MidBoss

Kitsune Games Developer

Kitsune Games Publisher

2017-05-25 Release

Indie Strategy RPG SingleplayerTags

Game News Posts: 36

🎹🖱️Keyboard + Mouse

Very Positive (208 reviews)

http://midboss.net/

Steam Store

The Game includes VR Support

Public Linux Depots:

MidBoss Linux [142.23 M]

Massive quality of life patch 1.2 out now!

The big patch you've all been waiting for is finally here! There's too much to cover in depth so here's a quick list of things you'll be interested in:

Upgrade system provided by the merchant. Scrap useless items into a single (sellable) pile, increase the number of slots in your inventory, and stack potions and tomes.
Three brand new abilities! Throw lets you throw anything in the game at your enemies, Guard replaces the Rust ability and is a toggle which drains stamina every turn but increases your damage reduction, and Miasma which replaces Life Leech on warlocks which throws down a field that blinds anything that passes through it, lowering Evasion and Accuracy.
Fast travel! Just right click on the map to travel to your cursor, the merchant, the cratefish king, or the stairs.
Item quickbar for using, equipping, and throwing items easily and conveniently.
Changes to game modes, there are now three to pick from. Hardcore mode is the default permadeath roguelike mode, 1UP mode gives you 5 lives with more to find along the way, and Narrative mode is for those who want to casually explore all the game has to offer with infinite lives and buffs to make the game easier.
Each new game mode now comes in three lengths: quick (same as quick play), standard (a new faster mode between the old quick play and default), and extended (the same as the old default).
Changes to make shrines more accessible. Gods will summon champions to punish you for trashing their shrines. If defeated these champions will drop icons belonging to their god, which you can use to gain the god's blessing. Additionally, pages of lore will randomly drop throughout the game, some of which contains information about the gods and how to interact with them.
New Game+ enhancements. When starting a New Game+ you can start the game with a new random seed. Additionally there's a hazard boost option, this makes items and monsters stronger, allowing you to play through the game multiple times at increasing difficulty.
Experienced players can now speed up animations by 25, 50, 75, or 100% through the options menu.
Mastery procs and debuffs will be shown onscreen to make it clearer what's going on.
Improvements to keyboard targeting prioritizes enemies over static objects, and selects targets in a more natural left-to-right fashion.
The floppy disk item has been implemented. If you find and use it there's an achievement in it for you, and a glimpse into MidBoss' past!
Improvements to controls and options for new players of all experience levels.

And those are just the highlights. Read on below for the full changelog, and if you enjoy these changes and MidBoss, please vote for it in the Labor of Love category of the Steam awards. Known issues On Mac and Linux the blue and red color channels on hardware cursors are reversed. This will be fixed in a patch shortly after Thanksgiving weekend.

Changes in v1.2.0:

(savegame compatible with previous version) [2017-11-22]

Abilities

Implemented new Guard ability, this ability replaces Rust on skeletons and reapers. This is a new type of ability, a toggle ability. It can be turned on and off at will and will drain stamina every turn until turned off or you run out of stamina.
Warlock's life leech ability has been replaced with a new ability: Miasma. This ability drops a 3x3 field that inflicts the blind debuff on anything that passes through it, inflicting a 25 penalty to Accuracy and Evasion.
Zap minimum damage increased from 60% to 70%.
The imp now has the new Throw ability, which can be used to throw any item in the game that can be picked up. When the Throw ability is available to the player the item shortcut bar will prompt the player when a new shortcut is created whether the item should be used/equipped or thrown.

