In preparation for NextFest we spent a few weeks combing through our game end to end and looking for opportunities to improve things. There's been a few major changes, a few minor changes, some bug fixes, and some balance adjustments.
Major Changes
Harps aren't useless!
Hero's swords give him ATK, and ATK directly influences how much damage he does.
Einstein's books give him M.ATK, and M.ATK directly influences how hard his spells hit.
OCG's claws give them ATK, and ATK directly influences how much damage they do.
But Princess's harps didn't really do much... If we gave ATK, this didn't help because Princess spent her rounds casting buffs and debuffs, not attacking. Her attack was (rather intentionally) underwhelming.
But if we gave her M.ATK, this has no impact on the effectiveness of her buffs and debuffs! "ATK UP" triples your ATK, regardless of how strong Princess is when she casts it.
So we've created a new type of attack: "Play"! Instead of swinging her harp at enemies and risking breaking a string, Princess now plucks those strings delicately and heals her allies! This small zero-MP AoE heal scales with M.ATK, meaning you finally have a reason to buy a better harp!
Hat Tricks!
We've added special hats to the game which, when equipped, grant the wearer a special ability! These "hat tricks" can open new avenues of play, give new uses to old characters, or completely change your strategy. Try to find all 7 hidden hats!
Minor Changes
Chest Rework!
We went back through multiple early maps and double-checked the loot in the chests. What good is armor if you start with something better? What good is a potion when enemies are dropping hi-potions?
During this pass we changed some of the loot, added a lot more chests, and added color-coding to the chests we had: Red for weapons, blue for armor, green for consumables, and gold for money!
As part of this rework we also opened the treasure room in Bat Cave. See if you can figure out how to get in!
New Status Menu
Many of our equipment items grant "secondary" stats like target rate or evasion rate. These secondary stats don't show up in the RPG Maker default status menu. We had added a VisuStella plugin which expands the status menu, but the expanded menu showed way too much -- adding fields for things like each character's zodiac sign and favorite food! The kinds of fields we hadn't filled out, and which had no mechanical impact on the game.
So we wrote our own status menu plugin. There's a known bug that the "current level" overlaps with the "experience to next level". We forgot to fix this before pushing the update, and we've put the game in code freeze during NextFest to avoid breaking something - so this will be addressed when the event is over!
Cutscene Adjustments
We've fixed spelling and punctuation issues, added animation and movement to several cutscenes that lacked them (the fetch quest in Purradoxia is way more fun now!), and improved the timing of some lines.
Interactables
We've added more books, scrolls, pictures, shelves, barrels, and buckets you can click on -- so keep your eyes out for dad jokes and puns throughout the world. We plan to keep adding more as development goes on!
Balance Changes
First Villain's Tower
During many, many play tests we found that the enemies here were just fine in terms of damage output, but their health was a bit too low. We've increased the HP in this area accordingly to ensure battles don't all end in a single punch.
Stone Cave Fairies
We found the agility and evasion on these fairies was a tad too high, making them nearly un-killable even at level 99. We've reduced their evasion dramatically so you have a chance to nab one of these spritely sprites!
All New Second Villain Fight
As the "last boss of the demo", we wanted this fight to feel both challenging and rewarding. So we've added some unique mechanics and given him a lot more hurting to put down. We've tested fighting this boss with multiple different configurations, so if you think he's impossible we implore you to just keep trying with new strategies and see if you can figure it out! We've beaten him:
Without ever doing a random encounter (minimum possible level)
Without ever accepting an optional team mate (minimum party size)
Without ever upgrading gear or opening chests (minimum stats)
Bug Fixes
Road to Second Villain's Tower
The road south of Bamboo Bay was inadvertently flagged as grassland, causing battles to occur on the road. To anyone who's good at following advice from signs, we apologize for this oversight.
Missing Shop Inventory
If you rescued the Princess before visiting Dawnstar Palace, the flag that you had started Chapter 5 was never set. On its own this might not seem like a huge issue, since most of our story logic and game progression isn't tied to the "chapter started" flag.
However our shop inventory is tied to what chapter you're on! And it updates at chapters 5 and 8. This meant that if you skipped this flag, shops would continue to only sell wood and bronze until you reached Purradoxia, making it impossible to tier up your equipment before then.
For now we've put in a quick fix: the act of entering the palace will always set this flag, so shop inventory is now correct!
There is still a known issue that the "Chapter 5" splash screen isn't displayed, so to the player it may look like they went straight from chapter 4 to chapter 6. After NextFest we'll adjust the logic to show this splash screen appropriately. When we do so, we will also consider teleporting players directly to the top floor of the palace upon their return, as play testers have reported getting lost in the palace and being unable to find the king's audience chamber.
Feedback Welcome
There's an in-game feedback button both on the title screen (bottom-right) and in the menu. Please submit any feedback you have! We love to hear from our players and want to make this game as fun as possible.
It's through player feedback like yours that we realized players were getting lost in chapter 3 and never discovering 90+% of the game. We spent hours figuring out the best way to solve this and as a result we've seen player retention rise from "5% play for over 15 minutes" up to "33% play for over 1 hour". We're very excited to see people enjoying the game more when we can fix pain points like this, so please let us know if you run into anything that's stifling your fun!