Hi all - Austin here!
Holidays are over and it's time to get back to work with what should be (fingers crossed ːsteamhappyː) the final main update to the demo.
The two main issues I kept seeing about the demo were that the intro tutorial and the intended strategy for the demo boss were too unclear.
Streamlined Tutorial
You might think tutorials are easy to make, but there are so many kinds of players at different skill and literacy levels that it's really hard to make something that works for everyone. It's REALLY hard to figure what to tell the player, how much, and at what speed. For example, the tutorial currently only has three parts and it covers shooting, comboing, combo+, and rewinding time. But there are a lot more mechanics in the game! For example, Dashing, Dashing + Absorbing time bullets at the same time, Point-Blank damage increase, bonuses when large enemies fall into smaller ones, rewind penalties, and more are not explained in the initial tutorial.
I have always been inspired by Hyper Light Drifter and how that game used next-to-nothing in terms of text. That's why the "How to Play" section had the images of what you were supposed to do instead of words. But that was a little too cryptic. So now they take away the controls for a moment to just display the image and words explaining what it means:
Much cleaner!
The Self-Coordination Problem
The demo's boss has one main purpose: to skill gate player's who can coordinate with their future/past selves. The intended way to defeat the boss is to open up one of the four joints inn one timeline, then rewind and shoot the opened joint in another. But MOST PEOPLE WEREN'T DOING THAT!
The main reason why, I think, wasn't actually about telegraphing what to do - this fix addresses that too - but that it was much too easy to unintentionally open and attack the joints at the same time.
So to address that, I adjusted both the hitbox of the joint and the way the covers retract so that it's MUCH harder to do that. And to really drive the point home I added this quick tip at the beginning of the fight:
Patch List
Tweaks and Features:
- "How to Play" tutorials clearer and more explicit text.
- Added mini tutorial animation when starting Demo Boss (Lewha).
- Demo Boss (Lewha) joints hitbox adjusted.
- Better fonts for Main Menu text and messaging.
- Fullscreen on startup.
- "Backpack" enemy goes to initial bullet sweep faster.
- "How to Play" Combo/Combo+ tutorials number of times to succeed adjusted.
Bug Fixes:
- MAJOR FIX: Enemies no longer duplicate when rewind ends on same frame as when enemy is created.
- Alt-Enter will toggle fullscreen without skipping tutorial if "SKIP" is available.