Yo! Hope you all are getting ready for the holidays, if you celebrate! I’ve finally gotten a decent-sized break in and worked on this patch over the past month and a half.
A popular sentiment I’d noticed can be paraphrased as: “The game is peak but there’s little [insert negative jank/lack of polish here] that add up to work against it.” It can be felt as early as the tutorial or as late as trying to 100% the game through Stage Rush.
Because of that, I prioritized finding some of those little ways to de-jank the game and increase the feeling of consistency and perceived quality throughout, especially for players’ first time experiences. However, make no mistake: jank is fundamentally baked into this kind of game, so I have no intention of completely sanitizing it for the sake of like, journalists or something.
With that all said: here’s the patch notes!
TL;DR for biggest changes (there’s many more):
Stage and Boss Rush can be done with perks. Original versions of the modes still exist with your previous records.
Neon’s aerial movement is a little floatier and triggering timestop is far more consistent.
Several gimmick physics have been updated to be easier to keep up with.
Vaya’s attacks have been updated to be cooler but may be slightly more difficult.
Tritium Act 4 and Phospha Act 1 got changes to the jankiest parts of their layouts.
Frame-based timer added for people who experience lag.
Tutorial and several stage gimmicks have been visually overhauled.
System Changes
Stage Rush and Boss Rush now allow you to use perks and upgrades!
The original Stage/Boss Rush have been renamed to Stage Rush: Pure and Boss Rush: Pure. This is where your old records will move to.
Achievements can be unlocked through either version of Stage and Boss Rush, meaning you do not need to forgo your upgrades to 100% the game.
There is a new “Extras” menu when pausing in the hub. Alternate Game Modes, Achievements and the Rewatch Scenes menus have been moved here.
There is a new “Tips & Tech” menu that goes over advanced or lesser known aspects of how the game internally works. These are specific things that should not be told through a tutorial and was added purely because I thought it’d be neat.
There is now a “Frame-Based Timer” toggle in the accessibility options menu. This changes the level timer to update per game frame instead of your computer’s internal clock. This is useful for those on older or less performant hardware (or run into lag on the Origin Seed), as it means lower FPS will slow the clock down as well. Levels and alternate game modes will score this time if you complete them with the option toggled on. Both versions of the clock are always running, so you can safely toggle between the settings during a level, to see how different the times are. However, if you enjoy doing speedruns, I highly recommend utilizing an external timer to maximize consistency, as the Frame-Based timer will always yield a better time than the default when at normal game speed or slower.
Your average Resonance SCORE for a level increases faster when you are at or above 75% Resonance. Originally, the Resonance score was your average Resonance % over the course of a level, so if you somehow went from 0 to 100% and stayed at 100% for half the level, your score would be 50%. This change is to make it easier to get a high rank if you get and maintain a high Resonance % later into a level.
Player Changes
The goal of these changes is to make it easier or more consistent for players to keep up with where Neon is if they aren’t actively inputting something, without reducing the amount of control you have of them. I do not intend to make this many changes to basic movement again nor can I turn how everything worked previously into an option.
You decelerate faster after dashing and running.
The apex of your jump now has a minimum amount of hangtime regardless of how high you jumped or how long you hold the jump button. This should help alleviate the feeling of Neon falling like a brick for some people, without the physics becoming overly floaty for people who adjusted to it.
Dashing now has increased hangtime in the air when not holding a directional input as it ends. For example, if you hold down while a downward dash ends, you’ll fall quickly, but if you’re not holding down, the speed of that downward dash will slow to a near stop in the air.
Dash now lasts for a couple more frames while going a similar distance; this is to make it more consistent to dodge and trigger timestop.
There is now a visual effect where your dash ends, giving you a general idea of the explicit distance of your dash.
The detection range for timestop during a dash is around 50% larger. Detection also lasts throughout the ENTIRE dash now. It should now be extremely consistent to trigger timestop by dashing into attacks.
You now restore both dashes when parrying attacks.This functionality has been moved away from the Energy Conversion upgrade.
Gimmick Changes
Boost rings, cannons and giant springs have had their firing speed slowed down.
Boost rings now fire the player at a consistent speed if they aren’t in any other states (such as drilling, boarding, etc).
Dash Bubbles (the ones in Tritium District) have been reworked to allow you to fly long distances when dashing out of them. Levels using this gimmick have been updated accordingly.
Dash Zones (the watery ones in Tritium District) have been visually overhauled and create bubble particles when being used. They also use a watery distortion effect! With sparkles!