Bug Fixes

Clarified wording on Devyn's Aether Respiration blessing.
Fixed a bug where Gravelord was applying its critical bonus as if it were an item, causing it to be scaled.
Fixed a typo in Fear's description.
Altar minimap icon is no longer off by 1 tile.
Fixed a bug with Ethereal where it would keep its user alive until their mana depleted completely.
Fixed a bug causing the drain soul option to never appear if you disable tutorials before getting the possessed form tutorial message.
Fixed fester typo.
Fixed a bug where the stats in the depossess prompt were not accurate with unmastered forms.
Fixed an issue with downward slash graphics being randomly flipped.
Fixed a bug where "items bought" in statistics was showing the number of items blessed, not bought.
Fixed a bug which was causing the Apple II, Commodore VIC-20, and Pen & Paper retro mode potions to not report their unlocked status in their tooltips.
Brood mother now has a status effect icon (oops).
Fixed a bug where the merchant would spawn with increased stats if a floor with a merchant on it was generated while the player was effected by the Precision Engineering buff given by the god Stack.
Fixed a bug which caused the final boss to have its passives duplicated on load.
Fixed a bug causing titlescreen menu items to be slightly misaligned.

Custom Game Options

The custom game window now includes an extra lives slider, which can be set to a value between 0 and 15 inclusive, or to permadeath or infinite lives
The quick play and default preset buttons in the custom game window have been replaced with the new presets of quick, standard, and extended. Quick is the same as the old quick play, while extended is the same as the old default.
Added a 'Narrative mode buffs' option to the custom game window, to toggle the narrative mode buffs to stats, stamina/HP/mana, and damage reduction on and off for custom games.

Death Cards

Added an unlockable MidBoss Classic card border.
Death card details now list unlocked upgrades (if any) and flags set by the game (if any).
Death cards window now shows how many lives a player had remaining at the end of their game on victory cards.

Environment

The game now spawns additional weaker aggressive monsters for each floor.
Gods will summon champions to punish you if you vandalize their shrines too many times. These champions can drop minor and major icons of their god, which can be used to gain the god's blessing.
Torn pages may drop randomly, containing small snippets of lore. This lore may help players figure out how shrines work.
Fast travel has been added. You can fast travel by right clicking anywhere on the map, and this lets you travel to where you clicked, the merchant, the cratefish king, or the stairs up and down.

Game Modes

When applying an exp multiplier in a custom game the amount of xp and form xp given when killing any monster cannot go below 1.
New mode: 1UP Mode. This mode introduces extra lives, letting players respawn at the last stairs they took a limited number of times. Additional lives can occasionally be found in chests.
New mode: Narrative Mode. This mode acts like 1UP mode but has infinite respawns, and buffs the player's meta attributes, HP, MP, stamina, and damage resistance.
The titlescreen menu has been changed. New game now opens another menu giving you the choice of Hardcore, 1UP, Narrative, or Custom Game modes, which in turn ask you for a game length of either quick, standard, or extended. Quick corresponds to the old quick play mode, and extended corresponds to the old default mode. The quick play and custom game options have been removed from the main menu.

General

Optimized the save system to prevent framedrops that some users were experiencing.
The last target selected using keyboard will be automatically re-selected when activating abilities using the keyboard.
Keyboard targeting will no longer attempt to target static scenery if the current ability cannot target scenery.
Keyboard targeting will now prioritize enemies over static scenery. This can be disabled in the options menu to revert to the old behavior.
Keyboard targeting will now function in a more sensible left-to-right manner.
Implemented new achievement "Yo dawg".
Clarified damage types tutorial wording.

Graphics

Added custom hardware cursors.
Added an option to show the mouse cursor in screenshots to the options menu, this option is off by default.
Item labels now do not appear until after an item's drop animation has completed.
Increased unique/legendary item glow size for small items.

The depossess prompt now equips the selected forms when you click yes.
The depossess prompt now tries to add forms you had equipped as the imp before to the selected forms, as long as this does not lower your multipliers.
You can now click yes on the depossess prompt when you're in imp form. This will only equip the selected forms, nothing else.
The possession window no longer shows the keybinds under the buttons when onscreen keybinds are disabled.
Learning the final Imp ability will no longer cause the mastered form depossession prompt to appear.
The possession prompt now shows a mastery star if the form it's asking you to possess is mastered.

