Major Demo Update: v0.10.0 is Live

Hi all,

I think I mentioned that the last update would be the last major update before release? Well, sorry (kinda) but I felt that all the polish, juice and progression changes I've been working on are probably worth sharing sooner rather than later, and with some massive changes to the way Rituals and Bosses work I felt it'd be a good idea to get feedback on them now rather than wait for launch!

The extensive patch notes can be found below so feel free to scroll on to see the list in full, but wanted to go into a bit of detail about each of the changes and why I've made them.

First Major Change: Boss Fights!

As has been pointed out, unsuccessful runs tend to just.. fizzle out. You have plenty of balls left but due to a poor build, bad economy or some other reason, your damage just hasn't kept pace. It becomes a slog, and Boss fights end up a slow, painful and somewhat boring death. Well, I thought I'd speed things along a bit and make this part of each run a proper build check by adding a Boss Timer. Beat the boss within 30 seconds to unlock access to the Bonus Table (this is now the only way to do so, the yellow Bonus-letter Tentacles are gone), and after that, every 60 seconds the Boss will Devour one of your Spare Balls. If you have no Spare Balls left, well, he eats your current ball and the run is over. Not only does this ramp up the intensity of what should have been the most important part of a run, but it massively increases the importance of Glyphs and Blessings that increase this timer, reduce Boss HP or increase the Tentacle respawn timers - all of which will be available in the main game. Best of luck!

Second Major Change: Rituals

A lot of new players are overwhelmed by all the Rituals to trigger on the table, and are uncertain what they are looking for. Well, that'll be much easier now as you only start off with one Ritual, and added a new Altar Bumper at the centre of all the others - hit this enough times and you'll be shown the Ritual Upgrades screen, where you can choose to upgrade or unlock a new Ritual, giving you much more control over your build and giving a substantial way to increase in power outside of the Shop and Blessing screens. I've also reworked all the mission lighting to glow the colour of the associated Ritual, and re-balanced all Rituals so that the can hold their own if you choose to follow only one upgrade path. To help learn the basics of each ball without complicating things, Ball Rituals for each ball are locked until you have completed at least one run with each ball - you're going to have to earn those ones.

Third Major Change: Ball, Table and Difficulty Select Panels

To make it much easier to track progress, a long overdue UI rework on the Ball Select screen kickstarted a whole new UI flow before a run begins. Not only is this just generally prettier (imo) but you can also see the highest difficulty each Ball and Table has been completed with, and the current difficulty is now also shown in the HUD of the main game. Difficulties have also been rebalanced a bit, and include a decrease to the earlier Boss Timers at higher difficulties.

Fourth Major Change: Optimisation and Physics

I've given the entire game a considerable optimization pass, however I've