Combat Polish + The Beginning of Bosses+

I'm finally back after a development break. It's time to finish this game up.

Content

• NEW LEVEL TYPE: Boss+. After no-hitting a Boss, you can fight a MUCH harder version of them. They also get an additional feature or piece of equipment to set them apart.

• Added Boss+ versions of Gigabrite and Scarred Experiment.

• NEW TUTORIAL: Advanced Tutorial. Helps players learn important, more advanced tech that their moveset can do.

• Rewrote the dialogue for the Basic Tutorial.

• Added a section to the Basic Tutorial that talks about Anobrite merging, as well as a new page in the Tutorial Menu for it.

• NEW VISUAL MECHANIC: Trick Display. Doing cool stuff will stack up a popup depending on what trick you did.

Visual/Audio

• Scarred Experiment's waves now have a different indicator, instead using a giant red arrow warning to show the path.

• Every boss attack that has a non-random trigger condition now has a proper indicator. For example, a yellow ring now shows the proximity trigger for Gigabrite to do a slam instead of a punch in his Melee Stance.

• Every boss now has a new type of indicator: Hints. Hints are faint white indicators used to help the player learn/remember learnable boss patterns. For example, Gigabrite's stomps always alternate between a plus and a cross shot pattern, so a hint on the upcoming shot pattern now pops up after specific non-stomp attacks to remind the player of the most recent shot pattern.

• Combo scoring has been slightly reworked to allow for more free-flow combos to count as proper combos. Instead of instantly ending when the swing ends, there is now a 0.25s timer that gets reset on additional hits. This shouldn't affect nest comboing that much, but it lets you actually get consistent combos on bosses for better visual feedback.

• Removed the volume increase that higher combos had. Pitch enough is fine.

• Added a distinct border to the arena during the Nightmare Growth fight.

• New sounds and animations have been added to Gigabrite.

• There is now a pause, animation, and screen indicator for getting stunned.

• Adjusted wording of some tips in the loading screen.

Balance/Feel

• Changed the main character's canonical name from Brigand to Brig, which is now her real name instead of being a codename. The name "Brigand" is now given to the giant knife she wields. Yes, them being similar is intentional. Themes and such.

• Removed the Boxer from the Basic Tutorial.

• Gigabrite's teleport has been changed to teleport to the player.

• Gigabrite's Greenie throw is now bigger but slower.

• Gigabrite's Dash Punch now always attempts to predict movement instead of being a 50/50.

• Gigabrite's Armored Stomp is now a new move entirely. It's an unreactable Armored Bash that leads into a cross-shaped divebomb.

• Nightmare Growth has received a slight rework. The arena is now pitch-black, but the boss emits a constant cone of visibility that tracks you. This also serves as the hint for the blinding scream attack.

• Normal branches spawned by Nightmare Growth's Branch Impale are now destroyable, but they also now stun the player on contact. This of course means you can Bounce off of them now.

• Adjusted player knockback to resolve faster, reducing duration but increasing speed.

• Instead of extending airtime, the airborne version of Punchback now forces the player back to the ground and gives a Dash window. This lets you chain it into another Bounce.

• Punchback's travel distance has been modified to fit the new knockback speed.

• Using Brake during Punchback now instantly cancels the knockback from Punchback, and now also resets your Punch cooldown instead of just your Slash cooldown.

• Getting hit while Dashing now cancels the dash and plays a special animation. This is less of a balancing thing and more of a feedback thing to better convey to the player that they got hit. Also in case they still think Dash gives I-frames.

• Brake no longer gives brief I-frames.

Bugfixes

• Fixed active mutations not being affected by lighting and fixed them not being Bounceable.

• Fixed offscreen indicators blocking UI elements from being clicked.

• Fixed a small thing that was causing Punchback Bounces to feel inconsistent.

• Fixed a small thing that made the post-Bounce lunge feel slightly inaccurate. The "hitstop" after the Bounce will now also feel more like hitstop. Adjusted airborne speed to compensate.

• Fixed an oversight with certain boss attack calculations that made their predictive aiming inconsistent (most notably Nightmare Growth's beam).

• Fixed a bug where Punch~Dash completed the Punchback tutorial step.

• Fixed a bug where some UI was blocking clicks.

• Fixed a bug where the score text was not visible ONLY on Forest.