Items

You can now favorite items from the equipment menu. Favorite items will no longer show up on the cat merchant's sell list, and will display a minimap icon when dropped. Favorite items will always ask for confirmation when trying to salvage them.
Added keybind to favorite items. Press the F key while mousing over items in your inventory to favorite them.
Added bulk selling buttons to items which are stacked when trading with the merchant.
Added keybind to salvage items and turn them into scrap. Press the Delete key while mousing over items in your inventory to salvage them.
You can now identify and bless items directly from your inventory without having to go through the item select popup.
Added an item quickbar. Drag items from your inventory onto the bar to use it. The bar can be used in two ways, by holding shift and then pressing the corresponding keybind for the item you wish to use, or by pressing and releasing the 'U' key, followed by the keybind. Both the key to hold or press in sequence can be modified via the options menu.
The "Path (hold)" keybind functionality has been removed to make way for the item quickbar.
The Floppy Disk item's functionality has been implemented.
The cat merchant now sells various upgrades including the pocket library, potion pouch, large backpack, and bag of holding. These upgrades improve inventory management.
The cat merchant now gives you the salvage-o-matic upgrade in his opening cutscene. This allows you to turn items into stacking scrap, which can be sold later.
Weapons of rarity rare and higher now sometimes spawn with a chance to inflict a status effect on hit such as burning or poison.
Legendary item abilities on weapons, armor, and shields will be different for seeds.
Tome abilities will be different for seeds.
Accuracy potions now cure blindness.
Alchemist's Manual functionality is now implemented.
You can now switch an either hand weapon to the other slot even if that slot is occupied by a non-either hand weapon, the non-either hand weapon will be unequipped.
Epic weapons will now sometimes spawn with the Returning property, which returns the item to your hand or inventory after being thrown.

New Game+

New game+ now carries over upgrades.
New game+ now includes a "hazard boost" option. Increasing this value will make monsters stronger, items more powerful, and cause more balls of yarn to be dropped.
You can now start new game+ with a new random seed. Additionally, for 1UP victory cards the number of lives for new game+ can be kept or reset to 4.

New Player Experience

The game will now show a one-time prompt to players for their experience with turn-based dungeon crawlers when it starts, this modifies the movement duration, turn delay, delay on aggro option settings, as well as which tutorials and reminders are shown. Note that the MidBoss Pro option disables all tutorials and hints, and sets the 'Animation speed' option to 25% faster.
A new controls overlay now appears on the 1st floor. This overlay shows how keys map to the directions of movement, and changes the cursor to one that indicates moving can be done using the left mouse button. It also allows players to change the orientation of the movement keys with a single click if using standard key bindings. The overlay can be hidden, either temporarily or permanently, and re-enabled from the options menu.
The control orientation picker has been removed.

Options

Added an experience level option to the gameplay section of the options menu. This affects what tutorials and hints are shown.
Minimum movement duration has been decreased from 0.13 seconds to 0.10 seconds.
Added 'Animation speed' option, this can be used to increase non-movement animation speeds by 25, 50, 75, or 100 percent.

Procs

Added option to disable the flash step mastery sound.
Mastery procs and status debuffs now have on screen text when they occur. Mastery procs are yellow and debuffs are purple.
Added option to disable onscreen proc/debuff messages.
The shield item mastery has been renamed to Block from Guard in order to prevent confusion with the new Guard ability.

[ 2017-11-23 00:31:34 CET ] [ Original post ]

Massive quality of life patch 1.2 out now!

The big patch you've all been waiting for is finally here! There's too much to cover in depth so here's a quick list of things you'll be interested in:

