v0.16.1

New

• Warbell is now on itch.io — miskibin.itch.io/warbell, with both Windows and Linux builds. Install through the itch.io app and it keeps the game updated automatically with small delta patches.

Under the hood

• Every release is now pushed to itch.io automatically by CI, stamped with the release version — no manual uploads.
• The stable-named Warbell-Setup.msi installer is now attached by CI on every release, so the website's download button always points at the newest installer.

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The Windows installer is self-signed, so SmartScreen shows "Unknown Publisher" — click More info → Run anyway.

Warbell v0.16.0

Warbell v0.16.0 — sharper fights, a real shop, and a snowy ambush

Last release made the island prettier to walk through. This one gives you more to do
in it: a combat aim-assist that makes swings land where you mean them, a proper merchant
shopfront you can't miss, a rewritten early game that actually teaches the loop, and a
new snow-biome hazard that punishes wandering too close to the wrong "prop".

New

• Ambush snowmen. In the snow biome, some of those charming snowmen aren't decor. Step
  too close — or take a swing at one — and it lurches to life, shambles after you, and
  body-slams you in melee. It's slow and kiteable: outrun it and it waddles home and
  re-freezes into a harmless prop, ready to catch the next wanderer.
• A real merchant shop. The old shop stall was so plain you could walk right past it.
  It's now an unmistakable roofed shopfront with a hanging sign, goods on display, and a
  merchant standing behind the counter. The well and woodpile in the bailey got the same
  mature, textured treatment.
• Ambient fish. Fish glide beneath the water of the lake and the open sea near you, and
  every so often one leaps clear of the surface. Pure atmosphere for the shorelines.
• A rewritten early game. The opening quest chain now walks you through the core loop
  step by step — numbered instructions, a plain "why" for each goal, and a real in-game
  screenshot on every step — from raising your first House to feeding the town with a Farm
  and automating wood with a Woodcutter.
• Redesigned website. The Warbell site got a "War Table" visual overhaul, with the
  mobile layout and cramped phone text fixed.

Combat & balance

• Soft-lock aim-assist. A light, Witcher-style "soft target": when a hostile is near
  and in front of you, the game quietly picks it, marks it with a subtle glowing ground
  ring, and eases your knight's facing onto it — so your swing commits to the foe you mean,
  not empty air. It's never a hard snap or a camera lock, your own movement always
  overrides it, and it drops the instant no threat is in front, so exploring never
  auto-turns you at wildlife or workers.
• Killable rival workers. The desert rival's labourers can now be cut down like any
  other enemy, instead of being invincible set dressing.
• Later dusk. Nightfall holds off a little longer, giving you more daylight to build
  and prepare before the siege.

Fixed

• Shaman bolts no longer keep flying in broad daylight, and a raid alert no longer sticks
  on screen after the raid is over.
• The lake and marsh shorelines are smoother — the carved pools that foamed a harsh white
  are gone, leaving a clean lake edge.
• Leaping fish stay in real open water instead of flopping onto dry land.
• A fresh static loading screen while the world spins up.
• A batch of stability and run-state fixes (19 in all): logic bugs, performance, and
  save/continue coherence.

Under the hood

• Removed the old dynamic storm weather system.

---

The Windows installer is self-signed, so SmartScreen may warn "Unknown Publisher" — click
More info → Run anyway to install. The Linux build is the portable zip.

What's Changed

• Attack aim-assist facing + camera terrain clamp by @miskibin in #35
• Fix daytime shaman bolts, persistent raid alert, killable rival workers, later dusk by @miskibin in #36
• Redesign early-game quest chain with step-by-step guidance + real screenshots by @miskibin in #37
• Add ambient fish: glide under water near the hero + occasionally leap by @miskibin in #38
• Fish: restrict to real open water (lake/sea), keep leaps inside the body by @miskibin in #39
• Fix 19 review findings: logic bugs, perf, run-state coherence by @miskibin in #40
• Static scene loading screen by @miskibin in #41
• Claude/forest paths boss ai v2oz50 by @miskibin in #42

