First major demo updated has landed!
I'm thrilled that so many of you have enjoyed Fireworks Incremental and I'm also very thankful for the feedback you've sent.
The game is in a pretty good state but it could also use some balancing changes as well as quality of life improvements and that's my goal for this update - to make the game feel and play better.
Here's a full list of changes that I've made over the last week since releasing the demo:
Balance and pacing
Unlocking Prestige Hall is now faster thanks to reducing 100 BPS milestone requirement to 80 BPS
Unlocking Tier 2 building upgrade is now faster thanks for reducing 250 BPS milestone requirement to 100 BPS
Earning Prestige Points is now 10% faster
These 3 changes are meant to make the game a bit faster and rewarding. Previous milestones made it feel like the game dragged a bit and I want to mitigate that with making progression a bit faster around these milestones.
The demo's final BPS milestone remains 500 BPS, which possibly is a bit too high and I'm considering lowering it to 450 BPS in a later update.
Observatory Tier 2 rework
Constellation Mapping now grants +1% resource generation per level instead of +10%
Constellation Mapping starts at just 1 Knowledge instead of 100
Observatory Tier 2 felt quite underwhelming and unfair. The change of granting +1% resource generation per level instead of 10% while greatly reducing Knowledge requirement makes the Tier 2 upgrade instantly rewarding.
Additionally the overall Constellation Mapping progression curve was lowered as the previous version was just unfair.
I'm hoping these changes will make Observatory Tier 2 a worthy choice. Existing Observatory progress also gets migrated to the new system, so you can just keep playing as you normally would.
Quality of life improvements
Resources, units and upgrades are now revealed gradually as their associated systems are discovered (this should reduce the feeling of being overwhelmed by too much information displayed at once)
Arcane Overload explanations appear only after discovering the Wizard Tower (to again reduce information in the beginning)
Tier 2 upgrades remain hidden until reaching the `200 BPS` milestone for the first time (same)
Once something has been discovered, it remains visible across future Prestiges (decided it's best to give more experienced players full overview of the systems so they can better plan their strategy)
Simplified the BPS and Magical Fragment introduction shown after reaching 3 BPS milestone
The 200 BPS milestone now briefly describes what each Tier 2 building upgrade does
Reworked all Tier 2 upgrade tooltips to better explain their effects
Improved the Field Chemistry Prestige upgrade tooltip and explanation
Renamed `Booms value` and `Science value` to the clearer `Booms Yield` and `Science Yield` (upgrades in Arsenal and University buildings)
Reordered University upgrades for better readability (Field Chemistry was inconsistently lower compared to other upgrades)
You can now prestige with 0 Prestige Points if you'd like to restart the run or try a different build (available after you prestige at least once)
Added "Restart Current Run" button in the Settings
You can now use A, D, left and right arrow key buttons to scroll the camera horizontally
Clicking and holding the Mortar now continues loading until release, even if the pointer moves outside it
Improved the cutscene skip indicator (it now has a black background)
Renamed the previous `SFX` setting to `Gameplay` for clarity
Added a separate `UI` volume slider in Settings
Lowered volume of gameplay background music ever so slightly
Increased SFX sound propagation so that you'll hear a little bit more of the SFX when you go a bit further (minor adjustment)
Added a feedback form link in Settings
These changes are meant to smoothen the experience and to "remove obstacles" from you, so to speak. Certain things were overwhelming (wall of text when it comes to upgrades), some things weren't clear enough or were hard to understand.
Bug fixing
Fixed squashed or skewed UI text, misaligned progress labels, modal borders and broken tooltip borders
Fixed disabled Prestige upgrades colors
Fixed rendering and scaling on web build
I almost had a heart attack when I saw the text being squashed in certain places.
Miscellaneous
Increased the visual spread of fireworks and Mortar Barrages, which scales with number of fireworks (more fireworks = bigger spread, which should better prevent from having a "big pink blob" in the middle of the screen in the late game)
Improved Prestige screen blinking stars animation
Restarting the game to start completely from scratch is now labeled as "Hard Reset" in the Settings
Added Steamworks integration setup in preparation for the full release
Added application icons on Windows and Linux (doesn't work on macOS, not sure why yet)
Added splash screen on macOS (GameMaker requires it. I didn't add it on Windows and Linux because it slows down game launching and also Linux build's full screen mode gets bugged)
Demo version v0.1.16-64 is now live for everybody.
After the initial demo update I need to focus on adding full game content, but I'm also planning to make more changes to the demo, both gameplay-wise and polishing-wise and you can expect more updates in the coming days and weeks.
When it comes to gameplay changes, I especially want to revisit Wizard Tower and University. Some visual changes might also come as I'm strongly considering some CRT shader changes as current implementation is just buggy and problematic. Balance-wise, I might need to nerf Arcane Momentum Prestige upgrade. Enjoy the hyper scaling while it lasts.
Thank you for playing and if you have any feedback, let me know. :)
Thanks!
-- Filip