Upgrade system provided by the merchant. Scrap useless items into a single (sellable) pile, increase the number of slots in your inventory, and stack potions and tomes.
Three brand new abilities! Throw lets you throw anything in the game at your enemies, Guard replaces the Rust ability and is a toggle which drains stamina every turn but increases your damage reduction, and Miasma which replaces Life Leech on warlocks which throws down a field that blinds anything that passes through it, lowering Evasion and Accuracy.
Fast travel! Just right click on the map to travel to your cursor, the merchant, the cratefish king, or the stairs.
Item quickbar for using, equipping, and throwing items easily and conveniently.
Changes to game modes, there are now three to pick from. Hardcore mode is the default permadeath roguelike mode, 1UP mode gives you 5 lives with more to find along the way, and Narrative mode is for those who want to casually explore all the game has to offer with infinite lives and buffs to make the game easier.
Each new game mode now comes in three lengths: quick (same as quick play), standard (a new faster mode between the old quick play and default), and extended (the same as the old default).
Changes to make shrines more accessible. Gods will summon champions to punish you for trashing their shrines. If defeated these champions will drop icons belonging to their god, which you can use to gain the god's blessing. Additionally, pages of lore will randomly drop throughout the game, some of which contains information about the gods and how to interact with them.
New Game+ enhancements. When starting a New Game+ you can start the game with a new random seed. Additionally there's a hazard boost option, this makes items and monsters stronger, allowing you to play through the game multiple times at increasing difficulty.
Experienced players can now speed up animations by 25, 50, 75, or 100% through the options menu.
Mastery procs and debuffs will be shown onscreen to make it clearer what's going on.
Improvements to keyboard targeting prioritizes enemies over static objects, and selects targets in a more natural left-to-right fashion.
The floppy disk item has been implemented. If you find and use it there's an achievement in it for you, and a glimpse into MidBoss' past!
Improvements to controls and options for new players of all experience levels.

And those are just the highlights. Read on below for the full changelog, and if you enjoy these changes and MidBoss, please vote for it in the Labor of Love category of the Steam awards.

Changes in v1.2.0:

(savegame compatible with previous version) [2017-11-22]

Abilities

Implemented new Guard ability, this ability replaces Rust on skeletons and reapers. This is a new type of ability, a toggle ability. It can be turned on and off at will and will drain stamina every turn until turned off or you run out of stamina.
Warlock's life leech ability has been replaced with a new ability: Miasma. This ability drops a 3x3 field that inflicts the blind debuff on anything that passes through it, inflicting a 25 penalty to Accuracy and Evasion.
Zap minimum damage increased from 60% to 70%.
The imp now has the new Throw ability, which can be used to throw any item in the game that can be picked up. When the Throw ability is available to the player the item shortcut bar will prompt the player when a new shortcut is created whether the item should be used/equipped or thrown.

Bug Fixes

Clarified wording on Devyn's Aether Respiration blessing.
Fixed a bug where Gravelord was applying its critical bonus as if it were an item, causing it to be scaled.
Fixed a typo in Fear's description.
Altar minimap icon is no longer off by 1 tile.
Fixed a bug with Ethereal where it would keep its user alive until their mana depleted completely.
Fixed a bug causing the drain soul option to never appear if you disable tutorials before getting the possessed form tutorial message.
Fixed fester typo.
Fixed a bug where the stats in the depossess prompt were not accurate with unmastered forms.
Fixed an issue with downward slash graphics being randomly flipped.
Fixed a bug where "items bought" in statistics was showing the number of items blessed, not bought.
Fixed a bug which was causing the Apple II, Commodore VIC-20, and Pen & Paper retro mode potions to not report their unlocked status in their tooltips.
Brood mother now has a status effect icon (oops).
Fixed a bug where the merchant would spawn with increased stats if a floor with a merchant on it was generated while the player was effected by the Precision Engineering buff given by the god Stack.
Fixed a bug which caused the final boss to have its passives duplicated on load.
Fixed a bug causing titlescreen menu items to be slightly misaligned.

Custom Game Options

The custom game window now includes an extra lives slider, which can be set to a value between 0 and 15 inclusive, or to permadeath or infinite lives
The quick play and default preset buttons in the custom game window have been replaced with the new presets of quick, standard, and extended. Quick is the same as the old quick play, while extended is the same as the old default.
Added a 'Narrative mode buffs' option to the custom game window, to toggle the narrative mode buffs to stats, stamina/HP/mana, and damage reduction on and off for custom games.

