- Free DLC: 24 New Cards supporting swarm & rush strategies! - 27 September 2025
As always, new cards are automatically added to your collection.We do not make any money from releasing new cards. We do it because it is what ensures the game remains awesome.Our recent content release will give our players 24 new cards to work with, and it will also explain how and why we decide to release new cards. Let's take a quick tour of the new tools in your arsenal. This content patch is like a miniature expansion set, fully focused on providing more tools for "swarm" strategies to fully express their brutality. We already had some support, but a quick dive into the deck builder left some of us wanting more tools, especially in the early game where swarm decks should be able to press their advantage fully.The most versatile tools added are these one-sided buffs. They're cheap and they add up fast. Select the one(s) that play best with your keywords, such as the ATK buffs on Tw…
- Manacaster Post-Launch MEGA-PATCH! Adventure Mode & Shop Fully Enabled - 17 September 2025
Thank you to everyone who wishlisted and bought Manacaster during Launch Week! It's been so encouraging to see our wish list count increasing after launch, which means that you, the players, understand what we built, and why. Many of you have communicated to us that you're waiting to see the game evolve during Early Access, so today's gigantic patch notes represent our first step towards showing you Manacaster's evolution. Warning: Wall of Text Ahead.As we detailed in our launch announcement, Early Access games should be considered "buggy until proven otherwise", and I am proud to announce our prediction was correct! Manacaster indeed has bugs! In all seriousness, we really appreciate all the bug reports, even the ones that turned out to be "user error". Even those tiny reports provide a lot of information for us to fine-tune our user interface. The quantity of bugs was not particularly…
- Patch Notes for 3.1.5 - 2 September 2025
Version 0.3.1.5 pre-launch build,New Features:,RPG Mode: unlocked preview mode now available. No progression yet.,Inventory item skills/abilities now active during RPG mode matches.,Improvements:,Player life gain/loss notification coloring changed to green/red.,Level 2 nodes start the boss at 25 / 30 life.,RPG mode matches draw a deck based on the node elements for the AI player.,Gold reset for existing profiles and enabed.
- Early Access Launch: What to expect on Day One of Manacaster - 2 September 2025
So it's launch week, and you're looking at that big "BUY NOW" button and that juicy 20% discount ( valid thru September 10th! ) and you notice, "hey, this game is in Early Access, does that mean it's not really ready?" The answer depends on the game and the studio, but our team considers Early Access to be as important as a full Version One launch. This means our core gameplay loop and the supporting gameplay loops around it need to be robust, mostly bug-free, and they need to represent a significant amount of the "Manacaster Experience".Below, we're going to explain what you'll be able to do right away, and what's still in the pipeline for release post-Early Access launch. In short, you can expect a very deep and robust game that's got some roughness around the edges, but it's solid where it matters most.Let's start with the thing for which Early Access is somewhat notorious; there wil…
- Patch Notes for 3.1.4 - 1 September 2025
Version 0.3.1.4,Known Issues:,This is an in-progress patch to push critical combat fixes.RPG mode is partially exposed, do not use it as it is not finished and will cause untested bugs.,Improvements:,RPG mode map reworked to draw lines and monitor completion differently.,Unblocked attacker fireball vfx size 5x increased.,Statistics moved back to main menu.,Settings menu adjusted.,Rulebook button removed from main menu.,Esc behaviors added for the statistics panel, learn to play pop out.,Reagent rewards disabled for now.,Gold re-enabled and rewards set up based on match type.,Gear items updated, profile inventories reset.,Tutorial panel positioning improvements, some text changes.,Bug Fixes:,Blocked combat resolving before unblocked causing on dies triggers to execute mid resolve incorrectly.,Broken if check preventing riposte checks in combat situations with no cards scheduled for C1 or…
- Patch Notes for 3.1.3 - 30 August 2025
Version 0.3.1.3,Tutorial has now been adjusted to the new UI and is once again enabled. New Features:,Toggle between official deck or your deck selection for pve/pvp constructed deck selection.,Improvements:,Tutorial match adjustments to the new Match UI.,Draft mode adjusted to 9 cards per round.,Missing hover effects / tooltips in the main menu top bar added.,Deckbuilder style updates.,Public and draft decks browsers redesigned to match main deck builder better.,New profiles no longer start with all the official decks added but instead have these as selectable options in deck selection and start with a blank new deck.,Buttons on loading screen adjusted to match stylings.,Exit confirm window added preventing game from insta closes on exit clicks.,Learn to play panel returned with read rulebook / start tutorial options.,Bug Fixes:,Card back selection images not setting on start.,Clicking…
- Version 0.3.0.6 - 2 July 2025
🎯 What's NewItem Rerolling Don't like your gear? Reroll it. Simple as that.Fast Mode Toggle Skip the animations when you're grinding. Combat resolves instantly while preserving all tactical decisions. Available in PvE and PvP duelsChallenger decides in PvP matchesCinematic Camera ToggleLove the dramatic combat shots? Keep them. Prefer to see everything at once? Turn them off. Your choice. (Note: Fast mode overrides this anyway)⚡ ImprovementsTutorial PolishBetter UI scaling across different screen sizesClearer text and context throughoutHybrid mana examples updated for easier learningMatch Flow UpgradesCards move faster during resolution (speed adjusts based on fast mode)"Round Won" screen now displays while opponent makes decisionsEnd phase button works correctly on first press (no more double-clicking)Combat Consistency Various under-the-hood fixes to make combat resolution more predi…
- Version 0.3.0.5 - 20 June 2025
