New Features

• Gratuitous Flip Sound Effects
• Excessive Gore Mode

Improvements

• Informational tooltips on opponents now have some updated iconography and some clarified descriptions.

Bugfixes

• Fixed a bug for Kalresh sometimes not getting out of the way of rebounding opponents.
• Fixed a bug with Whirlwind Staff Flourish hit patterns frequently missing opponents with larger than one tile in size.
• Water tiles should now properly appear on Frozen Lake practice map as expected.
• Certain looping sounds should play at the correct volume

Improvements

• When previewing future turn outcomes that involve defending, the amount of damage being defended against is shown in the turn preview.

Bugfixes

• Players with Early Access saves that acquired numerous upgrades before the Achievements were added in v1.0.0 will now get any spell upgrade related Achievement(s) due when entering any shop.
• Fixed a bug with old mid-mission saves showing up on imported save profiles.
• Fixed some clipping issues on some large opponent animations.

Improvements

• More loading screens

Bugfixes

• Fix bug with ice on lake tiles
• Prevent outdated damage preview for hero
• Endurance Arena matches now properly scoring achievements
• Max Defense achievement should no longer trigger if more than 9 dmg defended
• Adjusting Crowd Control achievement to key off of 24+ staggered enemies instead of 30
• Fix flourishing preview happening again after flourish
• Fix instant replay inserting future frame incorrectly

Improvements

• Added two more loading screens
• Adjustment to mid-level score streak achievement requirement

Bugfixes

• Fixing some achievements that trigger on doing damage but weren't updating correctly
• Removing some legacy loading screen messages

Improvements

• Cleaned up navigation button UI

Bugfixes

• Various achievement fixes
• Fix storm queen ignoring certain defenses in preview
• Removed legacy loading screen tip

Features

• Final gameplay areas are unlocked! Two new regions to explore: Mystic Mountains and Battlegrounds
• New Cinematics!
• New minimalist combat UI
• Arrows and other status effects now only show when hovering relevant tiles (can be toggled in Settings to always show)
• Better indications of damage received when using spells
• Gameplay options now include a Skip Story / Speed Run setting, which bypasses speech events and other cinematics
• New Staff Flourish and Technique Options
• 40 Steam achievements

Improvements

• New Loading Screens
• Various performance improvements
• Codex pages now have variable instructions based on virtual cursor vs 'speed input' for keyboard commands
• Tiles being overwatched now just show the overwatch icon and not the dmg amount
• Turned off (by default) the anti-magic glow on anti-magic tiles. Enemies that radiate anti-magic dynamically will continue to use the glow effect. Gameplay toggles now include an option to turn on the extra warning visuals for anti-magic zones
• Updated credits art and content

