v1.0 Update

Well, it’s finally here. Pennylooter 1.0. I still remember when The Developer first approached me with a 20 pound sack full of pennies and swallowed each and every one. At the end, he started convulsing, sobbing, and retching - a cacophony of agony that finally climaxed in the expulsion of millions of pennies from his skin. I offered him assistance, but he only said “write this down! Write this down!” With this momentous occasion, the deepest denizens of the land emerge for the final showdown. The thread of destiny presents itself to you, and offers a chance to finally claim revenge on the creator of this journey, if you are willing to pull on the taut strings of reality.

New Bosses

Amy Eightlegs

Method acting has taken some down strange routes. None know this road better than Amy Eightlegs; born a normal human, Amy knew she was destined for the big screen. When she finally landed the lead role in “Janitors VS Giant Octopus: Crying Over Spilled Ink,” she immediately began preparations. After 13 excruciating months of plastic surgery, mind melds, and DNA replacement, Amy found her true form as an 80 foot tall octopus. Unfortunately, she turned to villainy after the procedures rendered her unable to vocalize coherently, and thus unfit to voice the role of Roctopus in the movie.

I had the pleasure to interview Amy recently on my talk show. Check it out!

Writer: “So how are you reacting to the news of being fired from your latest role?”

Amy: WOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOSHHHHH

W: Okay, I don't really care for your tone? And I hear you spawn in at…wave 45? What's that all about? I mean, an actor of your caliber, appearing this late in the game? That feels like a bit of an octo-miss!

(5 minutes is allowed for the audience to cease their deafening laughter and applause)

A: BLOOOOOOSHHHH

W: Okay man, I get it, this bit isn't that good. Amy spawns after wave 44, fires ink lasers at you, and can blow ink bubbles that spawn smaller sub-bubbles (or Subbles). Does that sound right, Amy?

A: SKASSSSSSHHHHHHHHH

Remmy Ribbit

We are CONSTANTLY receiving complaints from concerned players, hundreds, maybe even thousands of carrier pigeons hourly, all asking and stating the same things: “where are the frogs,” “frog patch when,” “Pennylooter could compete with American Football if it had frogs,” “when Pennylooter adds frogs, I will be able to delete the rest of my Steam library,” and so on.

We hear you. The last patch was originally “The Frog-date,” and it added a very delicate ecosystem of every known species of frog into Pennylooter, each with unique habitats, behaviors, and taste in music. Unfortunately, Remmy Ribbit appeared right before launch, and promptly devoured all of the frogs we created. I asked The Developer why he would create such a creature, but all he did was exclaim “my frogs! My frogs are missing!” for 12 minutes straight before crying hysterically.

Hopping into action at wave 50, Remmy is relentless. Empowered by trillions of his brethren, he stands as one of your most dangerous opponents yet. He has two forms of attack: atomically charged frog jumps, and frogs themselves, hurtling towards you. So many innocent frogs, turned into artillery. God rest your small souls.

Princeton the Penguin

Forget anything else I have ever said about any of the other bosses. Princeton the Penguin is the most heinous of them all. Together, with an entire gang of formerly innocent penguins that he has hypnotized into tearing you limb from limb, he is here to make your life worse. In fact, here’s a pro-gamer tip for you, completely free: if you shoot a penguin enough times, it WILL die. This even applies to psychic penguins.

Princeton pops in after wave 54.

Fun fact about the number 54

it is the atomic number of the element Xenon.

Here's another one

Princeton, like most penguins, is armed with immense psychic strength. Unlike most penguins, he lacks any sense of decency, and will use those powers to launch homing snowballs and concentrated beams of pure Penguin Spunk right at you.

The Developer

I suppose it’s time we finally come clean. Pennylooter is not a “game.” At least, not for you. It is the culmination of hundreds of years of human engineering, esoteric rituals, and senseless, senseless sacrifice. All for the sake of holding back the greatest power of all: The Developer. A deity of immense strength, he was limited only by his warped perception that reality is just a video game. This was used against him to trap him in this digital form; as long as the game continues, he will be ignorant to the fact that there is another realm available for him to fill with sentient trees, yetis, and psychic penguins. He demands entertainment. Play the game.

