Alpha Version 0.0.292 — UI, Battle Presentation, Crafting, and Pebble Mischief
Alpha Version 0.0.292 is now available.
This is one of the bigger system-focused updates so far. A lot of this patch was about cleaning up old foundations, making the UI more consistent, and expanding the crafting/food systems into something closer to their final shape.
I was originally considering getting the Steam page started soon, but that will have to wait until next month because of the $100 Steam Direct fee. For now, the itch.io alpha will continue to be the main place to follow and play the game.
Battle Presentation Updates
Battle visuals received a major redesign.
Enemies now appear as free-standing battlefield sprites instead of being boxed into a rigid display. Enemy formations are more flexible, defeated enemies now vanish from the visible battlefield, and magic enemy targets can be selected by clicking enemy avatars directly.
This should make battles feel more like actual encounters and less like fighting a spreadsheet.
This update also fixes several battle display issues, including enemy names flashing during quick target clicks and enemy avatars flickering when the target display refreshes.
UI and Screen Redesigns
A lot of UI work happened in this version.
All window and overlay surfaces have been aligned with the Settings-managed UI theme system. This means the game’s windows should now follow the selected theme more consistently.
The Status, Inventory, and Equipment screens were also redesigned.
The Status screen now uses a cleaner RPG-style selected-character panel. Current Condition has been changed from large progress bars into compact stat rows, and the Current Condition, Base Stats, and Combat / Derived Stats sections now stack vertically in a cleaner single-column layout.
The Inventory screen now has clearer owner selection, category tabs, separated quantities, structured item details, and equipment actions.
The Equipment screen now has clearer party selection, slot details, stat summaries, and item comparisons.
Central’s avatar has also been added to objective cutscenes.
Cooking, Fullness, and Meal Buffs
Cooking has expanded heavily in this update.
New Cooking Level 12–16 recipes have been added, including seasoned meat, meat flatbread, seasoned flatbread, seasoned cheese, prepared meat, mayonnaise, croutons, syrup, fruit juice, flavored syrup, and pancake breakfasts.
Eggs, olive oil, and leavening have also been added as cooking ingredients through item-shop stock and daily kitchen pickups.
Bethia can now teach Juicing etiquette, which unlocks fruit juice and flavored syrup cooking recipes.
This version also adds a new fullness system. Food now manages hunger more properly without replacing medicine or MP recovery items. Characters can become Stuffed, which blocks additional cooked food use until fullness drops. Puke events now clear the affected character’s fullness.
Food hunger restoration has also been normalized so formula-priced food restores hunger based on its HP and MP restoration values. Authored food item stats were updated to match this formula.
Pancake-line meals now have internal meal-buff tracking with generic status display, expiration, vomiting cleanup, and save/load support.
Crafting Expansion
Several major crafting systems were expanded or added.
Long Grass gathering has been added, along with Weaving recipes, grass equipment, and Deconstruction crafting.
Elemental crystal inventory items have been added, including natural room spawning and battle-area movement spawning support.
Enchanting has also been added. Players can craft runes using focus materials, apply runes to equipped gear, remove enchantments, and deconstruct enchanted gear.
Alchemy has been added with Bitter Root gathering, salve refinement recipes, alchemy level persistence, Cellulose Gum, Healing Tonic Vials, and Regeneration Tonic Vials.
Regeneration now follows source-aware overwrite rules, so item, trait, enchantment, and magic regeneration effects can be handled more cleanly.
Tom and Mickey also now react when Zenas crafts Healing Tonic Vials, including Central log reactions when they reject selling Zenas’s tonics.
Shared Inventory Migration
The game has been migrated to one shared party inventory.
Items now stack up to 99, and version 3 save migration has been added. Legacy party-member inventory leftovers were cleaned up so active gameplay now uses the shared inventory system consistently.
This was a major structural change, but it should make inventory management much cleaner going forward.
Dev Mode Tools
Dev mode received two new party actions.
There is now a dev action for joining eligible companions from anywhere, and another dev action for leveling all party-capable members through the normal leveling pipeline.
Automatic need increases are also suppressed in dev mode.
These tools should make testing much easier as the game keeps growing.
Pebble Mischief
Pebbles have been added as a common outdoor gathering item.
They can be used as reusable thrown items in battle with their own damage behavior, so any character can throw them with roughly similar results.
Outside battle, Pebbles now have Inventory choices for playing with them, tossing them, or being mean and throwing them at a target. Mean throws have small responsibility and corruption consequences.
Throwing a Pebble at a guard has a much harsher reaction, including guard-pass revocation and short grounding.
In other words: yes, the game now lets Zenas get in trouble for throwing rocks at guards.
Fixes
Objective One’s sturdy-stick permission flow has been fixed so Zenas is not forced into the south gate before asking Orion or Bethia.
Battle item screen layering has also been fixed so enemy sprites stay behind the item panel.
Closing Notes
Alpha 0.0.292 is a big foundation update.
The UI is cleaner, battle presentation is more readable, food has a clearer role, crafting has expanded, and the inventory system is now much closer to the structure I want for the rest of development.
The next major goal is still building toward the level 10 areas and boss while continuing to clean up the systems that support the rest of the game
Play it here: