Demo Update 0.9.5: New Card Screens, Fair Warnings, Meaner Wardens

"CHAOS terms accepted. No refunds. I am going to enjoy this." — The Tower

Everything since 0.9.4 in one update. The three big ones first: new card screens, a game that tells you the move the moment you need it, and Wardens that hit as hard as the difficulty you picked.

NEW CARD SCREENS Level-up, the ult pick, the free reward and the market now use new stone-tablet screens.

• Every card on a screen uses the same text size. On the level-up screen no text is cut off: checked in all 15 languages, at all three text sizes, solo and duo.
• Your pick is easy to follow: corner brackets in your color slide between the cards, the highlighted card lifts and the rest dim.
• While you choose, a band along the bottom shows your HP and your build.
• In duo, the cards sit as compact tiles on your half, and the full text of the highlighted card opens in a panel below.
• Card chips say where a card leads: "1/3 → ARMOR GOLEM" for a set, "2/5 → FUSE FIST" for an effect, "7/10 → ECHO II" once you have the transformation.
• Weapon cards compare against the weaker weapon you hold ("vs BOW …") instead of the CLUB.

THE GAME TELLS YOU THE MOVE When something is about to put you down, one short line appears on your half of the screen, with your own button for the move. It shows up when it matters and stays rare: cues have cooldowns and per-run limits, and there's a gap between them.

• Standing in a Warden's red ring: RED RING — DASH OUT.
• A Warden close to enraging while you're in reach: ABOUT TO ENRAGE — BACK OFF. Its HP bar has a notch where it enrages. The notch pulses red as the bar gets close, and the bar reads ENRAGED after.
• Fairer: the enrage blast now shows a red warning ring before it hits. It used to land instantly.
• Hitting a shield-bearer from the front: SHIELD IN FRONT — HIT IT FROM BEHIND.
• An elite with a pink diamond healing the crowd or the Warden: PINK DIAMOND HEALS THEM — KILL IT FIRST.
• Next to an unused altar: ALTAR — HEAL + BLESSING.
• On your last life: LAST LIFE — the next wipe ends the run. Your last heart pulses too.
• When THE HASTY (one of the Tower's Bargains) opens the gate early: GATE OPEN EARLY — leave now and you skip this floor's rewards. Its 40-second timer now only counts during the fight. Before, if a card screen was open at 40 seconds, the gate never opened that floor.

WHEN YOUR PARTNER IS DOWN The partner-down alert now names the move that fits the moment:

• SLAM ON YOU — DASH OUT, if a red ring lands on you while you revive.
• WARDEN ON THEM — DRAG THEM AWAY. Hold INTERACT and walk. The revive keeps filling while you drag, and a downed body can't be hurt.
• REVIVING — STAY CLOSE, with a progress bar. Walking is fine.
• If your partner goes down off-screen, an arrow marked P1 or P2 points to them from the edge of your half, and their compass mark blinks red.
• The beacon over a downed player follows them while they're dragged. Its ring shrinks and turns gold as the revive fills.
• The first-revive lesson is rewritten: "stay close to revive them (walking is fine). Both down = a life lost." The old text told you to stand still to revive, which is the losing move under a slam.

WHEN YOU LOSE

• The defeat card says what you keep: build & level kept · the floor restarts.
• When the game knows what downed you, it adds one tip: a slam, a red ring, a revive under a slam, an enrage or a charge. For example: "A line on the floor = a charge. Step aside or jump it."
• Lessons now end once you've actually done the move. The Tower's event lines (like its warning before a Warden floor) no longer get swallowed by its floor-entry line.

DIFFICULTY: HARDER, AND HONEST ABOUT IT On CHAOS, Wardens went down before they could show their worst, and NORMAL didn't bite. Wardens now get their own numbers on every difficulty.

• Warden HP up to floor 15: EASY ×0.85, NORMAL ×1.1, HARD ×1.25, CHAOS ×1.45, easing to ×0.85 / ×1.05 / ×1.1 / ×1.2 by floor 25. The floor-15 Warden carries copies of your weapons and already scales with your build, so it stays at ×1.15 at most. In 0.9.4 a CHAOS Warden had the same HP as a NORMAL one.
• The harder the difficulty, the earlier a Warden enrages: at 35% / 40% / 45% / 55% HP. On CHAOS it fights the last 55% of its HP enraged.
• Reinforcement waves during a Warden fight: 1 / 2 / 3 / 3. It used to be 2 on every difficulty.
• Signature attacks come faster on NORMAL, HARD and CHAOS, and Wardens now move at your difficulty's horde speed.
• NORMAL bites: horde damage ×1.1 from floor 2 (floor 1 is still the tutorial), Warden damage ×1.1, and slightly shorter attack warnings.
• HARD and CHAOS lower the caps on armor and dodge. You'll only feel it if your build already reaches the cap.
• EASY is gentler: fewer elites (the lower elite rate now actually applies), less Warden HP, one reinforcement wave and slower Wardens.
• The CHAOS note shows the numbers the game really uses, in all 15 languages: horde ×2, damage ×1.6, gold ×2, champions ×2, elites ×2.5. The old note said ×1.75 and ×1.4.

