I was a bit dissapointed how easy it was to beat the new enemies.
Sure, I could just give them more health. But I figured out how to make them have a better aiming. The demon grunt that throws lava rocks will predict where you go and throw there. Mathematically not easy, but I got there somehow. So if you constantly strafe one way, you'll be dead. :)

I applied the same principle to the skeleton mage, but it will be dependent on your awesome meter. The higher you go, the more evil the mage's aiming will get.

In general I'm no fan of growing enemies with the player, because that makes the entire process of upgrading pointless. But this is just a gentle touch that should be fine. My design idea is that you get challenged in new ways all the time. So enemies don't just get more health and higher damage values; they should do different things.

The demon bomb, the one that rolls at you, is still pretty easy to beat. I guess if there are many of them at once, it will get more interesting. Or should it roll faster?

But the interesting thing about it is that if you manage to explode it in a group of enemies, it will kill all of them with its death-explosion. Problem is just that the combo is much easier to use. So I still have some design problems to solve.

But much more important than some fighting details is the world building. I'm currently expanding the region behind the purple crystal. It will be a big region and contain a complex puzzle, similar to the chapel puzzle from earlier, but harder. You'll be in the middle of a fight about how's got the bigger carrots.

I laid out the entire region on paper and will build it within the next few days. In the image above you can see a little bit of the new region.

Oh and there will be a 50% sale starting on saturday for 2 weeks. Maybe I have the new region ready by then.

- Reorganized upgrades (for example: you can now buy gun critical damage in the farm shop, you can buy more critical damage upgrades for sword and gun, added a new shop at the supraball pitch, you can get the shield breaker upgrade in this shop; and many other changes)
- 2 more red barrel upgrades (instead of having things in the shop by default)
- Added display showing how many barrels are left
- Hide ingame HUD while in ESC screen
- Many small changes

- Fixes being able to destroy stone graves unlimited times
- Disabled 3d grass for the time being because of performance problems
- Maybe fixed occasional "ouch" shoutings by player (pls tell me if it happens again)
- Added hint for first puzzle after boss
- Fixed wrong text by hintguy in region after boss
- Fixed gun losing ammo bar after having owned a ball
- Fixed broken puzzle right before the boss
- Fixed being able to carry objects that are behind glass
- Fixed float buckle tutorial text
- Fixed that you can shoot the button in prison without using the combo
- Fixed jumppad near stomp upgrade not kicking you far/high enough (including multijumps)
- Fixed OOB opportunity
- Small fixes everywhere

Old savesgames will be incomaptible in many ways, I suggest restarting. At least when you are past the boss. Beating him triggers major events. If you are past him that won't get triggered.

- Reworked a lot of effects (explosions, projectiles...)
- Improved ground textures in the world
- 2 new enemy types
- Added new ammo-refilling system for the gun and added upgrades into shops
- Easier to use levers, buttons etc, don't have to aim perfectly anymore
- Added upgrade to destroy stone graves (you wont get it if you play with an old savegame)
- Improved boss fight and added more epic presentation (beating him triggers new enemies)
- Gun sounds and projectiles dynamically change their appearance according to the amount of damage the gun does (more = more)
- Gun shakes less when you got 2 cooldown upgrades
- Added mini-boss after you return with the first MacGuffin, likewise after the 2nd MacGuffin
- Slight AI improvements
- New Sword range upgrade in red town making sword fighting way more satisfying and less risky
- New shieldbreaker upgrade to get your shots through the skeleton warrior's shield in new puzzle
- Fixed prison cell scene not playing music
- Fixed ending button telporting you away
- Fixed that it's too hard and fiddly getting onto the star player's roof
- Enemy's damage effects will now be according to the amount of damage done
- Lots of other changes

If you don't wanna get spoiled about whats coming next, don't watch this.

This shows what fighting will be like in the 2nd half (?) of the game.
It's still glitchy and buggy.

One important element of good fighting is how aggressive the enemies are. If you just make them all chase you, you will just keep running backwards away from everything. Not fun. It should rather be motivating for you to chase them.
So I try to find a good balance between them waiting at a distance and throwing stuff at you and them sometimes attacking you.

