Tomorrow, September 28, a major patch will be released for the traditional-style roguelike game "Caves of Qud" that will overhaul the chimeric mutants and revamp the user interface. The major change is that chimera-type mutants, which were limited to physical mutation, can now grow new body parts at random when mutating further. In other words, they can grow arms, legs, torso, head, or any other strange body part in the game's library, from plant roots and fungus gills to wings.

So, for example, you could have 12 arms wielding 12 axes and severing 12 enemy limbs each round. Or it could have three sets of arms, each wielding a flamethrower, each attached to three torsos.

I say 12 arms because you can start with one additional set of arms and get a second set with a mechanical backpack. In other words, you start with 6 arms available, and then you can get 6 more arms! Easy!

This update also implements the first of Qud's new user interface improvements, giving the game a more modern RPG-like style rather than the restrictive MS-DOS era interface. This will hopefully make this game less alienating for new players. See the new conversation screen above.

There are also a lot of strange new updates coming for other mutations, as hinted at in the screenshot posted on Freehold Games' Twitter account:

If you don't know what Caves of Qud is, how can I explain it? I have no idea. It's a dungeon crawler set in the distant future where science is magic and almost everyone is a weird mutant, or if not a weird mutant, a weird pure human cyborg. It's also a fascinating and beautifully complex piece of storytelling, with an awe-inspiring, detailed story that is partly handwritten and partly procedurally generated; one of the top 100 games for the PC, and "a dark horse, 'Caves of Qud' is worthy of being called the the best RPG you haven't played."

He also described it as "the best RPG you haven't played.

This year has been a year of major updates for Qud, with the addition of the sprawling "Tomb of the Eaters" dungeon just a few months ago. Since then, mutations have been steadily improved, most of which were done in the beta branch of the game. With this patch, all of these changes are one big overhaul; Caves of Qud is available for $15 on the official website, as well as on Steam, GOG, and itch.io