Vampire of the Sands (now at v1.8) $

[getter77]

http://j.itch.io/vampire-of-the-sands  $4.99 Win/Mac/Linux

Extremely difficult

1 hit and you're dead.

Roguelite dungeon crawling - Discover 58 items, every last one unique, with situational uses. You must carefully manage your sparse resources in order to see your way through the dungeon.

Permadeath - An unforgiving and harsh reality. Even a single hit will send you to your grave if you are not always vigilant. Feel your blood pressure rise as you delve further and further.

Intricate skill system - Gain up to 41 skill runes as you explore the dungeons, persistent between rounds. Place carefully to synergize with your preferred playstyle, or go for unique and fun loadouts to give yourself a challenge.

Every monster is unique - There are 104 monsters. No two monsters have the same AI. You cannot get far without figuring out their intricacies.

v1.7

* Chests can no longer be forced open with weapons.
* Added visual/audial warning when souls get low ( <30 and <10 ).
* Added extra visual effect for when monsters die.
* Made store prices a bit lower, from ridiculous to possibly-affordable.
* Soul Runes now only give 1 extra soul.
* Cactuses will no longer spawn immediately next to doors.
* Soul floor-spawns on farm reduced (treasure chests amounts unchanged).
* Escape key is now mappable.
* Use Skill key is now mappable.
* Toggle Skill key is now mappable.
* To delete a key mapping, you now have to press “delete” instead of starting to map the key.
* Spawners now shake when a monster is about to pop out.
* Hitboxes of normal walls made smaller.
* Shop UI now opens upon entering shop instead of waiting until you grab/drop an item.
* Shop UI now shows how much money you have.
* Shop UI moved down, so that it doesn’t hide other UI elements.
* Door graphics made a little more obvious.
* Tutorial no longer disabled automatically because of remapping a key.
* You can no longer “switch hands” for worn armor.
* Hitting escape now pauses the game (and blanks out the screen).
* Arena now spawns more monsters at each star level.
* Added new advanced-control “kick”, to break things “for free” when both hands are full.
* Added kick animations for player.
* Added attack animations for player.
* Added controller support
* Added control buffering so that stopping on a diagonal would be less finicky.
* Added notification about what exactly you’re picking up off the ground.
* Added notification when your items are getting corroded.
* Added visual effect when Book’s pages are slowing you down.
* Fixed bug causing chaos wands to do nothing.
* Fixed bug causing large rooms to sometimes have holes in them in weird places.
* Fixed bug causing weapons to take too much damage from bonking against walls.
* Fixed bug where taking items from a chest only accepted spacebar, not bound action key.
* Fixed bug causing Skeleton Fencers to circle strafe through walls.
* Fixed bug causing saving to not work properly on systems with alternate encoding schemes.
* Fixed bug where multiple skills could be used with one key press.
* Fixed bug where a skill could be double-bound and used twice (thus always making the error sound).

Nicely out of nowhere---certainly a tension-based premise!   

[getter77]

v1.8

* Added graphical enhancements to all areas.
* Added extra pathways in the dungeon for more organic exploration.
* Added 3 named hero monsters.
* Added key-hold feature that lets you move around menus more conveniently.
* Added settings toggle for “Move Assist”, which helps you stop while facing diagonally more easily.
* Added feature that gives you a random weapon/armor and the tumble skill, if you have no runes installed.
* Added ability to quickly wear items from inventory by pressing left-attack / right-attack keys.
* Changed missiles so that they can now be destroyed by attacking them.
* Changed “dumb-flee” AI routine to be shorter, so monsters spend less time cowering at walls.
* Changed Knife to be slightly faster (was already faster than other attacks).
* Changed Sabre to now make you lunge forward.
* Changed Whip to only paralyze on first attack. A second attack will deal damage.
* Changed Shotel to pierce all armor (monsters will multiple forms will die immediately).
* Changed Cuer Hind to have a Knife instead of a Whip.
* Changed Whipmaster Hind to have an actual Whip, removed confusing-to-players whip spell.
* Changed Skeleton Warrior to starts to attack from further away.
* Changed Skeleton Immortal to have a Spear instead of a Sabre.
* Changed polymorph so that it doesn’t effect named hero monsters.
* Changed polymorph so that it can’t change other things into named hero monsters.
* Changed main menu so that you can exit the game more quickly (rather than waiting for transitions).
* Changed all music to .ogg.
* Removed rocks in mines.
* Removed invisible wall in both arenas.
* Fixed missing outline on stairs.
* Fixed bug which would allow you to easily wipe all missiles from the screen by pausing and waiting awhile.
* Fixed bug where Cuer Hind and Fueg Hind looked the same.
* Fixed bug where Skeleton Warrior was punching instead of using a Sabre.
* Fixed bug that allowed you to close a door on yourself (and thus blanking out the screen).
* Fixed bug allowing attack animation to finish when using stairs.
* Fixed bug where large-map-chunks weren’t properly connecting with other areas.
* Fixed bug where monsters tumbling would make them imperveous to all damage.
* Fixed bug where getting killed by punching a Sun would report “Player” as your killer.
* Fixed bug where shopkeeper wasn’t getting angry after attacking him.
* Fixed bug causing shopkeeper to inconsistently spawn.
* Fixed bug allowing you to safely rest on deadly ground after tumbling/backdashing.
* Fixed some stuttering on controllers. Likely not to fix all problems, sorry!
* Fixed a case where items would spawn in the same exact place.
* Fixed bug where you could switch hands when an item was cursed.