When drilling, there’s now a single seamless trail left behind the player, as well as an audio cue when beginning to drill.This should feel much nicer to look at.
Solar Zones (the ones that stop you from dashing) have been visually overhauled. They are very bright before entering, becoming transparent and causing a heat haze effect in the background once you enter them. Basically: it’s very obvious when this hazard’s active now.
Wind Zones (the ones in Nitra District) have been visually updated with a speedline effect when you’re inside of them.
All of the aforementioned zones have been re-layered so that they appear underneath the main tiles of a stage.
The timestop laser has a wider range of detection, to increase consistency of actually triggering it.
Stage Changes
The tutorial’s background assets have been updated.
The tutorial dash segment has been updated to make it more obvious that dash is invincible, and will reset you to the start of the segment if you fail to dash through the hazards.
The tutorial high speed segment will reset you to the start of the segment for failing to maintain momentum.
Parts of Central District Act 3’s layout have been updated.
Fixed a crate-related softlock in Hexane Act 4 and certain cannons automatically fire now.
Parts of Phospha District Act 1’s layout have been updated, notably the cave portion that originally had the flying sawblades. That sawblade portion has been replaced entirely.
Parts of Phospha District Act 3’s layout have been updated, notably the segment where you’re expected to ride rocks over spiked conveyor belts.
The Tritium District Hub layout has been updated because of the gimmick changes.
The miniboss arena in Tritium Act 1 has been updated.
Parts of Tritium Act 4’s layout have been updated, notably the “maze” segment with a ton of bubbles.
Upgrades Changes
Energy Conversion II has been reduced to 500 Nodes
The visual glitch for Shield Prep III’s shop icon has been fixed.
Max Guard has been reworked. When getting hit at Max Resonance, you now lose 60%, instead of losing the form immediately. You’ll now only lose the form if you drop all the way down to 0%, and the hits you take while maxed still don’t damage your shield nor HP. This means Max Guard now essentially enables a shield that you can perpetuate with enough skill and speed. Max Guard’s price has increased to 700 Nodes.
Enemy Changes
Several enemies who didn’t have audio now do. (The main ones I remember as of typing this are the Sawblade Sentry in Phospha District and the bubble machines in the tutorial).
The Donut Deputy enemy in Central District no longer turns when attacking, going until it runs into a wall.
Basic enemies who fired fullscreen lasers now fire long projectiles instead.This is more of a change for the sake of presentation than balance. This mainly applies to the Sentry in Tritium District and the Fly Gun in Nitra District. The ranged enemy in Tritium District also fires this projectile now despite not having fired a laser originally.
The Sentry and Fly Gun are now more aggressive to account for their projectile travel time.
The Spirit Shark (the shark-car looking thing in Tritium District) has had its attack reworked. It now vanishes instantly and will charge you from a side of the screen. You MUST hit it either during this attack or in the brief window it resets. It will be KO’d in one hit, as it is now possibly the hardest normal enemy to hit.
Boss Changes
All of Ghostwave’s water blocks now redirect you forward when dashing through them. This minimizes, if not cuts out the softlocks in certain situations when dashing.
The Divas have had their HP increased by around 10-20%, varying per boss. This gives a little more time to their fights without turning them into bullet sponges (unless you were already being hit a lot or playing passively, in which case they already were), namely in the case where you come in with high Resonance %.
Vaya’s moves have been updated. I personally felt her moves weren’t as cool as the other Divas’ nor were as in line with how I felt her abilities canonically worked.
When Vaya punches out a lightning bolt, she now REDIRECTS the bolt several times before it goes offscreen. For example, if she punches the lightning above you, and you dodge down, the bolt will stop directly above you and then strike straight down.
Vaya’s clap attack now creates a giant expanding tornado instead of shockwaves.
Vaya’s strong attack (where she spins her arms around her) has been reworked entirely. She now stays in the middle of the screen to fire vortexes, and she now spins her arms many, many times faster than she did before.
Vaya’s ultimate has been reworked. The first portion now has her punching lightning bolts from the far sides of the screen. The barrage portion has been untouched. The finisher has been replaced with her firing many vortexes at once.
The spikes that Soma generates when stomping the ground now look more like drills.
The Origin Seed boss who uses these spikes in their moveset has had them recolored red and the spikes’ size/speed adjusted.
At the start of the final battle, Neon tells you that you can hold the dash button for another effect.
This should be most, if not all, of the changes made in this update! With how many things got addressed at once, I’m very sure I forgot to mention something. But I do hope you all enjoy it, and thank you all for the support so far!