Where were we...
Around 3 months ago, I've released TCC Beta 1.7 on Steam, which was a great update which added steam related stuff like workshop support, steam achievements and other features like new skins, fourth and fifth boss, graphical improvements to menus, backgrounds and particles and so on.
After the amazing update, I've took my time to also work on patching the game with bugfixes, as well as adding new skins, challenges and the wheel.
This is all great and all but there is a huge problem, and that is replayability of the game.
It's not like the game does not have replayability value, you have skins, the credits machine in the main game, hardmode, challenges, hat merchant, achievements, workshop etc. But there do exist people who don't care about getting all medals from challenges, who don't care about hardmode, or are not interested in getting achievements, skins and hats. They may only care about beating levels. So how can we make a system that rewards players for only playing levels but also making it as encouraging?
Well here is my plan that I had in mind for MONTHS now that I am hoping for it to work, and I had it all prepared up:
INTRODUCING THE CALENDAR!
The calendar is the next huge feature that will change TCC replayability value forever in the game and hopefully get players to more frequently play and enjoy the game.
How does it work?
Upon loading the game, you can find the calendar in fun mode, when entering the calendar, you will see a menu that has months from January to December. When you click one of the months, this is where the fun begins...
Each MONTH has 4 WEEKS and a WEEK has 7 levels. Upon completing a WEEK, you will unlock a reward that is displayed at the right side of the screen. Each actual day that passes in realtime, a new level gets unlocked and the levels are chosen from the steam workshop of the game and then also used in Endless Run later. The rewards that you can get from weeks are skins, hats, credits and items (I'll talk about items later).
If you do the math, each month has 28 levels, meaning an entire calendar has a whopping:
334 NEW LEVELS!
And that is all in just one update! Not only that, since there is 48 weeks in the calendar, then there is 48 rewards. So if you finish the entire calendar you can get 12 skins, 12 hats, 12 items and a huge amount of credits.
Well if that doesn't excite you I don't know what will....
Now before I move on, I do want to warn that the calendar has a paywall of 1000 credits. Again, I want to repeat that the game doesn't and will not have microtransactions at all, so everyone gets the same amount of credits when playing the game. This paywall is added to, again, encourage replay value, while also having their credits spent on something and keep the newer players away from harder levels.
Don't worry! If 1000 credits sounds like a lot (which it is). I added a dynamic system which decreases the price of the paywall overtime. So by the end of 2022, the cost will be down dynamically by 500 credits, and by the end of 2023, 250 credits.
BIG LEVELS IN LEVEL EDITOR
This was a highly, very highly requested feature, and I am happy to report that yes, you can indeed now make big levels in The Colorful Creature Beta 1.8. This is opening so much level combinations, its probably now in billions.
Regardless, I've limited the levels to how much big they can actually scale to (for performance, level length and level quality reasons), and its from 32x22 blocks (default value) to 100x100 blocks, it might not sound like much but remember that you can fit over 9 default sized levels within 100x100 block space.
Also, this was HIGHLY REQUESTED.
I am adding a item menu so you don't have to constantly scroll and keep finding what you need.
NEW WAY TO CUSTOMIZE!
Since I am adding the calendar, there needed to be something special in the calendar. Yes sure, you had rewards like credits, skins, hats, but what else could be added?
Introducing items!
Items are a third way to customize your player. Reddie will swing the item when he is moving. They only exist in the calendar for now, but may appear elsewhere in the future!
Oh yea, you can use those in local multiplayer
THE USUAL
Of course as usual, we will be also adding:
- More skins
- More hats
- Bugfixes
- New challenges
- Secrets :)
- Settings
- General Game Improvements
- And more!
THE GOAL OF BETA 1.8
I am hoping, really hoping to get more people into the game with this update and finally get to play it. The version is around 30% complete.
So when is it coming out you might be asking? Well... in 2 weeks.
You might think that this is a really bad idea. Considering Beta 1.7 was out for 3 months and only getting 30% done, and getting to 100% done is impossible by 2 weeks.
This is all true. But in truth....
I am making useful sacrifices for the version to come out early.
For example: The Calendar doesn't really have 334 levels, I only made around 35 so far. The Calendar doesn't have 48 rewards, it only has 4. And the reason why that is the case is because other months are not unlocked so therefore you can't play the rest of 304 levels or get the other 44 rewards on the first day. We all know that its an impossible task for me to finish all of the levels and rewards in 2 weeks and what I did is I've made an unlocking system which hopefully saves me time and hassle.
The Level Editor in it's current state is not fully ready yet, as there are bugs and issues with saving/loading big levels. But of course by the time the game is near deadline, these issues will be fixed.
Currently, my solution to make things work is to prioritize the most important things before an update comes. And then once fixed, you won't even notice the behind the scenes work.
And finally, behind the scenes, I actually started working on Beta 1.8 around when Beta 1.7.3 came out, so it not like I worked barely on it
It is very bad to have crunch time and work on a lot useless featues for a short period of time, so everything has to be prioritized and planned how it should.
But anyway, I hope you are excited as I am. And I think we will be all getting more frequent, meaningful updates. There's still time to get everything done, I'll try making a worthwhile update.