First of all, go check out the v3Expo showcase for 2026. It should be airing a few hours after this update goes live. Ctesiphon has only short spot in a montage but if you look carefully there's a hint on how to get to a new secret being added in this update. The game will also be 50% off for a week after the showcase starts!
Changelog
Let's get version 1.04d's additions out of the way first:
The Railgun and the Gyrobuster have had their projectile damage greatly increased. Should make them much more useful against the big mechs. Rockets are still the workhorse anti-mech weapon but you should no longer be completely screwed if you run out.
A couple of extra secrets have been added to the Outskirts level
Some of the buildings in the Multiport level have been made taller to prevent sequence breaking. Several spots where this used to be really easy have been converted to secrets instead.
The player now gets push velocity even if not taking any damage. This whole time I was testing blast jumping while I had invulnerability cheat on so I missed a bunch of really obvious sequence breaks and really good spots for secrets.
Personal Update
Ctesiphon hasn't really had a lot of major updates since launch which was semi-intentional. Launching the game was a big learning experience and the major goal of the project in itself. The plan is (and has always been) that I would focus immediately on making the next game with the knowledge gained from making this one. With limited free time available I pretty much expected that I wouldn't make any serious changes to Ctesiphon for some time if at all.
I had always really wanted to take game dev full time, but I figured I would wait to commit to it until I felt ready. I really liked my job and although games are my passion, I had a great relationship with my coworkers and was really conflicted about the thought of leaving to take the long shot of making a living off games. Well two weeks ago the conflict was resolved for me because due to a downturn in contract income I was made redundant along with some of my colleagues.
The big upshot of this is that I have enough savings to coast along for a couple of years while I put together the next game. And with all this newfound free time I'm also going to have a chance to give Ctesiphon some love too.
State of the Game
As with every game, a lot was cut to make Ctesiphon release on time. My deadline was entirely self-imposed but I refused to budge on it all the same. My new game, Fiber Optic Pizza is going to remain my priority for development but I've been looking at feedback and there were a few things cut from Ctesiphon that I'm going to consider revisiting:
Larger enemy roster. There's lots of room for improvement here, the lineup has some large gaps that did somewhat influence me to add way too many mechs in the later levels for lack of any intermediate thugs.
More levels. The Comm Station in particular was originally going to be an underwater level but that required tweaking how swimming works and I only recently had a good idea on how to do it without a really big engine rewrite.
More story. I once had the ambitious idea to make comic-book-esque panels for the loading screens and although it will take a long time I do think it would add a lot.
Better boss fight/s. Vega's Blood Eagle was given only about as much attention as any other enemies and that makes for a pretty boring boss fight. She originally also wasn't going to be the only boss fight.
Consumable Items and Powerups. I have a big list of these that ended up on the cutting room floor. Adding too many could change the feel of the game but without them Ethelyn's toolset is just limited to her weapons and it would be good to have some more utility items to spice up secrets and add some new encounter possibilities.
I haven't decided on any particular subject to explore yet, so I won't promise anything or give any timelines. But now I have the time to spare to tinker with Ctesiphon in a way that I couldn't really do before.