Lost To Riches releases from Early Access!

Just like last update, it's been a while, hell, it's been even longer since the wait between Convenience Part 1 and Part 2, sorry about that... I assure you that with everything coming in this update, it will be worth it. This is by far the biggest update the game has received, featuring:

• An Endless Mode, where you play for a high score

• A Lore/Codex system

• Eight new items

• Changes to Hard Mode

• Changes to Item Progression

• Economy Rebalances

• Slot Machine Reworks

• Item Rebalances

• UI Updates

• Updated Controller Support

• A new Unfair Mode

A ton of new features indeed! 2.4 was intended to be the last planned, major update to Lost To Riches before fully releasing it onto Steam, and I felt it necessary to include as much as possible to improve replayability, presentation, and overall polish presented!

Woah, a new trailer?

Below is an in-depth list of changes for posterity:

ENDLESS

A brand new game mode that allows you to play in a never ending version of the Velvet Angel. Play to get the highest score possible while contending with new gameplay changes that add an extra layer of challenge compared to the main game. Endless mode skips specific sequences that slow the game down, such as Boss Intros, Floor Transitions, and Cutscenes, allowing you to get straight into the action without any stalling!

Endless Mode becomes unlocked after defeating the first boss, however, it's recommended to play Endless Mode after at least finishing the game once! As you will have all items unlocked and hopefully a better understanding of the enemies and their attacks, traps, and how different items function.

This game mode introduces with it two distinct features, Curses and Limited Use Items

Curses

Randomly on entering a room, you may become cursed, inflicting a unique modifier for the duration of that floor. In total, there are 11 unique curses that you can become afflicted with.

Curse Of Aggression

Steam post image Enemies receive increased movement speed, faster attack speed, and no longer need to reload

Curse Of Combustion

Steam post image Props have a random chance to explode when broken

Curse Of Escalation

Steam post image The room has an extra wave of enemies, each succeeding wave spawns one additional enemy

Curse Of Famine

Steam post image Reloading gives a random amount of ammo instead of a full reload

Curse Of Ignition

Steam post image Taking any damage sets you on fire

Curse Of Inferno

Steam post image All enemies get the Gasoline Item, causing them to leave behind trails of igniteable gasoline

Curse Of Mob

Steam post image Every wave of enemies spawns in at the same time

Curse Of Surprise

Steam post image All traps deal double damage

Curse Of Vanishing

Lose $1 every second, if you run out of cash, lose 1HP every 5 seconds

Curse Of Weakness

Your bullet damage is halved

Curse Of Wounding

Taking any damage reduces your movement speed

Limited Use Items

All items now have a set amount of time they can be used for before being destroyed. Think of it as Item Durability; Upon entering a new room (Excluding the shop) the durability of all items ticks down by one. This system forces you to use new items as opposed to finding one strong combination and bulldozing through Endless. Damage Items tend to last for only a few rooms while utility and support items last longer.

Curses as well as Limited Use Items can be enabled in the normal game from the Gameplay settings menu.

Enemies in Endless Mode will also scale infinitely, becoming tougher and tougher over time. Upon completing a full loop, you may even start to see new enemies in the rooms!

The goal of endless, as stated above, is to collect as much score as possible, killing enemies, collecting cash and chips, surviving curses, completing room and floors, all of these and more contribute to your final score. Playing Endless Mode in Hard Mode will also double your final score, making it lucrative to play this game mode on hard to chase a high score!

Overall, I am very satisfied with Endless Mode, it is much more difficult compared to the base game, but I think that is fine as it helps Endless stand alone from the normal game. Endless adds a much needed layer of replayability to the game that was sorely lacking before.

THE VELVET ANGEL FILES + DEMONOLOGY 101

Another large feature introduced in this update is The Velvet Angel Files, written from the perspective of another person exploring the depths of the casino, Jeremiah T. Huckleberry, a Texan with a degree in Demonology, he is investigating the various disappearances in the casino that have run cold, and he writes about it in his journal which he's titled the Velvet Angel Files. Uncover it's different entries by picking up items, collecting weapons, and killing enemies!

All three categories track various different statistics

Weapons

• Enemies killed

• Times Reloaded

• Bullets fired

• Times picked from the Weapon Table

Enemies

• Amount killed

• Amount of elite versions killed

Items

• Times collected

On top of reading about the different enemies, weapons, and items found across the casino, you can also read a whole slew of statistics from the miscellaneous page, you can see how much cash and chips you've spent, successful escapes, total deaths, and even how many footsteps!

