Arcane Golf 2.0

Settle in! Arcane Golf just got a major upgrade, and there is a lot to talk about!

For the past several months we've been working with select testers to reshape Arcane Golf into a better looking, better playing gameplay experience. We've taken feedback from the gaming community, from our testers, and from our harshest critics (ourselves) and worked to create a much more polished and enjoyable experience than we could have when we first began this game dev journey years ago.

TLDR;

1. Updated and new levels: More fun, more forgiving, more creative. Smoother difficulty curve. More than 75% of the levels received updates!
2. No more time-limited shots. Take as long as you want! Levels have been redesigned with this in mind.
3. New aiming and user interface elements offer more information, better accuracy
4. Remastered pixel art: 3 times as many colors, updated textures, animations, and special FX!
5. New tutorials: A much friendlier (sillier) wizard imparts his wisdom this time around. Improved text legibility, with multi-color font to highlight important parts of the text.
6. A host of additional quality of life updates from optimization to object "collision boxes" and more!

Gameplay:

• There is no longer a shot timer. The "casual aim mode" added post-launch has become the only mode, and the option to enable or disable it has been removed from the options menu.
• New aim indicator
  1. A new power meter helps players fine tune their shots to the exact %
  2. A new direction indicator will better help players see the initial direction of their shots
• Nearly every level has been rebalanced or replaced. The deeper into the game you get the more dramatic the changes are.
  1. Levels designed around precise shot timing have been removed or updated to account for the new timer-free shot style
  2. Levels designed around pixel perfect reaction times have been removed or rebalanced to give players much more time to react
  3. Levels built around only timed inputs (and not shooting at all) have been removed or altered to include interesting shots
  4. A handful of levels include additional shots so players can solve them in multiple ways or simply have an extra shot for simple mistakes
  5. Many brand new levels have been introduced that play more like mini golf, with much lighter maze and puzzle-like qualities. This is still a puzzle game, albeit a much more relaxing, and forgiving puzzle game than before.
• Switches now have a more forgiving hit box that favors the player and does not require pixel perfect accuracy

Quality of Life:

• The Quick Restart function has been updated
• Players can now quick restart when paused
  1. Quick restart now works during penalty animations
  2. Quick restart can be bound to the middle mouse button in the options menu. Note: A number of special powers have been hardcoded to use the right mouse button already.
  3. There is also a tutorial text on level 3 of the first dungeon that will explain that the quick restart function exists (but you already know if you're reading this).
• Added a pause button that can be clicked on. Combined with the quick restart changes, the entire game can now be played with only a mouse.
• Added a "current level" number to the UI when in-game
• You can now also change the ball color by clicking around the ball/tee on the main menu (also still in the options menu).
• Tutorials and flavor text have been completely rewritten
  1. Like with the rest of the game, the tone of the tutorials is one that is more welcoming and friendly (and completely silly)
  2. The text system has also been given a small overhaul that should make reading tutorials and flavor text easier
  3. Tutorial text now supports highlighting, so if you want to skip the flavor text you can see the most important bits in orange
• Optimization: While Arcane Golf should already run on just about any PC, we've made a number of changes throughout that should further optimize the game.

Art:

• Every dungeon tileset has been remastered. Very little has been left untouched.
• Expanded the color palette from 32 colors to 80+. Added additional contrast to the overall look. Arcane Golf was originally going to be part of a collection of retro-styled games that shared a limited color palette, but when it became a full stand-alone game the palette remained.
• Creature and trap animations have been given more frames of animation and detail
• The fairy power has been completely redesigned
• Water/waves have been completely redesign
• All generic particle effects have been replaced with hand animated effects. Everything from the the tee, to the ball bouncing, to splashes and explosions have been replaced
• A new shot "charging" effect triggers when aiming your shot
• Updated shot indicator art for a more dynamic, interesting look

Check out some before and after animated gifs: Arcane Golf 2.0 Gallery

Developer Update:

• Gold5Games no longer exists, but the two of us that made Arcane Golf do (for now, lol). We may collaborate in the future, but sometimes we'll be doing our own things so we've rebranded to make it much clearer who is working on what projects. You'll see the new logos at startup.
• FromLefcourt is Steven Lefcourt , the artist and coder.
• thatgregperkins is Greg Perkins, the musician.
• We both worked on level design, game mechanics, and tutorials together.

We couldn't have made these changes without those of you that left honest feedback in your reviews, and members of the gaming community that made videos, guides, articles, and podcasts talking about our little game.

Special thank you to our beta testers, and Clickteam for all their help and support! Without them, this new version would not have been possible.

We have a few more surprises and announcements coming in the near-ish future, so stay tuned!
If you enjoy these updates, please share! We think it's a great game for all kinds of gamers, and it's especially fun to play together with younger family members. This year has been trying for all of us, so we hope this update brings a little joy to even a few of you. Happy holidays!

Sincerely,
FromLefcourt and thatgregperkins

P.S. Want to see what we're currently up to?
FromLefcourt will be the easiest way to contact us or follow us on social media.
[email protected]
FromLefcourt.com
@FromLefcourt (on Twitter)
https://fromlefcourt.itch.io/

Important Note:

A recent update to anti-virus definitions has caused Arcane Golf and other games made with the Fusion engine to trigger false positives. Clickteam (makers of the Fusion engine) are working to get this fixed, and most anti-virus should be fine now, but you may need to whitelist Arcane Golf with your anti-virus and redownload the files if you have a problem.

Also, in rare instances you may find certain levels have been locked again. We hope this isn't a problem since most of the levels are new or adjusted, but a certain famous cheat code might help at level select if you'd rather not unlock every level again.