Today marks the 1-year anniversary of me having released Pandora's Spirit to the public. So far it's gotten about the level of attention I expected, so close to nothing given I have no real social media presence, but also not zero, and it still gets a download every month or two without having completely fallen off the map on this site, so I consider that a success. I very much appreciate anyone who took the time to download the game and give it a try.

Anyway, what better way to celebrate this game's anniversary than with an update? Most of this is minor tweaks for later in the game (which I have a funny feeling no one's actually bothered to progress that far, I've yet to see any acknowledgement from someone who played the game beyond the first 15 minutes or so), but still, I think they'll make the game smoother and easier to complete.

- Included an optional skip for the entire Daiyamondo Temple area in the first adventure. Really just there because of the known issue of excessive frame rate lag in that area if you're running a screen recorder at the same time, but I suppose it's also available for anyone who might get too frustrated or confused by that part as well.

- Improved the RNG for the first fight of the first adventure's final boss run. I noticed that depending on how the RNG turned out in the old version, that fight could either go really quickly or become somewhat tedious as the same attacks would get spammed over and over without leaving openings to actually damage the boss. I've done my best to balance that out.

- Nerfed one of the post-game bosses (specifically for the "Secret of the Station" achievement). Basically just increases the timing window for that boss being open to hit with an attack, which could previously be smaller than any other boss fight's timing window.

- The sanctuary area for the "Apprentice Adventure" achievement has more obvious signage and dialogue trees to make it more intuitive to know where to go at certain points. 

- There's a new optional boss fight! This doesn't count towards any kind of achievement or completion requirement, but after you've completed the "Apprentice Adventure" achievement you can go back and fight Spirit Maryoku with the option to make that fight even harder than it was before. (Note, for this fight to be available you'll also need to replace the "sprites" folder with the one currently included in the zip, some files in the "fx" and "ba2" subfolders have changed to account for it, though the game should still work the same if you don't replace any of those folders, the harder version of the fight just won't be accessible.)

- Added an acknowledgement in the credits for the only person I've ever seen make a full-on YouTube video attempting to play the game :)

And yeah, that's about it! The whole process of making this game has very much been a major learning experience in many different ways. I'm thinking of even further expanding the lore of this game's universe through a possible sequel, perhaps you'll see that someday in the far-off future? I don't know, I won't make any promises in particular since this game did initially take me 5 years to complete, but whatever. Anyway, thanks again to anyone who might've bothered to read this post and/or downloaded the game in the past, I've put so much time and effort into this project and I'm grateful to know that some people might've had fun with what I've done even in the smallest possible ways.

As always, for the update to take place for anyone who downloaded the game previously, you need only replace the .exe file for the game itself (as well as the "sprites" folder to access that optional fight). So long as you keep the "save.ini" file you had before, you won't lose any progress.