Nocturne Demo v0.15

Another teeny tiny update to the demo. If you've not experienced any nasty game breaking bugs, this one probably isn't going to have you rushing to replay. Instead, why not spend your newly found free time doing something you've always wanted to try? Bake a cake, learn some Japanese, or take a leaf out of Kimothy's book and spend your afternoon watching ninja cartoons and chugging cans of delicious soda™.

Bug fixes

• The Satoru fight will no longer softlock even under the most laggy conditions.

• Fixed an issue where some OS languages (such as Turkish) wouldn't allow you to create a new game.

• Being defeated by Kimothy and Satoru no longer breaks some SFX.

Nocturne Demo v0.14

If you check Steam today you’ll see a cute little 2MB update to the demo.

New Cutscenes

We've all learnt the hard way that a hyperactive tween and an enigmatic fish monk aren't the most useful navigators. So we've added a few new snippets of dialogue to help keep the adventure on track.

Updated Park Map

We also noticed the Park Map was a little confusing with its 4 exits and 2 layers. So we’ve added a worn stone path to help guide players up to Satoru’s house.

Additional changes

• Moved the first save point to a more obvious position in an adjacent map.

• Made some small dialogue tweaks throughout the demo.

• Replaced the ladder in the Industrial area with a treasure chest. Let's be real, treasure is better than ladders.

Nocturne Demo v0.11

For those of you elite few who had a chance to play the demo before we opened the public doors, we’ve made some small changes that you may or may not have noticed.

Satoru’s Tutorial

The biggest change for this update, we’ve now implemented charts that match your set difficulty. Those playing on Beginner won’t have to struggle through a tough chart, whilst Zen players get a little extra challenge.

Additional Updates

• Selecting the option to add the game to your wishlist now opens the Steam overlay instead of forcing you to hop over to your browser.

• Fixed a bug where Kimothy lagging would cause a softlock in his tutorial.

Nocturne Demo v0.10

Hey everyone, it’s been a while. Lots has changed since the Playtest last year. While we’ve mostly been working on all the new content for the full release, we’ve taken some time to polish up a new Demo of Chapter 1.

There’s been a lot of changes since you last played! Don’t worry though, we’ve kept in Karma’s superb moonwalking abilities (iykyk).

Main Updates

Combat UI

What’s that, another combat UI update? Well the main focus this time was improving readability. We even invited some playtesters in-person to use an eyetracker, so we could learn where they look during combat!

Here’s a quick summary of the combat UI changes:

• Health and AP bars - Mechanically these work the same as the Playtest, but we’re now displaying more info, such as health regen. The Energy and AP bars have also been combined into one.

• Note reskin - The notes are no longer prototype art, and the green notes were swapped to a fetching purple. Beyond just looking nice, this also allows for the judgements to be more readable. Speaking of…

• Judgement text - New fonts, colours and animations have been applied to the judgements. We’ve also got new visuals for health damage and indicators when you hit with a special~ kind of attack.

• Judgement area and column highlights - The hitzone and column highlights are now fully responsive. The columns also turn yellow as a warning the enemy is winding up for an attack.

• C-C-C-C-Combo! - There’s a new combo display showing in the top left, and it’s now enabled by default.

Windup

Hitting an enemy during its windup is now a ‘Critical!’ hit, dealing bonus damage.

This change includes a new Stat for Karma called ‘Crit’, which you can increase with items or from leveling up. Some items also provide bonus effects for Crits. Get training those reaction times for maximum damage.

Map Visuals

Maya has never looked so pretty. All the maps now have full lighting and shadows.

Stagger

Those of you who are blessed with the ultimate rhythm gaming skills may have noticed that reducing Yako’s health to zero stopped him from attacking. We thought this was a pretty lame patchwork solution, so we’ve put in a brand new ‘STAGGER’ mechanic for when a Boss reaches zero health.

Stagger prevents Bosses from attacking or charging energy for 10 seconds. You can chain attacks during this phase to keep the Boss in Stagger for even longer.

But once Stagger is over, the Boss will return to normal (with slightly less health than before). If you’re skilled enough, you could even Stagger the Boss multiple times during a battle.

Consumables

We’ve added consumable healing items. Now you can get the true RPG experienece of saving every single healing item for the last Boss (and then forgetting to use them).

They activate automatically, so you don’t have to be distracted during battle.
If you have one equipped they’ll save you from defeat, healing you when your health falls to zero. Make sure to have some ready to equip for those pesky Moths!

Corruption Minigame

While the UI for Corruption isn’t final yet, the columns now move around like they used to in Prelude. We also added a progress bar to make it clear if you hit enough notes to pass the minigame (which scales based on your difficulty settings).

Music Charts

All the charts in all difficulties have been revised, some with musical changes too. We’ve also added an easier difficulty so even first time rhythm gamers should make it through alright.

