Hello everyone, today marks a big user-friendly update for my very first game on Steam The Duck Amikaze Strikes Back (as well as its Demo version).
After some time thinking about what was lacking in my first game, receiving feedback from here and there, I realized that :
1.) Some players miss the information about the fact that there is an easy mode, and so on, they don't know what it could bring them, and they stop playing because the game is too hard for them.
2.) Some players who found the easy mode and use it, still struggle way too much even with the current bonuses it provides, and so they also stop playing because the game is too hard for them. In other words, the easy mode is not easy enough.
3.) My pause option menu miss some options, like being able to change the joysticks deadzone, instead of the default 20%, also some options are not at the most logical place, so I'll update those. 'Game' & 'Accessibility' sub-options brings ambiguity because the difficulty can be changed from the 'Game' but the logic approach would be to put it in the 'Accessibility'. Therefor, 'Game' will be replaced by 'Language' as its the only sub-options left in there. Finally, I'll split the 'Controls' in two, one part for the keyboard, and one for the controller, just like I did in my second game.
-> It would be way more user-friendly that way, even for me.
On this patch 1.1.0, I'll handle all those issues :
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For the point 1.) :
I'll add one screen between the main menu and the world map, so that the players can select the difficulty from there, and not only from the pause option menu. Player won't ever miss the existence of the easy mode, and they will also be able to get some lore.
I'll add one or two sentence, so that players who don't read the Steam page, knows that Amikaze doesn't blow up farmers who are minding their own business, but bad hunters who did eat its entire family. Not much lore, yet some people missed it and that triggered me, as I want the idea of revenge to be in the mind of every player who will face the challenges I've settup in my very first indie game, The Duck Amikaze Strikes Back.
For the points 2.) :
Celeste does that pretty well, with the Assist Mode, it's really user-friendly, the ui, the different options available, give the player many ways to settup the game's difficulty. For example removing the damage taken from ennemies & spikes (infinite health), giving you infinite dashes, or even more crazier as I found out, you can choose to not die when crushed by stalactite and falling walls/blocks, which does a funny whistle sound effect instead of crushing Madeline. As well as never dying when falling into the bottom part of the screen, instead the game makes Madeline jump off the bottom line of the screen, which is pretty funny to watch.
From one end, I tell myself that making a game with such options makes the game meaningless to play because it has no challenge anymore, but with time I realize that everyone should be able to play games the way they want, and I shouldn't force my players to have only 5 hearts on easy mode.
Personnaly I adore to play some fps game on easy mode, just for fun, and that's all what matters!
So from now on the easy mode will no longer provide 5 hearts but an infinite amount of hearts instead. Every player that struggle with the game, even with 5 hearts, will be able to do just like Celeste does, and not be blocked anywhere. And for those who wants the intended challenging experience of the game, the normal mode & the hardcore mode are still exactly the same, the way I made them, and I adore them like that.
I could add an option like Celeste 'Complete the current level', but that is overkill in my opinion, and I won't add this one, it would go too far I think.
For the points 3.) :
I'll revamp the positions of the pause option menu sub-options as I detailed above. But I'll also add an option so that people that have old controller with rusty joysticks can increase the deadzone, and so on avoid the joystick drifting, more than what I did (20% by default).
I'll also do some tiny stuff here and there:
-> something requested by some players, the fact that if you die without having ever touched a checkpoint, then the chrono will be reset back to 00:00:00 while respawning at the beginning of the level. It avoids 3 seconds of: "go to the world map > reload the level", but it's user-friendly, so one more thing to enhance the quality of life overall!
-> removing the 'Flash' accessibility option, it was dumb of me to let it, because actually there is no Flash at all in the game, it was just by nostalgia that I left it in the code, because a huge part of my UI code started with this option.
-> show the game version on the main menu permanently, and not just while we open the pause option menu, just like I did on my second game, which is better for everyone in order to know on which version we are playing the game.
-> fix a tiny light visual bug on some levels, because some light from outside the current room didn't stayed on during a screen transition.
-> increase just a bit the height of the very first water area of the prolog level, to facilitate new players with jump mechanics in there.
-> decrease just a bit the height of the very first water area of "The Maple Woods - Exit", just so it looks better.
-> increase just a bit the deepth of some water areas of "The Crystal Cave - Entry", just so it looks better.
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Later this year I'll update the game cover, hand-drawn this time around, when I figure exactly what I'd like the cover to be. So that the loop is closed, and the game is near perfection on every aspect I could think about. Amikaze will be able to fly to Duck's Heaven on its own.
I hope everyone can enjoy my first indie game because I love it from start to finish, to the very first pixel I draw, on the Amikaze's 16x16pixel sprite to this day and so on, and I'm really proud to have started my indie game journey with this game and I hope you love it too!
Have a wonderful weekend, and see you around next time!
Alexandre