Itchio page from which you can purchase it:

https://winter-wolves.itch.io/the-curse-of-mantras



The game is content complete: there's all the story, art, gameplay. However it's a beta and due to the complexity of the game, there will still be many bugs



What's New In Version 0.8.3



- during some love scenes wrong Ace/Lily sprite image was shown, after some tests I decided to simply fade to black to uniform all the love scenes endings

- added in the options screen the possibility to turn the fedora hat on/off for Ace Order outfit (sprite only, won't change the love scenes)



What's New In Version 0.8.2



- casting a spell that gives double attack trait was making creatures attack the same turn they're summoned (so like if they also had charge trait added). This should be fixed now

- fixed a crash happening at the ending battles but only in Visual Novel Mode

- fixed Fire Wall card text to match the stun effect (lasting only for the current turn, and not until next owner's turn)



What's New In Version 0.8.1



- added an extra check to make sure that players don't get stuck if they finished the whole subplot of a character and their corresponding realm is blocked

- fixed a crash when using exclusive Kickstarter cards: if you update the game and don't remember to put the ks.rpa file back in the directory, the card images won't load and will crash. Now it won't crash anymore

- spells cards "discovered" by a creature, like Leviathan, wouldn't work as intended. This has been fixed!



What's New In Version 0.8.0



- improved how the AI handles spells and decides how/when to attack

- a cheat left to test AI cards was making certain spell cards do no effects like adding/removing traits, now they should work

- fixed Decay spell to remove taunt as the description correctly says



What's New In Version 0.7.9



- fixed a bug that was repeating both the Third and Fourth Awakening scene twice, now made sure gets shown only once per playthrough

- balancing: tweaked the Shell spell so that gives +2 armor instead of Force Shield

- fixed another bug in which the AI was stuck unable to play cards or summoning creatures, resulting in the impossibility to win the fight



What's New In Version 0.7.8



- improved CPU AI so shouldn't remain stuck cards in hand and not playing anything

- improved the CPU AI on several spells cards

- the challenge battles now will have less spell cards and more creatures instead

- fixed a bug in Decay spell so that the AI couldn't find target in particular conditions and remain stuck not making any move



What's New In Version 0.7.7



- fixed crash on Water level 8 easy mode only caused by a wrong card definition



What's New In Version 0.7.6



- if you start the deck tutorial but didn't finish it clicking exit, the tutorial text would remain stuck on the screen. Now it disappears when you exit the deck builder screen

- fixed a bug that would prevent advancing if you skipped all the tutorial battles (was counting them to advance but if you skip, the counter doesn't increase)



What's New In Version 0.7.5



- new hint system: in the options screen now you can choose if to enable a hint system, which shows heart in the right choice for the memories. This way you'll be sure to get the good endings (useful especially if playing all the card battles)

- fixed a crash that would happen if you enter a realm map, click "go back" and then immediately go in the deck builder using the upper-right parchment icon

- added more checks so that should now be impossible, while playing with card battles, to remain stuck with no battle to do and no character to talk to. Now you should always have something unlocked letting you continue the game



What's New In Version 0.7.4



- now in VN Mode after you select your alignment, it will automatically unlock all battles, so you don't need to go to each realm and do the instant battles to advance. You can just talk to each character to progress the story

- fixed a crash if you use a "doom spell", like Decay (spells that kill enemy at beginning of next turn) and then killed that enemy with another spell like Turn Undead. Now the card will be checked if wasn't already removed from play, avoiding the crash





What's New In Version 0.7.3



- fixed a bug in the gallery that would show the name of Lily in replay scenes even during Ace's

- fixed a bug that was allowing player to visit Mantras to unlock the final scenes even before they've remembered everyone's past

- fixed how the AI handles Cold Winds and Sun Spear spells preventing some freezes

- fixed some crashes while playing in VN Mode in the final scenes



What's New In Version 0.7.2



- fixed a game progression issue that was unlocking the Third and Fourth Awakening without the need to do any battle. Now should work as intended, you need to do at least a round of battles for all realm before moving to the next Awakening

- tweaked all Death battles to have less spells

- fixed a bug that would rollback to wrong point if you surrendered a battle, clicked on the map and then on "Go Back" button





What's New in 0.7.1



- fixed some typos

- fixed a crash when using the deck tutorial

- added a help button in the map zoom / realm screen explaining the various pillars color meaning

is the kickstarter codes sent out yet?

Yes like always I sent them with private messages on KS, check it.

i did and its not there i think im backer 120

lol, the AI cheats so much on hard. Ace lv2 is a nightmare, but I got it done, again. All lv4 fights are insane, but you know how I feel about having to kill all creatures. If it wasn't for this bug where the AI just randomly stops attacking, I would never get those done.



