May Update: Demo Success, Optimizations, Some Big Gameplay Changes for 0.0.61

It's been a few weeks since the demo dropped, and honestly, the response has been pretty cool to see.

Since launch, the game picked up almost 250 new wishlists. That's people who actually played the demo and decided they wanted more of it, which feels way more meaningful than a random click. The average playtime is sitting ~1 hour, so yeah, people are actually staying and playing. That's all I really wanted.

One small bummer though. The game didn't qualify for the Deckbuilders Festival on Steam. Their call was that it doesn't have enough deckbuilder aspect to it. Bit of a tough one to hear, but oh well. The game is what it is, and people seem to be enjoying it, so we keep going. Steam post imageYeah I made above image to grief..

Some midsized streamers also picked the game up on their own, which was awesome to watch. Got a ton of useful feedback just from observing how they played and where things got confusing or satisfying. Really appreciate everyone who gave it a go on stream!

Also... the game is now 30mb installed.

After the demo launch I finally had time to do an optimization pass on the asset pack. 30mb, down from 130mb. Smaller than most empty Unity project. #notmadewithunity

Now for the bigger stuff. Some of the feedback I got had genuinely interesting reasoning behind it, and it pushed me to make some real changes to how the core gameplay works. These are not small tweaks, these are things I think will matter in the long run.

Piece Weights are now visible

Pieces on the board now have weights that show how likely they are to spawn. Higher weight means you'll see it more. This was always happening under the hood, but now it's transparent to you as a player.

Steam post image Steam post image

You can now Skip pieces and Reroll

When you encounter a new piece during a run, you can skip it. This means you can keep your board small and focused, working with fewer tile types if that's your strategy. But there's a catch. Skipping a piece means missing out on something the game gives you when you actually upgrade the boards. I'll let you figure out what that is.

Duplicate pieces now increase weight

If you encounter a piece you already have, picking it up increases its weight instead. So yes, theoretically, you could stack a board full of swords or stinger bullets. Whether that's broken or brilliant is for you to find out.

Weight adjustments in the shop

You can now spend in the shop to directly reduce piece weights. More control, more ways to build around what you actually want to see. Piece that reached 0 weights will be removed from your deck. So now you can remove a piece from your deck!

Overkill now gives more rewards

Overkill triggers when you deal 150% or more of an enemy's max HP in a single hit. When it does, you get bonus credits and a higher mark count. This should help out in situations where you've built up a lot of attack power but the game was only letting you hit one enemy at the end of a turn. Felt bad before, should feel a lot better now.

One last thing. I'm going to start sharing a rough focus list at the end of each update. Not a locked roadmap, just what I'm currently working toward before the next post. So when the next update drops, you can expect these to be in the game.

Next up: Perks and Events.

Events in the classic roguelike sense, the kind where you walk into a room and something happens that isn't just combat. Perks, I'll let that one breathe for now. More on that soon.

That's it for now. See you on the internet, or in the Discord if you want to chat and drop feedback directly.

https://discord.gg/PXDWcuPtWx

Cheers, - Ernes