TRANSFORMATIONS NEVER CAP, AND NOW THEY FUSE

• Five copies of an effect card still make a transformation: STORM RING → LIGHTNING ROD, BLAST FIST → FUSE FIST, VAMPIRE → BLOOD WEB, THORNS → THORN GARDEN, EAGLE EYE → ECHO.
• New: every 5 more copies is a new rank (II, III …), with no cap, and effect cards stay in the deck. Ranks add more rods, more bounces, longer bomb chains, a wider web and more thorns. Past the last visible step, each rank adds +25% damage.
• Each rank gets a TRANSFORMATION LEVEL UP banner, and the Tower has opinions about it.
• Two different transformations now fuse: each one's trigger sets off a small burst of the other. There are 10 named fusions, like STORM ECHO, BLOOD BOMB and SHRAPNEL.
• Solo, you fuse your own two. In co-op, your partner's transformations count too, as long as you stay within 9 m of each other.
• The first transformation can't come before floor 5, so at the earliest it lands with the first Warden. Reach 4 of 5 before then and the Tower tells you why the fifth isn't coming yet.

SEE YOUR BUILD

• The pause screen shows your build as a skill tree beside the menu, one per player in duo: 4 set paths and 5 transformation paths, with an icon on every node you've taken.
• Pause › DETAILS lists your transformations (rank, what it does, what the next rank adds), then fusions, synergies and items, in full sentences.
• Every item, augment, pact, transformation, rank, synergy, ult, weapon and fusion description now says what it does, with its numbers, in all 15 languages. 22 cards whose description disagreed with their own stat line now agree.
• The BUILD panel shows penalties in red. Cards with two stats read ◈ COMBO. The HP card is now called BREASTPLATE, so ARMOR only ever means damage reduction.

LOOK AND FEEL

• Every flat effect has been redrawn: ults, rings, lightning, blasts, the shield, level-up, dash, the down beacon, flames and light shafts. Lightning zig-zags, rings break into arcs, and fades burn away. Attack warnings were left as they were on purpose, so they stay easy to read.
• New BRIGHTNESS setting in Settings, 80–150%. 100% is the look you know. It changes the 3D scene only, never the HUD.
• The gamepad no longer rumbles on every hit, shot and dash. It vibrates only for moments you also see on screen: the door, a player going down, low HP, a heavy hit, a Warden arriving, your ult, a transformation banner and an altar blessing.
• A new LOW HP! warning appears below 30% HP, with a heartbeat pulse.

FIXES

• No more "Not Responding" on first launch. On a fresh install the window could hang for about 9 seconds; the longest pause is now about 2.
• Japanese and Chinese text now wraps in the released game. In 0.9.4 long lines never broke.
• Pausing on the defeat card no longer costs extra lives. A floor cleared while everyone is down no longer gets stuck at the gate.
• Saves keep their word: Pause › MAIN MENU saves the climb and returns to the title. Lives you spent stay spent after you quit. Waiting level-up cards and the Tower's Bargain come back with CONTINUE. Once the gate opens, CONTINUE starts you on the next floor.
• Co-op: a partner who was down when the Warden fell now stands up and still picks their ult and reward. On one shared keyboard, ESC no longer closes both markets. Unplugging a pad keeps every pad with its player.
• In duo, a level-up waits up to 4 seconds for your partner's, so if you both level close together you pick in the same pause. Levels in duo need a little more XP (×1.15).
• PlayStation pads show ×○□△ and L1 R1 L2 R2 prompts (with Steam Input on, the game sees an Xbox pad and shows Xbox names). P2's prompts also name the keys that work without a numpad.
• Offers follow your build: once you have 2 copies of an effect, offers lean toward it. Floor 1 never offers cursed cards. Your very first climb has no Tower's Bargain and fewer card screens on floor 1. Market prices now rise by 5 per floor (was 3), so the market makes you choose.
• BLAST FIST on a ranged weapon explodes on the enemy you aimed at. Range bonuses make shots fly farther. THUNDER GOD's strikes now mostly land on living enemies. METEOR RAIN, BLACK HOLE and thunder kills count for the player who cast them.
• The first launch uses your system language, and the mouse wheel scrolls lists on the title screen.
• The game file is about 11% smaller (306 → 272 MB) and has its own icon.

DEMO

• Demo climbs now have their own save slot, so a demo climb can never overwrite a full-game climb later. Records and medals stay shared with the full game on the same PC, and a climb you started in 0.9.4 carries over.
• New line when the Tower beats you: "The tower kept you. Climb again — and wishlist TOWERMOUTH for the rest of me." The old line read as if wishlisting was needed to try again. It never was.
• CONTINUE no longer shows for a demo climb that's already finished.

The demo is still floors 1–25: all of COLD, the first five floors of UNCANNY and five Wardens, solo or 2-player split-screen. Your records, medals and settings carry over.

See you at Steam Next Fest, October 19–26. If you want the rest of the tower, wishlist TOWERMOUTH.

"Stay close, you two. It is disgusting. It works." — The Tower