Death Cards

Added an unlockable MidBoss Classic card border.
Death card details now list unlocked upgrades (if any) and flags set by the game (if any).
Death cards window now shows how many lives a player had remaining at the end of their game on victory cards.

Environment

The game now spawns additional weaker aggressive monsters for each floor.
Gods will summon champions to punish you if you vandalize their shrines too many times. These champions can drop minor and major icons of their god, which can be used to gain the god's blessing.
Torn pages may drop randomly, containing small snippets of lore. This lore may help players figure out how shrines work.
Fast travel has been added. You can fast travel by right clicking anywhere on the map, and this lets you travel to where you clicked, the merchant, the cratefish king, or the stairs up and down.

Game Modes

When applying an exp multiplier in a custom game the amount of xp and form xp given when killing any monster cannot go below 1.
New mode: 1UP Mode. This mode introduces extra lives, letting players respawn at the last stairs they took a limited number of times. Additional lives can occasionally be found in chests.
New mode: Narrative Mode. This mode acts like 1UP mode but has infinite respawns, and buffs the player's meta attributes, HP, MP, stamina, and damage resistance.
The titlescreen menu has been changed. New game now opens another menu giving you the choice of Hardcore, 1UP, Narrative, or Custom Game modes, which in turn ask you for a game length of either quick, standard, or extended. Quick corresponds to the old quick play mode, and extended corresponds to the old default mode. The quick play and custom game options have been removed from the main menu.

General

Optimized the save system to prevent framedrops that some users were experiencing.
The last target selected using keyboard will be automatically re-selected when activating abilities using the keyboard.
Keyboard targeting will no longer attempt to target static scenery if the current ability cannot target scenery.
Keyboard targeting will now prioritize enemies over static scenery. This can be disabled in the options menu to revert to the old behavior.
Keyboard targeting will now function in a more sensible left-to-right manner.
Implemented new achievement "Yo dawg".
Clarified damage types tutorial wording.

Graphics

Added custom hardware cursors.
Added an option to show the mouse cursor in screenshots to the options menu, this option is off by default.
Item labels now do not appear until after an item's drop animation has completed.
Increased unique/legendary item glow size for small items.

The depossess prompt now equips the selected forms when you click yes.
The depossess prompt now tries to add forms you had equipped as the imp before to the selected forms, as long as this does not lower your multipliers.
You can now click yes on the depossess prompt when you're in imp form. This will only equip the selected forms, nothing else.
The possession window no longer shows the keybinds under the buttons when onscreen keybinds are disabled.
Learning the final Imp ability will no longer cause the mastered form depossession prompt to appear.
The possession prompt now shows a mastery star if the form it's asking you to possess is mastered.

Items

You can now favorite items from the equipment menu. Favorite items will no longer show up on the cat merchant's sell list, and will display a minimap icon when dropped. Favorite items will always ask for confirmation when trying to salvage them.
Added keybind to favorite items. Press the F key while mousing over items in your inventory to favorite them.
Added bulk selling buttons to items which are stacked when trading with the merchant.
Added keybind to salvage items and turn them into scrap. Press the Delete key while mousing over items in your inventory to salvage them.
You can now identify and bless items directly from your inventory without having to go through the item select popup.
Added an item quickbar. Drag items from your inventory onto the bar to use it. The bar can be used in two ways, by holding shift and then pressing the corresponding keybind for the item you wish to use, or by pressing and releasing the 'U' key, followed by the keybind. Both the key to hold or press in sequence can be modified via the options menu.
The "Path (hold)" keybind functionality has been removed to make way for the item quickbar.
The Floppy Disk item's functionality has been implemented.
The cat merchant now sells various upgrades including the pocket library, potion pouch, large backpack, and bag of holding. These upgrades improve inventory management.
The cat merchant now gives you the salvage-o-matic upgrade in his opening cutscene. This allows you to turn items into stacking scrap, which can be sold later.
Weapons of rarity rare and higher now sometimes spawn with a chance to inflict a status effect on hit such as burning or poison.
Legendary item abilities on weapons, armor, and shields will be different for seeds.
Tome abilities will be different for seeds.
Accuracy potions now cure blindness.
Alchemist's Manual functionality is now implemented.
You can now switch an either hand weapon to the other slot even if that slot is occupied by a non-either hand weapon, the non-either hand weapon will be unequipped.
Epic weapons will now sometimes spawn with the Returning property, which returns the item to your hand or inventory after being thrown.

