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you were right, the crows were basically chasing souls they couldn’t catch and the priest just stood there being polite about it. fixed in 0.38.1, crows dive faster and the priest grabs anything a crow won’t reach in time 💀

Thanks, that helps a lot! 

You were right about the souls: each one was drawn separately, so a late game screen full of them (plus March of the dead) cost a lot. In the next update all souls are drawn in one go, and the march is lighter too. 

The double click on “Next” / “Got it” was a real bug as well, also fixed in the next update.

I’ll test it on Firefox too. 

Thanks for giving it another go, let me know how it runs :)

You’re 100% right, it bugs me too. I kind of turned a blind eye to it until I get the mechanics right and squash the bugs. I take the criticism on the chin, and I’ll rewrite every line of text so it’s completely “mine” :)

Thanks for playing and for pointing this out :) You were right, and it helped me find the real problem. Every body lying in the grave was its own draw call, so the deeper and fuller the grave got, the more the browser had to work. In the next update the whole pile is drawn in one go, along with a bunch of other optimizations. In my tests a full grave now needs about 2.5x less rendering work, and the game no longer slows down as the grave fills.

If it still stutters for you after the update, let me know which browser you’re using and roughly where it happens. That would help a lot. Thanks again! 💀

Thank you, really glad it hooked you! 💀

You're in luck: that's exactly where the full version goes. More dark rituals to bend the dead to your will, and the empty left side of the Book finally comes alive with a whole new way to put your clients back to work. The grave also keeps going deeper than The Pit, and what's waiting at the bottom… well, you'll see.

If you have ideas for rituals you'd love to see, tell me, I read everything!

Ooh, a net that catches them at the top sounds much better than slow souls in the late game. I've written it down next to the bonfire idea :) Thanks!

Good call on the crows - in v0.34 they circle near their tree once you have the lantern, so they're not fighting it for the middle anymore. My crow employees finally got their own territory :D

The lantern feeling weak at the start is fair. The new cemetery lanterns should help a bit with the souls far to the sides, but I'll keep an eye on the starting radius and when it unlocks.

An apprentice that tosses bodies is a fun idea, especially now that the carts bring so much. I've added it to my list, let's see how the pile feels with the new update first.

Hey again :) And no need to apologise for the essay, this is exactly the kind of feedback that helps the most.

You were right about the save. Renaming the itch page changed where your browser keeps the game, so the old save got left behind. That one's on me, sorry! v0.34 adds Save to code / Load from code in Settings, so you can keep a backup of your cemetery and it won't happen again.

A lot of your notes are already in v0.34:

- ritual info boxes are smaller and fit on the screen now

- the demo only shows the rituals you can actually use

- the cart doesn't sit in the fog anymore when you zoom out

- there's a small gauge next to the lamp showing when it will dim and when it comes back

- and the pit lamps are gone - I took your idea and moved them to the surface. Now there are small lanterns on posts beside the cemetery, and souls from the sides drift towards them :D

The bodies falling through the front of the pile is on my list, thanks for spotting it.

I really like the soul bonfire idea, especially clearing the ash as a small late-game event. I want to see how the new lanterns play first, but it's written down. Same with something changing between consecrations - for now The Pit is the end of the demo, but in the full version you keep digging, so consecration will matter more there. A toggle for the cutscenes and info boxes makes sense too.

And yes, there's a Discord now :) https://discord.gg/VEWe2Tqr2f - you'd be more than welcome there.

As for Apple and the full game in the browser - not right now. The full version is coming to Windows first, but I'll let you know if that changes.

Oh, herding souls towards the lamp is a fun idea :D Gives the crows something different to do instead of just competing with it.

In v0.33 they’ll leave the lamp’s souls alone and go after ones about to escape, so they should already be more useful. But I like the idea of them helping the lamp recover too. I’ll see how the current changes feel before adding another upgrade — worth keeping in mind though :)

Apparently I’m managing crow employees now.

Yeah, collecting more souls basically made the lamp take more breaks :D I’ve changed that in v0.33 — it now dims based on time, not the number of souls collected.

There’s also an “Everburning wick” upgrade that keeps it at full strength longer and shortens the dimming, plus stronger range upgrades. Some of this was already in the works, so we ended up thinking along the same lines :)

A relic upgrade for lamp range sounds like a good option too. I’ll keep that in mind!

Hey again :) Your comment made me take a closer look at deliveries, and yeah — too much time is spent waiting for the cart. I’m working on stronger cart upgrades and a second cart to help with that.

The lamp is getting better range and an “Everburning wick” upgrade, so it spends less time dimmed. I also liked your two-lamp idea enough to try it at The Pit :D

Some of these changes were already prepared after my own testing, so your notes are a good sign I’m heading in the right direction. I’ll get the update out as soon as I can :)

Let me know how the endgame feels, especially if deliveries keep holding things up. These fresh-run notes help a lot!

Thanks for playing through the whole demo and writing this up! Most of your points line up with my own thoughts after a few hundred runs through the demo and full version. At this point I may have spent a little too much time in this cemetery :)

The frame drops are my top priority, followed by the crows competing with the lantern and the Book hiding your soul count. I’m also looking at making souls more useful in the demo, the timing of consecration, and a more compact surface layout.

Really useful feedback — thanks for digging all the way down!

And yes, the squirrel knows more than it should.

glad to hear that! 🙂 especially that progression feels better now. i'm still working out what comes after the pit, but i want it to bring something new, not just a bigger hole 😅 thanks for coming back and trying the updates!

oh, i'll take that as a compliment 😄 glad you liked it!

oh, five resets just to get there is a lot 😅 glad the lamp helped, but i'll check the first run without relics too. i want resets to give you a boost, not feel like you have to do them to get anywhere. thanks for letting me know!

Yep, exactly! Fresh bodies take up more space in the pit. As they decay into skeletons, bones, and eventually humus, they shrink and the pile settles.

Slower decay keeps that extra volume around longer, making the pit easier to fill. The trade-off is that souls are released when decay starts, so you have to wait longer for them too.

That could definitely be clearer in the upgrade description — thanks for pointing it out!

Hey, glad the lantern and raven changes helped! And thanks for sticking with it and coming back with more feedback 🙂

I’ve looked into the slowdown, and the gravedigger upgrades do get expensive too quickly for the improvement they give. The cart also has a fixed delivery interval, so there’s room to improve that.

I’m looking at gentler upgrade costs, better deliveries, and a way to get more souls from each body later on. Unlocking those before The Pit makes sense, so you have something to work toward before hitting that wall.

I like the lantern suggestion too — I’ll try a centered placement and see how it feels. More relic upgrades are on my list as well, though I want the first run to feel good without needing a reset.

Really appreciate the detailed feedback. It helps a lot to hear exactly where things start dragging!

Thanks for playing and taking the time to write all this! Really glad you enjoyed it.

Yeah, I can see how clicking souls one by one stops being fun when you need hundreds of them. The ravens are supposed to take that job off your hands, so if you’re still stuck doing it manually, they need some work. I’ll take another look at their price and how long they rest. I’m also thinking about letting one click collect nearby souls, and maybe adding a lantern that attracts them automatically.

And haha, humus, not hummus — it’s the decomposed stuff left in the grave. The bones come from the ossuary, but I clearly haven’t explained that very well either. I’ll add some explanations as those things unlock.

Knowing where it started feeling slow helps a lot. Thanks again!