Hey, Yukiko here. And here's the 0.9.7 update!

This update focuses on visual-audio polish with a few gameplay changes.

Update Notes:

General:

- Lower brightness of most particles. Completely redo post-processing. Lower highlights and shadows.

The whole image now should be felt more calm and balanced.

- Add FXAA anti aliasing and a Depth of Field post-process.

- New setting: Turn Depth of Field on or off (Default: On).

This blurs the whole looking a bit so things don’t look flat.

- The old low-speed firing effect has been adjust and becomes the overload effect.

- Added a motion-trail effect for the player ship when firing at low speed.

A classic effect never gets old.

- Enemy hit flashes now change color based on rest HP: white → yellow → orange → red.

- No more flash red at low HP.

- Significantly reduced spawn frequency of flame effects.

- New set of explosion effects.

- Hit sparks rolled back toward the original: less bright, more trailing.

- Hit sparks now spawn highlight particles depending on hit distance.

- Gain energy items now spawns highlight particles based on collect amount.

- In O/U mode, destruction at closest range with a high-speed hit, spawns a visual effect and sfx.

- Single destruction gets 1 mil during stage or 5 mil during boss fight in O/U mode, or max quick shot with mid-large enemies in AL/AO mode: Play a sfx and flash the rate number

Give instant feedbacks to help with understanding what's happening on the screen.

- In-Game UI updates: Overload info shows on the left side; Boss HP shows on the right side.

- Pause menu update: Side UI can now be turned off from the pause screen.

Now there are sufficient info in game. Experienced players may turn off the side UI to avoid clutters.

Gameplay:

- Slaves of ACX-2 now retract faster when low-speed firing.

- Nerfed stage 5 enemy controlled J-60C/ATD-X4 HP by -40%/-25%, to the same as EC YF-84.

- Bomb damage increased by 20%.

- Point-blank fire power bonus changed from 5 tiers × 2.5% to 4 tiers × 5%

Trying some changes to fit the original design goals.

- Enemies' formation is slightly changed in Stage 5 Main Battle Ship Period

- Phase-2 pattern of first type of enemies' Main Battle Ship has been adjusted.

This makes enemy formation more connected and gives player more error-tolerance.

What's Next:

0.9.8: Try replacing some models and textures to improve visuals from another aspect.

0.9.9: Add background animations to further improve visuals.

1.0: Wrap up everything and conclude the game.

As previously, I can’t promise exact dates, but giving the game at this stage, the plan is as listed above.

In general, this patch mainly brings appearance polish. The patch notes can be hard to understand.

Jumping into the game and giving it a try provides the instant touch of what has been changed.

I’m currently working solo with limited resources, so please report any bugs or oddities and I’ll try to fix them.

See ya next update!

Enjoy!

Crystal Heart's Studio