Act 3? Yes, Act 3! It's here and ready to play in the Beta Branch, where we will be testing and refining things for an official Stable release in the near future. There are still a few things we will be expanding on with this act, but we are excited to get this release out to everyone to play with the new content and give feedback. Come and join the community on our discord at https://discord.gg/m9MAfrP if you haven't already!

How do I download the Beta Branch?

Opting into a Beta branch is easy on Steam. Simply right click Time Break Chronicles in your Library, select Properties, and then click "Betas." From there you can select the Beta branch from the dropdown, and Steam will download the files for you. You do not need to enter a beta access code.

Changelog for version 0.3.0b

There's a lot of new content for you to explore in this update. We'll separate it out below, into a few categories.

New Content

• A new act, with new enemy types, relics, encounters, and continuation of Claire's story
• A new form for Claire to unlock after completing Act 2
• A new Time Break tech to discover
• 15 new heroes to find and unlock, bringing the total available to 59!
• New heroes also added as unlocks for higher tiers in Singularity mode

Hero Balance Changes

• Odrak (Barbarian) heavily reworked to enable him to deal more reckless damage, and be less about shouting constantly
• Javed (Immortal) reworked a little to give him more opportunity to deal damage
• Claire's Scavenger form reworked slightly to make it better at dealing damage to Mechanical enemies and Fire damage
• Claire's Armor form reworked slightly to make it a bit less tanky but better at dealing damage

General Balance Changes/QoL/Other

• Alcohol related skills (Whiskey, Rum) now last forever instead of 5 turns
• Several heroes now have skill-specific icons that appear next to them on their turn to make it easier to track their unique skill's currency
• Enemies who counter attack will have a status icon to make it more clear as to the counter trigger
• Older bosses updated to have appropriate Resist stacks
• Incanter enemy is now called "Disciple" to help avoid confusion with Invoker enemy name
• Enemy Dark Shroud skill is now dispellable
• Technician enemy's stats reduced slightly
• Frozen Blob enemy's attack now deals significantly less stun damage
• Starter heroes now display a brief tutorial about their strategy when it is their first time getting a turn, to help guide new players (existing players will also get this tutorial the first time they use these heroes after updating)
• Female heroes will now play a female jump sound instead of a male sound
• Improved handling of hiding and showing overlapping enemy sprites when they take damage or have effects applied, etc
• Technique is now abbreviated as TEC instead of TCH, to avoid confusion with Toughness's TGH

Bug Fixes

• Fixed possible crash related to Undeterred trait
• Added some sanity check handlers to address a rare bug where particle values could go negative
• Fixed bug where Lydia's (Priestess) Blessing skill applied too much increased healing
• Fixed bug where Maximus' (Blacksmith) Whetstone skill's Lv 2 effect did not apply unless the skill was Lv 3
• Fixed bug where the Shift portion of some skills could be interrupted by Clown's Honk or other interrupt abilities
• Fixed bug where Will-O-Wisp enemy did not reposition its sprite properly when shifted
• Fixed incorrect weapon sound effect for Jack (Pirate)
• Fixed hit sound effects sometimes not playing when damage was redirected with Bulwark skill
• Fixed bug with animation timing of certain skills using the Fire Column effect
• Fixed bug where summoned drones, such as Claire's Snow Drone, would sometimes display the incorrect animation frame
• Fixed incorrect description text for Ambroise's (Plague Doctor) Plague trait
• Several typo fixes

The previous beta (0.2.26) has been moved to the stable branch at this time as well.

Finally, as mentioned earlier, there are a couple more things we'd like to expand on and finish up before the stable release. Mainly, there are a couple more special encounters we'd like to add, and the new heroes' backstory/lore blurbs are not yet fully written. We'll also be expanding Singularity with more difficulty tiers and the new enemies from act 3.

We'd love to get your feedback, bug reports, and anything else you'd like to share with the community on our discord at https://discord.gg/m9MAfrP as we polish up this release. Thanks to everyone who has already participated!