Dashing, UI, Squashing & Improvements (Patreon)

Dashing improvements

It may seem basic, but for a roguelite that's supposed to feel fast-paced, dashing is a very important part of the gameplay. There were previous a bunch of issues such as not being able to dash through enemies, and instead dragging them along with you. The dash also didn't have that good of a "feel", feeling very boring, and just being a fast walk instead. We've now changed that by adding some opacity changes and other effects. 

More UI and stat changes

We previously gave the pause menu a new lick of paint already, using our new scroll UI, but there were still some UX issues, such as not being able to see what item you've selected using controller, or what parts of the menu are disabled.

On top of that, you can now also see the different stats that are linked to weapons/artifacts as well, instead of only the character stats. 

Progress grab bag

This week, we are focusing more on improving the game we currently have, and less on adding brand new features, as seen by the improved dash and pause menu UI for example. This means that most of our changes are smaller or not that exciting. After our playtest next week, we have another month to cook up some new things, and we will be adding some extra mechanics such as different weapons or progress unlocks. 

In the meantime, here are some of the smaller things we've done: 

- Overhauled UI for the death screen

- Added more dialogue for master sun

- Updated loot tables and drops

- A lot (around 25) bug fixes

Mechanic of the week

We've explained most of the roadmap mechanics, so let's talk a bit about the stuff that we are implementing right now. 

A small mechanics, but still one that we think will increase playtime: Shields

The moment you run out of HP, the run is over, and you've failed your mission. Yet we've decided to add a bonus "buffer", your shield. This will take damage first, but with a much lower "HP", and only once the shield is down, will damage be taken on your main health. 

We are then looking balancing wise on making it easier to get shield regens, and making health regen much more rare. Since we have 2 different bars, we can also tie in items to give bonus effects if there is no shield, or only if shield is full, or when health is below 10%,... 

What's next?

I'm starting to work on our next devlog, releasing now Friday, announcing the start of the public Steam Playtest, as well as the various changes we've made in the past month, both feature and creative direction wise. The rest of the team will keep focusing on bugs and other smaller issues this week, and then next week, I assume we will have a lot of new feedback collected, which we can go through, and help with deciding our next major moves.

Some other roadmap features we are hoping to look at in the next 2 weeks, is getting our level gen overhauled, as we are running into some issues, and we're not getting the levelflow we wanted. This is something what will most likely require a full rewrite of our room generation, as well as the individual rooms we've made so far.