Hey everyone, Angie here! Two years ago today, FallingStar Games debuted with an RPG called Fiora, which turned out really well on our end and motivated us to work on a lot of different projects, which we call the Aurelian Anthology. Fiora, both the original and Full Bloom, mean a lot to the people who've played it, so to celebrate its two-year anniversary, we decided to release version 1.8.1, and make the game publicly available for FREE until the end of the month.

With the 1.8.1 update, we have added:

• Bugfixes, status effects are visible during battle using sprite animations, which are now clearly delineated from each other. This helps you quickly understand how a move works, which is crucial during later sections.
• Quality-of-Life Changes, your Auras now show dialogue when you use them, explaining in more depth what they do than the ambiguity of previous versions. That ambiguity was intentional on my end, but it meant that players never engaged with the mechanics on a deeper level, which I wanted to fix.
• Improved UI, you can now see all of your stats when selecting Identities, including Clarity, Logic, and Charm.
• Rebalancing, veeeeeery slight changes to stats and calculations to prevent undesirable dominant strategies. I might talk about this more in a separate devlog, but for now just don't worry, it's still Fiora: Full Bloom.
• Dialogue Changes, some players have found the new dialogue a bit clunky and on-the-nose, so some dialogue has been trimmed to make it flow better. I hope it works to make the story feel better to get through.
• Fixed Difficulty, Skip Mode has been removed and you now have to play through the whole game. Of the people who played Full Bloom, no one actually picked Skip Mode, even the people whose frustration with the game would have been alleviated by doing so. Ultimately, the people who don't understand or resonate with the way this game plays are not my audience, and I have more confidence in my work than to say "Sorry about my game, would you like to play less of it?"
• Supplementary Design Document written by one beautiful doe.

Also we forgot to announce this, but you can also download a Portuguese-BR version of Full Bloom, translated by JP, a friend and fellow creator. Any Brazilian players who want to experience Fiora for themselves can now do so with no language barrier! It's unfortunately not the 1.8.1 update, but it does have some added features like the improved UI. We'll see what we can do about updating the PT-BR version later.

This updated version will be available for free until November 1st, after which it will go back to a $5 pricetag. All money made from it will go to Black and Trans crowdfunds, but I would also highly recommend you just give the money to a Black Trans person you know.  My card has expired and I'm looking to get it replaced, and we at FallingStar will have to rethink how payments work here, but I hope you continue to trust us moving forward.

Alright, I hope you all enjoy the update! Make sure to install the fonts, and do check out the design document! Happy Anniversary, Fiora!