It has been a crazy week due to being a part the Tiny Teams 2025 Steam festival alongside a huge uptick in players on Itch.io, so first a massive thank you to everyone who has checked the game out so far! And now I'm happy to announce v0.8.87 of the demo with a whole bunch of fixes and changes but one core new feature I've been working on for a while:
Blessings! Blessings are a huge bonus you can select at the end of every Act! There are 12 to choose from in the demo so far but there will be 32 in the final game, and I'll update the demo to 24 once they've been playtested a bit more. Obviously, this has massively changed the game balance to the point where it might now be a bit too easy on lower difficulties, but I'll see how it feels for a while before tweaking anything to compensate. Some of these were previously purchasable Glyphs, which I've not removed and replaced with new ones so there are still 40 to unlock in the demo.
Currently, the Blessings you can choose from are:
Reduce the mission count for a specific ritual by 2 (4 Blessings, one for each Multiball, Tempest, Inferno and Sparks)
Chain lightning effect between all active balls
Double Blocker HP
Increase Mana reward at the end of each Act
Rerolls in the shop start at 0
Reduce Glyph prices by 50%
Increase maximum Glyph count by 2
Duplicate Glyphs now appear in the shop (good for very specific builds)
Additionally, I felt the Sparks Ritual was a bit underwhelming, and often found it was hard to reach that one last bumper in a stage so I reworked it into dealing high damage to the nearest bumper of each actie ball, which has made it feel much, much more fun to play and when combined with Multiball, absolutely shreds bumpers. Also in this patch is the addition of a Burning mechanic, triggered by the Inferno Ritual and the Pyro ball, where targets take additional damage over time. Overall, much more destruction to be had.
Here's the full patch notes for v0.8.87:
Blessings system added
Sparks Ritual reworked to be much more effective (and fun)
Burning feature for Inferno and Pyro ball, dealing damage over time
All Blocker Reset Glyphs no longer take up a Glyph slot (they're just destroyed on use)
All Blocker Reset Glyphs now display the blocker HP as a % in the description
Cheater Ball now grants a spare ball at the end of every Act. Survivability maxed out.
Some Glyphs added, others removed. Play to see the full changes.
Boss Bumper HP is now shown at the top of the screen when it's active
Performance imporvements throughout
Minor bug and text fixes
Overall, I feel this is a definitive shift in the game and one I hope makes it altogether a much more enjoyaable experience. While the Demo is still capped at 6 Acts, the full game will have an Endless mode - last night I managed to get my fist e-number damage alongside a Sparks and Multiball combo and it just felt insane. I hope everyone else will enjoy it as much as I do!
Happy Flipping!
Kenny