Beta 3
Developer Commentary:
Adding difficulty settings was something I didn't really want to do, as I felt the intended experience was supposed to be an extremely intense experience where you can never lose focus for even a second, but I got a lot of feedback saying the game was just too complex or difficult, and my friend finally convinced me to add easier game settings.
I did some playtesting and my win rate on the intended difficulty was very low, as in it took me literally dozens of tries to beat story mode once. This was intended, as I wanted winning to feel like a very insurmountable goal. It was extremely difficult for me, and I had to admit that the experience must be absolutely insane to a new player, and that's assuming the new player is used to playing videogames. Furthermore, it was straight up comical how un-fun this would have been for someone who does not already play action games, where they would have to learn the unorthodox controls combined with the high difficulty and tempo of the game in general.
Even though my vision was of an experience where it genuinely felt like you were trying to escape this massive place with very low odds, it was simply not fun for anyone who is not immediately drawn in by the combat mechanics. I created easy, medium, hard, and insane mode, where insane mode is the original experience, and the easier difficulties had effective health and damage multipliers for the player.
-Dan
-Added difficulty options
-Bleeding edge: 4x health, 2x damage
-Cutting edge: 2x health, 1.5x damage
-Experimental: 1.5x health, 1.25x damage
-Standard: 1x health, 1x damage
-Added character portraits for dialogue and character selection
-Map nodes now tell you if you've visited it, and also will have a black outline instead of grey
-Map player token now shows the character portrait
-Hardcore mode is now only unlocked after beating story mode
-Added requirements to unlock arcade, trial, and story mode
-New trial: Pacifist
-Added unlock requirement to arm cannon cosmetic
-Adjusted trial unlocks
-Removed "TOPCENTER" text from sandbox mode if it was the first game mode entered in a play session
-Replaced "Main Menu" with "Back To Trials" button when finishing a trial
-Fixed issue with ammo/durability text position and size