Free demo on Steam

Song of Larithea

A cute anime team-RPG with spell crafting.

Friendship, trust, revenge, and finding your way back from the darkness.

Some stories want to be told. The ones we don’t tell have to be repeated.

They wait.

This game is based on a novel I wrote — Серце гріє, a four-hundred-page fantasy published by Гамазин in 2008. It's a story about a team of young mages exploring the world of Larithea — its old magic and its hidden history. Each of them is on their own journey. Others walked it before. Few found their way back.

Ever since the book came out I've wanted to see this world in another medium. Other games have been made from my books over the years — this is the first one I'm building myself.

Cover of the 2008 fantasy novel Серце гріє (The Heart Warms) by Inga Pflaumer

Latest release

11.10.26
Alpha 9.4.4
Smaller Downloads, Redrawn Heroes
9.4.4 cuts the download size on every platform, fixes the Android title screen that stalled on launch, and redraws the dialogue portraits and summer cutscene panels for Maya, Nell, Tara, Grey and Dart.
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News

10.10.2026

Redrawn faces and summer scenes for the Chapter 1 heroes

Maya, Nell, Tara, Grey and Dart all got fresh art — their dialogue expressions are redrawn, and their summer cutscene panels are repainted to match.

06.10.2026

A round of Android fixes: the Map opens, dialogue reads right, fonts and the loader behave

On Android the Map now opens instead of crashing the game, dialogue types in cleanly and takes your first tap, bold and italic text shows in the game's own fonts, and the loading spinner keeps turning while the game loads.

04.10.2026

iPhone and iPad stop crashing past the title screen

On iPhone and iPad the game would crash the instant you left the title screen. That's fixed — the hero portraits now wait until they have room to draw, so the app moves into play cleanly.

03.10.2026

The “Challenge complete!” popup waits for the end of the fight

Finishing a daily challenge mid-fight used to pop a “Challenge complete!” message that interrupted you every turn. Now it holds until the fight is over and shows once things are calm.

01.10.2026

Advance dialogue with Enter or Space

If you were playing on a keyboard, pressing Enter or Space on a line of dialogue did nothing — it hit an error and the line stayed put. Now a keyboard press advances the dialogue, the same as a tap or a click.

30.09.2026

Arena enemies now think ahead and fight as a pack

In the Arena, enemies used to each pick their best move for the turn and nothing more. Now they plan several turns ahead and act as a group — focusing fire, splitting up, hunting the healer, or pulling back together — and a fresh set of fights has taken over the daily board.

27.09.2026

Daily challenges come to the Arena

Five challenges a day now wait at the Arena, the same set for everyone and reset each day, handed out by a new Challenge Herald. Each one names the material you'll earn from the morning, completing it pays that reward, and claiming plays a little celebration — plus materials and challenges now carry a rarity badge.

23.09.2026

Settings got rebuilt, tab by tab and row by row

The Settings popup is redrawn: folder tabs across the top that stop cutting off their own labels, every setting on one clean row, audio levels shown as a bar of squares beside each stepper, and text size that now grows the whole panel as you turn it up.

22.09.2026

Your fight plan is drawn now, and a low bar reads on the dark field

The planned-action popup and the hero tags used to spell each move out in a sentence or a stray emoji; now each one is a small drawn mark — footprints for a move, an open hand for a cast, a flask for an item. And health and mana bars switch colour below half, so a nearly-empty bar finally reads against the black battlefield.

21.09.2026

On Steam, your account is linked the moment you start a new game

Starting a new game on Steam now connects your Steam account right away, so Settings reads as linked through the whole opening instead of offering to 'Link Steam' until after the first conversation — and the prompt asking you to link no longer interrupts the intro.

20.09.2026

Cutscenes move on by themselves now

The comic-style story panels used to wait for a tap before moving on — only the intro and a couple of rest scenes advanced on their own. Now every panel does, stepping forward once it's had its moment on screen. There's fresh art too: Maya's expressions and two repainted backgrounds.

19.09.2026

The whole game reads in Chinese now, not just the menu it boots into

Setting a device to Chinese used to start the game in Chinese and then show you English almost everywhere — the Chinese words existed but weren't connected to the game. Now they are: the entire interface and every line you can reach reads in Simplified Chinese.

18.09.2026

The late-fight strain now storms across the battlefield

The three late-fight states — Elemental Strain, Battle Fatigue, Last Resort — used to be just a line of text in the top bar. Now the field itself shows them: storm clouds gather at the edges as strain builds, break into grey and lightning at Fatigue, and give way to a burning frame at Last Resort.

14.09.2026

Finishing an Arena fight keeps you in the Arena, and story friends speak the moment you tap

A finished Arena fight now returns you to the Arena instead of dropping you out to the map, and in story scenes a friend's line shows the moment you tap instead of after they walk over. A claimed material's rarity now reads in your language, the fight plan stays on screen when you pick an enemy, and short labels stop trimming when the trim wouldn't buy anything.

13.09.2026

A dead-end exit in three scenes is gone, and Chinese machines start in Chinese

An extra exit in three story scenes looked like the way forward but sent you back to the map without finishing the scene, so the next scene never opened — it's removed. And a device set to Chinese now starts the game in Chinese instead of falling back to English.

12.09.2026

A long session stops crashing, English buttons read in full, and two spells get new art

A memory leak that could crash the game during a long play session is fixed — a session that churns through the fight field stays steady now instead of building up until it falls over. Six of the seven activity buttons also stop cutting off their English label, and Maya's banner attack and Tara's default spells got new art.

11.09.2026

The demo map shows where it ends, and a desert battlefield reads cleaner

On the demo, the scenes past where it ends now look different from the ones you can play, and tapping one takes you straight to the demo-end message instead of opening it first. A desert battlefield also had its back layer redrawn.

10.09.2026

Every name shows in your language, and Settings is a tap away mid-fight

The name under each fighter on the field is now the character's real name in your language, and the well-rested popup names its hero the same way. Russian grammar inflects for the hero too, Settings is now reachable from every screen, and a batch of visible fixes came with it.

09.09.2026

Olija speaks up, a reload stops stranding you, and bubbles show their whole line

A round of fixes to things you'd actually hit: Olija has her lines between send-offs and the chapter-complete popup waits for the real end, reloading mid-tutorial no longer locks you out of the library, an expired session drops you cleanly to the title instead of replaying a fight, and speech bubbles show their full text.

07.09.2026

Three room intros speak Russian again, and arena names stop getting clipped

The line your party says on first walking into the bazaar, the arena or the grandmaster's office is back in Russian for all three, and across the arena the spell chips, spell-card names, aspect plates and reward names now fit their boxes in both languages.

06.09.2026

Russian text now fits the buttons and panels it sits in

Playing in Russian, some labels used to spill past their buttons or stretch a row out of shape. Every label now keeps the size it was drawn at — a longer Russian word is trimmed with an ellipsis instead of pushing everything around it — and button text draws in a narrower typeface that fits more of the word.

31.08.2026

The Steam page now reads in Russian and Chinese

The Steam store page is published in English, Russian and Simplified Chinese — the whole page each time, not just the headline. The game itself is already playable in Russian too, with Chinese, Japanese and Korean to follow. A native speaker went through the Russian, and we are looking for a native Chinese speaker to do the same for the Chinese.

28.08.2026

Getting to Broken Temple is a proper scene now

Reaching Broken Temple used to be a near-wordless two-panel moment. It's now a ten-panel scene across three pages: Maya and Nell lose the trail at a dead-end cave, spot bootprints in the silt, and find the gap between the stones that opens onto the far side of the lake.

