Cycle 3 is our biggest update yet with massive changes to how the game plays and feels. Thanks again to the Cycle 2 winner's for your great submissions! Detailed patch notes at the bottom, here's a breakdown of the main features.
WASD Character Controls - Scatus
One of the best things about the concept of this game if that the gameplay can completely change from one update to another. Scatus wanted to shake things up this time around and decided to transition from clicking to WASD-controls.
With the currently established aquatic theme, I thought it would be great to make these new controls feel like a swimming fish and I hope you like how it turned out.
Movement remains quick, snappy and yet smooth at the same. The twin button mechanic stays the same, but now you have to dash through the bubbles with left click.
To ensure a smooth transition for both old and new players, I also introduced a controls overlay to the start of the game.
Background Boss MEGANOM - NOMNOM
The initial idea was to have a background boss that takes damage with higher combos, which made sense given the clicking gameplay of the old cycle. However, with the new character controls we had a bit more Freedom to introduce more advanced mechanics.
While Meganom lurks in the background, he will take damage from combos, but every time a new song starts he will come forward to attack the player from different angles. While charging, MEGANOM reveals a weakspot on his tail that can be attacked to deal critical damage.
At the end of the final song, MEGANOM enters his final phase and attacking his tail will stagger him to reveal additional weakspots for burst damage.
Make sure to defeat MEGANOM before the last song runs out or he will get away!
Limited Run Duration - Papa
With how easy it was for Papa to take the top of the leaderboard in Cycle 2 by just grinding it out on an infinite run, Papa decided to ensure that this won't happen again.
With the new Boss it made sense to neatly tie a run's duration to him. Each run now ends when MEGANOM is defeated or escapes at the end of the fourth song.
Piranha Swarm Challenge - Dyxa
The initial Piranha event felt a bit lackluster, which was the unfortunate result of the tight update schedule of past cycles. Dyxa decided to sacrifice another submission to have a proper swarm attack the player in a bullethell-style survival challenge.
Aquatic Theme - Yeladia (+ Kohari)
Pairing Yeladia's design directive with my own submission, the gameplay now reflects the hub world's aquatic theme. With the new character controls, it made sense to also add a particle trail to the player.
The twin buttons are now bubbles and everything is tied together with a darkened ocean background, some environmental glow, and this beautiful god rays shader by pend00.
Unfortunately, there was not enough time for me to overhaul the UI, which is something I would've loved to tie into this graphical update as well.
Hopefully I will find some time during the off-cycle period to refine health bars and UI panels to fit the new aquatic theme as well.
Spiral Animation - RikuDayo
The initial idea was to introduce some magical transition whenever the game pauses during score challenge pop-ups, etc. Some kind of galactic orbit of the buttons spiraling around each other and bursting into a supernova at the end.
Unfortunately, this submission had to be cut to it's very minimum implementation due to the time constraints and already running late for the update. For the time being, it now is just the initial spiral with a short particle burst in the center, which already makes the challenge pop-ups less disruptive.
I hope to be able to revisit this animation to give it a lot more impact by adding some sound effects and additional visuals.
Patch Notes
The new gameplay shifted the balance of the game a lot, and while I did adjust a lot of the values I did not have enough time to test the new balance extensively.
This means that the might be some additional balance tweaks while the leaderboard is open.
New Content
New Gameplay
Player now moves using WASD
Introduced a dash attack on left mouse button
Twin Bubbles (fka Buttons) now require dashing into them
Player has now 100 health and takes damage instead of strikes
The score penalty now heals the player to full instead of clearing strikes
Songs now play sequentially
Runs now end when the boss is defeated or escapes at the end of the final song
Challenge spawn timer increased to every 20s (up from 10s)
New Boss: MEGANOM
Total Health: 200.000
Deals 50 contact damage during charge attacks
Takes 500 damage every 10 combo, multiplied by current combo multiplier
Takes 2.000 damage from weak spot hits to his tail during charge attacks
Enters stagger when weak spot is hit during final phase
Takes 250 damage per hit when staggered, multiplied by current combo multiplier
Escapes when final song ends
Kill Bonus Score: 50.000
New Challenge: Swarm
Piranhas swarm the player for 20 seconds
Piranhas deal 10 damage and disable cursor upgrades for 20 seconds
Reward: 7500 Score
No Fail Condition
Balance
Base Game
Base score increased to 50 (up from 10)
Combo Multiplier now increases every 5 combo (down from every 10)
Combo Multiplier now has a final jump from 5x to 10x at 50 combo
Combo timer now ramps from 3s at 0 combo to 0.7s at 50 combo
Bubbles now grow and vibrate stronger as the combo timer runs out
Score limit reverted back to 999.999 (down from 9.999.999)
Rush Challenge:
Base Target Score: 5.000 (up from 1.200)
Reward increased to 5.000 (up from 2.000)
Penalty increased to 2.500 (up from 1.000)
Target Challenge:
Reward increased to 5.000 (up from 2.000)
Penalty increased to 5.000 (up from 2.000)
Rhythm Challenge
Score now properly multiplies with combo multiplier, locked at the value it was at challenge start
Basic Cursor
Adjusted to new base score 60/75/100 (same % increase as 12/15/20)
Now also affects damage dealt to the boss (+20% / +50% / +100%)
Twin Cursor
Now limits combo multiplier instead of combo to 2x/3x/5x (previously 20/30/40)
Ice Cursor
Price decreased to 20/40/100 (down from 50/80/150)
Now slows combo timer to 3s at around 15/25/40 to 0.7s at 65/75/90
Piranha
Now deals 10 damage in addition to disabling the player's cursor upgrade for 20s
Base speed increased by ~33%
Shells
Currently past cycles use the latest cursor upgrades instead of their original cycle's values, which means shell in the arcade is somewhat broken. As a temporary fix, shell gain has been adjusted accordingly.
Cycle 3 - 1 Shell per 5.000 Score
Cycle 2 - Reduced to 1 Shell per 5.000 Score (previously 1 per 1.000)
Cycle 1 - Reduced to 1 Shell per 5.000 Score (previously 1 per 2.000)
Other Improvements
Added player controls overlay that fades after the game starts
Added new score challenge transition animation
Score challenges now appear on hit and the next hit after accept/decline can't break combo
Challenges can now be declined/accepted with Q/E
New ocean background
Added bubbles particle trail to player movement
Added glow and god rays visual effects
Introduced DELAYED and TBA state to leaderboard and cycle tutorial popup for delayed releases
Bug Fixes
Fixed cycle tutorial popup and leaderboard countdown showing incorrect values in some cases
Fixed game crashing on exit in some cases
Fixed some outdated corrupted scenes causing various insignificant warnings and error logs
Fixed arcade gameplay cycle's having incorrect challenge timers
Fixed rhythm challenge not considering combo multiplier
Developer Note
Sorry for another delay. Even with the increased cycle duration the timeline is quite tight. There's many things I wanted to tweak like overhauling the UI, more player feedback with sounds and visual effects, better balance, etc.
Some of these might make it into a mid-cycle update. I hope you enjoy the new stuff regardless!
As usual thank you all for playing and a special thank you for everyone who's keeping me company on stream during development! I'm excited to see all your new ideas for Cycle 4 on the leaderboard!
Cheers,
Kohari