Full Changelog: v0.15.0...v0.16.0

What's Changed

• Attack aim-assist facing + camera terrain clamp by @miskibin in #35
• Fix daytime shaman bolts, persistent raid alert, killable rival workers, later dusk by @miskibin in #36
• Redesign early-game quest chain with step-by-step guidance + real screenshots by @miskibin in #37
• Add ambient fish: glide under water near the hero + occasionally leap by @miskibin in #38
• Fish: restrict to real open water (lake/sea), keep leaps inside the body by @miskibin in #39
• Fix 19 review findings: logic bugs, perf, run-state coherence by @miskibin in #40
• Static scene loading screen by @miskibin in #41
• Claude/forest paths boss ai v2oz50 by @miskibin in #42

Full Changelog: v0.15.0...v0.16.0

Warbell v0.15.0

Warbell v0.15.0 — the island gets a facelift

A big visual pass. The world is rounder, greener, better-connected, and the landmarks
finally look like the set-pieces they're meant to be. No new systems to learn — the same
game, much nicer to walk through.

New

• A road network across the whole island. Natural, curving dirt paths now link the
  castle to every biome, every landmark, the ork fortress gate, and the rival keep, with
  short spurs out to nearby cages. Nothing grows on a path, and you move a touch faster
  travelling along one — so the roads actually read as roads, not hints.
• Rivers that meander. Watercourses now wind and pinch like real rivers instead of
  running as ruled canals, and their banks are cut with a smooth curve instead of a
  blocky tile-grid staircase. Bridges sit on the crossings.
• Smooth, rolling terrain. The ground is one continuous heightfield now — gentle
  slopes and knolls instead of the old Minecraft-style stepped terraces.
• Rebuilt landmarks. The biome set-pieces were redone in a crisp faceted style:
  crag-pillar rock spires, solid stepped ziggurat tiers, a shard-cluster ice spire,
  sandstone arches — each a proper destination worth the road out to it.
• Reworked trees (taller clustered broadleaves, slender drooping spruce) and a
  livelier ground: baked-in forest-floor debris, fake-3D cavity shading, drifting cover
  density, and grass species that vary patch to patch.
• Wetter swamp with standing pools, plus new meadow ambience and rival-garrison
  voice lines.

Fixed

• The ork-fortress courtyard kept its trampled-earth texture — the new trunk road no
  longer paves straight through the walls.
• Hunting wildlife no longer drops gear.
• Ground cover and flowers no longer poke through landmark set-pieces.
• Tidier peasant and rival-soldier models (tools only, cleaner torsos, a sandy desert
  guard); subtler, fewer butterflies.

---

Windows installer is self-signed, so SmartScreen may warn "Unknown Publisher" — click
More info → Run anyway. Linux build is the portable zip.

What's Changed

• Fewer, softer-fading butterflies by @miskibin in #26
• Fix peasant & rival soldier models: tools-only, tidy torso, sandy desert guard by @miskibin in #27
• Smooth terrain heightfield with per-corner blending by @miskibin in #30
• Set up Cursor Cloud dev environment by @miskibin in #28
• Refresh marketing screenshots (ultra-quality capture harness) by @miskibin in #29
• Revert "Refresh marketing screenshots (ultra-quality capture harness)" by @miskibin in #34
• Fix flowers clipping through landmarks by @miskibin in #32
• Mature landmark meshes + regenerate castle-after screenshot by @miskibin in #33

Full Changelog: v0.14.0...v0.15.0

What's Changed

• Fewer, softer-fading butterflies by @miskibin in #26
• Fix peasant & rival soldier models: tools-only, tidy torso, sandy desert guard by @miskibin in #27
• Smooth terrain heightfield with per-corner blending by @miskibin in #30
• Set up Cursor Cloud dev environment by @miskibin in #28
• Refresh marketing screenshots (ultra-quality capture harness) by @miskibin in #29
• Revert "Refresh marketing screenshots (ultra-quality capture harness)" by @miskibin in #34
• Fix flowers clipping through landmarks by @miskibin in #32
• Mature landmark meshes + regenerate castle-after screenshot by @miskibin in #33

Full Changelog: v0.14.0...v0.15.0

Warbell v0.14.0

Warbell v0.14.0

A prettier, more alive world — plus a friendlier on-ramp for new defenders and a round of fixes.

