Inventory & Drop Trails
An inventory has been added to the game, where you can equip different effects that play when you drop shapes in game. Drop trails usually will have a random color applied to them. Drop trails also work in online play
In today's update, 5 trails were added to the game. Trails can be received as a random drop every couple days if you have an hour of playtime and submit a score above a certain threshold of points. Of the 5 trails added in this update, there are two Legendary tier trails that are significantly more rare, the Suika trail (no color variations currently) and Sakura trail (random color). The common trails added were circles, magical runes, and flower trails.
The inventory can be opened by clicking the backpack icon in the pause menu. As of right now, there is only a slot for drop trails, but additional item types may be added in the future.
Plan for the economy
Drop trails can be traded or sold on the community market, so I'd like to clearly state my plans for trails going forward. Additional trails will be added to the game over time, and it's likely newer trails will be relatively easier to obtain than older trails. I am reserving the ability to discontinue certain trails from dropping in the future if a reason to do this arises. I don't plan to ever sell "lootboxes" or random chance items. Items added will never affect gameplay in any way, it's just cosmetic stuff. I won't sell gameplay related DLC, those updates are free for everyone always.
It's possible in the future you will be able to recycle items to paint existing items. Higher tier items would require more recycling to repaint but I haven't thought through this system in full yet.
Why add drop trails?
It's a mix of many reasons but probably the main reason is to give another reason for people to come back and try the game occasionally. I'm also hoping that over time Suika Shapes might be able to unlock community features, because currently it hasn't hit the threshold to where players can feature it on their profile, items from the game, and receive trading cards. Another benefit of having this system in the game is that I can create rewards to give out in community events, or I can run promotions for people to try other games I make as well.
Bug fixes
-Save data should be able to load without a connection to steam now
-Playing with a controller against bots and some related UI issues have been fixed
Also Sklime, my controller based climbing game will be releasing within a couple months. Wishlists help a ton. I've been updating the trailer lately so check it out if you haven't seen the game in a while!
https://store.steampowered.com/app/1380970/Sklime__A_Difficult_Climbing_Adventure/