Hey everyone, the first bigger update is here! Let's dive right in! :)
ENDLESS MODE
If you beat a Crawl or Delve run, you can now choose to keep going on the game end screen. Each level into endless will raise the stakes by adding additional enemies and generating harder layouts, but on top of it an ever-increasing enemy damage multiplier is introduced, making it especially tricky to survive not clearing all enemies with your initial set of shots.
Let me know if you find issues or have feedback on this big new addition! How far can you go? How many items does it take for the game to break? (Probably quite literally, but that's part of the fun... right? :D)
NEW ITEM: STOP SHOT
Some players found themselves wishing for more post-shot control, and Stop Shot is here to help. With this item, if you aim at an enemy straight on you will stop in place after hitting it. The maximum angle is 5° with one copy of the item but can be multiplied by stacking it.
The collision prediction will also show a stop sign if your angle is in range to make sure you can reliably plan around the stopping effect.
NEW ENEMY: FLOATY
This balloon-carrying enemy slows down a little quicker than your typical monster ball, but also introduces a new kind of “defeat method prioritization” gameplay. If you try to send it into a hole, it will spend its balloons to return as a Normy enemy. Other methods of defeat will take care of it immediately though, so you better plan carefully where you send it!
NEW RUN MODIFIERS
These new modifiers will now be able to show up in Daily and Wild runs!
- Positive: There is a 10% chance for a gem to spawn each turn.
- Negative: Take 1 damage when you pick up the first coin or gem in a level.
- Neutral: Mini balls are bigger.
The Gang just got scary... 👀
BALANCING
With one exception, the item changes are all buffs of weaker or very random and/or situational items to hopefully make them more generally useful and pickable.
- Beanstalk now gives 10 gold (instead of 5). Reasoning: Rocky enemies add quite a bit of risk and usually mean you have to at least take a couple shots and / or hits more which almost negated the gold gain already.
- Clumsy Trade now gives 3 (instead of 2) random items. Reasoning: Random items are random and therefore not worth as much as deliberate picks, especially if you’re lacking “mass item” synergy. Plus, losing a random item that might be more important after the level is a considerable downside (unless you’re in the last level, which previously was arguably the only decent spot to pick this item, now there should be a few more, especially “Hail Mary”, situations where it could make sense).
- Make ‘Em Count now increases the price of buying shots by 20 per copy you own. Reasoning: Since the price of an additional shot is based on how many max shots you have, it was too easy to counter the downside of the item (buy just cheaply buying back 1-2 shots) while making full use of the huge power potential gained through its upside in the long run. Sometimes this could even render higher difficulty runs mostly no-brainers. Now playing around the downside (by e.g. buying shots first and then picking up the item after) should lead to more interesting decisions.
- Money Is Power now triggers per 8 gold spent (instead of 10). Reasoning: The power level of this item was just a bit underwhelming in general and it required too much spending to really be worth it, especially on higher difficulties where gold is usually pretty tight.
- Parasite now makes an enemy shoot at the closest other enemy (instead of in a random direction). Reasoning: Fully random mini ball shots can be kind of fun and chaotic but didn’t really help the reliability of the item. Now it’s much more likely to result in enemies dunking one another. Fun? :D
- Patience now grants you 10 gold on top of its other effects. Reasoning: This should make it a little more attractive to pick (or randomly receive) the item earlier in a run, while it previously was really mostly just viable when already in the last level.
- Rack now grants 2 gold (instead of 1) per defeated Normy enemy. Reasoning: The risk the item introduces of adding additional enemies is quite scary to take on, and high risk should come with high reward.
- Raging Bull now also gives 5% shot power. Reasoning: Just making the item more of a certain net positive (and a little more flavorful). Its effect, while generally useful on its own, can be tricky to assign value to as a player.
- Spike Shield now works 2 times each level per copy you own. Reasoning: While it could very situationally be more useful than Impaler (that just grants you the rotating spikes on level start), those moments were so rare that it was usually just a flat-out worse pick. Therefore, more rotating spikes!
- Wild Ball now shoots a mini ball with triple speed. Reasoning: This gives the item more identity (when compared with other mini ball items), makes it more flavorful (it’s “wild” indeed now), and also makes up for the randomness of its targeting with more potential. If you’re afraid of dunking yourself by the way, make sure to grab those Guard Balls!
- Toxy enemies are now defeated when hit by mini balls.
Reasoning: Toxy is a pretty feared enemy, but it's really fun to figure out ways to get rid of it without taking damage, such as hitting other enemies into it to push it into a hole or timing your rotating spikes right. This adds another option in the form of mini ball assassins!
MISC
- Added option to swap left/right mouse buttons to aim and shoot.
- Small Steam Deck improvements (game is "verified" now, yay).
- Improved wording of a few items.
- Lots of minor fixes.
Phew, that was quite a bit! I hope you find something to enjoy about this new update. Once again, thank you so much for the continued support, feedback and reviews that allow me to work on this game more, I love every minute! ❤️
Finally, as always, if you'd like to get in touch about bugs, feedback or suggestions please do so via the comments below, the Steam forums or the Discord! Rest assured I read every post!
All the best and have fun,
Fabian
P.S. Speedrunning Tutorial!
I have to add one final shoutout! Just as I was working on these patch notes, speedrunner extraordinaire SatanHerself dropped a super comprehensive speedrunning tutorial on YouTube including a detailed companion guide document! I'm amazed and honored to see this kind of dedication (and also the runs are super fun to watch)! ːsteamhappyː