Aside from statistics, you can also read Demonology 101, a series of nine entries exploring the nature of Demons, Hell, and the Velvet Angel. If you wanted some deep lore, now you have it!

Demonology entries can be collected by finding Golden Safes, they can be collected alongside weapon pickups.

Overall, this system was designed to add some sort of statistics tracking while also giving anyone curious about the deeper lore of Lost To Riches something to read, as story was something that was lacking in the game before. Sadly, statistics are NOT retroactive, so any crazy kills you've gotten before will not be counted.

CONTROLLER

So... I have some good news and bad news about Controller support...

The good news is that controller is much more responsive compared to before, gameplay on controller should hopefully feel less jank and more fun, much more of the game's UI, including some of the new menus, are much more controller friendly.

The bad news is that not all of the game's UI couldn't be fitted with fully functioning controller support, the act of moving through certain menus, like the Upgrade Menu, is very janky on controller, sometimes you completely lose your selection in the menus, forcing you to use a mouse.

A major issue regarding controller is that much of the game's UI was made with Keyboard and Mouse in mind, with some of the older menus being made without a thought that controller would be implemented, and their design reflects that. Making the UI fully compatible with controller would require rebuilding different menus with controller in mind; No disabling buttons, bigger buttons, more obvious selection direction.

Another issue is that controller isn't exactly plug and play, you need to launch the game with a controller already plugged in, plugging it in after the game has launched, the game won't recognise the controller. This is a fault with the way the game registers inputs.

I deeply apologise, I imagine to some this news is disappointing to hear. It hurts more as this update is literally called the CONTROLLER Update ːsteamsadː. For now, the game has only partial controller support. In a potential future update, remade UI could possibly be implemented.

THE REST OF THE GAME

The Main Menu

Going into the full release, I wanted to make the game's opening moments look much more polished, and this is reflected on the main menu, with brand new screens showing off different rooms from different floors. A brand new background for the main menu, there are four different backgrounds that change based on your current progression. All of the backgrounds are taken from existing rooms, see if you can recognise each room!

Settings

Video

• Completely redone and reorganized video settings screen

• Resolution settings are now more uniform and state their appropriate aspect ratios

• Added a V-sync toggle

• You can now set a custom FPS cap

Gameplay

• Hard Mode now has a help menu describing what changes are made

• A new Unfair Mode, with a help menu describing it's changes

• A Blood And Gore toggle

• Two toggles that allow you to enable Endless changes in normal gameplay

• A new screen describing how to set up a gamepad for Lost To Riches

New Items

This wouldn't be an update without introducing new items, and this update has eight new items to introduce to the game, double the amount of previous updates, all of these items being encountered across different stages of progression.

Existing Items

A major issue I wanted to tackle before the full release was item balance, it became clear during testing that there were really only a handful of items worth using over long play sessions, while others fell to the wayside for having niche use cases or simply being too underpowered, especially when compared to other currently powerful options such as Monarch Killer's Crown, Hefty Drill, Golden Bullets, and Gunslinger's Pantaloons. Almost every item in this update has received some kind of change, positive or negative, with one item in particular being reworked.

Fixes

• Glove Pickups now use the correct sprite

• Fixed an issue where Ammo UI wouldn't update correctly when Weapon Workshop Kit was removed

• Fixed a bug with the way Safety Mask and Asbestos Suit grant immunity to fire and poison damage, allowing them to reliably be used simultaneously

• Fixed a bug with Chalky Tablets that made the player's reload much slower past a certain threshold

• Fixed an issue that prevented the particle effects of Area of Effect objects, such as Toxic Gas or Fire, from finishing. This fix makes these traps easier to avoid

Tweaks

• Bloodline Targe's dash damage now functions much more consistently

Changes

• Monarch Killer's Crown explosion now only triggers killing an enemy/prop instead of on impact

• Gunslinger's Pantaloons fires a burst based on your current max ammo

• Loop of Death's extra projectile fires based on max ammo size

• Increased the amount of gas Gasoline generates

• Prop Population Ritual drops more frequent, bountiful pickups

• Golden Bullets power increases require more cash to reach. Golden Bullet's maximum damage is now reached at $2500, as opposed to $750 in the current version

• Safety Mask suppresses trap trigger sounds

• Safety Mask's description has been updated to better describe it's current functionality

• Weapon Workshop Kit increases projectile size by 25%, instead of 100%

• Chequebook now increases the amount of cash gained from cash pickups, you will also now receive a small amount of cash from chip pickups

• L'il Prick's poison damage has been dramatically increased

• Chalky Tablets now make all healing effects replenish more health

• Secret Safe requires less cash to activate it's healing effect

• Smoke Bomb's description has been slightly rewritten to improve clarity on it's effects

• Bloodline Targe's dash damage now sets enemies on fire, dashing will also ignite Oil Traps or Gasoline if applicable

With these new changes, combined with the new items in the update, I am much more satisfied with the balance of the game's combat, all items now feel like they serve their own distinct purpose and most have strong synergies with each other and I hope you find that to be the case too!