New

• Daytime butterflies. Little flocks of butterflies flutter over the grass and forest in
  daylight, settling the world with a bit of life. Pure atmosphere — they sleep at night.
• Richer grassland. The ground now reads as a living meadow of mottled greens — worn dirt
  scuffs, damp moss hollows, sun-dried golden sweeps, lush deep-green patches — instead of one flat
  tone.
• Real god rays. Crepuscular shafts now fan out from the sun in soft warm beams that reach
  across the sky, instead of a flat sun-glow that died right at the light.
• Exotic rival garrison. The desert rival's soldiers wear a Saracen war-look — warm-bronze
  spiked turban-helm and a dark face veil — so the foreign host reads distinct from your own
  militia.
• Smoother menu. The start screen now uses a pre-rendered backdrop instead of a live orbiting
  3D scene — cleaner, lighter, no churn.

Combat & balance

• Friendlier Easy mode. A beginner's knight now hits ~30% harder in melee and carries a much
  deeper health pool, on top of the existing softer waves and tougher keep.
• Tighter dodge. Sand Dash no longer overshoots — the blink distance is halved, so you evade a
  swing and stay in the fight instead of getting flung out of the melee.
• Leaner night waves. Swarm sizes trimmed across the siege so the later nights are less of a
  grind of attrition.
• Faster town growth. The escalating House cost ramps up a bit more gently, so your village
  snowballs sooner.
• Hardier militia. Your guards toughen as the siege wears on — gaining health for each night
  already survived — so the steep nightly damage ramp doesn't shred them quite so fast.
• Roomier landmark trials. The "Hold the Rune" arena is wider, giving the knight space to swing
  and making the glowing ring read as a real arena to defend.

Fixed

• Rune-Trial guardians no longer spawn out in the water at landmarks beside a river, lake, or coast
  — they now always land on dry ground.
• No more phantom bridge laid across the dry sand beside the rival fort.
• Rival workers stationed inside the bailey now actually work in place instead of standing idle by
  their building.
• Townsfolk stop blurting their sarcastic "ow!" when you accidentally clip them mid-battle — they
  only quip for a deliberate poke.
• Trees crowding a biome landmark are cleared away, so each set-piece reads from afar and its trial
  arena has open ground.
• The spend/equip toast no longer overlaps the special-ability bar in the corner.
• Ork-camp and Gnashfang Hold tents are toned down — a faint tooth on the hide, not a heavy
  patchwork against the rest of the game.
• A daytime rival raid now raises an on-screen "under attack" warning (the old alert was
  night-siege only), and a couple of rival raid notices that slipped through untranslated now read
  in English.

Under the hood

• A razed rival fort now stays destroyed across save and load.

---

The Windows installer is self-signed, so SmartScreen will warn "Unknown Publisher" — click
More info → Run anyway to install. (A trusted CA certificate is needed to remove that warning.)

Full Changelog: v0.13.0...v0.14.0

Full Changelog: v0.13.0...v0.14.0

Warbell v0.13.0

Warbell v0.13.0

A rival rises in the desert, kills hit harder, and the loot economy tightens up.

New

• Rival AI stronghold. A Stronghold-Crusader-style human opponent now holds a walled fort out in the desert — towers, curtain walls, the works. It runs its own tax economy and raises new buildings over time, a human garrison patrols and skirmishes, and its walls go up as it grows. It survives save/load, so your rival keeps building between sessions.
• A bigger island. The map is enlarged — more ground between the biomes, and the rival's plateau flattened to seat the fort.

Combat & feel

• Reworked hit feedback. Landing a blow now reads by weight: a punchy impact flash (instead of the old faint blink), a weighty flinch on armoured orks (wildlife keeps its springy reaction), and crits/heavies stagger the enemy — interrupting its swing — with extra contact sparks.
• Kills land harder. A slain enemy topples and lurches the way you struck it; a heavy blow throws the body further.
• The shield holds the line. Orks and animals no longer clip through the knight or his shield, and raising your shield pushes a head-on attacker back off it.

Balance

• Chests no longer shower gear. Opening a chest pays out gold and provisions (plus a basic starter sword/jerkin for a fresh hero) — but real weapons and armour are earned only at the biome landmark trials, so a lucky chest can't skip the gear ladder. Hunt kills likewise stop dropping random gear.

Fixed

• No more invisible wall where an enemy just died — a fresh corpse stops blocking you the instant it falls.
• Loading a save no longer leaves last run's wall / tower / house / decoration collision lingering as invisible barriers where the meshes are hidden.

