About the Game
In a realm where the gods of life reign, Death starts to spread. It is foretold that you, a husk of a once-diligent scholar, will find a legendary mask and slay this eldritch evil. In the mountaintop kingdom of Wisdom, a prophecy begins to unfold, but it is your decision to fight for the gods and fulfill the prophecy or to become an apostle of Death.
Fast-paced combat
Evade enemy attacks, chain together your learned combat arts into unique combos, and channel the power of gods to crush your enemies!
Copy your enemies' attacks
Your mask grants you the ability to steal your enemies' combat skills.
Learn unique attacks from each enemy you kill, and grow your arsenal of dozens of deadly combat arts.
Challenging boss fights
The boss fights will truly put your fighting skills to the test. From giant arachnoids and mechanical beasts to dragons and terrifying angelic beings, every single boss is designed with their unique move set to be challenging but fair.
Unique World
You will travel through lush swamps, chilling ruins, and ancient cities. Each world features unique enemies and secrets. Explore the twisted lands of the gods and uncover the truth behind the spreading of Death in this once thriving world.
Steal your enemies' attacks and weave their moves into your own combos
Face off against unique and challenging monsters and terrifying bosses
Explore large, interconnected surreal worlds and uncover their secrets
Acquire the god's powers to solve puzzles and gain an edge in combat
Decide the fate of this world: rescue the gods of Life or become an apostle of Death
All lands have fallen to Death and been corrupted beyond repair. Let them live on or destroy them once and for all!
Screenshots
18 images
Version Information
Steam Patch Notes
Official update history
Hi everyone, it's time for another big patch!
With the help of your feedback, I've made a few more balancing adjustments to really get this game to the balance I want. I also fixed a bunch of bugs and made some quality of life changes like a Focus Regain display and faster elevators.
Ranged Combat Art Focus regain
Until now, most ranged Combat Arts regained basically no Focus at all. I implemented it like this to avoid cheesing enemies from afar, if a projectile keeps regenerating enough Focus to use it again you can just stand far away from bosses, spam the projectile and not engage with the fight at all.
However, a way better solution to this problem was right in front of me: projectiles now regenerate less Focus the further they travel. It already works like this for damage and stagger, so why not Focus too? Using this system, I was able to buff the Focus regain of almost all projectile attacks to make them way more fun to use in combos. You can find the detailed buffs in the patchnotes below!
Increasing Flasks of Blood
From watching gameplay and listening to your feedback, I realized that the endgame turned out far more punishing than anticipated. However, I didn't want to further nerf any more bosses (I think these fights are well balanced for the combat system once everything clicks) but I wanted to give you more chances to learn these complicated fights.
This is why I placed 4 Flask shards throughout the world. 2 Flask shards can be used to increase the amount of Flasks you can carry by 1, letting you upgrade your Flasks to a total of 6 by the time you reach the endgame.
I think this is a great addition to the game for multiple reasons. It gives you more chances to learn fights and makes the game a little bit less punishing, it adds additional character progression, it adds more meaningful loot to the game and it's entirely optional if you prefer the more punishing 4 Flasks.
If you're already into a playthrough and want to pick up the Shards you missed, I added a guide at the bottom of this post on where to find them. (Beware of minor spoilers)
Displaying Focus regain
One player suggested something really important: Focus regain should be displayed in the Combat Art menu. This way you can easily see how much Focus you will regain on a successful attack with each Combat Art. This is important data for making your build and it's finally easily visible!
Controller l3 & r3 issue
A small amount of players are experiencing an issue where they sometimes cannot use l3 or r3 to lock on and sprint. I'm still investigating this, but I have found that it seems to be driver or firmware related. If you are experiencing this issue, try to upgrade your controller drivers and firmware and if possible, let me know if that fixes the issue. I'm going to continue looking into this and more information on what does or does not fix it would be an enormous help!