26.08.2026

Press and hold an item to see what it is

You can now long-press any item or crafting material to pull up its full detail card, wherever it shows — the shop, your daily reward, the alchemy list, or the mid-fight item picker. Settings also gains an About tab, and a handful of visual fixes tidy up casts, ambient birds and the alchemy panel.

23.08.2026

Long play sessions no longer creep toward a freeze

Play for a couple of hours straight and the game used to slowly eat memory until it froze or crashed. That's fixed — a battle leaves almost nothing behind now, so long sessions stay steady. Dart's second strength upgrade also arrives far earlier.

22.08.2026

Chapter 1 opens all the way through again — and daily rewards finally add up

Two spots in Chapter 1 had quietly become impossible — a temple door that asked for a bigger party than you can field, and a run of fights with no way to survive it. Both are cleared now, Grey's first spell is affordable again, and a week of daily rewards actually buys something.

20.08.2026

The Windows download now opens instead of a black screen

The packaged Windows build launched straight into a permanent black window and never got past it. That's fixed — the Windows download now opens to the game the way it should.

19.08.2026

In alchemy, the material you've picked now shows its gold edge

Picking a crafting material in alchemy used to give no sign of which small card you'd selected. Now the chosen one wears the same gold border the bigger cards use — and loading screens hold steady on a game that's been installed a while.

18.08.2026

Three new chapter loading screens — and new music for every fight

The chapter loading screens that arrived last week now have three new ones — for Nell, Dart and Olija — each carrying its own school of spells across the top, and the music that plays during fights has been swapped out for new tracks.

17.08.2026

The world breathes — birds, fireflies and firelight move through your scenes

Every walking scene used to sit perfectly still. Now the world moves around you — flocks of birds crossing the sky, fireflies twinkling, water dripping into spreading ripples, firelight flickering — with a different effect chosen to suit each place.

16.08.2026

Loading screens between locations now show chapter art and lore

The wait while a new location gets ready used to be a bare spinner. Now it's a full chapter screen — the chapter's own art, a hand-inked line of lore, and that chapter's school of spells drifting across the top as the loading bar.

15.08.2026

Every fight shows its name in your language

The name on the pre-fight screen used to print in raw English capitals — "DESERT STEPS BATTLE" over a Russian party — and arena bouts just said "Battle". Every fight is now titled in the language you're playing in.

12.08.2026

Battle overlays line up with the grid — and story text follows your language

The aim squares, unit bars and spell highlights that draw over a fight now sit exactly on their grid tiles instead of drifting a couple of pixels to the side, and switching language now reloads the story text into the new one right away.

11.08.2026

Spell effects each get their own look — and show while they're running

Combat effects no longer all land like a plain school hit — each one has its own animation now, lingering effects show an overlay for as long as they hold, and a run of clarity fixes lands across crafting, quests and buttons.

10.08.2026

The chaining tutorial finally shows up for new players

The one-time explainer that teaches spell chaining now appears when you make your first chain — it had been silently skipping new players, leaving chaining explained nowhere.

09.08.2026

Dialogue types itself out now — plus three new spell effects

Dialogue lines now reveal letter by letter by default instead of popping in whole, with a tap to skip ahead, and three new combat effects — Nell's Berserker, Grey's Reinforce and Dart's Mirror — have joined the fight.

08.08.2026

Spell casts now fit the distance they cross

Spell casts come in three lengths now, so a short-range hit no longer shows a clipped trail, the plainer enemies share clean per-school effects that follow the colourblind toggle, and the hero hit animation only plays when a hero actually takes damage.

06.08.2026

Heroes celebrate a landed hit — and crafting gets a big-screen makeover

Land a damaging spell and the camera now swings back to your hero for a little victory animation, the alchemy and crafting screen has been rebuilt, and the aspect tree finally spells out what each node gives you.

04.08.2026

Tap the first enemy to start a walking fight — and every scene now has its backdrop

In the battle scenes where you walk into enemies, you can now tap the first one to jump straight into its fight, and with the last two painted backgrounds finished, every scene in the game has its own backdrop.

03.08.2026

Fresh backdrops across the world, and a new look for the desert

A big pass on the game's scenery — a run of scenes got new or redone backgrounds, the water caves now read as two distinct places, and the desert arc picked up a set of brand-new painted backdrops.

02.08.2026

The Mac app opens again

The Mac desktop build had been crashing the instant you opened it — every Mac build for the last few days died on launch, Steam included. That's fixed now; it starts up like it should.

01.08.2026

One counter for the Bazar: Auri runs the gift and the shop

The free daily gift and the potion shop have merged into a single Bazar window behind one character, Auri, with a Daily Rewards tab and a Shop tab — and the Mana potion is now the Energy potion.

30.07.2026

A Steam-only retry when sign-in stumbles

Launch through Steam and the sign-in that runs quietly in the background can occasionally miss — now you get a Steam-specific retry instead of a generic sign-in, so your Steam progress stays tied to your Steam account.

29.07.2026

A dead robber near the throne, and the trail down

A new side quest nobody hands you — search near the throne, find a dead robber Grey recognizes, and follow the trail down through a run of fights to a hidden grotto and the treasure two thieves killed each other over.

28.07.2026

A longer way down, past the drowned tunnel

A new multi-part side quest opens once you've helped the injured student — a woman at the grandmaster's office sends you back to the flooded tunnels, this time past where the divers stopped, down to where the passage finally ends.

26.07.2026

A drowned tunnel, and what Grey learns down there

A new side quest starts with a young diver at the bedouins' camp and follows an old waterhole legend down through the reeds to a flooded tunnel — seeing it through is how Grey earns Empower.

25.07.2026

Spells look like their element now

Casting a spell now sends its element flying across the field and bursts on the target — fire, earth, metal, air, water — instead of the old generic sparkle, for you and the enemies both.

24.07.2026

Maya explains chaining the first time you land one

The first time you trigger a chain bonus in a real fight, Maya steps in once to explain how chaining works — what lines up, and what you get for it.

23.07.2026

The battle screen tells you where you are

Fights now show their name and which fight you're on above the turn counter, and the camera frames multi-target spells to fit everything they hit.

22.07.2026

A guard against wasted spells

Cast an area spell that wouldn't hit anything and the game now asks you to confirm first — plus cleaner hero movement on desktop.

21.07.2026

Pull arrives, and Push hits harder

A new piece of spellcraft: Pull drags an enemy toward the point of impact, and Push now shoves them further the stronger the spell. There's a new arena fight built around exactly these tricks.

20.07.2026

Sigils unlock where they should

Reworked when sigils become available so every one — including Dart's Freeze — is reachable at a sensible point in the game, with a rebalance pass on Nell along the way.

19.07.2026

The Larithea story is now an animated series

Episode 1 of Song of Larithea — an animated web series set in the game's world — is live. Four student mages, one missing team leader, and a full cast of AI-generated voices.

18.07.2026

Dart learns to Freeze

Dart's new sigil locks an enemy in place with ice — the first control effect in his kit, for when you need someone to just stay put for a turn.

17.07.2026

The desktop build stops flashing white

Progress on the version headed for Steam: the white bars that flashed around the picture on desktop are gone — the game now fills its window cleanly.

16.07.2026

Tidier rewards, roomier battles on phones

Reward popups now list each reward on its own line, and on phones the in-fight text log is tucked away so the battlefield gets the whole screen.

15.07.2026

Play the whole game from your keyboard

On web you can now play entirely without a mouse — walk with the arrow keys, fight with arrows, Enter, and Tab, and drive every menu and popup from the keyboard.