Atmosphere

• A touch more fog and a stronger background depth-of-field blur for a moodier frame.

---

The Windows installer is self-signed, so SmartScreen may warn "Windows protected your PC — Unknown publisher." Click More info → Run anyway to install. (Removing that warning needs a paid code-signing certificate.)

Full Changelog: v0.12.0...v0.13.0

Full Changelog: v0.12.0...v0.13.0

Warbell v0.12.0

Warbell v0.12.0

A heavier swing, earned biome gear, a louder warband, and a cleaner, moodier look — the biggest update yet.

New

• Hold the Rune. Biome gear is now earned, not just found. Each landmark hides a rune circle you have to stand in and hold while waves of guardians try to break your grip — survive the timer and the reward is yours (and it auto-equips if it's a straight upgrade). Clear [E] prompt, a visible ground ring, and a trimmed guardian count so the trial reads at a glance.
• Charged Heavy Strike. Hold left-click to wind up a heavy blow, then release for a guaranteed-critical overhead smash — triple damage with the biggest hit-stop, screen-shake and FOV punch in the game. The wind-up slows your feet, so it's a read-the-fight power move, not a spam button; a quick click still throws the normal swing.
• Buff readout. The active-buff display now tells you what each effect does, not just a countdown timer.
• Nightfall embers. Every fire breathes after dark — campfires, the castle gate torches and the Gnashfang Hold braziers throw drifting, glowing embers into the night air.
• Footstep dust with weight. Sprinting kicks up a churned dust trail behind you, and landing a real drop or jump thumps up a burst at your feet.
• Cinematic lens. A subtle edge vignette frames the scene on High/Ultra, and taking a hit briefly splits the colour for a "rattled" punch.
• Real wolf & bear bites. Predator attacks now land with proper recorded bite SFX, trimmed and level-matched.

Combat & balance

• Sand Dash travels. The dash is now an explosive forward slide (with invulnerability frames) that actually covers ground and reads as a lunge, instead of a blink-teleport.
• The keep is reinforced each night. Its maximum HP now grows with every night you survive, so late-game waves — which scale up too — can't trivially raze a fixed-HP keep.
• Steadier hero curve. Hero levels soft-cap so power doesn't run away, harvesting no longer rides your combat damage, and each new house costs more than the last.
• Earn your town. Organic town growth is slower — clearing ork camps is now the real driver of population. More starting build plots, too.
• Bramble Sweep heal trimmed 20% (the forest-warden boon was over-healing).
• The warband is loud now. Orks shout battle cries far more often mid-siege and from farther away, with fewer death-snarls drowning out their taunts — a siege roars instead of muttering.

Visuals & feel

• Weathered walls. Castle and curtain-wall masonry is darker, grime-streaked and matte — it reads as aged, lived-in stone instead of flat pale blocks.
• Deeper nights. Nightfall now reaches true midnight with the moon standing high; the sun holds up through most of the prep countdown (no more "dark with a third of the timer left"), and the night fill is lifted so the dark reads moody and blue, not pitch-black.
• First-person, cleaned up. The held weapon and shield now sit properly in hand — no levitating blade, no arm blob filling the lens — and no longer flicker as you walk.
• Moodier horizon, cleaner depth-of-field — the background blur no longer sparkles on bright distant specks as the camera moves, and the picture is sharper by default.

Fixed

• New Game / Continue no longer leaves invisible walls where buildings stood in the previous run.
• The Heavy Strike's animation reads as a clean overhead raise into a downward smash, with the blade oriented correctly and no shoulder back-wrench.
• Bloom now has a single master control that sticks instead of being overwritten each frame.

---

The Windows installer is self-signed, so SmartScreen may warn "Windows protected your PC — Unknown publisher." Click More info → Run anyway to install. (Removing that warning needs a paid code-signing certificate.)

What's Changed

• Feat/feel fx batch by @miskibin in #25

Full Changelog: v0.11.0...v0.12.0

What's Changed

• Feat/feel fx batch by @miskibin in #25

Full Changelog: v0.11.0...v0.12.0

Warbell v0.11.0

Warbell v0.11.0

A big visuals + UI pass: real light shafts, rolling storms, a succession beat you can actually
read, a battlefield radar, and a proper Settings menu.

