Hello everyone! I have received some very kind, thoughtful, and actionable feedback lately, and I've been doing my best to improve the BubbleByte experience for everyone.
This patch introduces a few major changes that should make prestige feel more impactful early on, and give players who prefer a more idle playstyle more options to succeed.
Prestige Scaling Rework
Some players felt that prestiging, especially early on, did not feel very impactful. I played the game from the very beginning a few more times and I agree that the prestige system as a whole should feel more rewarding.
As a result, I've made a few changes:
- Changed PPs (prestige points) reward formula from (2 ^ prestigeLevel) to (2 ^ (prestigeLevel + 1)).
- Added a new "Autocast" prestige reward, costing 4PPs.
- Decreased the cost of "Selective Starpaw" from 8PPs to 4PPs.
In practice, this means that the pacing of the game will be sligthly faster, and -- most importantly -- the second prestige will feel much more impactful and give the player plenty of choice.
1st Prestige
By design, the first prestige drives the player towards purchasing smart cats, as it's a fundamental upgrade to start building chains with Devilcats. This is mostly unchanged, but the player can now afford to upgrade the Witchcat's ritual duration once as well.
2nd Prestige
Previously, you couldn't do much in the 2nd prestige -- this was a major oversight on my part, and I apologize! With this patch, players will have 4PPs available to spend, and there now are plenty of choices:
Depending on your playstyle, you might want to:
- Unseal the witch to more quickly start benefiting from ritual buffs.
- Improve ritual length significantly with either "Group Ritual" or "Worldwide Cult".
- Pick up "Autocast" to let the Wizardcat cast spells automatically if you prefer an idle playstyle.
- Pick up "Selective Starpaw" if you want to actively maximize bomb explosion value with star bubbles.
- Pick up other smaller upgrades if you want to specialize in Unicat ritual buffs, or have more mana available and actively cast spells yourself.
I think this is a huge improvement from before -- eager to know what you think!
Prestige Point Compensation
Player with existing saved playthrough need not to worry -- when you boot up the game, you will receive the "missing" prestige points that you should have had at this point if you had started playing with the new formula:
Autocast
The new prestige reward "Autocast", purchasable for 4PP after unsealing the Wizardcat for the first time, adds a new section in the "Magic" menu that allows the player to pick a spell to be casted automatically. Ideal for players who prefer an idle playstyle but still want to make use of the Wizardcat's powers!
Accessibility Improvements
Some players were accidentally dragging cats around when clicking bubbles. I've slightly increased the amount of time required to start dragging cats while holding the mouse button, and also added an option for people to tweak the timer themselves:
Additionally, some other players felt like clicking with the mouse button could cause wrist fatigue. I am experimenting with ideas to make this better, but I'd like to remind players that it is currently possible to "click" by pressing either the Z or X keys on your keyboard. With this technique, you can "aim" using the mouse, but avoid the wrist fatigue of clicking by using your other hand to press Z or X.
Suggestions on how to improve accessibility even further are more than welcome!
Thank you!
I'd like to thank everyone for playing BubbleByte and providing their valuable feedback. My girlfriend and I are very happy to see that players are enjoying our game (she drew all the cute cats).
I strongly encourage fans of BubbleByte to leave a Steam review to help us out with visibility on the store, and to leave feedback in the "Discussions" forum or on the official Discord in order to improve the game and make it even more enjoyable.
I have plans for future major upgrades that hopefully you will enjoy -- I will share more about them once they become somewhat more concrete.
Keep on popping! <3
(Note: in case of any unexpected bug or issue introduced by the new version, you can always revert to the previous one by selecting the "prev" branch through the game's properties on Steam, in the "Betas" tab.)