14.07.2026

The music stops dropping out

Background music used to cut out after you switched apps, took a call, or left the game sitting idle — now it keeps playing through all of that. The title screen's carousel arrows also click when you tap them.

11.07.2026

The battle camera stops drifting

On the fight field the camera zoom was slipping out of sync from the second turn onward — it now stays locked to the action for the whole battle.

10.07.2026

The web game now plays properly on iPhone

Alpha 5.2.10 is out, and with it the web game works on iPhone: the welcome card no longer traps new players at the first screen, popups fit and scroll on a phone, and the game draws at the right size even when you rotate or zoom.

09.07.2026

Every road looks different now, and the sky keeps time with your story

Each stretch of Chapter 1's walking scenes gets its own scenery — desert plains, ochre groves, gorges, water caves, fire-scarred bush — and the sky moves from early morning to late evening as your journey progresses.

08.07.2026

Scenes wait until they're fully drawn

No more half-loaded scenes: a scene now appears only once all of its art is ready. And after an update, the web game reliably picks up the newest version instead of showing you yesterday's.

07.07.2026

Grey joins the walking cast, and the shop shows what you're carrying

Grey gets his idle animations in the walking scenes and a refreshed story portrait. The shop now shows your gold and materials while you browse, and coming back after a few days no longer buries you in popups.

06.07.2026

Nell steps into the walking scenes

Nell gets five idle animations in the walking scenes — meet him on Ormron Street and he moves like a person, not a portrait. Tara picks up a fifth idle, and heroes now vary their idles so the rare ones stay rare.

04.07.2026

Tara gets her walking animations, and two new potions arrive

Tara now has her full walking-scene set — walk cycle plus idles — and she's animated in the teahouse. Two new potions arrive: Revival brings a fallen hero back mid-fight, Invincibility blocks all damage for a turn. Defeated fighters no longer leave blank cells on the fight field.

02.07.2026

Cutscene: speech bubbles stay on revealed panels

Speech bubbles no longer vanish when you tap forward past a revealed panel. If a panel is on screen, its bubble is on screen with it.

01.07.2026

Cutscene panels get their final art

The stone-plateau (team-split) cutscene is wired to its final panel art, and the Ormron Gates cutscene picks up new slides in place of the old ones. A cutscene input bug that could skip text when you tapped during the small delay before a speech bubble appeared is fixed.

30.06.2026

Dart joins the fight-field animation set

Dart is now on the same fight-field animation set as Maya, Nell, Tara, and Grey — all five main heroes share the same on-grid pipeline. The brief blink heroes used to show at the transition from planning to playout is gone. Portrait emotions and spell-card art now preload so nothing pops in mid-turn.

29.06.2026

Card icons and portraits stop going blank on slow web

On slow web, item, spell, enemy, and hero card icons could show up blank, and dialogue portraits could reload between lines. Both are fixed. Higher-strength spell aspect art now preloads during the fight's setup, so cards don't pop in mid-turn.

28.06.2026

Chapter 1 desert dialogues rewritten in audio-drama voice

Chapter 1's desert dialogues are rewritten to match the opening cinematic's audio-drama register. The sign-in modal is restructured into a clear New player and Returning player two-column layout. Scene reveals on the web are now all-or-nothing — a scene either paints fully or waits, no half-painted appearances.

27.06.2026

Scene backgrounds paint reliably on the web

Scene backgrounds that were coming up blank or green on the web now paint reliably. A battle-scene exit that sometimes never completed is fixed. The F&F welcome popup now checks connection quality when you land and warns you if it isn't stable enough to play well.

26.06.2026

Tara and Grey get their full in-fight animation set; winning hero dances, last fallen slumps

Tara and Grey now run on the same fight-field animations Maya and Nell already had — ready stance when selected, attack wind-up, hit flinch, KO slump, victory dance. The fight outcome popups pick up animated finishers: the hero who landed the killing blow dances on a win, and the last hero to fall slumps into a looping KO on a loss. Maya picks up a celebrate pose for parity.

25.06.2026

Tutorial: idle hints land when you pause; press-and-hold step gets an arrow and a highlight

The opening fight tutorial now notices when you stop and surfaces a centered hint with your next step. On the free-play turn it names the exact hero who still needs to move, pick a spell, or cast, instead of leaving you to figure out whose turn it is. The press-and-hold step trades a small on-card chip for a purple highlight, a pointing arrow, and a plain centered instruction.

24.06.2026

Consumable items land in the shop and on the fight grid; quest popups preview rewards

Heroes can now carry and use consumable items in battle. The Bazar sells basic health, mana, and strength potions for the same basic materials you'd otherwise spend on crafting spells, so every drop is now a choice — stock up on items or save for new spells. Items occupy a hero's cast slot for the turn and are picked through a new Use card right of the spell strip, with a target picker, a playout zoom on user and target, and a 'used an item' avatar tag. Quest popups also preview the reward on offer before you accept.

23.06.2026

Walking scenes load on slow connections; elemental strain timing pulled in

Walking scenes no longer wait on hero animations to load before revealing — the animations stream in behind a still pose and swap in once they're ready. On a slow connection the library scene drops from around 50 seconds to about 6, and Ormron Street stops getting stuck mid-load. Elemental strain now always starts on a reach-based turn (8 / 7 / 6) instead of defaulting to turn 10 in fights without a passive enemy, and battle fatigue now starts 3 turns after strain instead of 5. The participating-heroes chain panel also stops disappearing on turns you win.

22.06.2026

Max health gets a range modifier; Rose Lake and Down the Gorge swap in a Fire Wraith and a new Iron Brute; story map gets a starfield

Max health now layers a per-range modifier on top of the school modifier — short and close ranges get +1, mid is 0, long gets -1. Heroes and enemies both pick it up, with energy still mirroring the same-school hero 1:1. Rose Lake's first fight swaps a Fire Ghoul for a Fire Wraith. Down the Gorge's first fight swaps an Iron Strider for a new Iron Brute, the first Metal-school brute in the roster. The story map picks up the starfield background that was previously placeholder.

21.06.2026

Enemy stats mirror your same-school hero; Maya is the base walker

Enemy max health and energy now copy your owned same-school hero 1:1 across the whole roster, not just the active party, and the per-fight count multiplier comes out entirely. Maya is hard-pinned as the base-hub walker, with a fallback chain covering story scenes when she's not in the party.

20.06.2026

Chapter 1 sigil retiming; Dart joins in the excavations arc

Chapter 1's sigil unlocks get reshuffled. Maya's Spikes moves later, Grey's Gust and Draft move earlier, Tara's Adamant pulls out. Dart joins during the excavations arc, and the leaving-excavations scene drops its required-hero list — pick any three.

19.06.2026

Web loading: screens wait until painted; failed fetches retry

Title, fight, base walking, story and battle walking, and the opening now wait until their art has actually finished painting before revealing — they used to reveal on prefetch and fill in in front of you. A failed image fetch retries instead of leaving art missing.

18.06.2026

Nell's fight-field animations land; fight portraits stay mounted

Nell's full fight-field sprite set — idle, selected, attack, hit, KO — wires into the same animation state machine Maya uses. The fight field also stops blanking on the portrait stacks at playout, which fixes the brief unloaded-portrait flash on slower or uncached devices.

