using an event character, clear the Misty Forest, Bone Desert, Frost Ruins, Sealed Citadel and Void Depths on Heroic difficulty with Infernal Shard Level 24.
Game / System
Steam Trading Cards are now available!
If you’ve already played for a while, you should find some retroactively awarded cards in your inventory!
And... I know most people don’t collect these, but I spent a lot of time making them, so I wanted to show you 😆. Here’s the badge you get for completing the set!
Main menu background system
You can now unlock main menu backgrounds by clearing each area or reaching enough waves on an Endless Mode map.
There’s also a random option that displays a random unlocked background whenever you return to the main menu.
Block skin system
You can now trade spare EXP for block skins. (You don’t need to unlock all the talents first to get the block skins, but it’s HIGHLY recommended that you do!)
There are currently 12 new skins, and I’ll add more if people enjoy using them.
Ingame changes
You can now press ESC to skip a boss intro cutscene (you must have already watched the animation or defeated that boss before).
You can now use Q/E to rotate the camera.
Drawing tool: You can now use \[Ctrl+Right Click] to erase part of a line, and \[Ctrl+Shift+Left Click] to draw grid-shaped lines.
Damage chart
The damage chart button can now switch between “Show All Damage,” “Show This Round’s Damage,” and “Hide”.
In addition to tower damage, it now displays damage dealt by relics, the fire source, burning effects, and S.C.R.A.B.
Infernal Shards
Shard of Fragility - Level 3: Now reduces HP to 3 (previously 1) and no longer prevents increases to maximum HP.
Shard of Nightmares - Level 2: Werebeasts and Frost Elementals will no longer appear as large monsters from other worlds. This prevents unlucky runs from spawning too many monsters with large-area malfunction effects at once.
Dopamine Mode
Added “Dopamine Mode” to the Settings menu. Defeated monsters will burst into a huge shower of (decorative) coins!
Towers
New towers
Volcano Tower (3x3) - Fires multiple magma orbs at monsters in range! They explode on impact and have a high chance to apply burning.
Sentry Tower (1x1) - Enters Alert Mode after going without attacking for a while, then greatly increases its attack speed when a monster appears.
Removed tower
Basic Tower (it did a great job accompanying everyone through Early Access, but now it’s time to retire o7)
Tower balance changes
Here’s something I think is worth talking about!
During Early Access, players would sometimes message me and say, “Tower A has 50 DPS and Tower B has 40. Shouldn’t Tower B be buffed by 25%!?” That looks fair when you only look at the numbers, but the game has all kinds of combos. If every tower simply had the same DPS, they definitely wouldn’t be balanced in actual play. So I thought I’d take this opportunity to share how they are balanced in the game. It may not be the best way to achieve perfect balance, but I think it makes the game more fun! Most towers are designed to have one or two things they’re especially good at. For example, the Sniper Tower can stay locked onto a large monster for a long time, while the Fireball Tower can deal area damage to many groups of monsters at once. So I mainly balance each tower around the way it can deliver its greatest value under normal circumstances. I also give it some extra adjustments depending on how difficult it is to achieve that ideal situation. For example, towers with the following traits will be a little stronger than similar towers when used well:
Towers with unusual attack ranges (close range, straight-line attacks, a minimum range...)
Towers with unusual shapes
Towers that need to work with other towers or effects to reach their full potential
On the other hand, a tower with the following traits will deal a little less damage than other towers of the same type:
It works in almost any situation
It has an especially powerful effect (like the Black Hole Tower)
It doesn’t require much thought about where to build it or how to design the maze around it
The simplest example is the Missile Tower. It has an enormous range, covers 3 elements by itself, handles both single targets and groups, and can trigger some relics very effectively. Because of all that, its base numbers are a little lower than other similar towers. On the other hand, towers like the Lava Tower and Scythe Tower make you think carefully about your maze design or find ways to keep malfunction effects from interfering with them, so their base numbers are designed to be a little higher.
This round of tower changes follows the same rule. I’ve adjusted some especially strong or weak towers while trying to maintain what each one does best.
Normal-type towers
Adjusted the Charge and Fragile applied by towers whose element was changed by the Chameleon Shell relic, bringing their values in line with other Lightning/Arcane towers.