New FeaturesVisual combat resolve revamped.During best of 3 the loser of the round will now get to pick who goes first next round.Surrender rounds when not in one-gameImprovementsCheck renamed to Pass, End Deploy renamed to End Phase.Naming/wording improvements for various notifications and match UI elements.Discard windows order in hierachy adjusted to make them appear on top of all non notification/tutorial elements.(Tutorial Match) Various UI improvements and fixes for scaling and to match the highlighted element(s)Tutorial revamped and updated to new script.Welcome panel for first time players recreated in UI toolkit and can now be reopened from the bottom bar.Parry reset between phases removed.Parry shield effect added that takes hits and breaks when cap reached.Mulligan window resized to fit under the top header, this moved the keeping x cards .. text now a seperate floating box i…
- Version 0.3.0.4 - 19 June 2025
New Features: New effect for buffs. Random common item rewards for match winners. Reagent loot with 50% drop chance at match wins. RPG Mode map added (not usuable yet, for display and preview). Updates to map and line drawing based on user progress for RPG mode, map is now fully functional. Tooltips for matchUI check/end deploy button. Improvements: Statistics UI rebuilt. Demo UI rebuilt. Demo queues and modes adjusted. Tooltips for missing old tooltip triggers replaced with the new tooltip system. More UI updates and fixes. Draft mode color background for indication of maindeck selections being correct so hopefully people notice they need to drop 6 cards to the bench to proceed. Set background music to the tutorial track while in tutorial mode. Card tapping sound rained in have a cap to reduce the mass tap sound spam at turn changes. New item cards for loot drops. Some tutorial text /…
- Version 0.3.0.3 - 1 June 2025
New Features: - Tutorial match, this is a guided 4 turn experience to learn the basics of the game. - Full card view for after draft selections of bench/maindeck. - Sorting and type filter for card view on draft interface. - New rulebook and patch notes interfaces. - Action card impact effect. Improvements: - UI (mostly text) during tutorial match. - Rulebook now changeable in admin interface. - / rounds count added to the draft interface. - Revenge added into the precombat calculations for blocker selection display. - Large amount of adjustments to match and match tutorial UI to address scaling and sizing issues on different aspect ratio. - Tooltips added to the new main menu UI. - Duel feature returns. - Decks are now only send as ID to the server on match entrance instead of the full deck. - Heavy and card clear adjusted to also happen after ambush phase. - More ui parts shifted to u…
- Version 0.3.0.2 - 28 May 2025
New Features Modal card filter added to deckbuilder. 20 new cards. Account Inventory added. Equipment system fully working. 4 modal cards added. Improvements Transport stability fixes and other network related improvements. Riposte adjusted to cap to total incoming attack power rather then highest incoming attack power. New decks now need to be given a name when creating. Adjustment to main menu to see if it fixes the best-of-three against AI with invalid deck issue. Damage splitting for blockers now done before the phase it is about to engage in, meaning we can reassign damage after ambush/twinstrike. AI player improvements. Deckbuilder serverside interactions logging. 3 action card fixes. Bug Fixes Serverside steam heartbeat causing latency and relay issues. DeckBuilder serverside cache issues. DeckBuilder deck cloning issues. Issues as a result of the partial combat rewrite to allow…
- MASSIVE Card Release! 63 new cards to beat eachother with! - 2 May 2025
63 new cards were added to Manacaster today, bringing the base set to nearly 800 cards! New players might be thinking "my God man, 800 cards, how will I know them all at first sight!?" Don'tcha worry. Because of how Manacaster is designed, if we make a card for one Element, we have to make it for all 6 elements. If we make a card for one Hybrid, we have to make it for all 9 hybrid elements! And if we make a Neutral card, we have to make every version of that card possible. ( see: Jab, 1 mana = 2 damage up to Thundershock, 12 mana = 13 damage. With that said, lets get to the new hotness! Scavengers Everyone loves a grower! Battlemages Obliterators Giant monsters that help you bridge the gap between the Late Game and the End Game. Mono-Element {STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/4548981...
- "Don't Go There" - Manacaster's Forbidden Game Mechanics - 11 April 2025
Until one sits down to design a game, it's difficult to see how game mechanics are taken for granted by game designers. From a player's perspective, it's nearly impossible to differentiate between a "best practice" and an "outdated practice". Anyone attempting to design a new game needs to be aware of the greater design patterns across the industry. Below is a list of common patterns that we intentionally removed from the design space of our strategy-and-tactics card game. Manacaster is built on the premise of extremely precise, mathematical game balance, augmented by AI tools that can simulate millions of games. As one might imagine, the frameworks underlying the math include a large number of restrictions about what "can and can't be". Technically speaking, these are our design assertions against which we test all newly-created Manacaster cards. Speaking plainly, these are the "major…
- Balance Update: 10_04_2025 - 10 April 2025
This affects _ALL_ Units, and you will generally see Units are about 1 stat point bigger on average. Must Attack got a further buff such that they are now 2 stat points bigger than before. We also brought back Cannot Block as a credible alternative to Must Attack, since some decks prefer to avoid the risk of mandatory combat. This ability is similar ( but slightly less ) in point value to Must Attack. These balance changes also opened up a large design space for over 100 new Units, many of which fill existing "holes" that players have been feeling during draft and deckbuilding. These new Units are _not_ in this balance patch. We anticipate we can begin releasing the new Units in about one week, and with over 100 to work with, we think that will last quite a long while :) As always, balance is subject to change as we inspect the math and the gameplay logs. Manacaster's game balance is ha…
