It's super emotional for us to be back in Tiny Teams this year (especially at the Champion level!!) since Tiny Teams 2021 was one of the biggest tipping points that gave me the confidence to quit my day job and focus on Peglin full-time! It's really hard to believe that it's nearly been a year of full-time development already, and while we've still got a long ways to go it's extremely gratifying to look back and see how far Peglin has come in that time.
We are so thankful to all of you for allowing us to put our full attention on the game, and for all of the YouTubers and Streamers that have chosen to play early versions of Peglin while we continue to work away on the game!
We've been hard at work on the upcoming content, and we're excited to be rolling out our next big update during this year's Tiny Teams Festival :)
This content has just landed in our 'experimental' branch, and we're hoping to bring it into the main 'default' branch in the next day or so if there aren't any showstopping bugs. If you're really eager to check out the new content (and be first in line for new updates), the experimental branch can be accessed via the Properties -> Betas menu:
I hope everyone has a great Tiny Teams Festival this year, and I'm really looking forward to checking out some of the other games and demos once this latest Peglin update is solid. I was blown away by the variety and innovation in the games in last year's festival and I had a crazy amount of fun trying out random demos and picking up some new games.
Without further ado, here are some of the changes included in this 'experimental' update:
New Features & Content
- New Boss: The Super Sapper! - This boss brings some unique pegboard mechanics and both a strong offense and defense to provide a nefarious challenge. You could be one of the first people to ever earn the achievement for taking down the Super Sapper!
- New Miniboss: The Shield Mage - This miniboss is an expert in the arts of shielding both itself and pegs. Every attack it throws at you will cause more pegs to be shielded, and this enemy will gain more Ballwark each turn depending on how many shielded pegs there are! Take this foe down quickly or you'll find yourself completely walled out and at its mercy.
- Shield Peg Mechanics: In addition to the Shield Mage's shield peg utilization, the Shield Knights have found out how to use their shields to block pegs on the pegboard! In some maps these shields will apply their shields to random pegs (shield shield shield), but in others they have their attention focused on protecting new bombs that have appeared in the castle. However, destroying one of the shields (without just sniping its knight) will cause several of these peg shields to break immediately!
- Custom loadouts! - A long-requested feature makes its way into Peglin. If you've ever wanted to try out a particular combination of orbs and/or relics you no longer have to rely on mods to do so. This feature is still under development and will see many more improvements as we work our way to v1.0, but it will be an extremely useful tool in the meantime!
- New Orb: Etherwheel - This orb knows the true meaning of "leave no trace". When it leaves the pegboard, it will refresh the board behind it and ensure the next shot is set up for success!
- New Relic: Refresher Course - This new relic provides another benefit to keeping your board topped up: every 5 reloads will grant you 1 Muscircle or 1 Spinesse!
Balance Changes & Feature Improvements
- Demon Wall Castle Boss HP reduced slightly
- Castle Levels have had more bombs added to be more reasonable for non-AOE damage.
- Mines Enemy, Miniboss, and Boss have had their Cruciball bonus HP reduced across the board
- Slight Qaballistic Ruins damage & healing buffs
- Bomb added to Turned Knight Mines Miniboss pegboard
- Weighted Chip no longer has a x0 slot. Instead has 2 x0.5 slots that deal navigation damage when triggered.
- Perfected Reactant dmg reduced from 20 -> 15
- Critiball peg conversion nerfed to 9/7
- Jack-Orb-Lantern damage reduced, increased looping proved to be a sufficient upgrade
- Blind no longer provides +10% flat miss chance
Bugfixes
- Enemies should no longer get stuck at 0 HP (Or leave their health bar behind when defeated)
- External refresh effects (Refreshiv, Refreshield) are less likely to remove a refresh peg from the board.
- Scrolling the parchment map with speedup active should now behave more reasonably
- Pausing the game should now visually reflect the fact that it stops the x1.5/x2.0 speedups and should more easily allow players to re-enable the speedup.
- Steam Deck should now properly highlight the Play button when navigated to. Other simulated mouse weirdness still under investigation (but can currently be fixed by tapping anywhere on the edge of the screen to move the fake mouse)