Hello everyone,
I'd like to share that I've been deeply heartened by the reaction so far to Dr. Kobushi's Labyrinthine Laboratory. Many of you have shared your positive experiences with the game's puzzles, characters and music, and our recent Halloween Steam sale was a significant success. I'm truly very happy to see people enjoying the game, and I want you to know that I'm here to ensure that the game continues to deliver a high level of quality and value for players.
In our previous software update, I announced the addition of the Undo Button, after it became clear that this was a prominent community demand and that some players were suffering from trying to solve some puzzles without one.
Since then, another issue has arisen in discussions on the Steam Community Hub and on Discord: many players have complained that it's impossible to go back to previously solved levels in order to grab Gems or Disks that were previously missed. Earlier versions of Dr. Kobushi's Labyrinthine Laboratory would just make all Gems and Disks on solved levels transparent, and picking them up would not increase the Gem/Disk count, elicit character reactions, or matter in any way.
The reason for that was a simple and bad one: it was simply due to the fact that the game does not track obtained Gems/Disks per-level, but only as a total count, due to an honest lack of attention to detail on my part.
Today's update introduces new code that henceforth will track obtained Gems and Disks individually, allowing players to go back and try and collect missed Gems and Disks.
Implementing this feature raised the question of what to do with previous Gem/Disk counts on existing save files: if a player has a save file with 30 Gems and 12 Disks, how is the game supposed to know which specific Gems and Disks were picked up if the save file never tracked that information?
The solution that I've arrived to is the following: if your previous save file indicates that you've got, for example, 30 Gems and 12 Disks, then only the first 30 Gems and the first 12 Disks of the game will be marked as collected, regardless of which Gems/Disks were actually collected, as the game updates your save file to the new format. While this may label some uncollected Gems/Disks as collected and vice versa, I feel that this is the most suitable compromise given the circumstances.
Afterwards, as you continue playing, collected Gems and Disks will be tracked individually, and missed Gems/Disks will be available for re-collection afterwards by simply revisiting an earlier level.
I hope that players will appreciate this update. I am listening carefully to your comments, feedback and suggestions, and care enormously about your enjoyment of Dr. Kobushi's Labyrinthine Laboratory. It's my pleasure to see so many people around the world enjoy a game that I poured so much passion and effort into, and I look forward to answering your questions and comments.
Thank you very much for playing, and as always, please don't forget to leave a Steam review!