Hey folks, hope 2025 is going smoothly for you. It’s the end of May, and time for another blog!
Progress
At this point the 2025 update is looking really good and is nearing complete - I’ve done playtests of the new achievements to check they work, I’m now testing the existing game and fixing issues as I see them, and it’s all coming to a head of being releasable!
Over the weekend just gone I’ve made a new build to validate it all works on a baseline level, which is always a good feeling to know that, yes, my game does still work, cool :thumbsup: :smiley: :thumbsup:
There's a lot to highlight from this month of changes, so I'll pick out a few:
On my list has been to revisit the colours of the nodes. Before they all shared tints because when I originall made the game, I was going with a 'one central resource for all objects' approach. Now they each have their own colours for their states, rather than being tinted blue which didn’t really work for a couple of them.
The briefcase modules now have more to them, with a new wiring texture connecting them together. Underneath the hood the briefcase now has some patched logic: it won't repeat the same role twice, and it will aim to avoid Any Role slots.
On the top, you can also spot a hint for how many modules are in a briefcase, to help you anticipate the complexity of one in the level.
The stopwatch is finally a UI shader! The text now animates! Sick!
As part of this, I noted to myself that the skip-to-10s button is probably better off next to the clock here, rather than the other side of the screen. That now has a new custom image to sit more neatly.
All the character portraits are in, using another UI shader. I feel really swell about the way the interludes look now - the new effect gives the flashback some noise and patterns which I feel fond of, and with these small tweaks it feels more 'full', more 'complete'.
The level select now feels relatively final after updating the story/group buttons. One small detail I worked into these is that new buttons curve with the background ring - one of those touches I really like to see.
I have some more ideas for this: to give the ring buttons a different look with a glowy fil, but I’ll see how I feel about that after other leftover changes; At this point I’m past the point of wanting to wrap-it-up, so they may be left as notes.
Missing pieces being filled in
Along this big update journey, I’ve been filling in ‘missing pieces’ to the game - stuff that I didn’t realise was missing, or fixing bugs now that I have a clearer eye for it ([the original release was a big long crunch for me](medium link)):
At some point as I was thinking about the new clock ui, which felt unreasonably long for me to ‘click’ was missing is the time skip: why does it not have an effect when you do it?
Well, now it does! plus when you do a big skip, you get extra particlessssssss
The Update itself
My plan is this will be a free update pushed to the current game. As part of this, the game’s price will go up permanently, but I don’t want to announce an actual price change until I get to the finish line to press the deploy button. Along with the (massive!) changelog, there will be 10 new achievements! After release I’ll keep an eye on the game for bug reports and comments, then after a few weeks of rest, I’ll move onto the next thing.
At the moment it's still a bunch of ideas, but the foundation is there. It feels really promising 💙
Almost there! I’m pumped to see what people think of these new mechanics, features, look, and the whole refresh to this game.