Torch Tower
Torch bounce chance: 40% → 50%
Magic Arrow Tower
Cost: 15 → 20
Laser Tower
Charge speed reduced by 20%
Dice Tower
Range: 4 → 5
Giant Dice Tower
Range: 4.5 → 5.5
Drone Tower
Red upgrade: Detection range +50% → +100%
Dart Tower
Range: 4 → 4.5
Attack speed: 1.25 → 1
Earthquake Tower
Range: 4 → 5
Damage: 8 → 10
Decimate Tower
Red upgrade: Damage +20 → +25
Landmine Tower
Damage: 30 → 35
Hammer Tower
Blue upgrade: Speed +40% → +30%
Chomp Tower
Red upgrade: Damage +20 → +30
Sniper Tower
Now has 50% base critical chance
Cost: 90 → 80
Frost Ray Tower
Damage: 6 → 5
Fan Tower
Range: 8 → 12
Electro Gate Tower
Damage: 5 → 6
Bomb Tower
Damage: 30 → 35
Red upgrade: Damage +15 → +20
Poison Tower
Damage: 25 → 35
Blue upgrade cost: 50 → 40
Slime Tower
Damage: 6 → 5
Scrap Tower
Damage: 2 → 4
Ammo: 30 → 20
Barrage Tower
Cost: 85 → 95
Bullets fired per second: 20 → 15
Boulder Tower
Red upgrade: Boulders now roll along the monsters’ path instead of in the direction they were fired.
Relics
Old relics reworked
Flash Freeze Device: When a monster first comes within 10 tiles of the fire source, immediately apply 7 stacks of Chill. While it remains in range, continuously apply 1 stack of Chill per second.
Sacrificial Pact: When the fire source is attacked and its remaining HP falls below 5, consume this relic and immediately recover up to 10 HP.
Chaos Transmuter: The number of towers transformed increases by 1 after each round.
Ember Guardian: At the start of each stage, 5 buff tiles with random effects appear within the fire source’s attack range.
Frost Venom: While a monster is poisoned, apply 1 stack of Chill per second.
Explosive Demolition: When you sell a tower during battle, create an explosion that deals damage to nearby monsters equal to 10x the gold gained from the sale.
Volatile Poison: Once every 5 seconds, when a poisoned monster is affected by Burn, it explodes, consuming half of its Poison and dealing twice that amount as Fire damage, split among monsters within 2.5 tiles. If the explosion hits another poisoned monster, it also triggers this effect.
Giant Lizard Fang: While a monster is poisoned, it gains 1% Fragile per second, up to 20% (up to 5% for bosses). Fragile resets when Poison wears off.
Lava Bucket: Dealing Fire damage has a chance to create a pool of lava on the ground, dealing damage equal to 3x the current round number per second to monsters that pass through it.
Venom Satchel: Once every 5 seconds during battle, apply the “Poison Bottle” buff to a random tower on the field that does not already have a buff card effect.
Runes
New runes
Mirror Rune: When you place a 1x1 tower on it, weaker copies appear on every other Mirror Rune.
Precision Rune: Greatly increases a tower’s critical chance and critical damage.
Upgrade Rune: Greatly reduces the cost of upgrades of the matching color.
Characters / Skills
Belloc the Pyroguard: No longer reduces the fire source’s starting HP.
Tana the Sorcerer: Buff cards gained by Tana will now appear more evenly, reducing the impact of extreme luck.
Chrono Traveler:
The time limit is now 60 seconds for the first round and 15 seconds for later rounds.
When Shard of Confusion is active, “Overcharge” now costs 3 gold.
Scrap Master
Improved S.C.R.A.B.’s movement, making it easier to control in tight spaces.
S.C.R.A.B.’s movement is no longer restricted by enemy territory.
Focus Fire skill: Now has a 5-second cooldown (previously once per round)
Other Changes
The final group of stages before a boss is now guaranteed to include either a Mini Shop or an Abandoned Forge as a clear reward.
(I saw some players suggest always placing a shop and workshop before the boss. But after testing it... knowing there would always be a shop to buy things at the end made choosing a shop earlier feel like a waste or even a punishment, which was kind of backwards. A Mini Shop/Abandoned Forge reward felt more balanced.)
The “Recover Save from Achievements” option in Settings can now also recover Estelle the Astromancer.
Added a “Show Highest Difficulty Record Only” option to the Compendium’s completion page
The Poison pact at the altar now also twists cards into strange shapes.
In Challenge Mode after clearing the game, monster speed increases are now capped at 30%, while HP growth has been increased from 25% to 30% per wave.
Clicking a tower now shows both its total damage and its damage for the current round.
