Love • Words • 100M

Y'all feel that in the air? That giddy, happy feeling? Ah, of course, that must be love!

Hello, hello, hey, hey, and hi! It is I, flower baasket, here for the very first Love Words in Snow • Fall history. Man, if you're here right now, just know that I love you. Yes, you reading the devlog. I love YOU in particular!

Now, for literally everybody reading this, you may be wondering: "What's even the big deal? What is this?" Well, let me tell you, this is a celebration, that's what it is!

This is a love letter, from me, to you! Ever since release, the game has been slowly but surely getting bigger with each update. Today, we have reached a very important milestone. 100 members in the Discord server. Excellent.

...Erm, almost. We're close, but we haven't hit it yet. This month doesn't have anything exciting going on, anyways, so I figured I'd do it a little early.

For future Love Words, I would love for them to be standalone updates instead. But, since the game is at an awkward time right now, it'll just have to be added into 0.4.

But yeah. I guess for all intents and purposes, this will just be a slightly more interesting devlog.

Ah, and once we actually hit 100 members, I'll be doing a giveaway for a couple of keys in the server. The game will also be on sale, 25% off for a week (starting 4 hours from now cuz i fucked up the sale), so you should totally join!

I prioritized doing things that I think would get the most reactions, so...I hope you'll be very pleased with everything here!

Anthoney in Station Declaration uniform. He even painted his nails, what a diva! "Hikikomori Zettai Justice," and all that.

Unit • Info

What better place to start than the UI? I don't have much to say this time around, but the next screen that was reworked was the enemy info tab. Y'know, the one containing passives, Cubes, and tags.

I don't have much else to say, so I'm just gonna show it.

Ooh! Big and beautiful, isn't it?

It's very much larger than the last one, but shows all of the information on one screen instead of three separate tabs. Much more convenient for cross-referencing.

The player has the exact same thing. Just blue instead of red.

And, those of you astute lookers may have noticed that some of the text is the passives is colored cyan. What does that mean? Well, you may have noticed, but the Extra Deck is gone from this version. Instead, Cubes mentioned in passives will glow cyan, and hovering over them will bring up the full Cube. It's the same for those adorable mini Cubes, as well.

I'm very satisfied with it. I wish I had more to say, but it's fairly self-explanatory, all things considered. It's just a better looking and less annoying version of the last one.

Now that I have this, I better make some fights that are worth reading over, huh...

Events

...Don't get excited, I didn't finish two UI elements in one month. Or maybe you should get excited. Yap incoming.

Events are a very overlooked part in the Snow • Fall experience, and I think that makes sense. Since the addition of Zodi and Stage R, I now know what I want to do with them.

I very much like the idea of runs having certain "absolutes" that you can guarantee. Even if you're going for a special Reminiscent Mode Path, you still get 2 more free Event picks from Stage R that you can totally use to your advantage!

I don't know about other players, but I abuse this as much as I possibly can. Best case, you get a good Product for your build. Worst case, you get some fodder Cubes that you can spend on rerolling. It's free!

Still, I would very much like to flesh out some of the Events in the near future. I know some of them are home to some...ass, to put it lightly.

As well as some buffs to Event-exclusive Cubes, some Events will be gaining more options & more complex conditionals. For example, in the reworked Storytime With Mother Event, only Cubes tagged with [Emotions] can be eligible to pass the check. Cool stuff, huh?

Naturally, that means that the rewards will be all the sweeter if you can pass them.

There will only be one new Event in 0.4, Station glass' protoplan.

One Cube unlocked from this Event will inflict protostatic, a status effect that can combine the effects of up to two different Glacial status effects! It was the only natural evolution for that status, I feel.

Glacial fans are gonna be eating good with that. I tried my best to include every status effect in this Love Words, so that every child can feel my love equally.

Except Discard, because that kid is not my son.

...Kidding, I love Discard. They just have too much content right now.

Oh, and each Event is getting its own illustrations, as well as rewritten dialogue. Wahaha, isn't that love? Thank you very much for the incredible drawings, Acidtone.

Misc • Cool • Stuff

In addition to that, I had SO much free time this month. None of my artists got back to me until late March...I was kinda worried I wouldn't have anything to show for a bit!

While I was working on fully implementing the new Cubes to the game, I naturally had to do a lot of lag reductions. I was able to get away with some real bullshit since the Cubes were tiny. But now they're so large and have so much text, it was super laggy the first time I put them in!

This had me wondering, "huh, I wonder what other shitty implementations I can fix?" And then it was all over from there...

I think it just goes to show that despite all my awful coding, the game is so simple that it still runs fairly fine, performance-wise at least. The only exception to this rule was the Event screen, which was unnaturally laggy for something so simple.

Anyways, yeah, I did some lag reductions, and that also lead me to redoing some of the logic for flipping characters! Now Abstract Li An can pierce through enemies like a true Abstract Freelancer...I'm so proud of her...🥺

Painter infighting.

Ah, y'know, since we're on the topic of Abstract Li An, I wanted her to sprite to change depending on how many colors she stole. First, she'd start with no paint, then it would get in her hair, and end with her ribbon arms.

I think little details like this make the character more fun to use.

Misery Gravedigger has something like that, too. The shape of his hate determines which Sticky he's going to draw next. Use that information as you will, before he gets axed.

While doing this, I also thought of other various QoL things I could add to the game. These aren't implemented yet, but I plan to when I get free time:

Gravedigger switching Visepulture with Q, allowing him to use right-click Products Misery Gravedigger rework Tilt replaced with Grace except in Griffn's deck. Grace is like reverse Sentiment More random lines for Zodi

I'd like to have playtesters on this, but the game is in a VERY unplayable state at the moment. Who woulda thought that changing around multiple large systems would lead a lot of bugs?

So, uh...you'll hear about those in like two months or something.

Product • Showcase

And now, here it is! A much larger scaler Product Showcase.

There's a lot this time. Even though I said this update would have few Cubes and Products, all of my artists suddenly decided to make this update the best one. Not that I'm complaining.

Ahem. Let's start with the Cubes, shall we?

Congratulations to A Thousand Cherries for being the new highest rolling Cube in the game, at a 10-31! Focus stays on TOP!

I've had the idea for KING for a very long time, ever since Left Hand and Right Hand got added. Which...was like two update ago, so I guess not very long.

Products and such.

I didn't know what to do with Emotions, so I was lowkey just slapping it on Cubes before. But then I realized that there's an entire separate race that revolves around emotions. So, y'know, it's free inspiration.

We got Envy Baby, KING, and now we just need something for QUEEN! The French-Suited gang is almost all here.

Mika with the Impatience status effect. Envy Baby does not get two guns.

...Oh, and one more thing. I've decided that 0.4 won't include UI reworks for the Main Menu or screens revolving around that. After all, I've decided that I'm going to get this update out before August! Is that possible...? Well, who really knows!

Now, if you excuse me, I'm going to work on fixing all those bugs. Wish me luck, this is gonna be one long April...boohoo...

And Caiyin is soon. Maybe. A series of misfortunate events have struck my sprite artist, and they're still finishing up some sprites for Euryale. On MY soul, Caiyin in 2~3 months.

Making the game run - April Some UI bullshit prolly - May Caiyin - June

It's going to be a very beautiful June. Hehe.

Until next time, everyone. I love you all!

-flower baasket