How many curses does Ace have in his decks? Death lv4 so far played 6 curses in one fight, that's a bit excessive... My only chance seems to be to get him to play all curses on the same creature.

i did and its not there i think im backer 120

Going to look now!

lol, the AI cheats so much on hard. Ace lv2 is a nightmare, but I got it done, again. All lv4 fights are insane, but you know how I feel about having to kill all creatures. If it wasn't for this bug where the AI just randomly stops attacking, I would never get those done.

Haha yes but it's the optional battle right? I made those hard on purpose :D When it stops attacking means has no way to counteract, like cards that require only injured enemies etc. (at least that's how it should work)

How many curses does Ace have in his decks? Death lv4 so far played 6 curses in one fight, that's a bit excessive... My only chance seems to be to get him to play all curses on the same creature.

The spells are added automatically, so that for example if you're chaos they'll add order and so on. But indeed for Death both avatars share same cards so that might be the issue! I will check it, I agree they're a bit too many

I finally passed all lv4 fights on Hard. That was indeed hard, but I'm starting to see what kind of deck I need.

Cool. I know all the good cards but in Hard I still lost 1-2 match every 10, so was unsure if was too easy or not I'll still probably tweak the Death map to reduce the spells and add a few more enemies.



BTW if you trigger again 4th Awakening early can you send me a save so I can check why that triggers? thanks

I lose 9 matches out of 10, so ok... I didn't know I was that bad. I'm seriously considering switching to normal, so I can get on with it, it's taking too long to progress. It's taken me an hour to clear 3/6 lv5 fights.



By the way, are the upgrade souls random or fixed by fight?

The upgrade souls are fixed, they're displayed on the mini-map at the bottom, on the right of the card rewards (the lowest levels don't have many, as you go up they increase).

I calculated that you can fully upgrade 8 out of 12 creatures per element if you collect them all (so towards the end of each Realm).

BTW I found out that indeed due to a bug it was adding too many Death spells, so that 4th Death battle will have less spells now. I'm not sure if it's a real advantage though

Waiting a bit to do the next update to see if more stuff comes up.

lol, as soon as I complained it got better (in other words, I unlocked Grave Elemental). Luck, I guess.

All the elemental are pretty good indeed!

My favorite early cards are: Fishman, Brownie, Mudman, Rakshasa and Forest Warden

I thought it was fun to have 5 Brownies, but that really only worked for lv2-3.

Yes they are useful in early stages only, there are some creatures that I used until the end though (fully upgraded) like Forest Warden and Rakshasa

6 Turn Undead spells in death lv6? *sigh* I'll wait for that fix.

Great. Now I can't win because there's an invisible enemy that won't attack, and I have nothing left that can dispel invisibility... As if I needed another reason to hate "kill every creature" fights.



Ok, I see a trend here, I need anti-invisibility.

Haha I didn't consider that possibility, very bad luck! If you have another idea how to make those battles challenging I'm all ears lol

Doing the update now, fixed also the Third-Fourth Awakening triggering too quickly bug!

Your fix broke something, when entering deck builder (can click ignore though):
[code]
I'm sorry, but an uncaught exception occurred.

While running game code:
File "game/gui.rpy", line 719, in <module>
IOError: Couldn't find file 'xml/match/back.xml'.

-- Full Traceback ------------------------------------------------------------

Full traceback:
File "game/plot/gameflow.rpyc", line 133, in script call
���� �ծV^�B[������"4�b7��Z��@S7�`�iT8�0���bT��gVJgb9�r��a(
File "game/gui.rpyc", line 718, in script
File "renpy/ast.py", line 928, in execute
renpy.python.py_exec_bytecode(self.code.bytecode, self.hide, store=self.store)
File "renpy/python.py", line 2245, in py_exec_bytecode
exec(bytecode, globals, locals)
File "game/gui.rpy", line 719, in <module>
File "new_card_framework/Core.py", line 186, in create_match
File "new_card_framework/Board.py", line 18, in __init__
File "new_card_framework/Board.py", line 24, in load_definition
File "new_card_framework/Core.py", line 190, in get_match_definition
File "new_card_framework/AbstractBasics.py", line 33, in loadFile
File "renpy/exports.py", line 2469, in file
return renpy.loader.load(fn)
File "renpy/loader.py", line 798, in load
raise IOError("Couldn't find file '%s'." % name)
IOError: Couldn't find file 'xml/match/back.xml'.

Windows-10-10.0.19041
Ren'Py 7.4.11.2266
The Curse Of Mantras 0.7.2
Fri Feb 11 17:42:17 2022
[/code]

Uh? Weird I don't have that here, I can enter the deck builder just fine! Do you have a save? thanks