When building a tower, a highlighted grid now appears underneath it so you can see its occupied tiles more clearly.
Improved the game’s UI rendering. The UI should now look clearer than in previous versions.
Improved stage loading speed. It should be a little bit faster than before!
So... What Comes After 1.0?
OK, let’s talk about what comes next!
A lot of people have been asking about this lately, so I thought it would be quicker to explain everything here at once.
During the first few days after 1.0, I’m guessing you’ll dig up all sorts of problems I never even imagined, so I’ll focus on fixing those first. Then, once things feel stable... I’m going to sleep for a week! I’ve been working 14–16 hours every day for the last three or four months, and honestly, I haven’t been feeling very well lately, so I'll take a short to recover first.
After that, I’ll go back to something similar to the old update schedule and continue making new towers, relics, and maps. I haven’t decided whether that would be frequent small updates or saving up more content for larger updates. At the same time, I’ll start working on the console ports, so I’ll probably split my work time about fifty-fifty between the two until all the console ports are finished. The biggest difference from before is that the game now has lots of languages I can’t read, so I can’t make quick changes and adjustments the way I used to. Every update or change now needs to go through the translators, which will have some impact on the workflow and update speed.
Once the console ports are all finished, the current plan is to look at how the game is doing and decide what comes next. If the game is growing steadily and has a lot of regular players, I’d like to try making a level editor so everyone can design their own stages (and I really want to know what it feels like to play brand new stages too!). But I expect a level editor would take at least 3 or 4 months to make. If I put that much time and energy into it and nobody uses it... that would be really sad, so I’ll only consider it if the game can maintain a certain level of activity. If fewer people are still playing, I’ll probably keep the same update schedule. And if the player count drops very quickly... I may have to start thinking about what game to make next 😆
So yeah, that’s roughly the plan for now.
In any case, the game won’t stop getting updates just because 1.0 is out, so don’t worry!
---
Post-Update Fixes:
(9/20)
Fixed an issue where enabling both "Auto Pause In Background" and "Stealth Mode" could cause switching windows to break hotkeys and block recall.
(9/21)
The Scythe Tower's attack effect now scales with its attack range.
Reduced the frequency of Spitopus's skill usage.
Adjusted character unlock requirements. Silas, Tiny, and Chunk are now slightly easier to unlock.
Fixed translation errors.
Fixed an issue where having multiple identical blocks could cause the wrong card to be selected when applying runes in the Workshop.
Fixed an issue where numbers on certain relic icons would not appear when entering the game.
Rapidly clicking on a character in the character selection screen will no longer cause them to grow larger. (Why would you even do that!?)
(9/22)
Added a small notification to the Drawing Tool.
Adjusted some item vfx.
Fixed an issue where the game would pause too early when entering a level in the background with "Auto Pause In Background" enabled.
Fixed an issue where Tiny could obtain blocks larger than three tiles under certain circumstances.
Fixed an issue in the Void Depths where some monsters could encounter pathfinding issues after teleporting.
Fixed an issue where pressing Ctrl+Shift+Right Click while using the Drawing Tool would clear the map.
(9/23)
More translation fixes.
Some minor UI fixes.
Fixed an issue cause by an old Unity plugin.
Fixed an issue where the "Block Harvester" achievement could unlock under incorrect conditions.
Fixed an issue in the Bone Desert boss stage where placing blocks too far forward could block the path as the stage progressed.
Fixed an issue where electricity could fail to conduct through Poison Towers or Electro Gate Towers under certain conditions.
Fixed an issue where blocks sinking into Void Zones could still display electrification effects when powered.
Fixed an issue where enemy information would display Infernal Shard enhancement descriptions when Infernal Shards were not enabled.
Fixed an issue in the Frost Ruins boss stage where the enemy information UI would not display correctly.
Fixed an issue where certain environmental objects could prevent hand card tooltips from appearing.
Fixed an issue where some error messages appears incorrectly while placing blocks.
(10/8)
Tana will now gain buff cards at the start of each turn while the Ice Pact from the Altar is active.
Fixed an issue where leaving the game mid-run could cause dishes to stop appearing in Academy chests. (for the Abyssal Foodie achievement)
Fixed an issue where the Snow Mountain block-freezing effect did not work properly in certain stages.
Fixed an issue where the percentage-based damage from the area effect triggered by destroying Poison Crystals had no damage cap.
Temporarily disabled the Voidstalker's teleport ability.
