Dusts off keyboard

Oh, hey. Hi. It's Fred. It's been a while.

I imagine you might be surprised when you see that a game is updating in your Steam library, only to find that it's the 2014 release, LOVE. Didn't I say I was done supporting this game? Turns out that might've been a tiny fib.

Let me get this exciting announcement out there first:

There's a substantial, free update coming to kuso later this year.

New levels, new features, new modes, new music, new ways to play, and new secrets. I've been hard at work on this update since the day we launched kuso last November, and I'm really excited for you to play it -- later this year. If you haven't picked up kuso yet, please do! I truly feel that as a sequel to LOVE, it improves on the format in every single way.

But that's kuso. This update is about LOVE. And why it just downloaded a patch. What's that all about? Well, while working on kuso's new features, I learned a lot of things that I realized would fit perfectly into LOVEwithout messing up the original game, so I wanted to take some time this week and fit some new features in. Time for some patch notes!

• Customizable Keyboard Controls.
--- This has been a long requested fix, and while the implementation is a little hack-y, it works. Press Shift+F6 in game, and it'll take you to a room where you can rebind or reset your keyboard controls. Do note that the game won't show those keys in menus and things, but they will function perfectly.

• Individual Leaderboards for Level-Specific Speedrunning
--- This is something I'm very excited about. I personally can't compete with the world record for all of LOVE, but I can sure as hell beat Level 2 very fast. And now I can compete with you on an official level, as Steam now has Leaderboards for every individual level.

• RETRY and New Pause Menu
--- In Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 2, when you want to chase a high score, you're likely to hit start and select retry hundreds of times. When chasing a speedrun high score, you'll want to do that too. I've completely redone the pause menu to not only look nicer, but function better too.

• Local Configuration Settings
--- This one's an embarrassing fix for bad programming. Instead of calling for Steam's stats when you boot up the game, it'll check your local files for it. You can even edit your config.cfg by hand if you want. Want to set the windowed version of the game to a 40x multiplier? Go nuts. I won't try to stop you.

• Audio Levels
--- I've had a number of streamers request this for kuso, so while I'm still working on that update, I've included it here in LOVEas well. Now you can turn the sound effects to a whisper while blasting James' excellent music.

• New Tutorial Level
--- The original tutorial level was bad and didn't explain the respawn mechanic. It's been completely replaced.

• Better Input Handling
--- LOVE wasn't designed for a Game Pad, and when it got Game Pad support, it was poorly implemented. While it still only supports xInput by default, moving around menus should feel much, much better.

• New Menus
--- While they aren't massively different, all the menus have been touched up and refined -- or completely replaced.

• Optimized In-Game HUD
--- The original Lives and Timer counters have been replaced by some much more flexible and nicer-to-look assets.

• Flappy LOVE Leaderboards
--- Compete for a high score in the hidden mini game that (by looking at the metrics) very few people have found. No spoiling it in the comments, please.

And for now, that's it! While I don't intend to add anything more to LOVE, only time will tell. I'm so thankful to the thousands of players who have picked up LOVE and enjoyed it, and I hope that these updates are substantial enough to entertain you while I work on the upcoming content for kuso.

If you're a Discord user, I highly recommend joining the LOVE & kuso Discord Channel (https://discord.gg/jHhX6Np). We post snippets and teasers of things we're working on, and love to chat about other stuff we're excited about. Just please check the #rules channel before posting.

Thank you for reading, and see you again soon.