17.06.2026

Arena fight 3 redesigned as Ochre Pits; Empower icon and push animation land cleanly; dead-session boot recovers instead of stranding you

Arena fight 3 gets a full redesign as Ochre Pits — Tara and Grey against a Wind Strider, Earth Golem, and a long-range Iron Revenant. Arena fight 1 (Metal Winds) goes from three enemies to four with a second Wind Husk, and Proving Ground is retuned. Empower casts now surface their buff icon the moment they land instead of waiting for the next snapshot; pushes actually slide the displaced enemy across instead of skipping straight to the final position. A stored session the server no longer recognises now routes you cleanly back to the title instead of leaving you stuck on the loading screen. Dart picks up new dialogue art and his own VS-screen banner pose. Arena mobile layout tightens up — completed fights grey out as a whole block, rewards shrink, multi-word CTAs wrap.

16.06.2026

Screen music: arena gets its own track, base playlist tightened, opening goes silent, activity cutscenes muted

A pass on which music plays where. The arena gets its own track instead of pulling from the general fight pool. The base playlist gets tightened. The opening cutscene plays silent so the first thing you hear is the first scene, not a track that competes with it. Activity cutscenes drop their background music so the activity's own sound has the room.

15.06.2026

Ormron Gates cutscene art lands with comic-panel borders and speech bubbles; school ranks rename to Apprentice/Professor/Grandmaster; 4.3.0 cut

Ormron Gates cutscene art is wired in. Cutscene panels get double-frame comic borders, character dialogue inside cutscenes now renders as speech bubbles instead of a separate dialogue box, and the panel art ships as webp. School ranks rename: the single 'Master' rank splits into Apprentice / Professor / Grandmaster, so the school hierarchy reads at a glance. Walking battles get a Leave button with a warning, and a Maya-less party no longer breaks the walking-battle screen. The chain order reveal gets an animated electric border to make the reveal feel like a charge-up. Version cut 4.2.3 → 4.3.0 for the dev → staging promotion.

14.06.2026

Chains redesigned around per-fight hero order; difficulty levers tuned; multi-cell hits land in one beat; story map and aspects tree get freeform pan

Elemental chains get rebuilt around per-fight hero order — the chain used to follow a fixed element ordering, and now it's anchored to the order the heroes act in this specific fight, with the chain tracker hidden in the tutorial so it doesn't tease a mechanic that isn't taught yet. Difficulty gets honest levers: actsInUnison is renamed to what it actually does, a soft-cooperation knob lands so enemies can ease into coordinated play instead of always doing it or never doing it, and enemy spell strength now scales. Multi-cell damage on enemy turns batches up and lands simultaneously instead of trickling cell by cell. Move and attack cells in the fight grid render in one colour, never blending into a third. The in-fight spell detail popup now reflects a hero's active strength buff. Story map and aspects tree get freeform 2D pan instead of locked axes. Alchemy crafting buttons read as tappable and show per-batch cost. The recovery sign-in modal gets a 'Start a new game' escape hatch. Arena fight 2 (Metal Winds) gets rebalanced harder, with one strong spell per hero.

13.06.2026

4.2.2: audio settings stick, fight-rewards popup gets a redo, small-screen polish

The web alpha cuts to 4.2.2. Audio mute and volumes now survive a refresh or cold start instead of resetting every session. Fight-win rewards move into a dedicated rewards popup with a tidier loot list. Small-screen polish lands across the board: a compact Arena spells popup, a tighter spell card with smaller buff icons and name-tags, and a stacked quest list in the Journal so short viewports stop running out of room.

12.06.2026

Arena rewards randomized and revealed in a popup; school-colored effect icons on the fight field

Arena rewards are now randomized and shown in a reveal popup at the end of a run. A new Arena spells popup shows the spell set for the fight, and the spell card's secondary-damage line moves to a clearer slot. Active-effect icons on the fight-field combatants render in their school color, so it's readable at a glance who's carrying what. In the crafting picker, a long-press on a sigil opens the aspect-details view, and the Snake Medallion's bark gets finalized. Banter contiguity fix: a pair or trio exchange plays its lines back-to-back instead of being interleaved with other turn beats. Combos over dead enemies no longer mis-fire, pre/post banter timing is corrected, and dialogue speaker names resolve through an identity lookup so renamed NPCs read correctly.

11.06.2026

Broken Bridge polish: Tanzin the Archeologist, sparkles on gold spots, space-aware enemy positioning after the scene

A polish pass on the Broken Bridge area. Tanzin the Archeologist gets bridge dialogue and is wired in as the snake-medallion quest giver — no more orphaned quest. Gold examine-spots get a sparkle so they read at a glance instead of needing a hunt. Trigger positions and dialogue copy get a tightening pass. After the Broken Bridge scene resolves, enemy positioning becomes space-aware so encounters laid out on top of the new geometry don't end up sitting in walls or off-cell. The grandmaster's office exit zone gets a small nudge so you don't clip it leaving. Version cut 4.1.0 → 4.1.1.

10.06.2026

Chains require a shared enemy and bonus scales with length; Library Student splits off; tutorial pointer raised

Combat tuning on elemental chains. A chain only counts now if its links share an enemy — random links across the board don't trigger one anymore — and the bonus damage scales with chain length, so longer chains hit harder. The Digsite Student NPC splits into two characters: a Library Student who lives in the library and a separate Digsite student who shows up at the bridge. Tutorial polish: the spell-pointing arrow is raised 100px so it stops sitting on top of the card it's pointing at.

09.06.2026

Spell cards repainted, VS popup goes size-aware, Empower as a strength-set, enemy row-seeking difficulty lever

A pass on the spell side. Spell-card visuals are repainted for the new element set, with a single source of truth for the school label. Spell descriptions become composed strategic copy — per-hero range, per-hero phrasing, and the list of sigils you'd need to pre-craft each spell. The VS popup goes size-aware: mini cards on phones, compact on larger screens, two-up scrolling. Empower switches to a strength-set duration model (it sets strength for N turns instead of stacking with itself), with a pre-craft sigil popup added to its showcase. A new difficulty lever ships: enemy row-seeking movement, default on — enemies now move toward the row they want to hit instead of holding their starting cell. Library Student NPC art is in.

08.06.2026

Element wheel reworked to a sequential chain; chains reenact on the field with banter portraits; 4.0.0 cut

The element model is reworked end-to-end into a sequential chain — every element now sits in one ordering, and the same chain drives the data, the visuals, and the banter relations. When a chain resolves in a fight, it reenacts across the actual cells on the field, with banter portraits leading the burst — the chain is a piece of choreography now, not just a math step. A second peaceful music track lands. The comic burst bubble gets a redesign, with center and no-tail variants and a leading-avatar slot used by the new chain choreography. Version cut: 4.0.0.

07.06.2026

Elemental chains land in combat with a combo overlay; aspects screen gets a polish pass; Library Journal opens from a hotspot

Elemental chaining ships as a real combat mechanic. When casts line up in an elemental sequence, the chain triggers a combo overlay — polygon-clipped diagonal panels with per-link art, an enemy spotlight ping, and a follow-on bonus step on top of the base damage. The aspects screen gets a polish pass: two-times open zoom, web drag-to-pan with a grab-hand cursor, sigil strength and area preview on open nodes, press-and-hold on a sigil for a detail popup, and a badge trail (menu → hero → aspects → craft) that walks you to any uncrafted sigil. Aspect badges clear on tap, craft badges stay until you actually craft. Library Journal: a new quest-log panel opens from a library hotspot. Teahouse rest now blocks when the party is at full health and energy, so you can't waste a rest on nothing.

