This update brought a somewhat unexpected change in direction: I decided that Arkathul is worth pitching to publishers at an upcoming local event. That meant getting a few things ready, both in terms of presentation and overall polish. There was also an opportunity to reuse some of the art and enemy designs from Project Hadria, giving the game a more cohesive visual identity.

Reworking the Boss Arenas First, I fixed an issue with boss arena areas being stamped on top of the existing level geometry. They should now integrate properly with the surrounding level instead of looking like something was simply pasted over the map.

A New Bestiary One of the first things I wanted to tackle was the game’s enemy roster. I started reusing and adapting some of the monster designs originally created for Project Hadria, replacing several of the more generic fantasy enemies with creatures inspired by folklore.

The new roster includes:

• Zombie → Strigoi
• Black Panther → Cursed Varcolac
• Wailing Head → Trapped Soul
• Gill Man → Bukavac
• Werewolf → Varcolac
• Cultist → Mage of the Wheel
• Skeleton → Muma Padurii
• Crimson Skeleton → Lobag

I also made a couple of additional adjustments: Muma Padurii now attacks by shooting green flames, and the Powder Skeleton has been renamed to Land Bukavac.

The goal is to give Arkathul a more distinctive identity, with enemies that feel like they belong to the same world.

Extended Enemy Look While working on the bestiary, I also added an extended look feature; when inspecting an enemy, players can now bring up an additional information panel containing its stats, a more detailed description, and an image. This is available even when playing in the text-based display modes, so the feature isn’t restricted to the graphical presentation.

Music and Sound Effects The game was also missing something rather important: audio!

I added support for background music, starting with the title screen and extending to the actual levels. For now, there are two environmental tracks:

• Forest: Plays throughout stages 1–3.
• Castle: Takes over from stage 4 onward.

I also added a first batch of sound effects:

• Footsteps on grass.
• Footsteps on stone floors.
• Footsteps in caverns.
• Explosions.
• Player and enemy damage.
• Shooting.

Different floor types can have their own footsteps, with stone serving as the fallback whenever a tile doesn’t define a specific sound effect. For now, all weapons and enemy attacks share the same shooting sound set.

The sounds come from Rainy Day by Quiet Gecko.

A Proper Logo and Title Screen Another step towards making the game presentable was commissioning a proper logo from Goetias Art.

I also added an image to the title screen. For now, I’m reusing artwork from the old Relics of the Demon game jam project, originally made by Serena. This temporarily replaces the ASCII title art, even when playing in ASCII mode. The new logo is displayed there as well.

More Terrain Details I went through some missing terrain artwork and filled in several gaps using the existing Terrain Objects tileset, mainly in floor cracks, crumbles and rubble.

More Juice for 1-Bit Mode I also spent some time improving the presentation of the 1-bit display mode.

First, I added visual special effects for impacts, making combat feel a little more responsive.

I experimented with a bloom effect as well, including an option to control its strength with a slider. The idea was to make light sources and fire stand out by applying bloom only to burning tiles, light sources, and tiles immediately adjacent to them.

Unfortunately, the effect turned out to be rather expensive performance-wise, and I’m not entirely convinced it adds enough to justify the cost. For now, I’ve disabled it by default, although the option is still there to experiment with it.

Looking Ahead This was a fairly broad polishing pass, but with the possibility of pitching Arkathul coming up, I think it’s worth spending some time making the game look and feel more like a finished product.

There’s still plenty to do, but having a more distinctive bestiary, proper audio, a commissioned logo, and a more complete presentation is a good step in that direction.