Bug fixes

• Defeating an enemy with a push or toss now properly increments the 'Defeat X opponents' objective
• Numerous typo fixes in item descriptions, loading screens, and mission texts
• Ice cracking sounds no longer play when throwing enemies on to sky tiles
• Water tiles frozen-then-re-broken now use correct background art
• Doorman retaliation attack tracks player correctly and doesn't trigger if Doorman is prone
• Defensive Casting now raises defenses sooner when using two-input spells (magic throw/smash, mind control) so that hero is defending BEFORE retaliation strike or exploding plague demons trigger damage
• Doorman no longer momentarily appears knocked out and standing when enraged
• Flourish Staff attacks that beat defenses no longer hurt certain unstoppable enemies
• Score scrolling looping bug fixed
• Fix for some audio looping issues when undoing quickly or toggling spells rapidly between turns
• Adding some codex entry events to tutorial levels that were missing them
• Fixed double-scoring of pitfalls
• Flying opponents knocked prone when hovering over a short obstacle now take additional damage instead of being knocked prone
• Adding the 'prone over short obstacle' details to the expanded info of a codex page and practice map for Flying Opponents
• Fixed a bug where the player's preview told them they could hit a blocking enemy with a slash that ended behind their shield arc
• Points for taking no damage should no longer appear on the score screen (or factor into renown rewards) when you choose to quit a level
• Mousing over obstacles and pits within your move range have slightly more helpful tooltip descriptors that mention if the obstacle is short and or breakable/damaged
• Adjusted map completion percentage seen on the main menu/save profile selection screen so that it should no longer exceed 100
• Move Variety cheat sheet widened a bit so that 'Improbable Boomerang' doesn't stomp into the wrong column
• Random subtitles on title screen should no longer run over the edge of the screen.
• Mission selector slide out now shows a scroll bar if description text would stretch the screen past a certain point
• If you enter the Campfire from a sub-region the back button in the Campfire should now take you back
• Technique tiles should no longer show their 'about to be relevant' glow effect if you have the settings menu, codex pages, feedback widget, or any other modal interface on top of the battleboard
• Fixed a flicker that occurs after some certain pushes animations
• Fixed various edge cases with the frozen lake
• Fixed Arena Endurance Match high scores not posting in the selection screen
• Fixing overlapping purchase flair vfx in Stores
• Minimizing selection box overlap on mousing over / keyboard navigating across tavern speakers
• Adding tooltip when mousing over (or keyboard focusing) tower floors on the right-hand side floor listing that explains the two mission objectives
• Fixed the Disarm Trap technique to trigger if you step into a charge that finishes off an enemy and overtakes their trapped tile
• Fixes for the 'fail path' through the Blighted Trail (that is, failing each mission should not longer result in progression confusion/blockage)
• Fixed an issue with sounds sometimes looping after using the Undo option.
• Fixing an issue with exploding enemies thrown into a pit with Fall Upwards not falling into a pit properly a related issue with Spring Step causing brambles to appear on pit/sky tiles; any brambles created now spawn only on ground
• Fix fullscreen mode

Generic Lake Monster is delighted to announce that Quarterstaff will transition to full release on Monday, October 28, 2024! We're so excited to share with you all of the amazing improvements we've made since June! Stay tuned on our social accounts for more specific updates about what to expect on Monday. We'd also like to extend a special THANK YOU to all of our Early Access players! We're so grateful that you placed your faith in us, and hope you enjoy playing the game as much as we do!

Fresh new UI elements!

• New scoreboard
• New iconographic tile techniques
• New HUD pane containers
• New buttons
• New fonts
• New speech UI

Bugfixes

• Hero no longer is visually displaced after toppling a statue.
• Fixed Veteran Endurance Trial map to use proper pit
• Fixed miscellaneous visual positioning glitches
• Enemies that step onto obstacles will now correctly play their defeated animation instead without flickering.
• Enemies that explode or spawn new enemies that are defeated by stepping into a tile and taking damage now spawn new enemies or radiate a blast positioned on the tile where they stepped
• Fixing a potential visual flickering issue when using Fall Upwards to defeat an opponent.

Features

• Introducing a new adventure area: The Demonic Wastelands! Test your wits against a demonic host of tenacious opponents that use a dastardly mix of brute force and swift maneuvering. Explore four new missions full of frenetic battles and challenging bonus objectives.

Improvements

• Updated Codex pages for content/clarity
• New animations for falling into Pit/Water
• For missions where victory is something other than Defeat All Opponents the Mastery Objective for that level will now say what is required to win the Complete Adventure objective.

Balance

• Increasing power of Retaliatory Strike, Aura of Growth, and Bewildering Motion
• Remapping Technique Requirements if youve been playing the game you might have a Technique equipped that (as of this updated) you shouldnt normally have unlocked. If this is the case, once you unequip that Technique, it will be locked again, so feel free to enjoy an Early Access exploit by keeping that Technique equipped!
• Remapping of Technique Unlocks to get a better distribution of rewards across doing missions and winning arena trophies
• Endurance Matches now include some new guest stars from the Demonic Wasteland region.

