Update 0.5.1 - Quality of Life After Death

See below for details:

Leaderboards and Replayability Features

• all skeleton hand trials are now replayable, track best times, and support leaderboards. There are a total of 8 leaderboards right now. They will reveal themselves when first completing a trial, and will likely reset each time major updates are released.

  • leaderboards might have issues as they're basically brand new and empty. Please fill them!

• (minor spoilers) the Solarium levels now have long-form skeleton hand trials with their own leaderboards. these longer trials are "sandboxed" which currently means you start them with no ammo. also the Solarium door in the Library area should now unlock after two maps are collected to make these more accessible.

• (minor spoilers) the Bell Tower Disciple boss encounter is now replayable (look for the red skeleton hand within the Chapel). I noticed some players desired a way to replay bosses without starting a new game, so this is working towards that for all bosses in the future.

• additionally, as requested, key fragments now persist as semi-transparent "ghosts" after collected.

Movement Changes

just one core-gameplay tweak made it in: the Slide Skim move can now happen from the mid-air idle state while holding down crouch and moving a bit faster than run speed.

this is something the smooths out the movement kit, and is very useful when gaining speed with the grapple hook. it was even suggested by one of you, kudos!

Menu Improvements, Controller Support

• a lot of work for controller support was done before launch, except for the settings menus, which I have now entirely rebuilt with controller navigation in mind. I'll be adjusting the game configuration to ensure controllers are mostly supported and work with Steam Input. Many font sizes have been adjusted as well. All this works towards getting Steam Deck verified one day.

  • I still encourage using mouse+keyboard when possible for the best experience!

• the Map menu interface has gotten more attention: better camera control, a keys list, a compass button to control perspective, a player focus button, icons for keys and lantern posts and map unlocked state.

• there is also now a Patch Notes menu, which you can find by clicking the game version in the main menu.

• there is now a leaderboards menu at the top of pause menu (see above section)

• there are now two game settings assist options (see below section)

Other Changes and Polish

• to aid in the climb of the last main area, "flagpole" checkpoints have been added that will mark your respawn point if you fall.

• the Bell Tower Disciple boss now has state animations (this was cut from first release)

• the first two assist options are now available:

  • Game Speed can slow the game as low as 50%

  • Damage Reduction will impact all damage taken

and of course a large chunk of the latest fixes are included.

Admittedly, bosses have a few major balance issues that I wasn't able to address with this update. Expect the next major update to have something for those.

Many collision issues that have been reported tend to be elusive, but I have made good progress on that front, expect more fixes going forward as issues come up. Hopefully more regularly as well, I want to make