06.06.2026

Field banter playback timing: lines fire on the resolved action, not the cast moment; authoring sim flags where banter would run dry

Two passes on yesterday's field-banter shipment. Playback choreography: a hero's line now plays on the damage their cast deals (a single-target kill renders the enemy down on the same step), a hit line plays when damage lands on the hero, a heal line plays when the heal lands — instead of all of them firing at the cast moment. The step auto-advance freezes for a second when a line fires so it's readable on the stationary hero, then the bubble keeps tracking the cell as the camera moves on and dismisses shortly after. And a new authoring sim drives the real banter selection over a worst-case fight run and reports which pools would go silent.

05.06.2026

Field banter ships: heroes speak during fights — solo on cast, pair on same-target combo, trio on three in a row

Heroes now talk to each other in combat. The selector is server-authoritative: an element chain (when chains exist), a same-target pair (two heroes hit the same enemy consecutively), a same-target trio (three in a row), or a solo line as the floor — capped at three barks per turn. A six-fight dedup window keeps the same exchange from repeating right after you hear it. Authored content covers all five Chapter 1 heroes across solo, pair, and trio pools, every line tagged with an emotion. The frontend overlay maps emotion → kaomoji face on the speaker. Twenty-two unit tests on the selector, plus a hero-voices reference doc for writing future banter.

04.06.2026

Web demo prep: version 3.11.0 cut, deploy pipeline learns per-target gating

Plumbing for the upcoming web demo. Version bumped 3.10.2 → 3.11.0 across all five version files as the dev → staging promotion. The deploy workflow learns per-target gating — staging and prod can now have different access expectations end to end, and the smoke test honors which one is which (some targets are checked for public 200s, others for the gated 401-then-200 dance). Infrastructure-only; nothing player-visible yet.

03.06.2026

Field banter design doc lands; element wheel and Olija's school corrected in the docs

A design doc for in-combat banter goes in ahead of the implementation: five trigger categories, an element/pair/trio/character cascade, a six-fight dedup window, replay-safe server-side selection, the allBanter.json schema, and a coverage sim plan. Two doc fixes ride along: the element wheel is restated as the 5+3 model (Metal sits in the classic ring; Order is the future esoteric school), and the crafting rule is corrected to match the shipped data — own-school materials for T1–T4 area, all strength, and all effect spells; generating-neighbour material for T5/T6 area. Olija is renamed Light → Order to complete the esoteric Order → Fate → Chaos cycle.

02.06.2026

Fight log plan summary: chip text → black for readability

Small readability fix on the fight log. The chip text in the plan-summary panel was rose (#C084B8), which sat too low-contrast on its own background. Switched to black; chip background and border are unchanged.

01.06.2026

Grandmaster's office: a new base room off Ormron Street

A new hub room reached from Ormron Street. First time you step in, Maya delivers a quick "no one here, check in later" line and the room is marked visited — only the exit-back trigger is active for now. The secretary, the grandmaster himself, and the desk all unlock through later dialogue. New parallax background art for the room (back / mid / fore) and a front-facing secretary sprite are in.

31.05.2026

Grey's Embolden buff sigil, Arena spells now pull from live game data

Two systems pushes. Grey gets a new Embolden buff sigil — an in-fight +1 strength to a chosen ally, extending the in-fight buff system that paired with this week's rest-activity buff. Arena used to ship with hardcoded spell definitions, completely separate from the main game's spell data — so any economy or effect tweak had to be duplicated. Now Arena pulls spells straight from game data: when the rest of the game changes, Arena stays in sync automatically. Plus the opening cutscene stages the Ormron mid background through the intro, and Lamia's selected-sprite on the fight field gets a refresh.

30.05.2026

Burn deals damage again, plus a burn badge on spell cards and school-tinted aspect chips

A readability pass on combat. Burn was misfiring — it required strength even though it's an effect-only spell — so burn spells were resolving without damage. Fixed, and burn spell cards now show a top-center burn badge so you can read the effect off the card directly. Aspect-name chips tint by school color instead of all defaulting to gold, so school is readable at a glance everywhere aspects appear.

29.05.2026

Sign-in optional, rest grants +1 strength, cutscenes collapse to a single Skip

A friction-reduction pass aimed at the upcoming web playtest. Sign-in is no longer required to play — you can jump straight in, and Settings stays reachable from anywhere. Resting at base now grants a +1 strength buff for your next fight, so rest has a mechanical reason beyond healing. Cutscene controls collapse from a Next/Skip animation pair into a single Skip button. The Daily Arena popup tightens its layout so fight cards equalize to the tallest card, and dialogue boxes get a fixed minimum height across cutscene and regular dialogue. A dead-hero sticker no longer overlaps the health/mana stats in the vertical fight column.

28.05.2026

Big fix wave: hub walking instant, alchemy/quest popup cleanup, hero-died + last-resort tutorials

A wide bug-and-polish pass. Hub walking triggers now fire immediately on tap instead of waiting for the hero to walk over them. Alchemy ingredient rows get a dedicated Alchemy button instead of the whole row redirecting. Ingredient counts color green or red by sufficiency so you can see at a glance whether you have enough. The VS popup asks for confirmation before leaving a story fight. The Plan Ready popup no longer discards your plan if you tap the backdrop. Two new client tutorials — hero-died and last-resort — plug onboarding gaps. Sigil descriptions get real playable copy replacing the placeholder text. Plus a tutorial turn-1 fix and a story-exit + broken-bridge quest-flow fix.

27.05.2026

Ambient effects across base + story scenes, brighter trigger sparkles, search-spot polish

A data-driven ambient effects layer lands across base locations and story scenes — atmospherics are now defined alongside scene data instead of being one-off. Trigger sparkles get a density boost so they're easier to spot, addressing the "I didn't see anything I could tap" failure mode on first-time runs. Search-spot triggers skip an extra image step, the digsite-student NPC moves to a better position, and Arena herald assets land.

25.05.2026

Combat polish: dead-hero pickup fix, +1 energy pulse on mana regen, End Turn fills the gaps

Four combat and tutorial fixes. Tapping a dead hero's cell now correctly selects the living hero standing on it for pickup, fixing the long-standing issue where the click went nowhere. Fight playback shows a +1 energy stat pulse at SIDE_END so the mana regen tick is visible instead of just numbers bumping silently. The End Turn button auto-fills any heroes you didn't plan actions for with Skip, so a missed click no longer blocks the turn. And the tutorial swaps between a sparkle highlight and a gold border depending on which action type is required next.

24.05.2026

Quest Completed popup with rewards; tap anywhere advances cutscenes; basic-rest-with-Dart art lands

Quest completion now has a proper beat: a Quest Completed popup that shows per-quest rewards explicitly, plus Name the Dead's turn-in content. Dialogue cutscenes advance on a tap anywhere on the screen, not just on the dialogue box — useful on mobile where the box was a small target. The story map's Q quest marker is restricted to side quests now, so the main story line doesn't get visually tagged like an optional aside. And the basic-rest-with-Dart party-rest cutscene picks up two new panel art frames.

23.05.2026

3.10.0 to staging: per-fight difficulty levers, Main quest popup, web gets a horizontal spell strip

3.10.0 went to staging today. Two new per-fight difficulty levers — enemyAggression (bool) and enemyInRangeSlotCount (variable) — let combat tuning happen per fight instead of through global toggles. First pass: a difficulty ladder bump that adds more 3-enemy fights along the main path, paired with eased start fights on both side quests. A new Main quest popup fires when the main story takes a step (separate from side-quest popups), and the story map ticks visited scenes. Snake Medallion's giver moves to the Library with a proper map quest indicator. The web build gets a consistent selected-hero position and a horizontal spell strip at the bottom — desktop play was using the mobile portrait layout.