Interaction UI

The interaction icons now look more modern, and prompt you to press the Interact key (default Z) when you approach.

Next Objective

Pressing the Help key (default Tab) will play a unique cutscene telling you what the next objective is. Useful if you need a reminder of what you’re up to!

Congrats on getting through all those updates! Now for those who are truly dedicated, we have a bajillion more smaller changes below. (Will anyone even read those?)

Additional Updates

Combat

• Both Kimothy and Satoru tutorials have had complete overhauls.

• Revamped Karma combat animations, including a new animation for healing effects with accompanying SFX.

• Pause menu in combat has some more options. You can now also change audio levels and send us feedback right from the comfort of your Crawler battle.

• Yako’s battle is on fire, quite literally. The split column sections now look very different from the playtest, with an accompanying explosive animation.

• Death screen visuals and tips have been reworked.

• Karma’s AP bar is now hidden until the Satoru tutorial.

• Judgment timings have been tweaked so we’re slightly more lenient with early hits.

• Changed Mantis and Firefly stats to charge energy slower and gain less energy from missed notes.

• In every case where players are doing zero damage with an attack, the attack will read ‘blocked’. Previously there was some scenarios where no feedback was given.

• Stats and levelup screens can be skipped with confirm or cancel keys (Z and X by default)

• Losing against Yako and reloading will no longer force the player to refight Yako, instead loading them before the cutscene starts.

• Combo no longer resets between Yako charts.

• All items have been reworked. We’ve stripped out irrelevant stat info and given them more obvious effects.

Menu & UI

• Difficulty names have been updated.

• Updated icons EVERYWHERE. Menus, level up screen, combat, aggro exclamations… you name it, we’ve updated it.

• Font update! Comic Sans may be Kimothy’s favourite font, but he’s not in charge here, so we picked some nicer looking ones.

• Added a highscore screen in the pause menu so you can see all your best scores across Chapter 1.

• New screens to ensure you really are ready to quit with unsaved changes.

• Option to enable to deny access for the new analytic collection. (We’re only collecting gameplay info to help improve the game!)

• Got rid of the awkward playtest screen which explains the controls and replaced it with handy prompts for controls during gameplay.

• ‘Main Hand’ has been renamed ‘Weapon’.

• Credits screen updates and additions.

• Graphics options now display windowed display resolutions.

• New cute animations while you’re waiting for the next map to load.

• Vsync option has been removed with vsync now on by default.

Maps

• We’ve added tons of lamps in the caves so even Kimothy can make it through the dark.

• Introduced arrows so that it’s clear where the maps transition.

• Improved the corruption shader so corruption now looks even cooler.

• Updated save points and treasure chest locations across the chapter.

• Added an extra super duper hidden item 👀 (seriously it’s super hidden and probably nobody will find it and it doesn’t even do anything so it’s pointless unless you just love searching for hidden things for hours).

Audio

• Little updates to the music throughout the game, both combat and overworld.

• Brand new chase track for the cave area.

• New SFX for note misses that can be toggled on/off in the menu.

• New SFX for critical hits and heals.

• New SFX for quitting to the main menu.

• New SFX for when corruption is healed.

• New SFX for ladder rungs (yes, this is very exciting).

Cutscenes

• Brand new polished title reveal scene.

• We’ve introduced a way to skip through dialogue super quick by holding down the cancel button (X by default). Yay for speedrunners ;)

• The Fox has an extra runaway scene in the Bridge map.

• Updated sounds and timing for the cutscene when you first enter the cave.

• The Void Machine cutscene has been updated with flashy lights and flashy sounds.

Misc other changes and fixes

• Temporary save files are created at set times, as well as on any map transitions. The game also saves when you change your difficulty at a save point.

• Fixed an issue where settings from Nocturne: Prelude would still carry over to the current Nocturne Demo!

• Fixed an issue where interactions and cutscenes toggled run to off.

• Ladder animations have been improved and some layering issues have been addressed.

• Pressing N in battle no longer pulses the background art.

• Instead of freezing in place, enemies now return to their patrol if they’re chasing when you enter a cutscene.

• Slightly reworked the behaviour of enemies when two aggro on you at once.

• Fixed up diagonal movement issues on the way up to Satoru’s house.

• Kimothy no longer disappears on the elevator if you spam through the final cutscene quick enough.

• Flying enemies have better line of sight, no longer being blocked by some objects they should be able to see over.

Nocturne Playtest Update

For everyone who has access to the Nocturne Playtest, we’re releasing a patch.

This patch contains fixes to some of the larger bugs you’ve all reported, plus some experimental changes to the game. We decided this was a good opportunity to test some bigger changes and get early feedback to see if we’re going in the right direction.

The full changelog will be at the end of this post, but for now I’ll cover the biggest items.

EXPERIMENTAL CHANGES

Stat Simplification

Stats and Items have been completely reworked. The original build contained 9 stats and we observed most players didn’t understand how the stats affect gameplay, resulting in items being underused as players couldn’t make good decisions about what to equip.