That's it for this patch! Thank you everyone for playing! You can find all the detailed changes and fixes I didn't mention in the detailed patchnotes:
Balancing
Increased Focus regain of most projectile attacks, but made them regain less Focus the further they travel (This avoids long-distance-cheesing which was the main reason for low regain on projectile attacks, but makes them more fun to use in close range)
Increased Book Throw Focus regain from 10% to 25%
Increased Flamethrower Focus regain from 0% to 30%
Increased Living Hands Focus regain from 0% to 30%
Increased Rock Throw Focus regain from 0% to 70%
Increased Toxic Retch Focus regain from 20% to 40%
Increased Shattering Step Focus regain from 50% to 60%
Increased Chaotic Swings Focus regain from 44% to 48%
Increased Blood Orb Focus regain from 30% to 50%
Increase Corpse Barrage Focus regain from 18% to 42%
Increased Radiant Beam Focus regain from 35% to 55%
Increased Pure Light of Hope Focus regain from 9% to 54%
Increased Blood Wave Focus regain from 20% to 40%
Increased Deathly Discharge Focus regain from 20% to 50%
Increased Red Flame Cannon Focus regain from 36% to 64%
Added the ability to increase the amount of Flasks of Blood up to x6 using Flask shards found throughout the world
Placed Flask shard in the swamp area at the "Fallen Paradise" Bloodspring
Placed Flask shard in the machine workshop at the "Prison of Death" Bloodspring
Placed Flask shard in front of the hidden dragon shrine at the "Temple of Hope" Bloodspring
Placed Flask shard in one of the rooms at the "Root of the Red Flame" Bloodspring
Slightly increased minimum Red-Flame-Parry angle
Increased poison build up time until the first damage tick when stepping into poison-water or blood-pools
Reduced size of Apostle of Death tentacle hitbox
Adjusted Easy and Very Easy difficulty
Reduced Damage Taken on Easy from 75% to 72%
Increased Damage Dealt on Easy from 110% to 113%
Increased Damage Dealt on Very Easy from 130% to 150%
Increased Stagger Damage Dealt on Very Easy from 120% to 130%
Made enemies wait for a minimum of 0.8 seconds between combo strings on Very Easy difficulty
Misc
Added stat block for Focus-regain in the Combat Art menu
Removed hard-to-see fences and walls in the Decrepit Village to improve navigation and make it less easy to get stuck
Automatically focus camera on the True Angel after the phase-swap cutscene to make reacting to the first attack easier
Increased speed of various elevators
Reduced intensity of the poison screen-effect to improve visibility in poison
Added an automatic savefile backup system. If a savefile gets corrupted due to a not yet found bug, you will now always have a backup from said savefile available
Added white glow to Apostle of Death projectiles to increase visibility
Bug fixes
Fixed a bug where a game crash right after defeating a boss would lock you out of ever getting the corresponding boss Combat Art
Fixed a bug where a game crash right as the game is saving would corrupt the affected savefile
Fixed a bug where player projectiles would sometimes target the Wish-summon instead of enemies
Fixed a bug where you could get stuck in a vine bridge in the temple of Birth
Fixed a visual bug where you could see outside the map through one of the windows in the Despair boss arena
Fixed a bug where right after upgrading, an incorrect stagger number was displayed in the upgrade menu for multi-hit Combat Arts
Fixed a bug where the Pumping Carcass armor could be picked up a second time in NG+
Fixed a bug where sound was not mirrored in Mirror Mode
Fixed a bug where flying towards a Wind Point using the Wings of Hope the same frame as dying would cause permanent fall damage cancellation and blocked player rotation
Fixed a bug where the Scroll of the Summoner did not affect damage dealt by parasites spawned through the Scroll of Parasites
Where to find the Flask shards
For the first Flask shard, start from the "Fallen Paradise" Bloodspring and walk out into the large swamp area. Go over the wooden bridge that leads to the black tentacle door, then turn left until you reach a tree with 2 items next to it. One of those is the first Flask shard.
For the second Flask shard, start from the "Prison of Death" Bloodspring and turn right to the glowing green spot. Use the Vines of Birth to progress into the workshop where you will find the second Flask shard.
For the third Flask shard, start from the "Temple of Hope" Bloodspring and move through the Sakura garden towards the waterfall that is the water-source for the puzzle in this area. Turn the lever to open the path towards the dragon statue and find the third Flask shard in the rubble to the right.
For the final Flask shard, start from the "Root of the Red Flame" Bloodspring and move up the stairs you initially came from. Open the door into the first room on the right to find the final Flask shard.
Hi everyone! First of all I want to start of with a big thank you!
I'm quite overwhelmed by both the insane amount of positivity and also the incredibly constructive and helpful feedback!
Over the last days, I've been reading all of your feedback and opinions and have condensed them into 3 general points that I plan to address with this patch at least in some capacity:
Item variety & loosing half of your Knowledge Points on Death
A lot of loot in this game is upgrade materials. Since you get your Combat Arts from enemies, there is only Clothing, Scrolls and Consumables left to spice up the loot-pool. While there still need to be a bunch of upgrade materials, I think I underutilized the Consumable aspect. In this patch I place an additional 7 of each consumable type throughout the game. These replace item locations that were inks before, and the inks that are replaced have just been stacked together with some other ink location.
