I am very excited to be finally posting this update as it comes with lots of upgrades:

A whole new world map to explore. Twice the size and optimized to fit. I was scared to redesign the world map because of all the work that went into the original, but it needed it for optimization purposes. This new one came out better than expected and I feel like it has a lot of opportunity for a deeper poetry to be showcased about the world surrounding the player.

Pretty large NPC overhaul, for friendly and enemies. Friendly starter towns, and some hidden ones in the world now have distinct villagers and guards with their own appearances and tastes in combat. This includes uniformity in the outfits of the defenders and more variety for the common townsfolk. Also included is a revamp of the NPC behavior. Friendly guards will now attack common threats nearby like wolves or goblins, but they will also retaliate if abused by the player. Villagers will seek shelter if attacked. Friendly villagers also now go about exploring their local habitat, as well as eating and drinking.

A functioning world map that is currently bound to the 'M' key. It will show the entire island, icons for friendly towns and also the player's location through their travels.

The Esc key now has stronger functionality. Slapping ESC will now close the inventory or the map if they are active, alongside accessing the options menu.

The number of starter towns has been reduced to streamline the early player experience, but the old towns still exist as points of interest to be found out in the world.

Among lots of other bug fixes for tidying purposes but they are buried in my notes at the moment.

Thank you for playing and stay tuned for more cool stuff

• Reduced the player hitbox size

• Enemies are slightly pushed back when the player takes damage

• Increased the balance of PAPA GARDENER (Flamethrower)

• Shock Turret damage has been reduced

• Improved the selection UI/UX and replaced the resources. You can now check stats while choosing

• Added Refresh, Skip, and Banish features to the selection options

• The maximum number of weapons is now limited to three

• Increased most of the stats for antenna rewards. This is a temporary adjustment

• You can now purchase additional Refresh, Skip, and Banish from the Drugstore

• Added a Progress menu where you can check unlocked weapons and equipment

• Replaced some resources in the Inventory filter menu

• Improved the UI/UX of the Quest menu and replaced related resources

• Improved the save system but previous progress has been reset

(We are working hard to fix the issues. Thank you for your bug reports)

• Fixed an issue where effect sound was not affected by the master sound control

• Fixed a bug where gold teeth were not consumed when obtaining items from the Drone Shop

• Fixed the spawn position issues for monsters, antennas, recipe books, and equipment boxes

• The electric scooter model now appears during Electric Scooter Fever mode

• Damage taken is now displayed on the result screen

The demo serves both as a preview of the game and as a playtest. Bugs may occur and data may be reset.

Thank you for your understanding and support.

• New title screen!

• New areas!

• New NPCs!

• New tutorial section to introduce "Companions" mechanic.

• The music-playing mechanic makes a reappearance!

• Idle animation for the player character.

• Background tiles to add an extra layer of depth.

• Player now respawns at the last valid position instead of at the last checkpoint.

• NPC names now show on speech bubbles.

• Added a shader to re-color background objects.

• Camera is now much smoother and more dynamic.

• Tweaked lasso targeting and rope-swinging speed.

• Interaction and pick-up input prompts can now show at the same time for NPCs, rather than one overriding the other.

• Player can now pick up NPCs they are overlapping instead of just those that are in front of them.

• Added option to return to title screen from pause menu.

• Corrected the colors of particles that appear when the player lands on the ground or an object.

• Pulling the lasso while rope-swinging now gives consistent velocity.

• Gates now save correctly as opened or closed. No more getting locked out of backtracking!

Join the Discord to participate in the playtest and receive more development updates!

Build: 20442848

Recent Build Gameplay Footage

Hello Testers,

A new build is now available on the closed alpha branch. This update focuses on a major engine upgrade, introduces macOS support, and fixes a number of critical bugs.

Engine Upgrade to Unity 6.2 To address a recent security vulnerability, the project has been upgraded to Unity 6.2. After a few minor tweaks, this build is running fairly stable and shows some performance improvements.

macOS Support We've added native support for macOS. Based on internal testing, the macOS version is just as stable as its Windows counterpart. Tested on a Mac mini (M1), so it should run smoothly on any fairly recent Mac.

• Fixed: An issue where mission descriptions were incorrectly displayed as the title, and a placeholder text was shown as the description.

• Reworked: The localization system is now more modular and self-contained. (Currently, only English and German are available).

• Added: Time controls have been added to the debug menu (playtester-access only), allowing the game speed to be adjusted for testing purposes.

• Balance: Increased the initial cooldown for Anomaly Events to provide a smoother start for new players.

• Fixed: A bug that allowed a single Anomaly Event to be triggered multiple times in one round.

• Changed: Version numbers now follow a standardized syntax.

• Fixed: A critical bug that could cause the in-game time to freeze.

• Fixed: Removed Anomaly spawn points from inaccessible rooms to prevent them from spawning out of bounds.

• Fixed: A bug in the stats system that incorrectly counted non-triggered anomalies.

• Balance: Reduced the number of anomalies per round to lower the difficulty for beginners.

Please note: The closed alpha branch is only available to invited testers.

You can view the patch notes for all previous versions here!

• Added a new fighter - Scheherazade! Setting up her traps is a little slow, but her screen coverage & unique Supercharge make her a formidable team member.

• Added a new stage - Wildwood Dormitory. See if you can catch references to any classic stories with a natural theme!