So we’ve simplified the stats down to the most important; how much Health you have, and how much Damage you do. All the previous stats are now “hidden”, so we can still balance the combat and items as before, without the confusion. Here’s an example:

Both versions of Wasabi Chips function the same, but the old version required you to understand what “Regen” and “Stunned” means. It was also written in an awkward format rather than in plain english, leaving room for doubt on how it worked.

Windup & Energy Damage

There was a lot going on in combat that wasn’t very well explained. So we’ve separated out some mechanics and now introduce them slower.
By default, there is no longer any effect for hitting the enemy during its attack Windup.
Karma no longer deals damage to the Enemies Energy from the start.
Instead, these effects will be unlocked via items.

After you learn how to Attack with Satoru, you’ll then find items later in the chapter that provide bonus effects if you hit the enemy during Windup, or deal energy damage. This makes items more impactful, and teaches an important mechanic.

Speaking of items, most of them have been replaced with brand new TEST items. We’d really like to hear your feedback about which items you found most/least useful, or any you didn’t understand.

Combat UI

Probably the most requested change is the Combat UI. We were aware it wasn’t great going into the playtest, but also knew the best way to improve it was your feedback. So we’ve taken a first pass at addressing the major issues.

Everything is much larger and more readable now. We also found that players focus varies significantly, with some players preferring to focus their eyes close to the hitbar, and others looking far up the columns to anticipate incoming notes. So we made the UI cover most of the length of the columns so no matter where your focus is, you can easily glance at the UI.

Enemy Health & Damage

Enemy health is now a solid bar instead of segments. This is because we’ve rescaled Karma’s damage and Enemy health. You now deal 5 damage right from the start instead of just 1.

We did this so we could rebalance your ability to kill Crawlers before the song ends. You might not have even realised this was possible before! Now we provide +1 Damage every level up, so you’ll really feel yourself getting stronger as you progress and are able to kill Crawlers faster every levelup.

Full Changelog

If you’ve made it this far, you might be dedicated enough to read all the remaining changes below. But if not, enjoy the new patch and leave your feedback in the Discord!

Combat & Items
- Enemies are now much easier to kill by attacking.
- The end of hold notes now auto PASS at 0ms instead of +150ms.
- Late timing on notes is now stricter, and will auto MISS at +100ms instead of waiting until the end of the MISS timing.
- Adjusted Karma’s 2AP attack animation to feel more responsive.
- Added a visual effect for when Enemies are stunned.
- Clean Bandage no longer gives +Dex and instead gives more Regen than Soggy Bandage.
- Wasabi Chips item description now better explains it’s functionality.

Maps
- Almost all treasure chests in the game have been updated with new TEST items.
- The Firefly in Industrial Central has been switched for a Pillbug.

Menu & UI
- Added a Speedrun Timer which can be enabled in the Menu. This timer will auto pause upon reaching the Playtest End screen.
- The combat results screen no longer gets stuck in view if you exit the game during combat.
- You can no longer “cancel” the death screen and cause a softlock.
- Support for 16:10 aspect ratios added.
- Adjusted font textures to render better at lower resolutions.

Cutscenes
- The Ladder dialogue in Industrial Yard has been moved to the correct position.
- Added an extremely important full stop that was missing at the end of a dialogue line.
- Increased the duration of the sleeping fade at Satoru’s house.
- You can no longer speak to an invisible ghost Kimothy in Satoru’s map.

Starting a New Game after beating the game
Yes this gets its own category for how much was broken
- All the audio doesn’t break anymore. (But it might still break some audio, this one was a headache)
- The combat columns are no longer stuck in “Yako special attack mode” where they’re split down the middle.
- Kimothy no longer hangs around in a strange ethereal darkness during the opening scene.

Audio
- Exiting to Main Menu no longer breaks some audio.
- The Title Card music no longer fades out too early.
- The low health heartbeat now correctly syncs to the BPM during songs with BPM changes.
- Adjusted some scene transitions to prevent audio from being clipped.
- Audio filters during the chase music no longer continue if you open the menu.
- Adjusted music transition from the Main Menu to Overworld when loading a save.

Nocturne: Prelude 1.1.2

Opt-In Beta Release v1.1.2

Nocturne: Prelude 1.1.2 is now available to all players on the Beta branch.

Menus

• Fixed the coolant icon not appearing in the status menu

• When starting a new game, it now defaults to suggesting Easy instead of Hard.

Achievements

• Collector: Fixed a bug which made it impossible to obtain the achievement.

• Collector: Change the requirements to only need equipment items, therefore allowing players to get the achievement even if they gave the Soda Can to Kimothy earlier in the game.

Combat

• Added a failsafe to prevent issues with the combat UI fading incorrectly.

• Fixed an issue that caused judgement text in Classic mode to be invisible during the tutorial battle.

