What's up Pixelmancer fans, Gem here and welcome to launch update 1.0!
- - - Updates & Bug Fixes - - -
- Added Snow World Tier
This introduces levels 20 to 29 in Adventure mode
- Added Crystal World Tier
This introduces level 30 to 39 in Adventure mode
- Added Hell World Tier
This introduces level 40 to 49 in Adventure mode
- Added the Snow, Crystal and Hell world tiers into Survival Mode
- Added Companion: Twilight
Twilight loves to collect stones and cannot die or attack
- Added Sparkle effect for Twilight
- Added Enemy: BoomBat
- Added Enemy: Crystal Golem
- Added Enemy: Elite Slime
- Added Enemy: Floof
- Added Enemy: Prism
- Added Enemy: Queen Demon
- Added Enemy: Snow Golem
- Added Enemy: Snowisp
- Added Enemy: Soul Burn enemy (Dynamic event)
- Added ice mechanics in the snow world tier
- Added R3 scrolling on controller for main menu
- Added R1 and L1 switch tabs in main menu
- Added Q and E switch tabs in main menu
- Added Soulstone counter in the death screen
- Added Level status in the death screen
- Added gravity properties to rain effect
- Added Endgame reward
- Swapped Lifebloom's primary and secondary
- Reduced Lifestone drop chance from 25% to 10%
- Categorised Soul Mastery
- Fixed collision on upgrade buttons
- Fixed collision on setting buttons
- Fixed enemy movement speed not working sometimes
- Fixed bridges not moving sideways when horizontal
- Fixed bridge end connection layer not being on top of the land
- Fixed settings being changed in menu with controller when user wasn't on settings page
- Zementu projectile no longer hits companions
- Zementu projectile damage increased
- Pixelmancer Gravestone now only saves in Adventure Mode
If you already have Pixelmancer Gravestone saved in Survival Mode, it'll stay until you die 10 more times in Adventure Mode.
What's Next For Pixelmancer & Gem Bear Games?
I'll be working on adding more sub levels for late game in the background (these won't have patch notes). Sub levels adds variety to level structure in Adventure Mode and I should be fully done by late April, I'll be releasing the updates throughout March and April until its completed.
As for new features and content updates, this depends on the level of support from the community. In an ideal world, I would love to put all my energy into Pixelmancer and keep making it better but its only logical that if Pixelmancer has a low playerbase then it's better for me to focus my energy on creating new games instead.
If by some miracle, Pixelmancer has a healthy playerbase level then of course I would love to keep on creating more and more free content for the game.
I already have the next game planned, I'll be focusing on finishing the sub levels for Pixelmancer first before starting my next project. My next game project will be smaller because I want to be faster at releasing full games for the reason of how big of a project Pixelmancer ended up being in early access and it took way longer to launch than originally intended.
Pixelmancer Early Access History
It all started with the Steam Deck. The Steam Deck launched and it was great for 2D indie titles, at the time there was a game called Vampire Survivors and it was a massive hit. I looked at the game and it inspired me to create my own, I'm not great at programming and have little to no experience in creating 3D models and animations but I thought I had the skills to create a game similar to Vampire Survivors, a simple fun 2D Pixelart game.
My biggest fear was if I couldn't even create a game on Steam Deck with Steam Cloud support, so I created a quick 2D test demo on Steam Deck with testing out Steam Cloud between Windows & Linux, the test ended up being a success. At this point the hardest hurdle for me was over and I knew I could create a super basic game, thus Pixelmancer was born.
Pixelmancer originally was supposed to just have a few pets and enemies to fight on screen while progressing the levels and upgrading your abilities. That was it, that was what the game was supposed to be and launch once I had all the levels made. It should've taken me maybe 6 months max from early access to full launch.
However, as I kept working on the game, one thing lead to another and I kept adding more and more content. I ended up adding more weapons, weapon wheel, gravestones, anima system, survival mode, shadowmancer system, soul mastery, even more skill upgrades, dynamic levels, sub levels etc. The game ended up being way bigger than originally intended.