Sanctuary Has Left the Building. Please Mind the Dragons.

Sanctuary has been rebuilt again.

Yes, again. At this point I should probably stop calling it Sanctuary and start calling it the Temporary Arrangement.

I liked having a familiar little safe place to return to after a dungeon in Swordoku: Grid & Glory. But even with things moving around in the scene, something still felt missing. You could leave, fight your way through a dungeon, and come back... without much sense that you'd actually gone anywhere.

The camp had atmosphere. What it needed was a journey.

We're going to need a map

Sanctuary is now a map showing your location, with progression taking you onward to the next dungeon.

If you make it there.

That gives the adventure a sense of movement the previous scene wasn't giving me. The familiar camp was nice, but I want clearing a dungeon to feel like another step through the world, rather than another trip out of the same front door.

So, naturally, the solution to finishing Sanctuary was to change what Sanctuary is. Excellent progress. Very efficient.

The board has started making suggestions

Gameplay has had a few additions too, and the puzzle board now gives you more to consider than simply finding somewhere to put that awkward piece.

Exposed weaknesses and resistances appear as highlighted rows. A green row is an opportunity: clear it and you'll deal double damage. Orange or red highlights mean reduced damage from matches in those rows.

Suddenly, the row you can clear and the row you want to clear aren't necessarily the same thing.

Loot can also appear as an icon on the board. Clear any match containing that icon and you'll receive a piece of equipment. Which gives you another very sensible reason to start rearranging your entire strategy around something shiny.

A goblin with a promotion

Monsters now have five ranks, identified by the colour of their names:

• Normal: white
• Veteran: yellow
• Elite: orange
• Champion: red
• Boss: purple

The system lets monster types support different ranks, and I can control which ones each type is allowed to use. Goblins could be limited to Normal and Veteran, for example, while a dragon could be reserved for Boss encounters.

Because meeting a dragon as an ordinary monster on level one feels less like an introduction and more like a clerical error.

The plan is for most dungeons to be populated dynamically using rules like these, with only a few hand-authored. That should give me control over what belongs where without placing every last goblin personally.

A little extra maths with your monster slaying

Some blocks within your pieces can now carry damage modifiers, assigned using a set of rules. Those can push a row's damage up or down, giving you another detail to weigh up before placing a piece.

For example, clearing a row containing both a ×2 and a ×0.5 modifier gives a combined ×1.5 result under the game's stacking rules.

Between those modifiers, highlighted rows, and equipment drops, there's a bit more temptation to think, “Hang on, maybe I should put that somewhere else.”

Usually just after you've put it somewhere.

Mostly playable. Still plenty to build.

The game is now mostly playable, and these mechanics have added a nice twist to the battles. There's more going on without losing the puzzle at the centre of it all.

Next on the list are the shop, shrine, and blacksmith. Time to give those systems some attention.

Assuming I can leave Sanctuary alone long enough.