Bugfixes

• Fixed some issues with enemies being knocked out of bounds or causing collisions after being defeated.
• Dodging and Parrying enemies no longer play Dodge/Parry animations when being shoved around by other enemies to prevent flickering between animations
• Fixed a bug that caused Mind Control to work on certain immune to magic enemies
• When spawning new flying enemies, new flying enemies can spawn over pits and short obstacles (unlike non-flying enemies) but don't spawn over tall obstacles
• Enemies should no longer step onto each other and get stacked in cases of extreme traffic jams.
• Enemies with 2 or more hp that were already prone and then moved into a pit (or pushed/tossed with the Upending Throw Technique) no longer double-score the Pit event
• Fixed an issue where Defending against a Fast enemy when Winding Down wasn't keeping your streak alive like it should have.
• Fixed an issue where the about-to-lose-momentum warning wasn't showing if you opened turn 1 with a perfect defense and then spent your first momentum action doing something that should put you in the Winding Down state.
• Various typo fixes.
• Fixed an issue with Training Golems flashing red when falling into a pit or taking lots of damage in one hit.
• Breaking through ice now removes ground hazards that were present on the tile before the ice shatters.
• Fix for determining the player's position when exploding enemies detonate after overtake-and-throw situations; Player should now be correctly hit when it seems like they ought to be hit by popping plague demon and are 'safe' when they ought to have been tossed clear of the hero.

Improvements

• Faster/smoother level loading
• Adjusted 'Undo' tutorial
• Tutorials have numbers dropped from their player-facing titles
• Expanded description of Statue mechanics
• Style objectives as 'unachievable' if player lacks the spell to achieve a Move Variety Mastery Objective
• Updated map and tutorial pin locations
• The 'tail' of the shopkeeper's speech bubble now draws a bit more accurately given where the speaker is located below it.
• Adjusted Lulim speech avatar

Bugfixes

• SiggSigg name tags now appear in tutorial texts
• Fixed some codex typos
• Defeating an enemy by throwing them into an obstacle now correctly registers as a Slam for purposes of Objectives and Move Variety
• Fixed various throwing bugs

Features

• Mind Jab re-balanced to be more powerful

Improvements

• Much faster load times!
• Kalresh animation touch-ups
• Enemy stepping into a friendly fire hazard uses updated sound
• Imps now use updated flappy idle sound
• "Hide HUD & Grid" button (default key H) now cycles between four stages of hiding just the grid, just the HUD, both, or back to regular (showing grid and hud)
• Disabled gridlines in the instant replay entirely for a cleaner look
• Treespirit and Guldaeva character portraits now spookily fade in instead of normal slide in
• Better screenreading accessibility for tooltips (we recommend NVDA for players using a screen reader)
• Tweaked Blighted Trail speech events

Bugfixes

• Enable spell selection/deselection when in anti-magic zones
• Fixed erroneous border on 3rd tutorial level
• Dodging enemies now display the correct fight value if theirs is higher than the player's focus
• Enemy damaging magic hazards now score as "opponent crossfire"

Improvements

• Added more tower maps
• Better Dryad shot animations
• Updated defense sounds to better handle simultaneous defense sounds
• New swipe attack animations
• Semi-transparent avatar for Guldaeva's remote presence
• Slimmer asset size
• Misc animation touch-ups for Kalresh
• Updated Necropolis and Forest background art and pin placement
• Sounds for imps and campfire UI

Bugfixes

• Fixed a display bug wherein performing a magic smash with familiar/tremor spell would erroneously draw a blue arrow indicating hero motion toward the target
• Enemy melee slash vfx
• Fixed edge case bugs when both hero and decoy are in melee reach

Improvements

• Added a "Center On Hero" button that lives between Undo and Flourish and it centers the camera on the hero
• Enabled cross-platform cloud saves
• Defending sound effects now play when player defends
• More animated scenery VFX in Blighted Trail levels
• Magic Resist VFX
• Shorter hit animations
• Improved defeat animations
• Teal torch sprites for tower lobby
• Equipping/Unequipping techniques now uses the StatPlus/StatMinus sound
• Equipping a spell now makes a bespoke sound per spell instead of one generic sound. Likewise, changing staff now uses flourish sound of your new staff
• Tower Lobby now has two sizes of animating torch flames in the various braziers
• Improved art for Blighted Trail, Bandit Hills, and Tower
• Dryad parry and block animations
• Necropolis Slasher speech art for threat/defeated poses added to Necropolis speech events
• Campfire submenus now have roll-over sound for when you roll-over/tab-select the campfire for techniques, the meditating Kalresh for stats, etc.
• Necromancers now use charge-up sounds at the start of their attack sequence, new sound) then a launch sound when the projectile fires, new sound), and lastly a projectile-explodes-into-hazard when projectile reaches on destination tile.
• Feedback widget has additional text about contact info

