Devlog

Until now, every enemy in the forest had exactly one idea: walk at you. This week they learned to fight back.

Enemy attacks

Five enemies now have real attacks, and every one of them tells you before it swings. A red shape flashes on the ground - a ring, a shadow, a lane - and a beat later something lands there. Stay in it and you take the hit. Step out and it whiffs. That's the whole thing: watch for the red, and move.

The Golem plants its feet and slams the ground, punching out a ring of force around it.

The Mushguy stops holding its ground and lobs a slow spore arc across the field, with a red shadow marking where it'll drop.

The Puffcap is the scary one - it sprints straight at you, swells up, and bursts into a poison cloud, taking itself out in the process.

The Hopper crouches, marks a landing ring, and leaps onto it, squashing whatever's underneath.

And the Acorn Guard - the one hiding behind the shield you have to walk around - now lowers it and charges down a lane, overshooting past you before it can turn around.

Blobs and wisps still just walk at you, exactly like before. That's on purpose: if everything on screen were attacking, nothing would read. The plain horde is the quiet backdrop that makes a red telegraph pop.

Also this week

• The Golem got a fresh walk animation, and enemy packs move with more character.
• Poison flasks spread their pools more sensibly, and mega-flasks read their size correctly.
• Music now ducks under the post-run Learning Review so you can actually read it.

Play free: quizcaster.com - also on itch.io

Last week the Dressing Room got a redesign. This week it's fully stocked: there are now more than thirty pieces to wear, and a way to earn them by playing.

A wardrobe worth raiding

Your wizard's closet has grown a lot. A dozen hats - from bunny ears to a shark hood to a dragon-tamer's helm - plus seven shirts, five pants, and a rack of dyes to recolor your Wizard Hat. On top of that sit six school-mastery robes, earned by mastering a subject. Mix and match until your wizard looks like nobody else's.

Costume Coins

So how do you unlock it all? Every run now pays out Costume Coins - the better you do, the more you bank, added to your total at the end of each run. Take them to the Dressing Room and spend them on the pieces you don't own yet. (The mastery robes stay earned, not bought.)

The Seeker

Keep an eye on the scenery. From the second cycle on, a hidden figure peeks out from behind a tree, a fern, or a crystal. Grab it mid-run and the piece is yours for free - miss it and you can buy it later. It won't stay put for long.

Already playing?

A one-time thousand Costume Coins are waiting the next time you load the game, to get you started.

Play free: quizcaster.com - also on itch.io

Big week, and it all points one direction: a challenge the whole game takes on together, and runs that stop setting up the same way twice.

The Daily Challenge

Daily Challenge is one run everybody faces each day. Same map, same waves, same twists for all of us - but you bring your own questions, so it's still your study set powering the fight. Clear the first cycle and you've beaten today's challenge; keep pushing for a deeper best, or bow out and come back tomorrow for a brand-new one.

33 modifiers

Here's what makes each day its own beast: the run keeps rolling curveballs at you as it goes. Some days the floor freezes over and you slide across the ice. Some days fog rolls in and you can barely see. Some days the swarm floods with one kind of enemy, or sneaky little thieves start snatching your coins mid-run. There are 33 of these twists in the deck, dealt fresh each day, so the daily never feels quite like yesterday's.

The golden mouse

New in every run, daily or not: every so often a shiny gold mouse darts across the map. It won't fight you - it runs. Chase it down before it slips off the edge and it bursts into a shower of coins. Blink and it's gone.

More to wear

The Dressing Room got a proper redesign - cleaner layout, spin your wizard around to see every angle, and a tidy split between full outfits and mix-and-match pieces. And there are nine new hats to track down, from bunny ears to a shark hood to an astrologer's celestial cap.

Also this week

• Void, Shock, and Poison - last week's new schools - got a tuning pass, so they fire more reliably and play fairer.
• Menus, achievements, and the end-of-run summary all got a cleaner look.
• A fresh gold QuizCaster title across the game.

Come throw down a daily best in our Discord.

Play free: quizcaster.com · also on itch.io

Big update. Three new spell schools, a reworked enemy flow so runs stop feeling the same, the first wizard outfits, and a smarter study loop. Here's what's new if you jump back in.

Three new schools: Void, Shock, and Poison

All three are in the opening pick now, alongside arcane, fire, and ice.

Void is control. Void Pull yanks enemies toward a point and packs them into a cluster, then pops the group when the field goes off. It grows into a hovering black hole, a line that drags everything along it, or a field you drop where you dashed from.

Shock is chain lightning. Spark gets you going, then it builds: Lightning Orb circles you and pulses on contact, Electric Beam fires in the way you're facing, and deeper in the arcs jump between enemies.

Poison stacks damage over time. Poison Flask lobs a cloud that gets worse the longer enemies sit in it, and grows into a spore-puffing sentry and a poison-breath cone.

We reworked how enemies spawn

Instead of arriving on a fixed schedule, enemies now come in a rhythm that shifts through the run - crowds pour in, then a lull to breathe, then a stretch where one kind takes over. And about once a cycle the Tide rolls in: a telegraphed surge that ramps the pressure hard for a minute before it recedes. Runs never feel like the same grind twice.

