v1.0.0 Out Now!

Full Release Announcement!

I'm pleased to announce that Paper Towel Royale is finally in a state where I'm comfortable calling it "complete" after almost 4 years since my first commit to GitHub! I want to say thank you to all of the early access players who have supported this game from the beginning. It wouldn't be where it is now without you.

This doesn't mean that I'm finished releasing updates; I'm just ready for more people to play it because I think that it is finally worth playing.

This final 1.0.0 update focuses entirely on the friction points that make or break a player's experience: input reliability, camera behavior, and visual clarity.

Update v1.0.0 Notes

Additions:

• Basketball:

• overhauled maps

• added cheering sound on score

• added game notification and sound for scoring a three-pointer

• made goal barriers only collide with the basketball

• added a slight basketball throw animation

• camera now follows basketball hoops

• camera now follows basketballs

• increased size of basketball sprite

• added indicator to point out where basketball is Steam post image

• Added Reddit link to menu

• Added lead change notifications

• Added new bullet sprite for gumshot

• Added explosion AOE sprite for bubble special

• Added explosion AOE sprite for grapple special

• Improved change scene arrow sprite

• Added a help menu

• Improved crown indicator arrow sprite

• Added gifs to movement tutorial

• Removed redundant tutorial messages from tutorial instructor ui

• Made it to where anyone can interact with the game end screen buttons

• Added ability to submit ui using 'e'

• Added specials sign to special shop

• Increased default speed of helicopter intro

Game Balance:

• King of the Crown:

• wearing the crown now reduces movement speed by 25%

• Basketball:

• reduced ball respawn delay to 0.5s

• increased 3-pointer distance by half a unit

• increased basketball throw force

• increased wind-up time slightly

• decreased collision size of basketball bumpers

• Tower Control:

• reduced default match time to 4 minutes

• increased speed of the tower substantially

• increased tower idle time before timeout from 3.5s to 5.5s

• Respawning:

• Respawn time now scales upwards with number of players by a little bit

• Increased default respawn time by 1 second

• Increased chance of lightning in jungle world slightly

• Reduced storm damage from 5 to 3

• Made experience gain based more on time played than kills or damage

• Increased default camera extra zoom and follow speed

Item Balance:

• Item Spawns:

• reduced spawn-rate of rocket launchers

• reduced spawn-rate of cacti

• Shield Pot:

• increased explosion AOE size by 20%

• Cactus:

• reduced damage rate when attached to players

• increased throw-force

• Rocket Launcher:

• now shoots a max of 3 shots instead of 4 shots before destroying

• Grenade:

• now detonates in ~2s after activation

• Turret:

• Increased health from 75 to 100

• Baseball Bat:

• Increased size of collider and sprite

Special Balance:

• Grapple Special:

• now pulls players through blocks

• increased speed of grapple

• increased explosion radius

• increased max explosion damage from 80 to 95

• improved grapple explosion effect

• reduced charge lost on death by 10%

• Bubble Special:

• increased number of bubbles from 3 to 6

• doubled bubble shoot range,

• made each successive bubble shoot closer than the last

• increased explosion radius

• increased max damage area for explosion

• increased bubble max lifetime from 15s to 20s

• gave bubbles more gravity to not fly away

• made it harder for bubbles to automatically pop each other

• Hammer Special:

• halved damage

• reduced max duration from 10s to 5.5s

• slightly reduced character forward thrust

• Missile Launch Special:

• removed where missile explosion would hurt the original user of the special

• increased explosion max damage area

• increased missile fuel

• reduced missile initial speed

• reduced collider size

• Spin Special:

• reduced projectile knockback

• increased charge time by 3s

Gun Balance:

• AdjustedChumpsignificantly increased knockback and recoil
• AdjustedDesert Eagleslightly increased knockback, fire-rate, and clip-size (by 2)
• AdjustedDual Masterincreased fire rate
• AdjustedGumshotno longer a burst weapon; increased fire rate and clip size; decreased damage
• AdjustedGuzzlerincreased clip size, recoil, and fire rate; reduced reload time
• AdjustedTri-Burstincreased burst fire-rate and fire-rate; decreased reload time by half a second
• AdjustedUpshotincreased recoil and knockback slightly,; bullets now go vertical much more than horizontal
• AdjustedT-5increased clip size and fire-rate
• AdjustedNegative!increased forward recoil
• AdjustedZapperIncreased knockback and clip size (by 2 bullets), reduced fire-rate slightly and reload time by 0.3s
• AdjustedPop PistolIncreased number of shots; decreased reload time

Fixes:

• Fixed where rocket launcher missiles would explode even when being absorbed by sponges

• Fixed where camera would have a seizure when something was too far off screen

• Fixed where after you shoot the basketball or throw an item you can’t shoot until clicking once on keyboard & mouse

• Fixed lightning explosion AOE sprite

• Fixed some camera barriers on some stages

• Fixed powering up indicator for basketball not showing when holding it to the left of the character

• Fixed strange error in tower control

• Fixed where the tower on Parlimont tower control map wouldn't work

• Fixed incorrect icon for choosing target score for Last Towel Standing game mode

• Fixed deathmatch game mode overtime not working

• Fixed where score increase text would go too far down

Developer Reflection

The Importance of Playtesting

There were so many times where I spent multiple months working on a feature, only to realize that players either didn't understand it, or didn't enjoy it. Of course, this is all a part of the iteration process, but it still felt like I was accomplishing nothing.

It isn't easy to tell how players will respond to a mechanic without seeing them react in real-time! Balancing intuitive gameplay and controls with deep and interesting gameplay was a huge challenge. I could add a super deep and interesting mechanic, only for it to be completely lost on players because it was unintuitive or unexplained.

Local Multiplayer is Challenging

One of the biggest hurdles to developing a local multiplayer game is that you must fit everything on a single screen. Every piece of information from UI to gameplay elements must all share one space without becoming too cluttered or too small. This problem is compounded when you want to support up to eight players, as Paper Towel Royale does. How shall I communicate to each player:

• Their current health?

• Their current ammunition?

• Are they reloading?

• Their current special charge?

• Is their special ready?

• Which player are they?

Scope Creep

One of the most difficult parts of finishing this game was knowing when to stop adding new things. Truly, one of my biggest allies was good old Google Docs where my giant TODO list lies. When I was tempted to add some unnecessary feature that seemed cool, I instead stuck them in the "Ideas for the future" section.

Conclusion

Of course, I didn't do this perfectly, but I sure learned a lot in the process. Not only that, but I think I've got a pretty fun game to show for it! Give it a try and let me know what you think!