NextFest Demo Update

In preparation for NextFest we spent a few weeks combing through our game end to end and looking for opportunities to improve things. There's been a few major changes, a few minor changes, some bug fixes, and some balance adjustments.

Major Changes

Harps aren't useless!

Hero's swords give him ATK, and ATK directly influences how much damage he does.

Einstein's books give him M.ATK, and M.ATK directly influences how hard his spells hit.

OCG's claws give them ATK, and ATK directly influences how much damage they do.

But Princess's harps didn't really do much... If we gave ATK, this didn't help because Princess spent her rounds casting buffs and debuffs, not attacking. Her attack was (rather intentionally) underwhelming.

But if we gave her M.ATK, this has no impact on the effectiveness of her buffs and debuffs! "ATK UP" triples your ATK, regardless of how strong Princess is when she casts it.

So we've created a new type of attack: "Play"! Instead of swinging her harp at enemies and risking breaking a string, Princess now plucks those strings delicately and heals her allies! This small zero-MP AoE heal scales with M.ATK, meaning you finally have a reason to buy a better harp!

Hat Tricks!

We've added special hats to the game which, when equipped, grant the wearer a special ability! These "hat tricks" can open new avenues of play, give new uses to old characters, or completely change your strategy. Try to find all 7 hidden hats!

Minor Changes

Chest Rework!

We went back through multiple early maps and double-checked the loot in the chests. What good is armor if you start with something better? What good is a potion when enemies are dropping hi-potions?

During this pass we changed some of the loot, added a lot more chests, and added color-coding to the chests we had: Red for weapons, blue for armor, green for consumables, and gold for money!

As part of this rework we also opened the treasure room in Bat Cave. See if you can figure out how to get in!

New Status Menu

Many of our equipment items grant "secondary" stats like target rate or evasion rate. These secondary stats don't show up in the RPG Maker default status menu. We had added a VisuStella plugin which expands the status menu, but the expanded menu showed way too much -- adding fields for things like each character's zodiac sign and favorite food! The kinds of fields we hadn't filled out, and which had no mechanical impact on the game.

So we wrote our own status menu plugin. There's a known bug that the "current level" overlaps with the "experience to next level". We forgot to fix this before pushing the update, and we've put the game in code freeze during NextFest to avoid breaking something - so this will be addressed when the event is over!

Cutscene Adjustments

We've fixed spelling and punctuation issues, added animation and movement to several cutscenes that lacked them (the fetch quest in Purradoxia is way more fun now!), and improved the timing of some lines.

Interactables

We've added more books, scrolls, pictures, shelves, barrels, and buckets you can click on -- so keep your eyes out for dad jokes and puns throughout the world. We plan to keep adding more as development goes on!

Balance Changes

First Villain's Tower

During many, many play tests we found that the enemies here were just fine in terms of damage output, but their health was a bit