Thank you for all the encouragement and thoughts since the first demo. Most likely I'll leave the game here (for now) besides making Linux and MacOS builds available later on in the week. It will be almost two months and I'm eager to start on something new that's a bit more well thought out.

New:

• Added new characters and character select screen. Each character comes with different stats, different random starting spells, and a unique ability.
• Added a brand new shop. The new shop shows all item details at once, highlights rarity, has a new shop keeper, and plays an audio cue for the rarest shop items appearing. Spell upgrades also highlight if you have the spell it upgrades or not.
• Added character abilities. Each character has a unique, powerful spell with a cooldown. Abilities can be cast with E/Z on keyboard or square/X on controllers.
• Added spell merging as a rare shop offering. Spell merging blends two equipped spells into one spell, taking aspects from both of them and freeing up a spell slot. Beware that merging two different spells into a new spell will no longer let upgrades apply to the new spell.
• Added new victory and defeat screens which give a summary of the run.
• Added new pause screen that has in depth player stats, including how much damage each spell or ailment has dealt.
• Added drops which either restore health or collect all dropped essence.
• Added many new shop items.
• Added 2 new spells.
• Added lots of new spell upgrades.
• Added animations to enemies.
• Added unique sprites for new spell upgrades.
• Added new music.

Changes:

• Reduced memory usage by clearing cached text textures between runs.
• Added additional spell hooks spawn_on_expire and spawn_on_kill that can be used for modded spells.
• Rebalanced the volume for kinetic hit sound effects.
• Added double bindings for controls and modified controls. Movement now has WASD and arrow keys. Confirm as return. Cancel as escape or backspace. Pause as escape or P. Ability as Z or E.
  
• Player's projectile limit has been raised to 1024 from 256.
• Enemies are now outlined separately, so even with full ailments they're able to be seen.
• Added spell school specific stats for added projectiles, chain and pierce.
• Added new legendary item rarity which are as rare as unique items.
• Enemies now have higher health scaling.
• Increased default move speed.
• Increased the cost scaling for higher rarity shop items.
• Changed rare of earning essence from enemies.
• Changed rate of common items appearing so they're more common.
• Named all shop items and upgrades.
• Reality Rend has been redesigned and now sucks weak enemies into its center.
  
• Magic Missiles has a shorter duration but slightly better damage scaling.
• Rerolling in the shop is now bound to a control (R on keyboard, circle or B on controller) rather than being a button you have to navigate to.
• Changed the scaling of the wave timer. Initial waves are now a bit longer and late game waves are a bit shorter.
• Changed the rate of enemy spawns so late game waves are a little less overwhelming.
• Reduced memory usage by enemies, projectiles and animations by around 70%.
• Enemies now flash when they take damage.
• Essences now move towards the player on pickup instead of vanishing.
• Added pizza.
• The shop now explicitly says how many available spell slots the player has remaining.
• Added new sound effects for getting hurt and picking up drops.

Bug Fixes:

• Fixed running out of sprites after dying on a late game wave.
• Fixed movement speed being able to hit negative value and inverting controls.
• Fixed music not resetting on death.
• Fixed getting a shop at the end of wave 20 instead of going to victory screen.
• Fixed out of bounds spiral and homing projectiles from being removed, so the player isn't punished for being near a screen edge.
• Fixed Crackling Cloudburst's Fiery Infusion upgrade having the wrong sprite.
• Fixed spawn indicators colliding with active enemies.
• Fixed double walking sound effect when changing direction.
• Fixed menu selections not wrapping from first or last menu item.
• Fixed player not dying until end of a wave if they picked up an item that sacrificed all their remaining health.
• Fixed ailment stacks being able to overflow.