I've finally finished work with the new starting level! It's been a lot of work, you can tell by the amount of chocolate wrapping in my recycle bin.

(Minimap for the crypt level)

To celebrate this I wanted to highlight some important features we've finished recently:

• A peek at the starting point of the new plot: It starts simple enough, your brother Robert has sent you a letter asking you to retrieve a highly valuable magical object from these ruins. After fighting your way through undead to get the object, you find the ancient king still guarding it. Turns out, he's been guarding the artifact because it's too dangerous, too powerful to fall into wrong hands.
• Music: Each map will have a set of area specific tunes composed by our talented friend Gareth Meek. There are also half a dozen tracks to play in combat. It's incredible how much it has added depth to the world!
• Minimap: The image you see above is the minimap for the crypt area. Today I finished adding the level editor button that can create a 1024x1024 texture to contain the minimap. It works wonders, and will be very handy also for modders who want to use the minimap option in the game!
• Improved combat: The combat has been changed from the hack and slash style present in the preview into a more strategic style. You can use various recharging combat skills to take advantage of your opponent's weaknesses. You will learn combat skills by leveling up, and from certain special quests.
• Randomized items and monsters: To add a bit variation to gameplay, many items and monsters are taken from a predefined random set. It's an easy way to add some replayability into the game, which is important to me since I play each map hundreds of times.
• New graphical effects: We've got completely new particle effects, roofs, sun shadows and more!

PS. I've updated the website theme a bit to make it load faster. According to my tests, it's dropped to a quarter of what it used to be, especially if you're on a slow connection.

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