Balance

• Adjusted Battleground mastery objectives.
• Familiar Strike now does 10 points instead of 5.
• Confounding Staff's directed flourish is now unstoppable (that is, avoids parry/bock/dodge) on all strikes instead of just the opener. This makes it more reliably evade opponent defenses as advertised.
• Lightning Staff's directed flourish now does 3 damage on the target immediately next to you, 2 damage on the opponents two tile away, and then 1 damage beyond that
• Lighting Staff directed and whirlwind flourish attacks now evade Dodge/Parry

Bugfixes

• Updates/fixes to store text and item purchase/upgrade responses
• Fixing a bug with "lost a tutorial speech" looping forever
• Fixing some bugs with KO-to-explode logic
• Enemy magical attacks now play "magic" sound instead of "bow and arrow" sound
• Enemies being pushed/forced to move into a magic hazard play "magic damage" sound instead of "player hurt" sound
• Shock spell can no longer leap from an enemy outside of an anti-magic zone into an enemy standing in an anti-magic zone
• Magic throws and smashes now break Parry/Dodge
• Magic Smash correctly scores on par with regular Smash
• Enemies that strike at a melee arc now always animate attacking the 'center' tile only
• Mind-controlled enemies can now be ordered to move out of mist tiles created by Smoke Screen (instead of them failing to move and the action terminating)
• Fixed a bug with flourish points being awarded too early but the pips indicating progress towards flourish pips drawing by way of the 'correct' math. This could cause the player to go from 4 to 5 pips and NOT see an increase in flourish points (on account of it having been awarded earlier in the pip progression)
• Flourish moves will now generally NOT increment flourish pips (in the past they were causing the pips to move but not progress to be tracked). Flourish moves that drop damaging hazards (Flourish Familiar, Flourish Brambles, Flourish Earthquake) still give flourish pips
• Hero defending against more damage than their defense stat in one turn now properly lowers defense if the player ALSO did hit an enemy that turn
• Mastery Bonus Objectives for the Speed Trials are now awarded so long as you defeated all enemies and does NOT require getting at least a Bronze medal
• Tooltips that show enemy status now indicate Prone (instead of Staggered) if the enemy is prone
• Fixed tooltips on withered speed saplings so player can get a tooltip over the withered plant telling them what turn it could have been acquired.
• Hero Attacks that do more than 1 point of damage now can earn more than 1 point of focus / score streak / flourish pips provided they hit an enemy with enough HP. Example: If player has something that makes their charge do 2 extra damage (up to 3 total) and they hit an enemy with 2 HP remaining, they'll gain 2 focus, 2 flourish pips, and gain x2 score streak.
• Enhanced-damage attacks also have increased score values so that the attack scores proportional to the dmg done (usually +10 or +15 per extra damaged depending on the base move). Whereas doing 'excess' damage to an enemy doesn't gain bonus streak multiplier/focus/flourish, a move is scored at full value regardless of the enemy's hp (Example: A 4-dmg slash against an enemy with 2hp will only advance your score streak x2 but that action will get scored as a 40 points slash).
• Staff Flourishes that do more that 1 damage in a single impact now have those hits that are >1 dmg score +10 points per damage above 1 and adjust focus and streak if target had hp to reduce
• Fixed Battle Meditation so you now only get your spell cooldowns reduced if you did indeed pass your turn defending against nothing instead of just "any time you stay put regardless of what you defend against" This also should fix the HUD indicator for when Battle Meditation (and by extension Empowered Strike, which has the same setup conditions) show their preview highlights.
• Fast enemies update their plans based on a new decoy (that is, a non-flourish decoy thrown off your current position) during their fast actions (aka when you're taking your momentum actions) instead only noticing decoys if you thrown them as the top of the turn.
• Hero keeps defeat animation during scorescreen instead of standing back up
• Fixed some timing issues with exploding enemies
• Misc glitchy animations fixed for hero and archers
• Rollover sounds for the Campfire submenu should halt each other so moving with the mouse/tab key won't cause cascade of sounds. This also now applies to the staff select sounds (if you rapidly select different staff options, each new 'equipped' sound will halt all others)