• Removed a rogue note at the end of the Rock Silence song.

Nocturne: Prelude 1.1 (Opt in Beta)

Opt-In Beta Release v1.1

Nocturne: Prelude 1.1 is now available as an opt-in Beta on Steam.

Start by right clicking Nocturne: Prelude in your steam library and selecting “Properties”.

Navigate to the “Betas” tab and select the “beta - For Beta Testing” option from the drop down menu.

Steam should now have an update available for Nocturne.

If you find any bugs. Please report them on the #bug-reports channel on Discord, or email support@pracystudios.com

Changelog 1.1

Achievements

Nocturne: Prelude now has 17 Steam achievements! They provide a mix of challenges, some which will require you to play the game a little differently.

Upstream

Nocturne now fully supports an upstream layout for combat. Change your note direction in the gameplay settings.

Combat Layout

For players that prefer a more classic layout for combat, you can now enable “Classic” mode in the gameplay settings. This moves the Judgement and Combo text to be centered on the columns.

Note Colors

By default Nocturne has fixed colors for each column. Now you can switch your colors to “Timing” mode in the gameplay menu. This will color each note individually based on the timing of the note.

1/4th - Red
1/8th - Blue
1/12th = Purple
1/16th = Yellow
1/24th = Pink
1/32nd = Orange
1/48th = Light Blue
1/64th = Green
1/128th = Grey
Mines = Black

New Rank: S+

Added a new S+ Rank for players who are already too good at the game. Requires a 98% score.

Difficulty Selection

When changing the game’s difficulty, you’ll now get a preview of each difficulty to better help you select the right one.

Additional Changes

Menus

• Added tips to the game over screen.

• Added “Mirror Charts” option to the gameplay options menu, allowing players to Enable or Disable mirror charts.

• Added a “Wishlist Now” button to the main menu which takes the player to the Nocturne Prelude steam page. After Beta this will be updated to link to the full version of Nocturne.

• Added a new final screen after beating the boss that has options for wishlisting, loading the latest save or returning to the main menu.

• The scrolling background from the title screen is now also visible on the difficulty screen and character naming screen.

Combat

• Easy and Normal difficulties have had their Judgement Zones relaxed. Hard, Expert and Zen remain the same as previous.

• Increased the Bike Helmet armor bonus from 1 to 2.

• The combat score screen now shows your score in green if you beat your previous high score.

• The columns no longer fade out during Yako’s transition to his special attack.

Cutscenes

• Pre-boss cutscenes are now skipped after your first attempt. Beating the boss or quitting the game will reset back to the full cutscene for just one viewing.

• Dialogue is now always skip-able by default.

First Patch v1.0.9

Release v1.0.9

Combat

• Ending an encounter next to the edge of the map no longer causes the camera to jump.

• Fixed a bug that could cause random encounters to become enabled before the tutorial with Kimothy had been completed.

Arcade

• Completing a battle now also unlocks the arcade for all difficulties lower than your current setting. (Eg: Completing a battle on Hard, will unlock the battle for Hard, Normal and Easy.)

Nocturne: Prelude

Release v1.0

New Enemies & Boss Fight
The Roach and Beetle have arrived, both with new surprises to share. Though an even more powerful foe is waiting for you, one who will twist the rules of battle.

New Locations
East of the Park, you’ll venture into the industrial complex. Then you’ll travel deeper, where strange machines raise concerning questions as to their purpose.

New Notes: Critical & Mines
Critical notes cause double the damage of a standard note if you miss them.
Hitting Mines will disable the column for 2 seconds, preventing input.

Arcade
The Records tab is now the Arcade. Select any battle you’ve previously defeated, and you can battle them again anytime from the menu.

Additional Changes

Combat

• Adjusted the timing for Perfect judgments (less strict).

• Updated Kimothy’s Battle music loops (shorter loops).

• Reworked combat floating text to better accommodate when you have multiple text effects activating at once.

• Missing notes is now more punishing to your score. Miss = -100, Bad = -50. (Previously 50 and 25 respectively).

• Added prompt to press any key if the player waits at the start of combat.

• Changed random encounter weighting system to better ensure you don’t encounter the same enemy too many times in a row.

World

• Final polish of all maps, collision and lighting.

Menus

• Updated splash screens on loading the game to show the studio and game logos.

• Rearranged the order of the menus.

• Removed the secret dev testing menu.

• Updated some menu colours for better visibility on certain monitors.

• Added option to enable Dialogue Skipping, which instantly progresses the text without needing to wait.

• Added a “Reset to Default” button for Gameplay Options.

• Updated all help text.

• Reworked how menu keys operate. Back (default x) will now return to the previous layer of the menu. Exit (default c) will now close the entire menu no matter where in the menu you are.

Data

• All save files and settings from playing the Beta will be wiped/reset upon loading v1.0 to ensure no issues carry over from previous builds.

