A new level is now available for Lawyer Guy! When you start the game, a menu should pop up asking which level you want to play. 'Desolation Zone' (build 410), is new, ruinously difficult, and full of crumbling platforms\lightly haunted enemies. This level is intended to appear later in the game, so you also have access to a new ability, the dash!
Thanks to everyone who has tried Lawyer Guy so far. Even though this level is arguably more difficult than the previous one, the build incorporates some of the most-requested changes from build 401, which should make the game easier.
Some of the major changes:
- Difficulty adjustments: the game now has (optional) difficulty tuning. If you're having a hard time, it will let you restart with full lives from your previous checkpoint.
- Hitbox changes: enemies are now a lot easier to hit with Lawyer Bullets. In addition, some enemies have longer hitstun periods and windups.
- Spawner cooldowns: the game will not respawn certain enemies if they've just spawned. This means the game won't spam those enemies at you if you walk back and forth.
- More tutorialisation, including a new controls screen shown when you boot the game (note: this change was backported to the previous build).
- New and existing menus now have icons and diagrams to make them frendlier to non-english speakers (note: this change was backported to the previous build).
- Continuous music: the music no longer stops when you die. Instead, it fades out, then fades back in where it left off.
Plus, bugfixes and small quality-of-life changes:
- Fixed a number of audio bugs that resulted in sounds playing too loud.
- Fixed an input bug that resulted in menu inputs being repeated on Linux. Note: this still happens on some menu inputs and I can't figure out why, but at least you won't be trapped in the volume slider menu anymore.
- The game will now tell you if you try to place a checkpoint on a temporary platform.
- Bonus briefcases will no longer despawn if they're onscreen.
- Enemy spawners now have a visual indicator of when they'll spawn enemies.
The previous stage has NOT been updated yet
Please note: these changes have not (yet) been backported to previous levels. Clockwork Gadget is running on the old engine version (build 401). As the game gets closer to release, and the underlying engine stabilises a bit, all the levels will be brought forward to the latest engine version and merged into a single executable. For now, I will probably backport hotfixes and other important changes, but leave the rest as-is.
What I'm working on
Right now, I am in the middle of a new level, which I hope to release this spring. After that, I want to focus on adding features to help tie these disparate levels into an underlying structure. That means: a UI/menu refresh, save games, an opening sequence, and making the first steps toward a hub area, to replace the current level select menu. I'm particularly excited about that last one!
Thank you for playing!
Putting this game on Steam has been exciting, but it's also scary to recieve so much judgement in so little time. The game will always be very difficult (that's kind of the point of it!) - but watching people play and seeing what they said made me realise that they were experiencing difficulty in ways that I hadn't intended, like poor tutorialisation, lack of polish, and bad enemy placement. I also had no idea how many people would play the game who don't speak English - I hope the changes I've made can help them better understand the game. Producing a translation of Lawyer Guy would be very difficult, as the assets are not easily interchangeable, they're baked into the game itself (in fact, any text that moves has to be baked into sprites). Also, I barely speak English, let alone other languages. But I want to do my best to make the game accessible to everyone, so bear with me, and let me know what you think of this new build!
Much love,
Rob