Improvements

• New title screen design
• Tower lobby art
• Damaging enemies now creates a series of 'hit notes' that play an ascending scale of notes as your score multiplier climbs
• More combat sounds, more tower music
• Updated Blighted Trail map art and more animated scenery elements like grass and fog in the Blighted Trail missions
• New speech portrait art for opponents
• Shops now have updated text and some added bits of animated flair
• Fancier animating clouds in the main map
• New option to wait to for player confirmation before starting a mission after loading screen finishes
• Pan camera by dragging using either left or middle mouse button
• Slower visual pulse when flourishing

Bugfixes

• Fixed issue when player ascends tower stairs as they open a UI modal
• Fixed mastery objective logic
• Sounds no longer overlap loudly
• Virtual cursor no longer triggers improperly when hitting space bar
• Allow player's momentum to continue after beating tutorial/practice maps
• Final tower boss intro sound and music plays correctly
• Various text fixes/improvements

New Features

• Exploding Golems/Plague Demons in the Tower & Arena
• Save/Resume Games During Missions
• Anti-aliasing Settings

Improvements

• New Campfire Animated Elements
• Updated Tavern Art
• VFX for Environments in Maps & Particle FX for destructible obstacles
• New Codex, Feedback, and saving icons
• Overwatch indicators now show potential damage amounts

Improvements

• New iconography
• New arena background
• More golem animations
• More final boss animations
• Tower has new art and a more cinematic intro
• Updated demo/tutorial movies
• Speech text is larger for large UI scale preferences

Bugfixes

• Large avatars aren't hidden behind speech bubble
• UI arrows no longer have "detached" arrowheads
• Ice spell no longer completely obscures other effects like smoke/decoys
• Victory condition for tower is fixed
• Misc fixes for final boss animations

Minor patch to update backend dependencies for better stability and accessibility

Internal Improvements

Improvements

• Bandit Spearman animations
• Bandit Slasher animations
• Heavy Flourishes animations
• Lightning Flourish animations
• Confounding Flourish animations
• Shieldbearer animations
• Dryad animations
• Bandit Champion animations
• Bandit archer animations
• Tighter Golem toss/landing animations
• Better sound balancing
• Add sounds for various enemies, spells, and flourishes
• Added new techniques: Perimeter Ward, Staggering Riposte, and Reflect Impact
• Better blocking UI indicators for Shieldbearers
• Endurance and Time Trial arena overhaul
• Enemy magic hazards now leave behind a magic cloud
• New parry icons
• Misc visual improvements on archers

Bugfixes

• User goes back to correct area after leaving tutorial
• Technique indicators correctly "flair" when made active
• Pageant of Strikes and Precise Hit correctly add damage
• Unstoppable Advance and Kinetic Rush now causes pushback damage
• Fix enemies sliding when pushes/tossed/shoved
• Prone enemies now stay facing their original direction until they stand again
• Better positioning/clickability of some tavern patrons
• Mind-controlled enemies now play their melee attack when commanded to charge an enemy
• Momentary Betrayal now has better tooltip text
• Gelatinous Cube can't be mind-controlled anymore
• Damage over 9 will appear as "10+"

Lots of new improvements this update!

• New gelatinous cube animations & SFX
• New necropolis enemy animations
• New map for the Necropolis Boss level
• New enemy in the Sacred Forest: Dryad Sentinels
• New dialogue for Tavern Patrons
• New Kalresh animations
• New Bandit Hills Level 3 Map Art
• New loading tooltips
• Polished misc animations
• Prettier arrow previews
• Misc performance improvements

New Features

• Guldaeva's glimmering goons have entered the game! Enjoy fighting against new soldier animations - smash them, toss them, and knock them down all to a satisfying result!