Hard Mode Reworks

As mentioned in our last announcement, Hard Mode has been almost entirely reworked, while I won't be repeating what was mentioned there here, I will mention that spawning difficult to fight enemies has been tweaked slightly, the game will now limit how many tough enemies spawn in at once to prevent fighting in extremely difficult or unfair conditions.

Gameplay Changes

• The Shop now changes dynamically based on the current floor

• Fixed a bug that prevented the Black Gloves from being unlocked

• Shop Items now show their full description + Their price when inspected

• Updated the particles for fire from Gasoline and Oil traps, making both more distinct

• Updated the blood particles to be more gorey

• Made the Grease Gun's accuracy penalty more aggressive

• Moneybags now explodes on death

• Charge attacks (Like the ones from bosses) now knock you out of your dash on-top of stunning you

• Damage Over Time Effects like Fire and Poison now ignore Immunity Frames, this was done to make these effects more threatening, and to act as a direct counter to one of the new enemy types introduced in this update

• You auto reload when not at full ammo for five seconds or longer

• Currency Pickups now track to the player on completing a room

• Re-tuned the drop rates of pickups across all enemies, common enemies should now drop less cash, chips and health overall, while tougher enemies will drop all three more frequently

You will now be able to shoot all weapons fully automatically by default by holding down the fire button, this was done for accessibility and to make it feel more satisfying to use specific items. To compensate for this major change, all weapons have been tweaked:

• Grease Gun's fire rate bonus has been increased

• The Musket's penalties have been increased across the board

• Bullet Binding Ritual has been reworked: On-top of a fire rate bonus, it now refunds ammo on kills

• Fire Rate upgrade cost has been increased, it is now 10 Chips by default

• Base Fire Rate is now 0.5/s, the max Fire Rate is now 0.25/s

Poison and Fire damage effects have been retuned for better distinction between the two damage types:

• Poison now deals greater damage, but slowly over time

• Fire now deals heavy damage in quick succession

For a while, poison and fire both felt like they were the same but with a couple of activation differences and a different appearance separating them. This change should make them feel even more apart from one another.

Unfair Mode

A new alternative to Hard Mode for those that want that original overly difficult experience, this game mode makes the following changes to gameplay:

• Enemies have double their maximum health

• Bosses receive quadruple their maximum health

• Enemies move twice as fast

• Enemies receive double damage, can no longer be interrupted, and no longer need to reload

• Rooms have double the waves

• Only the toughest of enemies spawn in each room

Unlike Hard Mode, Unfair Mode provides no bonuses to gameplay (Achievements, Endless Score Bonus), so it is not required to play this mode to complete the game. If you do choose to take it on, good luck, and Godspeed, I'm not even sure if it's possible to beat the game with the modifiers listed above!

Known Issues

Despite the size and time taken with this update, there are still some issues that slipped through the cracks, we want to make all players aware of these issues before reporting any issues on the Steam Forums:

• Sometimes buying an item from the shop with a full inventory won't allow you to swap items properly

• General Controller Instability (Particularly in menus)

• Ethereal Rodents sometimes do not spawn when entering a room

• Ethereal Rodents occasionally get stuck when an enemy or pickup they are targeting disappears

• The map screen fade effects sometimes do not fade properly

• Screens that ask to "Press Any Button" don't accept mouse input (Specifically the Floor Transition Screen)

• Music and SFX, unless muted, completely ignores volume settings in certain scenarios

• The scroll bar for the Items tab in the Velvet Angel Files starts with nothing in view

And with that, this is the end of a rather lengthy announcement post! This update is gargantuan, and is a massive overhaul of what the game was like 10 months ago. This update is a culmination of a large amount of ideas we have had over the course of this game's 2 year development, and I am excited for everyone to play this new content.

Personally, working on Lost To Riches has been a lot of fun, as it has allowed me to explore different parts of the Unity Engine, and bring a project from a student project to a polished fully release game available for people to buy on Steam.

Here's to the full release of Lost To Riches, and your enjoyment of the new update!

• Ethan