Howdy, all.

I've made quite a few big strides forward since the last update for To Ash and Ember. Don't have a huge amount of time to write it up today so I'll summarize!

Map Screen is Done(ish, for now)

And I'm moving on to other parts of the project. With this iteration on the map, I've finally introduced a feature I felt sorely missing from the previous version of To Ash and Ember: Resource-management. Moving from Location to Location now costs time -- which costs Terror. The further away a location is from where you are, the more time it takes to investigate it. Sublocations of a Location you're in take only 1 tick of time to investigate.

Additionally, The City is now as foggy as I keep describing it in the map overview and the encroaching terror will slowly fill The City with dark energies only those gifted by Prophecy can see as the hour of the fated resurrection comes closer and closer to passing.

Visuals still not final, but are much improved.

Death and Failure are an Option

I've finished hooking up the mechanics for death and dying. Should you drop, you'll get yanked to the Hospital and can either spend precious time and Funds gaining a full recovery or fighting your way out of it with only a partial heal as the custodians do their best to keep you bed bound until healed completely. Wounds and Madness are still not in yet -- but that's because Conditions aren't in yet. Those'll be coming in once I finish up Dungeons. Speaking of which-!

To Divine in Dungeons

A new mechanic I've added in, bowing to the Investigator's gift of Prophecy, is to give you a limited stock of Divination attempts on cards within the Dungeon.

When you enter a Dungeon for the first time, you're brought to the dungeon setup screen (in most cases; the Adversaries will not allow you to change their decks so long as they are protected against Predetermination when you're off to Confront them). Each Dungeon has requirements for their deck, but so long as you play within those bounds you can stack the odds in your favor for more favorable draws or opponents that work better with your Investigator's skillset and allies.

Once finished, you'll be taken to the Dungeon proper and placed at its Entrance. Your shadowy surroundings may look similar to this:

You may wonder 'but where would I find an exit to this place', presuming you cannot go back the way you came (and, indeed, often you won't be able to until some sort of task has been accomplished). But you need not blindly grasp into the darkness -- you have Divination on your side, after all.

Instead of moving to a card to reveal it, you can opt to Divine it instead. Doing so takes a Turn (time passes in the Dungeon as it does on the surface). You attempt a Mystique check against the card that's drawn your curiosity and, should it be successful, you may reveal it without even having to encounter it.

Much of the things that can happen to you in a Dungeon are up and running at this point. I just need to get a custom handler in for Rest and Loot, majorly. All the others are in at this time. Once that's done I'll be refocusing back to the Confrontation portion of the game as I try to liven things up with Conditions, Effects, Events, and the ability for certain foes to summon cards to their side of the board and target your cards with their own Effects and Events.

Officially on SubscribeStar!

Finally, I'm happy to announce the SubscribeStar profile is fully up and running. Check it out if you'd like to support the project and occassionally get more behind-the-scenes content, wallpaper-scale art, and so on. Of course, Wishlisting on Steam would also help the project out a lot!

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