New

• God rays. Sunlight now scatters into visible light shafts through the treeline and over the
  hills — a cheap, reliable screen-space pass that's on for both High and Ultra (the old
  Ultra-only volumetric version was invisible and tanked the framerate, so it's gone).
• Storms. Weather can roll in with lightning flashes and rolling thunder over the battlefield.
• Legible succession. When your hero falls, a short slow-motion beat now shows the soul wisp
  fly from the corpse into the nearest villager, who rises as the new hero where they stand —
  making it clear that every heir is a townsperson.
• "Last of the line" warning. When the town runs out of heirs, an unmissable on-screen alert
  tells you your next death ends the run.
• Battlefield radar. The compass now shows live blips for nearby orks, bosses, and loot
  chests so you can read the fight and spot treasure at a glance.
• Unified Settings menu. Graphics, display, audio, and controls are now one clean tabbed menu,
  with a full graphics page: presets (Low / High / Ultra) plus individual toggles for shadows,
  anti-aliasing, ambient occlusion, bloom, depth of field, outline, god rays, terrain detail, and
  render scale.
• Window icon and kids-at-play village ambience for a bit more life and polish.

Combat & balance

• Tighter, more useful radar ranges — blips appear closer in (orks 46→30, bosses 78→48,
  chests 50→32) so the radar reads the immediate fight rather than the whole island.

Fixed

• Fixed a crash when raising the graphics preset or shadow level up from Low.
• The succession beat no longer keeps running behind an open menu (it could slow time, lose a
  villager, and teleport the hero while paused).
• Bloom no longer fights itself frame-to-frame, so the per-preset bloom shows correctly again.
• Camera screen-shake no longer borrows the wrong direction from a previous sword swing.
• Fixed a Windows crash from a debug memory diagnostic running on normal launches.

Under the hood

• Performance: render-scale support gives integrated GPUs a real framerate lever on Low, plus
  a proper profiling framework (Chrome tracing) and scheduling fixes.
• Retired the expensive, invisible volumetric god-ray pass (~13 ms/frame) in favour of the new
  screen-space one.

---

The Windows installer is self-signed, so SmartScreen shows an "Unknown Publisher" warning on
first run — click More info → Run anyway. (A trusted certificate authority cert is needed to
remove that prompt.)

Full Changelog: v0.10.0...v0.11.0

Full Changelog: v0.10.0...v0.11.0

Warbell v0.10.0

Warbell v0.10.0 — Eyes Up

A HUD overhaul — a new compass and a clean, glanceable night readout — riding on an engine upgrade
to Bevy 0.19 and a clean bill of health from a performance hunt.

New

• A strip compass across the top. A thin heading bar with N/E/S/W that slides as you turn, plus
  two landmark markers — a gold house for your keep and a red axe for Gnashfang Hold. They
  swing into view only when you face their way, so a glance tells you where home (or the fight) is.
• Redesigned objective readout, top-right, no panel. Just an icon + the number that matters:
  • By day — a sun + the countdown to nightfall, which pulses red in the final 10 seconds so
    you look up before the assault lands.
  • By night — a red axe + the orks remaining, and a shield + your keep's HP % (blue
    while healthy, reddening as the keep takes damage).
• Settings now live in the pause menu. First-person view, graphics preset, sound, and fullscreen
  moved into the Esc menu, clearing the play-screen corner. The M / F10 / F11 / V shortcuts still
  toggle them directly.

Combat & world

• Wildlife shows health bars in combat now, just like orks.
• Ork lunge attacks no longer clip through the hero.
• Buildings sit at a corrected scale, with castle window shutters realigned, and props settle at
  the right size when they pop in.
• Townsfolk stand more naturally — a wider stance and fuller legs replace the old pinched,
  spindly look, plus general behaviour polish.
• Smoother follow camera over hills — the camera no longer lurches as the hero walks up and down
  the terraced ground; vertical tracking now floats over the steps.

Under the hood

• Upgraded to Bevy 0.19 — GPU clustering (free performance) and contact shadows on the
  High/Ultra presets; also fixed a post-processing flicker that crept in during the port.
• Performance hunt — added profiling instrumentation and stress-tested the core loop: combat,
  roaming, and menus are leak-free (no unbounded entity/asset/memory growth behind the
  long-session FPS drop).