Outfits

The Dressing Room finally has real outfits - a warden look for each school, unlocked by earning that school's achievement, plus new pants to mix in.

Studying got smarter

The game now remembers the questions you miss and brings them back, spaced out over time, so the stuff you're shaky on keeps coming around. Quizzes aim for a sweet spot, challenging but not brutal. And the Mastery screen is redesigned: one clean table of every question with a plain read on how you're doing, plus a Runs tab for past sessions.

Also this week

Grab-and-go Tomes (floating books that give a 30-second buff), the start-of-run freeze is gone, runs now shuffle five music tracks instead of one, "Fire Rate" is now "Cast Rate," and a batch of fixes (K-1 picture cards, picture-prompt spelling, stray enemy health bars).

What's next

More schools, a new enemy, and snow-covered cycles are in testing. Come throw down a depth score in our Discord.

Play free: quizcaster.com · also on itch.io

If you're new here: QuizCaster is a free, browser-based action roguelike. Hold off waves of enemies, and every level-up either hands you an upgrade or asks you a quick question - answer well, earn better loot. No install, no signup.

This week is mostly one big thing, plus a round of making the fight feel better.

Endless mode is here

A run used to have an ending. Now it doesn't have to. Endless mode runs in cycles - clear one, catch your breath at the intermission, then drop into the next, a little tougher than the last. How deep you get is your depth score, so there's always a run to beat.

And you don't have to finish it in one sitting. Endless saves the whole run - your map, your build, how deep you are - so you can step away and pick the exact same run back up later, right where you left it.

The fight feels tighter

The swarm packs in close around you now instead of trailing in a loose line, so holding your ground actually feels like holding a line. Alongside that, the run economy got a rebalance pass - cycles scale their health and XP, shop prices and rewards got evened out, and the early XP curve is gentler. More runs should land in that tense-but-fair sweet spot.

Also this week

• The shop opens the moment you walk up to it, and you stay inside after buying so you can grab a few things in one stop.
• Health bars read at a glance now - yours and the enemy's are clearly different.
• Taking an upgrade lands with a proper card-claim moment.
• Paste your own deck is now a front-door option right on the start screen.

What's next

We've started on cosmetics - giving your wizard a look of their own. The first pieces are in and there's more on the way. And we'll keep tuning and polishing every week.

Come throw down a depth score in our Discord.

Play free: quizcaster.com · also on itch.io

About these devlogs

QuizCaster is a free, browser-based action roguelike: hold off waves of enemies, and every level-up either hands you an upgrade or asks you a quick question - answer well, earn better loot. No install, no signup.

These devlogs are our running notes on what's changing - roughly once a week, in plain language, focused on the stuff you'll actually notice when you play. Here's the first one, and it's a big one.

Leveling feels better now

Here's the problem our playtesters handed us. Every level-up used to come with a quiz - and since killing enemies is what leveled you up, the enemies basically became math. So players started doing something telling: they ran away from the enemies, because fighting them just meant another round of questions.

The fix: the quiz now runs on its own steady cadence - one every 15 seconds - instead of firing every time you kill something, so fighting no longer means "more math." And on top of that, enemies now drop XP you scoop up for free upgrade picks - so just playing the game makes you stronger, with no question attached.

And of course, Free Play mode is still there if you'd rather skip the quizzes entirely and just play.

Upgrades you can actually see

We've rebuilt and redesigned the upgrades - both how they work and how they look - to be more fun and more visually impactful. An upgrade used to be a quiet "+ damage" bump you'd only really notice on a card. Now they change how your spells play and look on screen, so the jump in power is something you feel the moment you take one.

Sliding difficulty

Runs now scale themselves between a floor and a ceiling - the pressure ramps up steadily as you get stronger so it never goes flat, but stays under a cap so it never spikes into something unfair. The goal is to keep every run in that sweet spot where it's tense but beatable.

Achievements library

A full achievements library you can browse from the menu - 71 achievements across six categories (Combat, Spells, Milestones, Collection, Study, Streaks), with the ones you haven't unlocked yet shown as locked silhouettes so you can see what's still out there to chase. Earn one and you get an end-of-run banner and a chime.

Also this week

• New enemy: the mushguy - roams the map between the big swarms.
• Shop - kills drop coins; spend them at a market stall on tier runes, a Reroll Charm, a reworked Phoenix Feather, and more.
• Smarter studying - a new SAT / ACT vocab deck, a first-visit picker so you choose what to study right away, and missed questions that cycle back until they stick.
• Plays great on phones - adaptive zoom, a crisp HUD, and UI that reflows when you rotate or resize.
• UI polish - NEW / UPGRADE / EVOLVE badges, evolution previews on cards, and a new first-run tutorial.

What's next

More ready-made decks, a smoother paste-your-own-deck flow so any subject drops right in, and new weapons and spells down the road. And we'll keep balancing and polishing - making the game more fun every single week.

Come swap decks or throw down a high score in our Discord.

Play free: quizcaster.com · also on itch.io