This will hopefully not just make looting a little more interesting, but also reduce the frustration of loosing your Knowledge Points. While you get far enough to upgrade you Combat Arts, you now get a lot more Mask Shards which will give Knowledge Points when broken and are not lost on death.
Gank fights in the land of Hope
I went a little overboard with these. In this patch, I remove a lot of the ganky enemy placements in the land of Hope. You can find a detailed list of what enemies have been removed in the detailed patchnotes below.
Inflated enemy health pools
This is the hardest point for me to address. I think it comes down to a mixture of some enemies actually having too much health and the intended playstyle not being conveyed well enough. Bosses will feel painfully tanky if you only wait for openings and then perform a single slow attack, but if you fully focus on playing around the stagger system and stunlocking enemies with combos, you can deplete healthbars rather quickly.
I decided to reduce the health of some bosses, but especially of small enemies in the land of Hope. Those were definitely overtuned, fighting against 2 enemies at the same time that each have a health bar balanced around 1v1 fighting is just not fun.
There's still more things that I want to address in the future, but I wanted to get this first patch out rather quickly. Thank you so much for playing, I'm incredibly grateful for all of your feedback!
Detailed patchnotes
Balancing
Enemies
Reduced Shroomhead poise from 150 to 110
Reduced Disposed Sacrifice health from 100 to 80
Reduced Headless Angel health from 140 to 100
Reduced Cross Carrying Villager health from 220 to 200
Reduced Whip Villager health from 60 to 50
Reduced Crawling Villager health from 170 to 140
Reduced Crawling Villager poise from 250 to 220
Reduced Annihilation Unit tracking during gun attack
Bosses
Reduced Decay poise from 1000 to 700
Reduced Decay poise regen-speed from 40 to 30
Reduced Decay health from 990 to 900
Increased Decay wait time between attacks
Removed Decay combo where the boss moves away and then explodes into an AOE
Reduced Sacrificial Mound Minion health from 100 to 50
Reduced Watcher & True Angel projectile tracking
Reduced Traitorous Child of Birth health from 107 to 96
Reduced Apostle of Death health from 808 to 770
Reduced Traitorous Child & Apostle of Death poise from 360 to 340
Reduced Passion damage for light attacks from 45 to 33
Removed the following enemies to reduce the amount of gank fights in the land of Hope:
2 Headless Sacrifices in the villa in the Decrepit Village
1 Flail Priest in the Decrepit Village backside
1 Crawling Villager at the Noble Cookhouse
1 Crawling Villager & 2 Disposed Sacrifices in the Skyward Chamber area
1 Headless Angel in the room with the first Summoner enemy
1 Whip Villagers on the hanging bridges
1 Cross Carrying Villager & 1 Disposed Sacrifice in the bathhouse
2 Flail Villagers, 1 Crawling Villager & 1 Headless Angel at the top of Hopes temple
3 Crawling Villagers & 1 Flail Villager in the hidden village
Controls
Slowed down horizontal camera movement speed when looking directly up or down
Bug fixes
Fixed a bug where the turning towers in the Temple of Birth would no longer open their gates when reloading a savefile while they are in their reset position
Fixed a bug where a game crash right after a cutscene could break a savefile (For example crashing right after getting the Wings of Hope would cause the player to not have the wings but also not be able to start the cutscene anymore)
Rewrote the camera lock-on system to make locking on less inconsistent when not directly looking at the enemy
Fixed a bug where the Tentacle door in the land of Passion could be opened without defeating Passion
Fixed a bug where you could get stuck in a hole in the lower swamps of Birth
Fixed a bug where you could get stuck in a piece of rubble in the Decrepit Village
Fixed a bug where you could get stuck in a one sided wall in the hallway leading to the land of Hope
Misc
Distributed additional consumable items throughout the game to slightly boost item variety
Removed distracting line-indicators for Vine levers & Wind Points
Removed distracting wind tunnel effect for Wind Points when not using them
Lowered intensity of windmill particle effects to make them less distracting
Hi everyone!
Only one more month until release! I'm super excited and working hard to get everything finalized and ready for release.
I have been adding and changing a few things, so I wanted to release this patch to bring the demo up to date.