21.05.2026

3.9.x: spell trails fly to targets, fight playout Skip controls, first-time intros across the base

3.9.0 → 3.9.2 ships a lot in one day. Spell casts now show their trajectory: school-tinted sparkle trails fly from the caster's cell to each targeted cell. Fight playout gets explicit Skip all / Skip stage controls and auto-advances every 500ms by default. Materials and Aspects stay "Opens soon" until Maya finishes her first Heal craft, then unlock with one-shot intros. Cancel Move stays available after Skip Attack so a hero's turn can be re-planned. Bazar and arena get first-time entry intros, and the popup back/close UX distinguishes Back from Close on hero panels. Plus art for teahouse_mid and Grey's VS-screen banner, dialogue polish, and a battle-scene stuck-loop fix after multi-fight wins.

20.05.2026

Railway took staging and prod down for ~6 hours — weighing a provider switch

Railway hosts the game's backend, and Railway went fully down for roughly six hours overnight (Sydney time). Staging and prod both went with it. Yesterday's connection-error screen did its job on the client side. The interesting part is what caused the outage, and what it implies about whether Railway is the right host going into October.

19.05.2026

3.8.0: Burn keyword, new Excavations battle, library gets new art

3.8.0 ships a lot in one day. Burn becomes the second effect keyword in the spell system (heal was the first) — Nell's Burn sigil unlocks at the end of Name the Dead and ticks fire damage on enemies in its area at the end of every turn. A new walking battle drops in between Old Road and Broken Bridge with a Tara/Grey beat. The library aspect screen gets new mid-ground art and collapses seven per-hero triggers into one central trigger. Fight playout zooms in closer (1.25× → 2×) and the spell-card gem now matches the spell's school color.

18.05.2026

Side-quest rewards land in the Ch1 economy; base activity picks heroes in two taps

Snake Medallion and Name the Dead both feed into Ch1's spell-sigil economy now. Each grants a new T1 effect sigil on completion (Tara Push, Nell Burn), priced at a new tier-wide 100c discount instead of the old per-hero Maya·Heal exception. Base activities switch to a two-step hero pick so a stray tap can't fire the cutscene by accident.

17.05.2026

Story map: pinch zoom, hidden quest paths, no more overlapping nodes

Story map gets three player-visible improvements. Pinch zoom (0.5×–1.5×) on mobile, scroll-wheel zoom on web. Quest scenes stay hidden until you've taken the quest, so the map doesn't telegraph what's around the corner. And scene nodes no longer overlap each other when names wrap onto two lines.

16.05.2026

Snake Medallion quest redesigned — 7-scene desert run with Old Quarter walk

The Snake Medallion quest is rebuilt from a 5-scene stub into a 7-scene chain branching off the broken-bridge area. Five new battle scenes through the desert and old-digsite, a new walking scene at the Old Quarter ruins with a boulder-pickup, and a Snake Order tease.

15.05.2026

Name the Dead — first full side quest lands (11 scenes, 15 fights)

First full side quest in the demo arc lands. Name the Dead is an 11-scene chain branching off Ormron Street: pick it up from the Traveller merchant, fight through 15 encounters, and turn it in at the halrock aftermath. The merchant unlocks earlier in the chapter so the quest is available right after your first desert fight.

14.05.2026

Base rest becomes a real cutscene — video panels with baked-in music

The base-rest activity stops being placeholder color panels. It now plays as a two-panel cutscene with real art, video, and a cozy folk soundtrack baked into the MP4s. Location music pauses while it plays so the cutscene's audio carries the moment, and resumes when you dismiss.

13.05.2026

Opening cutscene as video, guest tutorial, popup queue (3.5.0)

3.5.0 ships. The opening cutscene moves from static panels to 13 MP4 panel videos with its own soundtrack and a corner skip control. A guest tutorial flow lets new players try the game without signing in. Popups now run through a unified queue — one modal at a time, priority-ordered. Sigil-unlock popups always show the celebratory card.

12.05.2026

Walking scenes consolidated; broken-bridge content lands

Walking scenes across hub, story, and battle now run on the same shared presentation, with trigger enforcement so collisions can't be skipped. The broken-bridge story scene picks up its written content. Party selector and battle popup got web-clipping fixes and the rewards block is now centered.

11.05.2026

VS screen rework, party selector with fight previews, heal effects on the playout

Big polish day across fight setup and playback. VS screen drops crowded horizontal rows for vertical hero and enemy bars with paging. Party selector adds per-fight enemy and reward previews. Heal spells now pulse on the affected cell with a floating stat bar. And KO'd heroes still in decay come back when the fight is won.

09.05.2026

Fight playout gets a camera — side slide, actor zoom, cast framing

Fight playback picks up camera moves. The view now slides sideways to follow whichever side is acting, zooms on the current actor as they move, and pulls in close on the caster at the moment a spell resolves — so the playout reads as a sequence of shots instead of a fixed render.

08.05.2026

Fight SFX wave, second battle track, hero column refactor (3.4.2)

3.4.2 wires 17 sound cues into fight playback — turn ticks, spell casts, damage, heal, KO, win/lose. A second fight composition lands with cycling playlist support, the fight hero column gets extracted into its own component, and Maya's first Heal sigil moves earlier in Chapter 1.

07.05.2026

Maya animated on the fight field, heal as its own card, 5-hero stacks (3.4.0)

3.4.0 ships Maya's animated sprite sheets on the fight field driven by a state machine (idle, selected, attack, hit, KO), heal becomes a stand-alone effect-only card with cost equal to magnitude, and the fight stack now supports up to five heroes or enemies per side.

06.05.2026

Title screen previews all seven chapters; social login working

The title screen now previews all seven chapters of Song of Larithea up front, so the full shape of the run is visible from the start. Social login is fully functional — one tap and you're in, no email-password flow.

05.05.2026

Background music, 16:9 design, opening cutscene (3.2.0)

3.2.0 lands background music with per-screen track selection and live volume sliders, plus a five-page opening cutscene on a fresh run. The design aspect ratio drops to 16:9 so popups stop squashing on tall phones.

04.05.2026

iOS sprite-slide fix, faster Maya walk (3.1.1)

A small bugfix release. Maya was sliding on iOS when she switched between walking and standing still — that's fixed. Her walk cycle was also a touch too slow for the speed she was actually moving, so the legs are catching up to the feet now.

03.05.2026

Animated NPCs and Maya's first walk cycle

Walking-scene NPCs can play animations now — auri is the first, with three idle poses and a welcome wave. Maya picks up her own side walk and idle animations, so she's actually walking through hubs instead of sliding around.

02.05.2026

3.0.0: tap-to-deselect, scene preloads, restyled popup headers

3.0.0 lands selection-and-screen polish. Tapping a selected hero, enemy, or spell now deselects it. Scene images preload during transitions, popup headers got a restyle, and two bugs are out — the daily-rewards tap target and an activity-cutscene crash on web.

01.05.2026

Letterboxed viewports, multi-identity sign-in, rest at the teahouse

Web letterboxes to 16:9 and every platform locks to 19.5:9 so the layout stays put no matter the device shape. Players who started on Google can now link an Apple identity to the same account, with conflict resolution if the second identity is already in use.

30.04.2026

Hero panel system rolls out across map, party, and fight (2.1.3)

2.1.3 ships a unified HeroPanel component family — same skewed slot, same selected treatment, same stat layout — across the world-map hero strip, the base-menu top bar, the party selector with multi-select, and the fight-field rest popup. Base popups now share the Aspects starfield backdrop, and scene parallax got a math refactor so the mid layer tracks world coordinates exactly.