Notable Bugs & Adjustments

• Fixed an issue with combat enemies not being properly cleared and reinitialized resulting in errors with attacks and potential soft locks.

• Fixed the broken output_log to use Unity’s newer player.log system.

• Fixed a bug where closing the combat keybindings menu with the Exit key would circumvent the 3 second resume timer and cause syncing issues with the notes.

• Fixed an issue where Silence would count hold notes as correct even if you let go too early.

• Fixed various bugs which could cause certain SFX or Music to mute when exiting from the Latency Calibration options.

++ many minor bug fixes and adjustments.

Nocturne Prerelease

Beta v0.61.9

In preparation for the public release of Nocturne: Prelude, we’ve released a final Beta update. You can read more about the release details in this blog post.

Records
Your highscore for each enemy is now saved and can be viewed in the Records tab of the menu. Highscores are saved separately for each difficulty.

Item Drops
Enemies now drop a unique item. They have a 30% drop chance and will only drop once from each enemy.

New Active Ability: Fortify
We’ve been experimenting with Active Abilities for a while, and have now added Fortify into the game. Once per encounter you can press the Active Ability keybind (default: Space) to activate Fortify. You will have an additional 25 armor for just the next attack.

Latency Improvements
After lots of feedback about various latency issues, we’ve done a deep dive into timing & latency code. A few underlying bugs have been fixed which make huge improvements in overall timing accuracy and has solved many edge cases which would cause notes to arrive at incorrect intervals. In addition, C-Mod has been reworked to be more reliable and accurate. We strongly recommend you reconfigure your Delay setting when playing the new update.

Silence Scaling
Playing Silence now scales with your difficulty setting. A progress bar appears in the bottom left which displays how many notes you have to hit. At lower difficulties, less notes need to be successfully hit. Previously you were required to hit all notes.

Additional Changes

Combat

• Enemy damage has been changed, and scales by difficulty. Overall the easier difficulties do less damage and harder difficulties do more damage.

• Enemy attacks are now manually timed as part of the beatmap, rather than occurring after a fixed number of notes. This means attacks are now timed exactly the same across all difficulties, rather than happening faster on higher difficulties.

• Adjusted the timing of judgement zones.

• Added SFX to the combat score bars.

• Tweaked the rank percentages to make rank C have a higher requirement to achieve.

Items

• Balance changes to all items, to reflect the changes in enemy damage.

• Armor now subtracts from total attack damage rather than individual note damage.

• Abilities now have ranks, where higher ranks of the ability are objectively better, instead of the old system where it was extremely unclear which abilities are upgrades or not.

• Removed “Resistance” ability from the game.

• Added various new items and changed which items are found in some chests.

Cutscenes

• When standing near an interactable object or NPC, an interaction icon appears to indicate you can interact.

• Updated all character portraits to final versions.

• Many minor updates to dialogue, eg: removing typos, making language more concise, etc.

• Names of items are now displayed in yellow with an icon to make them clearer during dialogue.

• Cutscenes are now able to transition between maps mid-scene.

• If you fail the “Ultimate Attack” during Kimothy’s Tutorial battle, instead of forcing you to retry, the game continues with alternate dialogue.

World

• Added a new corrupted object in the park, which rewards a special item for completing.

• Updated all lighting across all maps. Lighting is now more contrasted and has been adjusted to retain the original colours of the pixel art.

• Collision for all maps have been improved.

• Added various ambient SFX such as flowing water and howling winds.

Menus

• Changed the default keybindings.

• You can now equip items from the Inventory tab, and the game will redirect you to the appropriate section the Equipment tab.

• Removed Memories & Submit Feedback.

• Added V-Sync, which can prevent screen tearing on some displays.

• Added Keybindings into the combat menu.

• Added option to enable Note Miss Sounds, which play if you miss a note during combat.

• Added Master Volume slider.

• Updated all help text for all menu options.

Refactoring

• Performance optimizations.

• Improved how data is stored and loaded.

• Reworked how the game’s systems are managed.

• Spit the menu controller into separate scripts to handle different types of menus. This allows for more flexibility in menu features and improves performance.

• Many minor latency tweaks that improve overall timing accuracy.

Notable Bugs & Adjustments

• Fixed an issue which caused the “Nothing” button for Equipment to actually do nothing, instead of unequipping the current item.

• Fixed an bug that caused all damage taken in battle to be counted towards the first attack only and all following attacks would be 0 damage.

• Evade and Block now occur as intended. Evades happen when you miss no notes. Blocks happen when you do miss notes, but the attack damage is reduced to zero due to an effect, item or ability.

• Fixed a bug which caused the Silence mechanic to use the incorrect judgement zones when the BPM was set to C-Mod.

• Fixed a bug which caused a map transition to loop endlessly between two maps due to a change in the size of the player’s collision box.

++ many minor bug fixes and adjustments.

