# We made the Viridian Storm fair

> Tag: WORKSHOP · July 2026 build notes. Published 2026-07-31 by Tom and Ollie, FOXFIRE developers. Mirrors https://getfoxfire.com/dispatches/viridian-storm-made-fair/. Also on Steam: https://store.steampowered.com/news/app/4714090/view/690890419051955743

Two weeks off, 50+ playtest recordings on return, and one signal louder than the rest: Stage 2 (the Viridian Storm) was too hard. Not hard-interesting — hard-unfair. Most of July went into fixing that, plus a few extras.

---

## The setup

Playtest build left in players' hands during a two-week break. Returned to recorded playthroughs + Discord notes. Stage 1 landed as awesome and addictive. Stage 2, the Viridian Storm, landed as a brick wall.

---

## Viridian Storm — rescheduled

- **Threat scheduling rebuilt.** Same principle already working in Stage 1: introduce one thing at a time. Threats now arrive one family at a time, each with a breather behind it. You solve one problem instead of three at once.
- **Elites softer + slower early.** Reduced hit rate + damage across the first minutes of Stage 2.
- **Offscreen beam gauntlets require line of sight.** They wait until they can actually see you before opening up, and they're capped so the screen can't drown.
- **Still our hardest stage.** But watching a Mega Beamer disintegrate its own brethren is genuinely satisfying.

## Cyrex — proper boss fight

Cyrex is the Viridian Storm boss. Now has:

- A proper attack combo, a beam, and a phase change (lobs an egg across the arena).
- Per-hitbox damage: skull, claws, abdomen, tail each register separately. Aiming for the exposed part is a real decision.
- Reference point: closer to a Diablo 2 boss than a survivor-like damage sponge.

## HUD — the eye is findable

Confession: at one point the storm's lightning, the reward ring, your shield, the XP gems and the level-up sigil were all drawn as blue hexagons of slightly different sizes. Pulled apart:

- Storm lightning → violet. Reads as weather, not instrumentation.
- The Eye (moving safe zone) → permanent HUD compass instead of an off-screen arrow that got lost in the noise.

## Crescent Moon — hull art landed

The fifth ship in the roster. Now has its own hull art and phase-shift readiness display. It's the ship that asks for more skill than the rest of the roster. Next work: its unique spin on phase-shift — thinking something with strategic depth, like the movement of a knight in chess.

---

## Also shipped this month

- **Weapon clarity.** Flamer is a proper cone with real reach. Plasma Cannon picks a target on each side independently. Kepler Chain's blast scales with the rock it hits.
- **Accessibility foundation (first slice).** Native pause menu + options panel with accessibility and haptics settings.
- **CRT power-on boot.** Photosensitivity notice → terminal warming up → Start Screen.
- **New power option.** Lets the game ease off the hardware when the action's light, without changing how it plays.
- **Storm-field perf work.** Unglamorous under-the-hood work so the busiest moments hold their frame rate + some VFX polish.

---

## Where next

Stage 2 was the July program. August splits between the Crescent Moon's phase-shift design and the long tail of Supanova items still open — offscreen-threat legibility, mid-run camera behaviours, more weapon clarity.

---

## Where to look next

- https://getfoxfire.com/dispatches/hand-foxfire-to-strangers/ — Supanova Sydney playtest observations and the 90+ item list that produced most of the July program
- https://getfoxfire.com/game/ — FOXFIRE systems overview
- https://store.steampowered.com/app/4714090/FOXFIRE/ — wishlist on Steam
- https://store.steampowered.com/news/app/4714090/view/690890419051955743 — original Steam devlog

Last updated: 2026-07-31