Updated UI
One of the biggest changes you will notice when opening the game is the new Main Menu. The beautiful cover art was drawn by Edgar Gomez, I love how it turned out so much.
[img src="{STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/44739762/e30a9afbcf75e6dcbfec5585eaa6dc0bebfa8493.jpg"]
I also reworked the inventory screens.
The Combat Art screen is now way more readable. The equipped and unlocked Arts have moved more to the left and increased in size, and the Combat Art stats are now displayed in easy to read stat-cards.
[img src="{STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/44739762/5a5e356a0ddf708fcf94ebf9dc9239e8a664ed5a.jpg"]
The inventory is now split into 5 horizontal sub-folders instead of one large list. This makes it way easier to find an item you're looking for since you don't have to scroll through the entire list. (Thank you to everyone in the community who proposed this idea!)
[img src="{STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/44739762/a4dc55d2e474422452f1cadefbf5a2e29371318e.jpg"]
The Equipment menu also received some slight re-ordering to make it more beautiful.
[img src="{STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/44739762/15ef8200749f635b7c82d4b0b3278713bae648d4.jpg"]
Boss Refight Difficulties
For all of you who are looking for a bigger challenge: Boss-refights now offer two additional difficulty levels. These scale the bosses similar to how NG+1 & NG+10 will scale them, and can be accessed directly from the boss-refight menu.
[img src="{STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/44739762/e0d90c192b6085cd7bf863c68f9367d4df8299ad.jpg"]
I have also replaced the previous difficulty system with a more simple plug-and-play solution that offers 3 difficulty presets. (Recommended, Easy, Very Easy)
Polish language support
In one of the last updates I mentioned that there are a lot of polish players. As a result, support for polish language has now been added!
I hope you enjoy the changes and I can't wait to hear what you think of the full game when it releases on October 1st!
Detailed Patchnotes
New features
Added new difficulty options to the boss-refight mode
Replaced inventory folder buttons with a horizontal section-selection to reduce time spent searching for items
Added Polish translation
Added optional automatic selection of most recently acquired items in inventory
Added option to disable new-item exclamation-marks
Added option to force Xbox or Playstation icons if automatic controller detection fails
Added option to adjust camera follow smoothness during lock-on
Balancing
Scroll of Discipline no longer reduces damage dealt
Slightly reduced Flamethrower damage
Bug fixes
Fixed a bug where enemies would not attack if the player stood too close to a wall
Fixed a bug where sometimes the game would display an endless black screen when loading a savefile
Fixed a bug where exclamation marks would sometimes not show for scrolls or clothes
Fixed a bug where the lock-on indicator would jitter at low fps
Fixed a bug where the player sprint animation would continue when healing in swamp-water
Misc
Elevator buttons now activate instantly, instead of requiring the player to stand on them for a while
Replaced difficulty settings with a preset-based system
Reworked Combat Art-ui to look less cluttered
Made new-item exclamation-marks stand out more
Added NPC-icons to fast travel-menu to make following questlines easier (mostly important for the full game)
Re-designed the main menu
New features
Allowed upgrading Combat Arts in the tutorial area to make first Knowledge Points useful and introduce core mechanics faster
Newly acquired items are now automatically selected in the inventory to reduce the time spent searching for them
Balancing
Allow earlier stand-up after getting staggered
Bug fixes
Fixed a bug where the player could get stuck when trying to enter the first log-tunnel in the land of Birth
Fixed a bug where the upgrade menu would show an incorrect ink number on mouse and keyboard when opened for the first time
Fixed a bug where repeated staggers would not be displayed correctly on the stagger bar UI
Fixed a bug where there was an exclamation icon signaling that Combat Arts could be upgraded, even though the player did not have sufficient Knowledge points
Fixed a bug where the player could not get up from a Bloodspring after dying with an item popup visible
Fixed several font-clipping issues in russian, chinese, japanese and korean
Misc
Slightly increased size and duration of damage numbers
Added tutorial text to explain that Insight cannot be farmed by repeatedly killing the same enemy
Added info text in inventory that explains that Scrolls and Clothing can be quipped in the "Equipment" menu
Reduced poison "hissing" sound volume
Made poison swamps shallower to make it easier to get out of the poison
Removed flickering for intro-scene subtitles
Hi everyone!
First of all I wanted to say thank you all for playing and giving such amazing feedback! I'm reading through everything and doing my best to address all of your thoughts while still staying true to my vision for the game.