Minor Script Updates & Bug Fixes

Beta v0.55.1

Cutscenes

• The game now creates quicksaves after certain cutscenes.

• Added a new cutscene on the waterfall bridge when travelling to meet Satoru.

• Added some new portraits for Kimothy and Karma.

• Updated scripts for a few of the major cutscenes so they are more concise and clear.

• Added a few new interactions around the city if you interact with objects again after meeting Kimothy.

Combat

• Mirrored versions of songs no longer include “(Mirrored)” in the song name on the results screen.

Bug Fixes

• Fixed a softlock that could happen during the tutorial cutscene.

• Fixed an issue that caused the dialogue box to become invisible in very specific situations.

• The Flexible Tunic chest is no longer mistakenly repeatable.

Menus and Mirrors Update

Beta v0.54.0

Menu: Icons & Descriptions

The menu now has icons for all items and abilities. We’ve also improved the descriptions on the right to make them more readable.

When you find items around the world, the dialogue will include the icon, so you know at a glance which slot you can equip it in.

The status page has been completely redesigned. It now lists all the abilities you have equipped so you can easily check what kit you have without needing to scroll through your equipment page.

Difficulty: Save Points

The option to change your difficulty setting has been removed from the menu and placed at save points. You can now only change your difficulty while at a save point. This was always the intended way to change difficulty, we only had it in the menu during early beta for easier testing.

Combat: Mirror Mode

When you get a random encounter, there’s now a 50% chance you’ll have a mirrored chart. This adds more variety to the encounters.

Additional Changes

World

• The transition between maps is now smoother. You should always appear at the same relative spot when you transition between two maps.

Menus

• Adjusted some of the menu colours to better accommodate for Protanopia, Deuteranopes & Tritanopes colour blindness.

• The Data button has been removed from the menu.

Saving

• The game now quicksaves after each successfully won battle. These quicksaves do not remain if you quit the game. They are used as “continue” points if you die before reaching a save point. You must still save at a savepoints to record your progress before quitting.

Notable Bugs & Adjustments

• Fixed an issue that caused the player to sometimes move slightly at the end of a cutscene because they were finishing the movement that got interrupted.

• Fixed an issue that caused the camera to wiggle when snapping back to the player after moving in a cutscene.

• When clearing corruption, the music now fades back in instead of returning abruptly.

• The player’s sprinting is now accounted for when determining the movement animation’s speed.

++ many minor bug fixes and adjustments.

Ranks, C-Mod & Map Updates

Beta v0.52.2

End Screen: Performance & Ranks

The combat end screen has had a huge reworking, now with animated performance bars and rank badge.

While the end screen displayed a rank and score previously, they were all placeholder and didn’t actually function. Now each judgement has been assigned a score.

Miss: -50
Bad: -25
Okay: 50
Good: 70
Great: 85
Perfect: 100

Ranks are awarded based on your score, going from D, C, B, A, up to the prestigious S rank.

New Feature: C-Mod

Nocturne now fully supports C-Mod for note speed. This allows you to set a fixed BPM value for note speed so you’ll always experience the same note speed no matter what song you play. Switch between C-Mod and the default X-Mod in the Gameplay Options.

Maximum note speed has also been increased to 3x or 1000BPM.

Judgement Text: Timing

You can now toggle your Judgement Text to display “Early” or “Late” timing text instead of the default “Okay”, “Good”, etc.

You’ll still be scored exactly the same, this is purely an aesthetic change to help determine how your hits are timed.

Art Update: Corruption

The art for corruption has been completely recreated to look more unique.

World: Visual Polish

All maps have had another round of revision and polish. You’ll find many new animated objects, especially in the water. We’ve also added another chance to encounter the elusive Fox. The collision is still unfinished, so you’ll still find many objects you can walk through.

Additional Changes

Tutorial

• Added a tutorial message system for keybindings which displays text in the top right corner of the screen during the early sections of the game.

World

• The world now uses a newer layer system, fixing issues with layering appearing incorrect in certain places.

• Updated map transitions to be smoother. The camera now stops moving as you approach a transition.

• The player camera has been smoothed to help reduce motion sickness.

• You can now run! Switch between “Hold” or “Toggle” modes in the Gameplay Options.

Notable Bugs & Adjustments

• The latency calibration is now in the main options instead of within Audio, and the slider can now go between -150 and 150 with the center being 0.

• Removed the test mine from the beginning of the latency test song.

• Adjusted many cutscene character movements and positioning.

• Updated credits and made it auto scroll and loop.

• Updated the names and position of the settings within the options menu.

• Fixed an issue that allowed the player to still win a battle if they died on the last attack.

• Fixed an issue with some of the park layer triggers and elements being at the wrong Z position.
  

++ many minor bug fixes and adjustments.

Combat Update: New Encounters, New Difficulties, New Art, Protagonist Name

Beta v0.48.2

New Art: Sunset

This beautiful sunset has a parallax effect for a greater sense of scale. Now you can listen to Satoru’s wise words with a much nicer view.

