5.3

Highlights

• Two rooms in one inn: Compact phone UI and Standard tablet/desktop UI now share one game, one renderer, and one set of saves—with each given the space it needs.
• Combat has stopped shouting over itself: larger dice, steadier logs, clearer cards, stronger turn rings, and touch actions that forgive a natural human finger wobble.
• Party Only keeps the good pauses: let your own actions roll forward, then stop before enemy chains, multiattacks, and automatic turns run away with the story.
• Town has put its tools in order: rebuilt Blacksmith, Shop, Temple, Guild, Character Sheet, report, campaign, and narrative screens are clearer across every shape of window.
• Higher roads grow tougher: new enemy armor scaling raises the challenge above Basic while preserving player growth, saved battles, and Master+ replay rules.

Build Status

The Build 13 source and simulator smoke are ready. Native Athena build, physical iPad acceptance, Apple counter confirmation, and TestFlight availability are still pending. This page does not announce a TestFlight build.

Compact Phone and Standard UI

• Compact phone UI focuses on safe-area-aware landscape layouts with less repeated labeling; Standard UI serves tablets and desktop from 4:3 through ultrawide. Rules, content, and saves remain shared.
• Rounded panels, clearer typography policy, compact-only cosmetic reductions, and complete-text fitting give controls, artwork, and reading space priority.
• Combat dedicates more room to the battlefield. Summaries retain committed actions, cards prioritize useful HP/resources, selected enemy details stay predictable, and logs wrap at readable fixed sizes.
• Dice settle on their proper sides, natural rolls move clear of top text, the active ring is brighter, buffs use orderly lower/upper slots, and spells/Pouch gain roomier rows.

Touch, Inspection, and Party Only

• Compact combat actions tolerate small natural finger movement while preserving control bounds, disabled states, modal gating, and deliberate hold-for-help behavior.
• Adventure art, dialogue, combat targets, and Character Sheet portraits support consistent right-click, touch-hold, and focused-controller inspection. Closing inspection never performs a game action.
• Auto Advance Messages now offers Off, On, and Party Only. Party Only advances player-chosen results but pauses before automatic chains, multiattacks, or skipped turns; it returns directly to the next available player choice.

Town, Character Sheet, and Reports

• Blacksmith Weapons/Armor, Shop Supplies, Temple Spellbook, Guild Artifacts & Skills, and rest pages use clearer illustrated cards, states, paging, controls, and spacing without changing their real catalogs, costs, ownership, or rules.
• The Character Sheet adds clean rounded tables, a proportionate graph-paper portrait, hero tabs with levels, clearer groups, section icons, independent scrolling, and useful equipment details without redundant profiles.
• Combat reports now fill the page with a single consistent statistics table, hero portraits, readable outcome/reward groups, scrollable loot, and no duplicate reward grants.
• Campaign selection becomes an illustrated scrolling list with persistent selection and per-row rename/delete menus; narrative pages center short text and preserve longer reading states.

Opening, Lobby, and Travel

• Adventure selection, compact opening, report, and sheet surfaces remove subtle seams; video, narration, and lobby preserve safe-area controls and proportions.
• The accepted six-hero lobby art is paired with correctly registered staff glow, smoke, sparks, window lighting, and bounded ambience. The revised opening narration and Mayor’s Hall scenery polish are included.
• Map travel notes center below Travel, return-to-town confirmation is clearer, and higher difficulty receives a red breadcrumb accent without changing travel, unlock, or tier rules.

Higher-Tier Enemy Armor

Enemy AC is now Basic +0, Advanced +5, Expert +11, Master +13, and Master+ +15 above each creature’s authored base. Basic, player growth, equipment, rewards, unlocks, and Master+ replay remain unchanged. Existing interrupted battles retain captured tuning; new fights use the revised curve.

Compatibility and Version Path

• Existing Companies, slots, settings, unlocks, and adventure progress are preserved; there is no intentional save reset. The initial level-2 advancement discussion did not become a gameplay change.
• There is no new adventure or story encounter in 5.3. The next adventure release is 5.4; later adventures advance the point component, while fixes and intervening enhancements use patch versions such as 5.3.1.