In this video they are still a bit too aggressive I think. I'm too much on the defensive side.

https://youtu.be/Ic1NyN0kiNU

With the much stronger enemies (they will get enabled by winning the boss fight btw) I can finally give you a lot more weapon upgrades again. I was a bit worried about what to put in all the chests. But now I have a huge lists of upgrades coming.
You will also get to destroy stone graves soon.
And since the sword is really useless for fighting, I will give you extra big sword upgrades, so it's worth taking the risk.


I worked on the boss fight, making it stand out more, have the world go dark for a moment etc.
You can tell he is using the stomp attack way too much (like all the time...). I have some more balancing to do.

https://youtu.be/0_TJB6SC4uM

Today's update brought a new button tutorial system. This basically shows the buttons that are actually binded to a certain ability, whenever I want it to.
You cannot set controls yet yourself, but once you can, this system is already there and shows the correct keys. It also can see if you're using gamepad or mouse/keyboard and shows the approriate keys.
All new abilities and the tutorial at the start use this system to show you the necessary buttons until you actually solved the situation.

In the starting tutorial I replaced the last "puzzle" with something new. The last part required you to carry a stone and use that as a ladder to get up. Which is a mechanic that is NEVER used in the entire game after that. That part of the tutorial is only supposed to show you that you can carry certain items around with the "use" button. So the new tutorial does just that and only requires you to put the stone onto a button which then opens a door.

You might have noticed that in the new region I spawn a shitload of enemies and throw them at you, but you just kill em within seconds with a few combos. As satisfying as it is to kill so many enemies at once with a combo, I'm now starting to create new enemy types. They will have different behaviours and take lot more damage. I'm thinking 200+ (the current ones have 20-60). So you will actually have to focus on combat again and can't just flip even the biggest army away as if it's an annoying fly. Of course it's also part of the game design that I reward you this way, so you can actually combo-kill entire armies. But just at the right moment, I hope, I will introduce new challenges.

I also might make the part after the purple crystal much longer. It's really short at the moment and ties back into the battery puzzle part before pretty quickly.

In the battery puzzle region you might notice a lot of empty spaces. I left them on purpose, because I learned in the previous parts that I often want to cram in another puzzle or secret but then I have no more room. So this time I just left a lot of room and I have a few things in mind that I will put there.

Thanks for testing guys. You help me so much finding so many bugs!

- Added tutorial button system, showing the actual buttons to be used for a new item
- Fixed ball hack that shot you far up in the air
- Added some more guidance to red crystal region
- Small changes and improvements everywhere

- Fixed wrong ways to solve new puzzles
- Fixed wrong highlight when looking at NPC (only hat was highlighted)
- Big objects now get transparent when you carry them
- Replaced stone climbing part at the end of the tutorial with "put stone on button"
- Health cannot be pulled with the beam any longer
- Added 0.2s coyote time for the first jump (google if you don't know what that means)
- Fixed that mage could not be damaged with gun's altfire
- Fixed Boss' buggy dying animation

- Added new region behind the purple crystal (30-90mins of new gameplay)
- Reworked entire force beam mechanics
- Added tutorial guide under the purple crystal for the beam
- Force cube cooldown reduced to 1s
- Changed region near blueville
- Reworked jumping code
- Forcebeam pulling reduces your remaining jumps now
- If you highlight a usable actor, the entire actor gets highlighted now, not just a little part of it
- Fixed Mouse Invert not working
- Added new secret chests
- Fixed non working achievements (I hope...)
- Fixed lots of small things

- Fixes bug where you cannot press buttons when a coin is nearby
- Made all buttons that are for respawning an object white (instead of red)
- Added new chest with new upgrade
- Added new elements in the map to be used with the Force Beam
- Performance improvements
- Fixed that you can camp on the ballista during boss fight
- Fixed that boss respawns after been beaten, if you die after beating him
- Fixed warrior having wrong head rotation when he tries to look at you
- About 20 small changes (gameplay improvements, making ugly things prettier...)

Edit: I screwed up the new achievements, they don't work anymore. Will fix next update!