New Encounter: Mantis

The mantis has powerful sythe-like arms which it uses to cut enemies. It’s mostly found in dense and overgrown forests.

New Encounter: Scorpion

The scorpion has a devastating pincer than can crush enemies. The most aggressive of the crawlers you’ll encounter so far.

New Difficulties: Novice and Expert

When starting a new game you can now select from 5 difficulty settings. All the encounters in the game have unique charts for each difficulty.

Protagonists Name: Karma

You’ve always been able to name the Protagonist, but now they come with a default name; Karma.
The naming screen has also been upgraded to include on screen input.

Additional Changes

Music & Audio

• Mantis and Scorpion have their own unique combat music.

• Added new SFX for various interactions, such as: New Item, Gate Opening, Chest Opening, etc.

Cutscenes & Dialogue

• Add new lines with Satoru.

• Added animations for the Firefly attack in the cutscene when you first meet Kimothy.

• NPCs now always face the player when interacting with them.

Combat

• Updated column art to look even cooler.

• Added support for 192nd interval notes (upgraded from 32nd).

• Updated the restore animation to be more dynamic, allowing it to play during any of Karma’s sprite animations.

• Additional spam prevention in combat to ensure that randomly mashing all the keys won’t be very useful.

• The background in combat now moves faster or slower depending on the BPM of the song.

• Creatures now attack more or less frequently depending on the difficulty setting.

• “Bad” note judgements now do 50% less damage than a “Miss”.

• Mines are technically in the game, but can only be found in the Latency Calibration Test Song right now.

• Creatures are now contained in “Encounter Zones” which determine where you can encounter different creatures on the map.

• Judgement text is now coloured for easier reading at a glance.

Notable Bugs & Adjustments

• The version text now says “Beta” instead of “Early Beta Gameplay”.

• Kimothy no longer breaks the 4th wall by asking you to set your difficulty.

++ many minor bug fixes and adjustments.

Satoru's Update: New Character, Location, Story, Gameplay & Art.

Beta v0.45.5

New Location: The Cliffs

North of the park, previously blocked from access, is now open. This location continues the story as you go to meet Kimothy’s friend, Satoru.

New Character: Satoru

Satoru is deeply knowledgeable, yet it’ll be harder than you expect to get the right answers from him.

New Story

Learn more about the world of Maya and take the next steps in your journey through the afterlife.

New Gameplay Mechanic: Silence

Mini-combat challenges where every note you play creates the next part of a melody.

New Art: Combat Animations

The main characters combat animations have been completely remade based on newer character designs.

Additional Changes

Music & Audio

• Kimothy now has a theme song which plays during some of his cutscenes.

• Re-balanced all audio levels in the game.

Combat

• Added player animations for: Idle, Damage, Block, Evade, Death, Restore.

• Added animations for when pieces of the health bar are removed.

World

• Added another location where you can spot the fox.

Menu

• Full keybindings are now available in the menu, instead of just the combat keys.

• The fancy lighting can now be toggled on/off in the Video Settings menu. This was done to help low performance computers maintain a good framerate.

Notable Bugs & Adjustments

• Fixed a timing related bug which caused the game to wait for 2.14 billion seconds (67 years) before continuing combat.

• Updated small pieces of dialogue across many cutscenes.

• You can no longer use modifiers when binding keys (such as Shift+A).

++ many minor bug fixes and adjustments.

Atmospheric Lighting & New Tutorial

Beta v0.39.2

Lighting & Particles

• All maps now use a lighting system that provides atmosphere and texture to the environment.

• Small particles now randomly fade in and out of existence, slowly moving around the map.

If you experience performance issues due to the lighting update,
please email your log file to support@pracystudios.com

Users\<username>\AppData\LocalLow\Pracy Studios\Nocturne\Logs

Combat

• Kimothy’s tutorial now has music and a beatmap.

• Added attack animation for Kimothy.

• The tutorial script has been completely rewritten.

• Combat transition visuals have been improved and now have a sound effect.

• The rhythm board has been recoloured to have red hitbars. This makes it much clearer to see when you are supposed to hit the notes.

• The Firefly now has full combat animations.

• The combat end screen now has some information about your performance.

• Hold notes no longer count a judgement upon release. They do still miss if you release before the end.

• Changed the calculation for random encounters so they occur slightly less often.

Menu

• Latency calibrator is now more accurate and displays the same art as combat for consistency.

• You can now play a Test Song in the Latency menu to quickly test your settings.

• Completely reworked the Video Settings menu.

  • Resolution and Aspect Ratio options have been removed

  • The game now automatically letterboxes if you are not playing with a 16:9 aspect ratio.

  • When playing in Windowed Mode, you can now change the render scale.

Audio

• Improved the 3D spacial audio system.

