As many of you know, Siralim: Invasion was released late last week on Steam and itch.io (Windows, Mac, Linux), in addition to Google Play (Android). As I started to write this post, I received an e-mail from Apple saying that they’re reviewing the patch for iOS as we speak. Playstation users might need to wait a little while longer, as I haven’t been able to submit the patch yet since the process is a bit more involved than all the other platforms (a lot of “wait and see” – but I’m doing everything I can on my end, rest assured!). In the end, I’ll be surprised if the patch isn’t available on all remaining platforms by the end of the week!

In addition, I’m also working on releasing both Siralim and Siralim 2 on Amazon Underground. This means that the games will be completely free – including their in-app purchases – on Android if you have the Amazon Underground app. I’ll get paid by Amazon for every minute players spend playing these games, so I figured games with infinite playability would do pretty well on there. At the very least, I figured this would be an interesting experiment considering it’s an all-new payment model that no company other than Amazon has tried yet.

Last week, I promised that I’d dive into details about how the two new “mini-expansions” work for Siralim and Siralim 2. However, there’s not much to say about the patch for Siralim that hasn’t already been revealed, so instead, let’s take a closer look at the patch for Siralim 2.

Daily Realms

Daily Realms are unlocked via a mid-level castle upgrade. After that, you can visit an NPC in the main room in Siralim to open a portal to a Daily Realm. You can complete a Daily Realm once per day, which also increases your Daily Realm Streak by 1. If you die or exit the game while in a Daily Realm, your completion streak will be reset back to 1.

Enemies in Daily Realms scale in level and Gene Strength to those of your own creatures, similar to how Sigils and God Battles work. Enemies will not grow more powerful after a Daily Realm Streak of 10.

If you manage to complete the Realm Quest in a Daily Realm, not only will your Daily Realm Streak increase, but you’ll also receive an increasingly better reward based on your streak. Rewards always include some Spell Gem crafting components to be used in the Arcane Refinery, along with a chance to receive a Fleshwarper Coin. At a Daily Realm Streak of 10 or higher, you will always receive a Fleshwarper Coin.

Unlike in the first Siralim game, no stats are tracked or displayed to players in Siralim 2’s Daily Realms. These statistics would have made it impossible for me to add Daily Realms to the Playstation version of the patch, so I decided to omit that functionality entirely.

New Game Plus

New Game Plus is a new option unlocked at the title screen. You can unlock it by either defeating the final boss of the main storyline, or by holding down the right-directional button (default “D” on keyboards) for a few seconds. After that, you can choose “New Game Plus” and start a new save file.

When you start a new file under New Game Plus, you’ll start in a different room than normal. This room contains several NPCs that allow you to toggle certain in-game options that will affect the way you play the game. Below is a list of options, along with a description of each one if necessary:

Random Creature Mode – in the normal game, the order in which creatures are unlocked in the wild is always the same, no matter how many new games you start. With this mode enabled, you could encounter a Diabolic Nemesis starting at realm level 1. The first 50 creatures that are unlocked can be extracted from, so there’s no need for them to be in your bestiary first. This mode should give the game a tremendous amount of replay value.

Extract Anything Mode – this mode allows you to extract a Core from any creature without it needing to be in your bestiary first.

Classic Mode – greatly decreases the amount of resources, experience points, and items you’ll gain throughout the game. This mode is intended to make the game feel more hardcore, and from my own experience, it makes the game feel a lot more rewarding and satisfying.

Ignore Gene Strength – with this mode enabled, creatures will always have zero Gene Strength. This includes your creatures and enemy creatures.

Start With All Cores – allows you to start the game with one of every Core already in your inventory. No, that doesn’t include the Mimic or any other creature that is otherwise unobtainable. This option also adds an NPC to the summoning chamber that allows you to delete all the Cores in your inventory. That way, you can start the game with a creature team of your choice, then delete all your Cores in case you don’t want to spoil the element of extracting Cores from new creatures later on.

Start With All Spell Gems – allows you to start the game with one of every Spell Gem already in your inventory. None of these Spell Gems have any properties.

Start With Extra Resources – allows you to start the game with 10x as many resources (Brimstone, Crystal, Essence, Granite, and Power) as normal.

Start With All Breeding Recipes – allows you to start the game with all the breeding recipes already known.

Start With Double Speed – allows you to move at double your normal speed in the castle and in realms without needing to unlock anything.

You’re probably noticing that there’s no permadeath option listed here. Permadeath won’t be added to Siralim 2. Cloud saving makes this option obsolete and pointless, not to mention that a permadeath mode introduces a lot of technical bugs that are difficult to work past.

Retro Skins

40 new skins have been added to the game: one from each of the original creature races in the first Siralim game before it received a graphics overhaul. While I think all of the battle sprites still look really good, some of the overworld sprites leave something to be desired. You’ve been warned.

Here are a few screenshots of some of these skins:

I’m hoping to release the Siralim 2 patch shortly after I’ve finished deploying the patch for Siralim 1 on all platforms. Shouldn’t be much longer now!