Hello Everyone!
It's been a very long time since my previous update, far too long and I feel like I owe everyone an explanation.
What Happened
In September 2023, shortly after my previous August post, Unity announced some seriously concerning changes to their terms and conditions. This caused me to waste a lot of time trying to figure out what exactly to do, and after a month I gave up and started focusing on some administrative issues I had while waiting for the dust to settle.
For various reasons it no longer made any sense to retain the 'Wozzy Games' company as it existed and so I began the slow process of moving the Plague Breaker IP to my personal ownership to reduce operational costs. This process took a lot longer than I expected.
Once that had been resolved, my personal life simply became far too busy to get back into the groove of working on Plague Breaker. Work began taking up more of my time, and I became a parent which really reduced my availability. When I occasionally had the time to pick up Plague Breaker I now had to handle migrating to a newer version of Unity which wasted even more time!
Fortunately, I've resolved all of those issues. Plague Breaker is now on a new (and vulnerability free!) version of Unity and updates are much easier to work on than before. I still don't have an artist or a ton of free time, but I certainly have enough to dedicate to bringing in some new features for Plague Breaker that I've always wanted. If things pick up I may also try to find a new artist to work on a few new additions I've wanted as well.
TL;DR: Unity, Administrative issues, Work and Life all got in the way and I've only recently had the time to get back into working on Plague Breaker consistently.
October Update
Ok with that all out of the way, what is in this update?! This updated focused on fixing complaints I've seen in Discussions and Reviews, so thanks everyone who left comments!
Adventurer Overhaul
The Adventurer had a few issues on release, but these issues were fairly hidden as they only appeared for new users and didn't appear for any of the play testers! The biggest problem was that the item list was incorrect as it included items that no longer existed in its count. To fix this I've overhauled the adventurer menu to show all items and abilities as they exist in the game, you can see this below:
Items that you haven't yet unlocked will appear as '???', while items you have unlocked but not discovered will be greyed out. This functions the same for all abilities and spells as well.
All Achievements related to the Adventurer should now function as expected. If you find anything that doesn't work, please let me know!
Unity & Save Upgrades
The version of Unity was upgraded to resolve a security vulnerability. This introduced some breaking changes to the input system, but nothing else seemed to have been impacted (Except they added the Unity logo to the splash screen). While I am pretty confident I've resolved those issues, if you notice anything weird with the controls (or anything else) please let me know!
The Save Files have been changed to fix the adventurer bug and to be better compatible with forward changes. The new saves are not backwards compatible, so to prevent any data loss I am backing up the saves for the previous version on startup of the new update. Please let me know if you notice any issues with the saves!
Other Changes
Poison Bloats have been reworked. Instead of sitting in a pile of poison, they instead create poison piles from their projectiles
Buff Mages now heal the closest enemy to the player, instead of the closest enemy to the Buff Mage
Healing Mages now heal the enemy missing the most health
Poison Mushroom has been nerfed and should deal significantly less damage now
Armor Spikes have been nerfed to deal less damage
Reduced number of special rooms on Level 1
What's Next?
The below updates are changes I want to make to Plague Breaker in the near future. I can't commit to any timelines, but I'll do what I can!
New Items
The first update I'd like to make after this is adding new items. I've had a long list of cool new items I wanted to add to Plague Breaker but simply never had the time. If you have any new item ideas of your own please let me know!
Encyclopedia
I'd love to replace the basic 'Unlocks' page with a full encyclopedia, allowing you to read item descriptions, look into enemy and boss information.
Seeded Runs
Another hallmark of Roguelikes is being able to use and generate a seed to ensure predictable runs. This is either going to be trivial or incredibly difficult!
Additional Enemy Variety
One issue I see with the enemies in Plague Breaker is that they are generally static, and usually confined to the rooms they spawn in. I'd love to introduce some new "roaming" enemies that explore the castle.
Expanded Room Variety
The next thing I'd love to add is some more room variety with some more interactive elements.
Improved Roof Level
Finally, I'd like to convert the roof battle to a full level before reaching the peak. I wanted this structure to be a bit different than the generated levels produced so far, with a "flatter" layout than the rest of the castle. I'd probably want to add some new enemies to this as well!
Closing Thoughts
Well if you've read all this, thank you very much! I want to thank everyone who's played Plague Breaker so far and I hope you enjoy the new updates! I can't commit to any timelines, but I'll be consistently working on Plague Breaker for the near future so I'll pump out the updates when I can.