Surprise! We've got a brand new content update for Flowerdrops. It's not quite as major as V1.4 was, but it's pretty substantial nonetheless.
Since the game's retail release back in September, we've gotten a lot of great feedback, and watched many new players experience the game at various IRL events. We ended up making a lot of small changes that help improve the overall feel quite a lot, and managed to sneak in a tiny bit of new content while we were at it!
Check out the new trailer!
Changelog
Lots of little things, highlights are in bold!
New feature, Bonus Splashes! Immediately after reaching Full Bloom on a level, splashing bloomed flowers earns you these. Bonus Splashes are shown on the Results Screen and have their own tracked high score value.
Added 2 new levels to the final world; Archipelago and Into The Whirlpool
After reaching the minimum goal in a level, the few remaining unbloomed flowers have a new animation effect, which helps them be emphasized more so they stand out against the already bloomed ones. This effect triggers at the start of each turn, and also when the player is idle for a few moments.
When playing a level, you can now see the name of the developer(s) of the current level and the artist of the current background music on the pause menu.
Improved the visual clarity of the flower Splash Counter UI elements, as well as the numbers that appear after they bloom.
Flowers that are covered in snow/sand will display a "X" on their splash counter for added visibility/clarity.
Added the ending sequence as one of the levels that can potentially appear in the background of the Titlescreen once you've beaten the game.
Added new Sky City, Ruins, and Salt themed levels that can appear in the background of the Titlescreen.
Tweaked the color saturation levels of several themes to make the visual contrast between the start/end of a level more dramatic.
Reduced the sound volume of Ice Crystals colliding with solid terrain.
Fixed Water Balloons not correctly counting towards a level's "Turns Left Over" tracked high score
Another change related to high score tracking: If, on your very last turn, you get Full Bloom while also collecting one or more dewdrops, it counts as having one turn left over.
Added several more faces that can randomly appear on Water Balloons. As your grand total of flowers bloomed increases, the variety of faces increases.
Added "Menu" prompt to World Map UI, and made those button prompts reflect the color of the selected level. The "Menu" prompt shows a "!" icon if you have unread Guidebook pages or newly unlocked Costume pieces.
Added "Window Scale" setting to the Main Menu, which determines the scaling factor used when Fullscreen Mode is off.
Tweaked the appearance of the "Oh No..." eye cosmetic piece
Slightly adjusted the wording of the tutorial text on the first level for added clarity.
Added a new entry to the Gardener's Guidebook focusing on Full Blooms and Bonus Splashes. This replaces the page about Full Blooms that was on the "World Map" guidebook entry, which has been removed.
Made subtle but meaningful design adjustments to the levels Cascade, Surrounded, Machine Spirit, Arboretum, Hydroponics, and The New You?
Gamepad glyphs will be shown by default if the game detects one at launch. The same also applies if the game detects it is being played on Steam Deck.
Fixed an issue with an incorrectly placed level on the map in the 2nd-to-last world of the game.
Properly set default player aim for all of the levels in the game.
Fixed instances where screen transitions could be interrupted/skipped early, which caused other issues.
Fixed a minor visual bug on the World Map involving Crystal Cove map tiles that were in the Cleared state.
Fixed a minor bug where the level's Flower Count UI would remain stuck onscreen when it wasn't needed.
Fixed 'Blanket the Earth' achievement not being triggered immediately upon Full Blooming 40 levels.
Implemented several Steam stats that were added but not previously being tracked.
8 new Achievements to earn! (If you already have save data with a lot of progress, there is one of these that might unlock immediately upon loading your save data.)
Demo Version only
Various improvements to Garden Gauntlet Mode. We are still beta testing this mode and plan to bring it to the main game in an eventual future update.
Garden Gauntlet Mode's point distribution has been adjusted slightly.
Garden Gauntlet's score and final results UI screens have been overhauled and flow much more naturally.