New Game+

New game+ now carries over upgrades.
New game+ now includes a "hazard boost" option. Increasing this value will make monsters stronger, items more powerful, and cause more balls of yarn to be dropped.
You can now start new game+ with a new random seed. Additionally, for 1UP victory cards the number of lives for new game+ can be kept or reset to 4.

New Player Experience

The game will now show a one-time prompt to players for their experience with turn-based dungeon crawlers when it starts, this modifies the movement duration, turn delay, delay on aggro option settings, as well as which tutorials and reminders are shown. Note that the MidBoss Pro option disables all tutorials and hints, and sets the 'Animation speed' option to 25% faster.
A new controls overlay now appears on the 1st floor. This overlay shows how keys map to the directions of movement, and changes the cursor to one that indicates moving can be done using the left mouse button. It also allows players to change the orientation of the movement keys with a single click if using standard key bindings. The overlay can be hidden, either temporarily or permanently, and re-enabled from the options menu.
The control orientation picker has been removed.

Options

Added an experience level option to the gameplay section of the options menu. This affects what tutorials and hints are shown.
Minimum movement duration has been decreased from 0.13 seconds to 0.10 seconds.
Added 'Animation speed' option, this can be used to increase non-movement animation speeds by 25, 50, 75, or 100 percent.

Procs

Added option to disable the flash step mastery sound.
Mastery procs and status debuffs now have on screen text when they occur. Mastery procs are yellow and debuffs are purple.
Added option to disable onscreen proc/debuff messages.
The shield item mastery has been renamed to Block from Guard in order to prevent confusion with the new Guard ability.

[ 2017-11-23 00:31:34 CET ] [ Original post ]

Kill your enemies, possess their bodies, and take their abilities as your own in this turn-based procedurally generated death labyrinth. You play as the imp, the weakest monster in the dungeon. Tired of being bullied by the other monsters, you set off with your sidekick Mid to descend to the deepest levels of the dungeon, defeat the final boss, and take his place.

MidBoss is easy to pick up and play if you're new to the genre of traditional roguelikes (turn-based strategic RPGs with permadeath), but still has the depth and complexity that veterans expect and enjoy.

Features

Possess your enemy and gain their strengths and skills with over 60 unique abilities to discover and learn.
Permanent death, if you die your save is gone!
Randomized potions every game. Who knows what's in these mystery bottles! (optional)
Traps as well as unidentified and cursed items.
Dynamic music system that ups the musical excitement when enemies are about.
Quick Play mode for shorter, more condensed play sessions.
Custom Games so you can play the game exactly the way you want to.
Shareable death cards document your run and how it ended. Load these in the game for stats or to play using the same seed and settings. Customize your cards with unlockable themes!
Spend death cards to start your next run with items you had when you died.
Beat the game and get a special card which unlocks a new game+ mode. Start over with your items, abilities, or both!
Lots of crates, chests, and other containers to pillage. Find the royal chest that spawns on every floor for extra sweet loot!
Playable with mouse and/or keyboard. Pick whatever control scheme you like!
Color-blind modes, optional high contrast font, and adjustable brightness.
Multiple monitor support and borderless windowed fullscreen.
12 retro mode filters to find and unlock.
Cratefish.

MINIMAL SETUPOS: glibc 2.17+. 32/64-bit. S3TC support is NOT required.
Processor: Dual Core 2.0 GHzMemory: 1 GB RAM
Memory: 1 GB RAM
Graphics: OpenGL 3.0+ support (2.1 with ARB extensions acceptable)
Storage: 300 MB available space

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