Clear 54 waves, and he will slink forth. He does not play fair; the fragile rules of reality are against you.

The Map

This is one of the most monumental additions to any video game ever, and here's why: Pennylooter's generation is based on seeds. That means that, in order to add this item, The Developer had to painstakingly draw out every single possible seed's world layout. That's more maps than there are atoms in an elephant (i.e. at least THOUSANDS). You better be grateful.

The map, when obtained, will display your current location and the location of shops, and you can also drop pins on the map to mark other places of interest. If you unlock the Marathon achievement by travelling 42 kilometers (or approximately 39,370 inches), then you will always start with a map.

New Items

Listen fella, I'm not gonna sit here, hold your pretty little hands, and talk you through every blessed line of code that was added to this god forsaken game. Do I sound like a tour guide? Have these patch notes ever actually said anything useful regarding things like “balance” or “what a boss fight is actually like” or “finally resolved the ‘Meat Mansion Massacre’ bug”? Oh, you've never heard of the Meat Mansion? That's because there isn't one. I made it up. But no one was shooting Archduke Franz Ferdinand, the heir to the Austro-Hungarian throne, either, until someone was! Yes sir, I am appropriating ANOTHER tragedy for the sake of comparison just to make a point, since tragedy and exaggeration is the only thing you seem to comprehend. In an age of divided attention, brutality demands headlines.

Look, maybe we got off on the wrong foot here. Earlier, I asked several rhetorical questions. In the interest of being more “transparent” or whatever, here is the answer to all of them:

“Yes, Pennylooter is being sponsored by Gut Mustard cleaning products, and yes, these products have been known to cause irreversible damage to the respiratory, nervous, skeletal, circulatory, cardiovascular, digestive, respiratory (again) and temporal systems. We know this causes a great deal of concern regarding our ethics, business practices, and sense of basic human morality. But you should consider this: there are bugs in your skin.”

I sincerely hope that clears some things up about what exactly we added to the game.

So like, i know I kind of went off up there for the final section and you don't have to use it. It would be funny if you did though. Would be even funnier if you kept this part in too. Keep it real, keep it fresh you know, like a, like a baby bird in sunglasses-type fresh. - Patch Notes Writer

Small Changes and Bug Fixes

• Improved UI navigation with gamepads

• Some visual improvements to the UI

• Gamepad controls are now displayed on screen

• Native controller support for more types of controllers

• Added sound effects for the Bow and Arrow and the Bloodgun

• Fixed a crash that could occur during the tutorial

• Fixed a bug that allowed the player to duplicate the starting item during the tutorial

• Retextured Phillip McTree, Boulder Beast, and the exterior of the Shop

• Fixed a bug that caused altars to sometimes despawn shortly after appearing, making them impossible to get to

• Reduced the price of Healthy Stench and increased its rarity

• Changes to cooldown and shop music

• Improved the effect of knockback on the player

• Fixed various collision issues (you can't phase through the shop's walls anymore)

• Added shelves in the shop

• The fungus biome is now unlocked by defeating Anita

• Animated the wings given by Dev's Blessing

• Rebalanced various item unlocks; defeating each boss unlocks two items, one for normal difficulty and one for hard mode

• Armor pieces will no longer appear in the shop if the player is already wearing them

• Fixed special magazine meter colors for the Blood and Penny guns not resetting when switching back to a normal weapon

• Added a credits screen

• Reworked and improved the tutorial

• Fixed blinker enemies sometimes spawning on top of the player

• Enemies now flash red when damaged, like the player

• The damage numbers that appear above enemies can be toggled on/off in the settings, and they're now off by default

• On gamepads, guns now reload automatically when the magazine is emptied

• Recently unlocked items will now be highlighted in the shop

• Reworked the save system to work like traditional roguelikes. All your achievements and unlocks will be automatically migrated to the new system

• Reworked progression (it doesn't take as long to get through the game now)

• Fixed dropped items disappearing in the shop