Improvements

• Enemies will turn to face Kalresh if they aren't staggered/prone/flipped over
• More UI sounds, such as button hover/clicks

Bugfixes

• Fix Kalresh sometimes retreating after a north toss
• Play "Cancel Flourish" sound only when toggling Flourish button, not after executing a Flourish move
• Undo no longer clears fast enemies' intent preview
• Better formatting of enemy special abilities in the tooltip
• Thrown enemies now face the right direction after landing
• Added missing hero animations

Bugfixes

• Fixed a potential issues with throwing opponents backwards
• Fixed issues with final position after a Counter-Shove

Improvements

• Full map backgrounds for The Blighted Trail
• More slash and throw animations
• New sounds for staff flourishes
• New market background
• New spell iconography
• Faster initial load time

Bugfixes

• Added some missing animations
• Fixed hero sliding when slashing large enemies
• Misc typo fixes

Improvements

• New spell icons
• New GUI icons
• New flourish lightning staff animations
• New slash animations
• New sound effects for smoke, shock, bramble, and boomerang spells

Bugfixes

• Less freezing when loading new animation textures
• Fix overly thick outlines on medium/low texture quality settings

Features

• Each Speed Sapling you collect now shows up at the campfire. Collect saplings to unlock new powerful staff forms.

Improvements

• The nemesis statue is now larger and more magnificent than ever
• Improved start-up screen
• The Guard Tower map now has an artful background
• Audio for Familiar and Earthquake spells
• Better flourish animations for strikes and spells

Bugfixes

• Charging and overtaking animations are less buggy

New Features

• You can now make your moves sooner! Instead of waiting for animations to fully wind down, you can start your next action before the dust settles, keeping you in the groove.

Improvements

• New spell VFX for Smoke Screen, Displacement Screen, Improbable Boomerang, and Branching Attack
• New status indicators for Confused and Entangled
• Miscellaneous speech updates

Bugfixes

• Fixed animations flipping when throwing enemies in certain directions
• Momentum indicator pane doesn't spin wildly anymore
• Indicators for winding down are more accurate
• Parrying enemies can no longertrample other enemies after you throw them

Improvements

• New speech avatars for Kalresh and Guldaeva
• New VFX for Thorny Brambles, Ice, Earthquakes, and Lightning spells
• New animations for Whirlwind Flourish
• Simplified splash screen and copyright info
• Updated credits
• Remove intro cinematic draft
• Misc speech and loading tip polish

Bugfixes

• Hero no longer ends up in incorrect position after throwing enemies in certain directions
• Large enemies correctly step on landable hazards

Improvements

• New in-game visuals effects for spells from the Geodes, Fossils, and Ancient Curios store (familiar, lightning, and earthquake spells)
• Better UI in the tower start screen
• Better art in the overworld and campfire
• Better animations for overtaking and pushing

Bugfixes

• Restore missing avatars
• Fix speech typos
• Horticultural Appropriation shopkeeper antlers now fully visible

Hotfix to fix missing tavern images

New Features

• Hitting escape skips all speech events
• Add speech log button to view all previous dialogue in case you skipped past it
• Show a spinner save indicator to let you know your progress has been saved
• New arena backgrounds
• Quit button on splash page
• Add Windowed, Fullscreen, and Borderless Fullscreen options
• Campfire stats screen now has a preview of equipped techniques that dynamically update as you adjust your Finesse stat

Improvements

• Speech transitions are a little snappier and smoother
• Improved throwing animations
• Various map tweaks

Bugfixes

• Fix bug where enemies could spawn over player's position
• Dashing into a statue no longer has bug where you appear somewhere you're not
• Checking "Hide Codex pop-ups" now hides all codex pop-ups

Happy Quarterstaff Release day! As of this morning, Quarterstaff has officially been released with a quarter of the Early Access price. Take advantage of this discount - it's for a limited time only! If you participated in the playtest, please accept our sincerest thanks! We're so grateful to Steam for providing this service, as it yielded incredible feedback results. There still may be some bugs to fix, but we're way ahead of where we'd be otherwise. The playtest has been deactivated for now - there will be further announcements if we have another to test any features. Our developers have worked devotedly through December to make sure our game is as good as it can be for release today. However, development will continue until Quarterstaff has the art and content it deserves! Over the next few months, we have a few goals in mind before we can say the game is fully completed: - Continue creating and adding beautiful art to flesh out all areas of the game - Refine the main progression story - Complete the story for the three unreleased areas of the game - Add achievements (yay!) We plan to update the build on a monthly basis (at minimum!) if not more. There's plenty of work to be done, and the game is changing and growing daily. We're so glad you've decided to join us on this journey. We're looking forward to your feedback, or hearing about any incredible multiplier streaks you managed to pull off! Happy New Year! The Team at Generic Lake Monster