I wanted to share some other updates as a part of these patchnotes:
I saw a large influx of Polish-speaking players. Full Polish translation will be ordered and added to the game!
I uploaded a "Developer Plays" video of all the demo boss fights, if you're interested in the play-style I intend to push this Combat System towards:
[dynamiclink href="https://youtu.be/zL36q_MLauo?si=NkokSly5xzReWwQV"]
Some awesome people from the Discord Server set up categories for Speedrunning: https://www.speedrun.com/False_Hero I might even do some speedrun competition with this in the future, so check it out!
I spent most of last week hunting down an obscure Unity-bug that caused the game to crash under high cpu load. If you still experience crashes after this patch, it would help me a lot if you could let me know in the Discord server or send me an email about it: [email protected]
Now to the patchnotes!
I did another pass through all hitboxes present in the demo and tried to find and remove as many lingering or inconsistent hitboxes as possible. If you still feel like a certain move shouldn't have hit you, let me know!
I also reduced the boss stagger values a little bit, though I didn't want to adjust them too much since they act as an important skill check to teach to not use your default sword hit.
The attack frequency of enemies throwing books has also be reduced to give you some more breathing room in areas where many books are being flung around the room.
Some players had issues with the character being left-handed. If you'd prefer a right-handed character or want to replay the demo with a different perspective, I've added a Mirror-Mode to flip the game across the horizontal axis.
I also added UI-scale options to increase the size of different UI elements or move the boss-bar to the top of the screen.
Here are the detailed patchnotes:
New features
Added a Mirror-Mode to play with a right-handed character or re-experience the game from a different perspective
Added UI scale settings for status bars & enemy health
Added an option to align the boss status bar at the top of the screen
Balancing
Adjusted inconsistent hitboxes
Reduced Book Throw frequency for Scholars of Wisdom
Increased enemy book projectile terrain-hit detection radius
Slightly reduced default player run speed
Reduced Flamethrower Combat Art damage
Slightly reduced Ignorance Phase 2 Stagger regeneration speed
Slightly reduced poise for all demo bosses
Increased Evasive Thrust hitbox size
Bug fixes
Fixed various crashes related to spawning particles during 100% CPU usage
Fixed a bug where 0 Knowledge Points could never be reached through dying
Fixed a bug where the player could drop to an out of bounds area at the Edge of the Mountaintops Bloodspring
Fixed a bug where the player could stand in the air next to a moving elevator
Misc
Adjusted the position where the player character holds the Blade of Wisdom to make it look more natural
Added sorting of savefiles to the Load Game menu. Recently opened savefiles now appear on top.
That's all for now!
Thank you so much for playing!
New features
Added separate camera sensitivity settings for each axis
Bug fixes
Fixed a bug where the Russian font had weird capitalization issues
Misc
Reduced default volume to 30%
New features
Added remapping of WASD-controls
Added unlocked Combat Art counter in "Combat Arts" menu
Allowed disabling the pixelize-effect through the "Visual Style" setting
Balancing
Reduced hitbox-lingering for some attacks of Ignorance and the Foreign Defense Machines
Slightly reduced speed and accuracy of enemy book projectiles
Slightly reduced speed of Ignorance stab attack
Bug fixes
Fixed a bug where fast attacks and projectiles would sometimes not hit at low fps
Fixed a bug where the game would sometimes crash when hitting an enemy using projectiles during 100% cpu usage
Fixed a bug where a Foreign Defense Machine would no longer attack if saving and reloading the game at a specific spot
Fixed a bug where being blocked while executing the Evasive Thrust combat art would sometimes result in the players movement being locked
Fixed a bug where the camera-lock system would sometimes lock on to an enemy behind the player instead of wanted targets in front
Misc
Slightly increased Spectral Blade hitbox size, to avoid it not hitting very close enemies
Replaced "saving..." text with a blinking mask icon
Made Cerulean Cape less stiff
Increased camera lock-on range
Improved camera rotation responsiveness on controller
Current Release
Build 25694797
Uploaded Oct 06, 2026
System Requirements
How to Install
False Hero.exe to play
Troubleshooting tips
• Run Redist/_CommonRedist installers if game won't start
• Add folder to Windows Defender exclusions
• Run as administrator
Download
Direct link available
Needed when extracting (WinRAR / 7-Zip) — not a site login.
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Download False Hero for PC with a direct link or via torrent. Get the full version of False Hero for free. False Hero is a Action released by Torchlight Games.