Demigod has been out for a few months now and it's finally getting a patch that addresses some lingering thorny problems. For instance, see that picture up there? That's the Queen of Thorns. You can't see her because she's closed up in her flower, which is carried on the backs of four beetles. The wavy green lines are her Bramble Shield. The shield is one her unique powers. She can cast it on herself, on a minion, or on another demigod. It has pretty serious gameplay implications, because it's a glowing green indicator that a unit is magically protected.

Until this latest patch, the shield was invisible on some computers. There was no way of knowing whether it was cast, much less on whom it was cast. Similarly, the Torchbearer's circles of magical fire and the Unclean Beast's puddles of poisonous ooze were invisible. With certain videocards, these important effects weren't being rendered. That's now fixed.

Also in this patch is a very simple interface option that should have been in the game from the beginning: the option to play a randomly selected demigod. I really love what the guys at Gas Powered Games have done, and Demigod is easily one of my favorite games this year, but how is it that they overlooked minor but important touches like that? And left them unaddressed for so long?

The patch, which is live now on Impulse, marks the beginning of the second "epoch", which means online stats for the Pantheon games are reset. In Pantheon games, players select a god from the forces of Light or Darkness. The servers then track which gods wins more often. Right now, Darkness has taken an early lead. The patch also lets players resign if they want (it used to be mandatory that you saw a losing game through to the end), addresses some AI concerns, and majorly nerfs the Heart of Life, a must-have favor item that some players felt unbalanced the game. Now the Heart is an expensive artifact you can only buy when you control the artifact store and have lots of gold to spare.