• Added Arcade Mode, a gauntlet of matches that culminates in a 3-round boss battle vs one of the other fighters in the game. Each character’s Arcade Mode run has fully voiced intro & ending cutscenes, so check them all out!

• Added camera shake when attacks connect.

• Added a fifth costume for Alice, Creature, and Wendy.

• Significantly improved fighter AI.

• Author Medley (Scheherazade’s Theme) now available as a music track for matches.

• Improved frame drops in the game’s menus.

• Fixed an issue where directional tags would allow players to teleport past the camera bounds.

• Improved efficiency with VFX particles.

• Added grab react animations.

• Fixed issue where motion trails would appear in the center of the stage for one frame at the start of the match.

• Improved frame drops when multiple characters are tagged in at once.

• Fixed an issue where some projectiles didn’t properly despawn at the end of their life/after going off-screen (specifically Alice’s Teacups and Creature’s Iceberg).

• Fixed an issue where projectile positions would break during opponent tags.

• Fixed an issue where backing out to the stage select menu from character select would put the cursor in the wrong slot.

• Fixed a graphical bug where characters would render on top of Creature’s ice cube.

• Fixed an issue where players would sometimes be stuck facing the wrong direction.

• Fixed an issue where the wrong player would win on match time out.

• Removed a mechanic where opponents could wiggle their character around & counter-attack while grabbed by an opponent. Grabs should now be much more consistent across the board.

• Lowered forward airdash speed for all characters except Wendy, so cross-ups aren’t as easy for most of the cast (see exact values per character below).

Alice’s Mad Tea Set was good for covering the lower screen in projectiles, but using it was quite slow and left her vulnerable, and she’d very rarely connect with more than two teacups due to the knockback. The move has now been sped up and made easier to connect, but to compensate Alice won’t get to throw out as many projectiles at once.

• Forward Airdash Speed: 4000 → 3000

• Back Attack Max Charge: 6 → 5

• Back Attack Frames Per Shot: 15 → 10

• Teacup Hitbox Size: 100 → 150

• Teacup Speed: 2500 → 3500

• Teacup Damage: 300 → 400

  • Max Total Damage: 1800 → 2000

Creature has been one of the best team members to have in part because of his Supercharge, which freezes the opponent for a long time and allows for pretty much any move to be used in a tag combo. By lowering the hitstop of his Supercharge’s initial hits (without lowering freeze time), these team combos should still be possible, just a bit harder to pull off.

• Forward Airdash Speed: 2800 → 2600

• Supercharge Hitstop Frames: 75 → 45

Dorothy’s Home Sweet Home is meant to be a powerful threat that persists on screen for a while (which is why, prior to Scheherazade’s addition, it was the only Supercharge to cost 2 tag bars). However, it was often too easy for opponents to fall out of the tornado, or put up a block before the farmhouse exploded. Hitstun & launch angles of her Home Sweet Home have been adjusted so that all hits will connect more reliably. 

• Forward Airdash Speed: 4000 → 3000

• Supercharge now connects all hits more reliably.

Gatsby’s Ceaseless Drive was originally designed as a niche-use Supercharge where you could hold back to delay the attack, then tag in a teammate to lock down the opponent while you hold forward & speed up. In practice, this was far too confusing and difficult to use, especially when the opponent could just jump over Gatsby’s car. Ceaseless Drive has now been changed to a simpler, screen-clearing attack that quickly crosses the entire screen, and damage has been increased to compensate for the lack of team potential.

• Forward Airdash Speed: 4000 → 3000

• Supercharge startup is now invincible.

• Player can no longer control Supercharge movement.

• Supercharge Speed: 0-7000 → 4000

• Supercharge Damage: 0-2100 → 5000

Wendy’s Shadow Stitch briefly stuns the opponent for a follow-up after pulling herself towards them, but realistically she could only get off a single uncharged Believer Bash before the stun wore off. This change should give Wendy players a bit more freedom in how they follow up on Shadow Stitch.

• Back Attack Hitstun: 20 → 100

• Forward Airdash Speed: 3750 → 2650

• Camera now moves more smoothly when more than two characters are onscreen.

• Font was changed for the yearbook (character select) and the icons are larger.

Hey everyone, Mothership here.

I’m happy to report that development on Episode 2 is on its way!

It took a bit longer to get back into the groove as my main PC was having some serious technical issues that required a full reformat, but everything’s finally back up and running.

The story and setting for Episode 2 were locked in months ago, which makes production move a lot faster, and a few new enemy types are already being prototyped (though they’re not quite ready to show off yet).

If all goes well (and my computer behaves) you can expect Episode 2 to launch in the first half of 2026. I’ll be posting updates as development progresses.

In the meantime please consider leaving a positive review: the game is currently enjoying a 97% Positive score on Steam, so if you're reading this and enjoyed the game do your part!

the Girl will touch grass in episode 2

Enjoy! -ML

::: Stay in touch! Twitter 1 / Twitter 2 / Bluesky / Discord ::: Support my work Patreon Ko-Fi :::

Hey everyone,

I just wanted to give a quick update into some of the things I've been working on. I've done a lot of work on updating the Store page with some of the more recent content that I've added since the demo. I added a new trailer, some animations, and some new screenshots and cover images. I also added Steam Achievements which I'll be including once the game is released, and I did some testing to ensure that cloud save functionality was working as well. It's been a really exciting ride building this game and I'm really hoping you'll enjoy it.

Once again thank you so much for your support and hopefully you'll take this journey with me by Wishlisting Life of Guy.

Cheers!

Just1Guy