• The sound effects master mixer now compresses the audio to a maximum volume that matches the volume set in the menu. This means that when multiple sound effects are playing together, they won’t exceed the maximum volume.

Notable Bugs & Adjustments

• Fixed an oversight that allowed the player to play the game with the pause screen open.

• Some minor script updates across the whole game.

• You can no longer unlock the gate multiple times.

• Lots of backend work on how items, cutscenes and maps are created and updated.

++ many minor bug fixes and adjustments.

Progression Bug Fixes

Beta v0.34.3

Last week when we simplified how the game registers progress, it caused a bug that would prevent the Welcome Center cutscene from triggering upon return. This small update fixes that bug, and a few extras.

• Fixed an issue that caused key information to not be properly saved for the player, causing certain scenes to not properly trigger.

• Fixed an issue where entering the City map would always spawn the player facing down with their eyes closed.

• Fixed an issue where ambient audio and any other 3D sounds didn’t use their intended min and max distances.

Combat Transition Effect & Video Settings

Beta v0.34.2

Combat

• Added the first version of a screen transition when combat begins. It still needs some polish and has no sound effect yet, but the basic idea is there. Tell us what you think!

Menu

• Completely revamped the Video Settings page.

• Removed resolution and aspect ratio options.

• Added “Scale” option when the game is set to Windowed mode. This allows you to increase the scale of the pixel grid.

• The game automatically letterboxes if your Fullscreen aspect ratio is not 16:9

Audio

• Simplified how the game handles SFX & Music to prepare for mixing and balancing audio levels in future updates.

• When returning to an area, it will remember which part of the background song it was at and continue playing from there. Quitting to the main menu and loading will still reset the background song to the start.

• Continuous ambient sounds like the corruption or Firefly hover are now handled by a special ambiance script.

Notable Bugs & Adjustments

• Simplified the way the game registers progress. For example, knowing when you have completed specific cutscenes or visited specific areas.

++ many minor bug fixes and adjustments.

Adding user requested features

Beta v0.33.1

Last week we released the 2nd phase of the Beta with a great response from the community. Thank you everyone who’s been providing feedback, suggesting features, discovering bugs or just enjoying the game!

This week we’ve been working on fixing many of the bugs that have been reported and adding features that have been requested directly by you.

Important: This update requires a save file wipe, but should be the last one for a very long time. Once the game is released we will never wipe saves.

Your keybindings now display on the corresponding column.

Combat

• The number below the player now says “Combo” before the value.

• The amount of time between each random encounter has been increased slightly.

• You can now use the Load Last Save from the game over screen.

• Columns now display the keybinding for their column as part of the art. This supports most keys on your keyboard, including the arrow keys. We don’t yet support this feature for controllers or keys that have long names, eg: “Ctrl, Return, Backspace”.

• Combat no longer begins immediately. The game now waits for the player to press a key before starting the encounter.

• The game no longer waits awkwardly for 5 seconds after the end of an encounter.

• Added an end screen after winning an encounter. It’s currently just placeholder text.

• Unpausing during combat now gives the player a 3 second timer before resuming.

World

• Moved the screen transition from the City to Park so the camera doesn’t need to go off center anymore.

• Fixed the tree on the cliff in the Park map being incorrectly layered.

• Gave the Fox a running animation so it no longer crab walks across the map.

Cutscenes & Dialogue

• Smoothed the camera movement during cutscenes.

• Small adjustments to some of the dialogue to be more concise.

Notable Bugs & Adjustments

• Moved all the Dev Tool commands somewhere much harder to find ;)

• The mouse cursor is no longer visible.

• Updated the saving system making it easier for us to release updates to the game without needing to erase everyones’s save files. That being said, this update does require a save file wipe to upgrade to the new system. Moving forward, the need to erase saves during updates will become very rare. Once the game is finished we will never erase saves.

• Made minor adjustments to cutscene movement in the hopes that it might fix the bug where your character slides around. Since we do not know how to reproduce this bug we’re not sure if it’s been fixed. Please email us with details if you still experience this bug in the new update.

• While Nocturne does not officially support controllers yet, we made some minor adjustments to make movements smoother when using analogue sticks.

• We now store a history of logs in the Nocturne folder to help with bug fixing. If you experience a major bug such as a soft/hard lock or a crash, please email your log file to us. Each log file is timestamped.

  C:\Users\<username>\AppData\LocalLow\Pracy Studios\Nocturne\Logs

++ many minor bug fixes and adjustments.

Small Tweaks & Polish

Beta v0.32.3

World

• Updated the Park tile map and collision around the pool of water.

Notable Bugs & Adjustments

• Updated an issue that caused the stepping stones to be invisible.

• Fixed a player collision issue that caused them to get stuck in some cases.

• Fixed misplaced cliff and updated it's art.

• Fixed misplaced note in Firefly Easy beatmap.

++ many minor bug fixes and adjustments.