Launch Dreadmark and it tells you a story first. A chronicler narrates six illustrated panels about the parish gravedigger, and the ash from those panels now falls in the game itself.
The story plays once each time you launch, over the main menu, and a button press or a click skips it. It runs about a minute and a half. The chronicler follows one man, from thirty years of quiet work as the parish gravedigger to the day he lifted the first stone. The last panel turns to you, walking in through the ash with a sign already on your back. The music stays well under the voice.
The main menu has a new title. The old one was plain font letters beside a painted ember crest, and the two never quite agreed. Now the title is a single painted word, drawn to match the crest. The figure standing by the fire on the menu got a small fix as well. It braces its shield properly now, instead of putting an arm through it.
Low fog hugs the ground and fine ash drifts down over the camp and the Graveyard. It follows you, with a clear ring around you so a fight never disappears into it, and none of it falls through a roof.
Whenever a voice line plays in the game, the music and the sounds around you dip so the words come through, then swell back.
A fight plays the same as before. The changes are in the first minute, before the first skeleton, which is where the free demo in October starts.