---

The Windows installer is self-signed, so SmartScreen shows an "Unknown Publisher" warning on
first run — click More info → Run anyway. (A trusted certificate authority cert is needed to
remove that prompt.)

Full Changelog: v0.9.0...v0.10.0

Full Changelog: v0.9.0...v0.10.0

Warbell v0.9.0

Warbell v0.9.0 — The Remodel

Every living thing in Warbell has been rebuilt. The hero, the orks, the townsfolk, and
the wildlife all share one new articulated skeleton with real per-clip animation — walking,
running, jumping, swinging, and blocking instead of sliding around as stiff boxes. This is the
biggest visual pass the game has had.

The hero knight — plate harness, wooden kite shield	Orks — tusked, armoured, and finally articulated
Townsfolk — woodcutter, farmer, miner, guard builds	Wildlife — wolves and the rest of the menagerie

New

• Completely refined models. The whole cast — hero knight, every ork variant, all the
  townsfolk trades, and the wildlife — was remodeled onto a single shared skeleton with
  chamfered low-poly parts and per-surface materials. They now read as one family instead of
  a grab-bag of cubes.
• Real animation for everyone. Mobs walk, run, attack, and crumple on the same per-clip
  animator the hero uses — no more rigid sliding.
• A bigger, bolder hero. The knight got a thicker, stronger stylized build, real boots, a
  cleaner helm, and a wooden kite shield with a gold boss. He can now jump, his walk has
  more punch, and his shield no longer clips through his arm.
• Armor you can see. Equipping armor now actually re-skins the knight — the whole plate
  recolours and each set adds its own signature look (dragon spikes, a gold crest, a chest
  device) instead of leaving the hero unchanged.
• A second world: the Volcanic Ashlands. Pick it from the start-screen map selector for a
  scorched-frontier run (one of its biomes is still flagged "not ready").
• A loading screen worth watching. The branded veil now actually shows on boot and New Game
  (it used to sit on a frozen frame for ~2s), with a sweeping gold progress bar and a fresh
  rotating lore tip each load.

Combat & balance

• Tougher everything. HP pools across the hero, defenses, and town buildings were raised to
  stand up to the night damage-ramp, and defense damage was re-derived so a siege stays a fight
  deeper into the night.
• Town buildings hold longer — farms and producers take more punishment before falling.

Fixed

• No more getting trapped in your own buildings. Raising a producer or a War-Table
  wall/tower/ballista on the spot you're standing used to wedge the knight inside it — he now
  steps clear.
• The hero no longer plays a tiny unearned landing-crouch on the first instant of a run.

Under the hood

• Smoother, richer terrain — bump-mapped ground relief, smoothed island edges, and the old
  repeating-grid tiling artifacts are gone.
• A worn-stone courtyard — the castle paving was reworked from a brick grid into irregular
  flagstones.
• Performance pass — terrain frustum-culling, far-scatter distance culling, a cached static
  IBL, reused separation buffers, and a tightened follow-cam that reads the hero larger.
• Faster pathfinding — the night-wave A* was rewritten onto a binary heap.

---

The Windows installer is self-signed, so SmartScreen shows an "Unknown Publisher" warning on
first run — click More info → Run anyway. (A trusted certificate authority cert is needed to
remove that prompt.)

Full Changelog: v0.8.1...v0.9.0

Full Changelog: v0.8.1...v0.9.0

Warbell v0.8.1

Warbell v0.8.1

A small patch that fixes the loading screen — and makes it worth looking at.

Fixed

• The loading screen was never actually showing. On boot and on New Game, the window
  sat on a frozen, near-blank frame for ~2 seconds while the world was built, then snapped
  straight into the game. The branded loading screen existed but never got a chance to draw — it
  now appears properly and stays up over the whole build.

Improved

• Nicer to wait on. Instead of three static dots, the loading screen now shows a sweeping gold
  progress bar and a rotating line of lore/tips — a fresh one each load (ring the war bell, block
  a berserker's charge, repair the keep, and more).

---

The Windows installer is self-signed, so SmartScreen shows an "Unknown Publisher" warning on
first run — click More info → Run anyway. (A trusted certificate authority cert is needed to
remove that prompt.)

Full Changelog: v0.8.0...v0.8.1

Full Changelog: v0.8.0...v0.8.1