30.04.2026

Effect sigils land — Maya's Heal is first (2.2.0)

2.2.0 adds the engine plumbing for effect sigils: a status-effect list on every fight character, a four-slot turn dispatcher (onCast / heroEnd / enemyEnd / turnEnd), and atomic field blocks. Maya's Heal ships as the first effect — casting it opens a hero picker, and the unlock pops a story dialogue instead of a generic title card.

30.04.2026

Smarter enemy AI: flexible action order, no more passive campers

Hero and enemy actions inside a turn can now be ordered freely instead of locked into per-actor move-then-cast pairs. Chapter 1 melee packs bias toward coordinated moves-first attacks, and out-of-range Passive enemies flip aggressive instead of camping.

28.04.2026

Real sign-in: Google, Apple, account deletion

2.0.0 brings real sign-in. The title screen's PLAY button now opens a sign-in flow with Continue with Google or Continue with Apple, plus a Terms & Privacy link. Sessions persist across launches, so you don't sign in every time. Account deletion is in too, with a clean revoke of the Apple/Google grant. Behind the scenes, the API gained backpressure protection so a fresh launch under load stays calm.

28.04.2026

Title screen rewrite, walking-scene parallax, global DEBUG menu

2.1.0 ships a new poster-backed title screen with sparkles at character hand locations, the walking-battle scene gains tiled parallax and image-backed enemy triggers, and all the dev-only entry points collapse behind a single global red DEBUG button.

27.04.2026

Crafting tutorial: Tara walks through Steel + Strike

A guided crafting tutorial walks the player through their first spell, ending in a card-reveal beat. New dialogue execution kind handles steps that need the player to read before tapping, and three bugs that surfaced while building it got fixed.

26.04.2026

VS popup runs over the walking scene

The pre-fight VS popup used to live on its own dark screen. Walking up to an enemy now keeps the walking scene mounted and renders the popup as an overlay — much less of a hard cut.

25.04.2026

Tier-based spell crafting and Ch1 economy rebalance

Spell crafting is now tier-based against a much smaller material catalog, and Chapter 1 scene rewards are derived directly from each fight's enemies — so what you get from a battle reflects who you actually fought.

25.04.2026

Tighter buttons, compact alchemy, hero stops beside NPCs

ComicButton shrinks ~25%, the bottom menu narrows, alchemy gets a compact layout with owned counts on every card, and the hero now stops next to friend/enemy triggers instead of overlapping them.

25.04.2026

Story map: hero strip, scene info popups, cutscene dialogue match

Story map gets a hero strip overlay, repositioned location nodes, and tap-to-preview popups on closed scenes. Cutscene dialogue now uses the same text box and speaker badge as in-game dialogue.

24.04.2026

Hub art refresh and VS screen polish

Repainted back and mid layers across five hubs, and tightened the VS popup with selectable enemies and a cleaner comic hero card.

24.04.2026

School rename, hero-first base, Aspects starfield

Order and Chaos are now Metal and Dark, Sheichi moved into the Fate slot, base panels follow the selected hero instead of asking you to pick a school, and the Aspects screen got a starfield background with pinch/button zoom.

23.04.2026

Post-playtest fixes: fight UI and onboarding

A full day of fixes in direct response to the Sandbox playtest. Cast and Cancel buttons, atomic move-plus-cast, a louder sparkle burst, a proper end to the guided intro, and a comic bubble over NPCs instead of the sparkle nobody saw.

22.04.2026

Unified fight vocabulary and TestFlight prep

Every shipped enemy now has its own fight art under a single shared vocabulary — idle, attack, hit, ko — so the same word means the same pose across banners and field sprites. The iOS build is wired up for the first TestFlight alpha.

21.04.2026

Per-character fight art and manual planning order

Eight characters now have their own fight art across field sprites, banner playout, dialogue portraits, and spell cards — everyone else still falls back to Lamia while the look settles. Planning order is fully manual now, and the story-map battle popup shows enemies per fight.

18.04.2026

Cutscenes are in — new opening screen

The cutscene engine is live and the game opens with a proper comic-panel intro instead of a stub. Ormron Street also got a post-tutorial tweak so only Olija starts active.

17.04.2026

Planning UI polish and fight sprite variants

The plan screen got a proper pass — per-hero selection memory, sparkle feedback, and energy cost outcomes. Heroes and enemies now have sprite variants for planning and playback.

16.04.2026

Comic-style fight playout

Fight playback has been redesigned as a comic-panel sequence with stat bars, energy recovery, and auto-skip — replacing the old step-through with something that actually feels like watching a battle unfold.

14.04.2026

First look at the tutorial

A first look at the Larithea tutorial before this week's playtest. See how the guided intro walks new players through the game.

14.04.2026

Unified map, journal system, and emotion portraits

The story map now includes base locations as nodes alongside scenes. A journal system tracks player progress, heroes have full emotion portrait sets, and the viewport scales beyond 16:9.

13.04.2026

Design system migration complete

Every legacy UI component has been replaced by the new comic design system. The story map, settings, VS screen, daily rewards, and hero cards all run on shared primitives now.

11.04.2026

Building the comic design system

New comic-styled components for spell cards, barks, hero popups, and crafting — plus entry animations and a burst bubble effect. The visual language of the game is getting a proper system behind it.

09.04.2026

Arena fights reworked and notification system

Arena fights now use the new spell system end to end. A notification layer has been added so the game can surface events without interrupting flow.

08.04.2026

Aspects UI, new spell art, and dialogue timing

The Aspects menu is fully playable, spells have new card art and a reworked look, and dialogues now animate in and out instead of popping.

06.04.2026

Library rework and story scene changes

Reworking the Library to show aspects — making it easier to see when sigils unlock and when stats grow. Some of those UI findings are pushing changes to story screens too.

02.04.2026

UI audit: shared buttons and clearer calls to action

Every button and label was reviewed and routed through shared components so primary actions read as CTAs and secondary controls no longer compete for attention—directly addressing confusion we saw in user testing.

01.04.2026

Biome fight fields and a new art pass on story backgrounds

Tactical fights now read biome-specific backdrop art on the fight field. Hub and story exploration use a fully refreshed background style—kept separate from battle flow and from the grid itself.

31.03.2026

Barks and steadier state updates

Short bark lines now appear when you poke at the world and story beats, and the build applies player-state changes more reliably across combat, hub, and tutorial.

30.03.2026

Smoother early combat

A progression-blocking bug in the second fight is fixed — combat would stall completely and leave you stuck. Several other combat edge cases from testing builds are resolved too.

29.03.2026

Spells, constellations, and backgrounds

Your spell list opens in a clearer default state, constellation presentation is updated, and class-themed backgrounds refresh several hub and menu screens.

28.03.2026

Tutorial polish, materials, and loading

The guided intro skips steps you don't need; new and updated materials show up in the UI, the menu and inventory art got a pass, and scene images load with less hitching.

Gameplay

25.08.2026

The trailer — first cut

The first full cut of the Song of Larithea trailer, with Maya telling you how she put her team together. It still needs polish — the footage comes straight out of the game and there's cleanup left to do — but the direction is all here, and I wanted to show it at this stage rather than wait.

15.08.2026

Spell casts and landings each have their own look

Every spell now flies and lands with its own effect — the cast crosses the grid, the landing bursts on whatever it hits, and each school of magic carries its own colour through both.

12.06.2026

Elemental chains — combo overlay on a shared enemy

When the party lines up casts on the same enemy in the right elemental order, the chain fires — and the longer the chain runs, the more damage it lands.

12.06.2026

Field banter — heroes talk during fights

The party finally talks during fights. Sometimes a hero gets a line on their own, sometimes two share a moment when they hit the same enemy, sometimes all three get one together.

06.05.2026

New title screen, seven chapters, social login

A walk through the new title screen — all seven chapters of Song of Larithea previewed up front, an active selection effect on the chapter posters, and ending with a one-tap social login.

28.04.2026

Main menu

The main menu — sparkles instead of full animation, for now. Hand-animating the menu is on the wishlist; sparkles are the version I'm willing to commit to today.

28.04.2026

Spell crafting tutorial

The crafting tutorial in action — picking sigils to forge a new spell. You don't unlock spells in Larithea, you build them.

25.04.2026

Library of elements and hero menu

A walk-through of the elements library and the hero popup — Spells, Materials, and Aspects in three separate panels, because magic in Larithea is a system, not a button. The clip shows one of the starting spells a hero has from the beginning of the game.

25.04.2026

Main screen polish: dialogue icon and character emotions

A walk-through of the updated main game screen — new background, the new dialogue character icon, and character portraits that finally express what they feel in scene. Everything's still images for now — animation is on the wishlist.

The Party

MayaRestoration student

Silver-haired heiress to a healing dynasty and the largest private hospital in Ormron, Maya has never known want or hardship. Her future was settled the day she was born — and a schoolgirl crush on the school's most sought-after Magister was never going to change that, unless it did.

TaraTranslocation student

A girl with no past and no certain future, Tara has fought for everything she owns. All she wants is a place of her own in the world — even if earning it means joining a pack of privileged brats on a fool's errand.

NellDestruction student

Quick to laugh and quicker to burn, Nell collects friends in minutes and grudges quicker still — it only takes someone cruel picking on someone smaller. Ask him about home and the smile stays; the answers stop.

GreyAmplification student

Grey was born in a free city of the north — the idle son of a prosperous baker who paid his tuition in full, coin counted out on the table. So where does his knowledge of the old magic come from?

DartIllusion student

The most talented student in the school and the coldest, Dart earned a Magister's badge before most of his year earned a passing mark, then took every field assignment that led away from Ormron. About his life before the school he has never said a word.

Latest Diary

29.09.2026

Three States and a Plan, twenty years later

The best enemy AI I ever played against was F.E.A.R., twenty years ago: soldiers with goals, actions and a planner, and a squad coordinator on top. I rebuilt that shape for Larithea's arena with Jev, TypeSafe AI's decision model, as the coordinator. Simulations, a healer that did not exist, and why the wording of the options mattered more than the model.

23.09.2026

The morning coffee dashboard

Last week I ran a workshop for Airtree's Pathfinders program on understanding your users. I am not a UX designer, so here is the version from someone who just needs answers: think first, audit the bets you hardcoded into your product, and build a fake dashboard before you build a real one.

07.09.2026

Translation skill that almost killed me

Ten days on one skill. I translated 3k strings by hand first to get a baseline, then split every string in the game into three groups and built the prompt out of four levels of files. Fully deterministic up to the point where it hits the LLM — and then a set of checks, a comparison against my own translation, and me ruling on every line.

01.09.2026

Let's talk about game engines

Larithea has a custom engine, built by me — and it is not an engine in the traditional sense. The story of getting stuck fighting AI slop early in 2026, restarting the build, and the "Jesus take the wheel" commitment that followed: every time I wanted to write code, I wrote a skill instead.

26.08.2026

Let's make the enemies less aggressive

A friend told me I am too pro-AI, which is fair. So here is the honest version: AI gets you 80% of the way there and then fights you for the last 20% — and the 20% is the part nobody trained it on, the part only you know. Featuring Claude's most genius idea ever.

22.08.2026

Non-existent users of the future

I wanted to do this for MONTHS and this morning it finally happened. Larithea is turn-based and seeded, which means a machine can play it — and if a machine can play it, a machine can playtest it. Three simulations, three player personas, each with a different idea of what a spell is worth, and A LOT of JSON.

03.07.2026

It wasn't a loading problem

In "There is no engine" I said sprite animations were the spicier of the two things a game engine would have made easier. This month sprites came back and asked for a bigger conversation.

17.06.2026

There is no engine

Since the alpha went out, a few people have asked what engine Larithea is built on. The honest answer is — there isn't one. Here's why I deliberately built a web game with web tools, and what I had to build myself because of it.

21.05.2026

My secret passion is game economy

Why economy is easier for me to love than balance, how the Larithea loop pushes you to craft constantly, and why I now run a simulation before designing any fight in the game.

12.05.2026

Eighteen years on the page, one minute on screen

Finished the one-minute opening cinematic for Larithea — the cold open that will play right after the tutorial. The characters first appeared in a novel I published in Ukraine in 2008. This week I got to watch them move.

24.04.2026

4 doughnuts and a playtest

Took the game to Sandbox gym on Wednesday with one nice piece of promo and four doughnuts. Walked out with a list of assumptions to throw out.

22.04.2026

Control Freak, Gears of War, and Kling enemies

Finished Cliff Bleszinski's Control Freak this week — the story behind Gears of War and Unreal. Also: experimenting with Kling animations for some of the Larithea enemies, just for fun.

17.04.2026

Fight playout iteration

The fight playout got rebuilt as comic-panel sequences. Two games shaped how it feels — Enchanted Arms for the tactics, Dragalia Lost for the charm. Also: why animations have to wait.

13.04.2026

Blood, Sweat, and Pixels — and why I make games

Just finished Blood, Sweat, and Pixels by Jason Schreier. Two chapters stood out — The Witcher 3 and Stardew Valley. Also wrapped up the design system migration and moving into playtesting.

What makes it worth playing

Spell crafting

Gather materials and craft the spells your party actually needs. Your loadout is something you build — not a fixed list — so experimentation and specialization both pay off.

Team combat

Lead a small party through turn-based encounters. Plan your moves, place your spells, watch the fight unfold.

Seven schools of magic

Each school has its own feel. Elemental affinities and combos let your team work the way you want it to.

A story worth following

Episodic chapters with a cast of complex characters, real stakes, and choices that land.

Play your way

Full keyboard and mouse controls on PC, and touch controls for the phone versions on the way. Pacing built for sessions that fit your day.

Questions

What kind of game is Song of Larithea?

Song of Larithea is a cute anime team-RPG with spell crafting. You lead a team of young mages through a story about friendship, trust, revenge, and finding your way back from the darkness. Battles are turn-based, on a grid.

How does combat work?

You take two or three heroes into each fight on a grid. Each turn you plan where every hero moves and which spell they cast, then watch the round play out. Line up casts on one enemy in the right elemental order and they chain into a combo that hits harder.

Can you craft your own spells?

Yes. You gather materials and craft the spells your team needs, across seven schools of magic. Each hero's spells are ones you build, not a fixed list, so you can specialise or experiment.

Is there a free demo?

Yes. Play the free demo on Steam, or in a desktop browser on itch.io.

What can I play it on?

Windows and macOS, through Steam. iPhone and Android versions are on the way: join the waitlist at the top of this page.

What languages is it in?

English, Russian and Simplified Chinese.

When does it come out?

Early Access on Steam is planned for the first quarter of 2027. Wishlist it on Steam to hear the day it launches.

Who makes it, and is it based on a book?

A solo developer at Dropbear Labs in Sydney, Australia. The game is based on Inga Pflaumer's fantasy novel Серце гріє, published in 2008.

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Song of Larithea

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What makes it worth playing

Questions

What kind of game is Song of Larithea?

How does combat work?

Can you craft your own spells?

Is there a free demo?

What can I play it on?

What languages is it in?

When does it come out?

Who makes it, and is it based on a book?