As in, Literally The Story

In the previous two-week period (should I call them "sprints" like at work or does that make this project sound too serious?) I mostly just fiddled around with random levels and mechanics. Two of them are donzo super ultra complete now; Lever Action and Short Desert. The rest are still just disjointed unplayable messes where the geometry just randomly ends and dumps you into the void.

I realized fiddling around all over the place is too much of a sisyphean task so I decided to bite the bullet and actually go back to the thing I've been trying to avoid; continuing the story chronologically. There's been days where I just wrote dialogue for hours on end, and things are slowly shaping up. Part of the reason I've been avoiding it is that next up there's two boss fights back-to-back (Saltman and Frie) and boss fights take a LOT of work.

Things went slower than expected due to real life stuff (including both my main chair and my backup chair breaking and me having to emergency-order a new one from Ikea, then spend a whole day trying to get the thing assembled) but I've at least managed to finish ONE of the major bosses:

A lot of the groundwork for Frie is in place but the fight itself is just a void of nothingness right now - I haven't really planned out a moveset for her and due to plot changes during The Big Writeup I'll have to scrap a bunch of my original vague ideas. So for now, she just monologues at you and then softlocks the game.

On top of the fight itself, there'll be three whole levels and a whole bunch of cutscenes and choices associated with her, so this update will probably need even longer in the oven before it's ready - I'm probably gonna pivot to finishing up the Bread Ruins storyline entirely for the 1.10 update and dummy out the new plot stuff in Lake Slushi and Nugget Mines a bit longer until I can finish either of those areas, but at least let you find the blacksmith and the clown shop.

One of my main worries right now is that Frie comes off as too hostile - you're meant to pity her and want to help her when the Big Plot Reveal happens, even though she's wanted you dead for quite a while. There might need to be further rewrites to make her more likeable. I still have no real idea how people feel about the characters introduced so far, feel free to tell me in the comments!

That Other Boss

When messing around with progress flags and stuff I also realized the Mean Eugene fight absolutely sucks, so I've completely revamped it - the randomness is now completely gone and he uses a pattern alternating between fruit throws and movement attacks (which flows a lot better than the surprisingly high chance of him throwing four tomatoes in a row he had before). The "grab ceiling" attacks is still terrible and I need to figure out a way to make it feel better, since it's basically the main setpiece tying the fight together.

Castle Town

I started work on the real hub zone, Castle Town. This one might also need some more time in the oven since it'll need a lot of shops and facilities and those in turn need a lot of new ITEMS, and it's also probably the area with the most writing (don't worry, most of it will be jokes instead of the Deep Lore you've gotten from Tippy and Gupreda so far).

Castle Town will also later be how you reach the Nameless Institute and Cowloon, plus having alternate paths into Slushi and Nugget. As I said in the first devlog, ideally the game should end up so nonlinear anything outside the tutorial is optional. Heck, I kinda wanna put a secret path somewhere that lets you take on another level first instead of the tutorial, though that means you could potentially reach the Nexus without a magic ring...

More Systems

I finally got around to make a system for letting you carry things around. This one I'm expecting to get a lot of mileage out of - e.g. letting you carry around pots to throw at enemies, carrying umbrellas to extend your jumps, and putting heavy things on buttons. The drawback to carrying something around is that it limits your mobility - maybe it's the secret sauce to stop the player from blazing through levels at lightning speeds? Or maybe it's so boring I only ever use it for the two gimmick levels I've planned that absolutely requires it. Only one way to find out! :D

There's also plenty of new effects, like windy zones, textured cylinders used for some backgrounds, and background spinny things that I intend to use for cool spinning galaxies for some backgrounds. Or sometimes something much more abstract. (I'm trying to narrow down a concept for a completely incomprehensible location that will be important to the plot but I'm still not happy with any of the designs I've tried out)

That's All

Yeah, as I said, not a lot of things done these last two weeks, but if I can get the Frie plotline (and three associated new levels) done that should be enough for the next content update. Maybe ideally I can get some stuff in place where you can use the movement upgrade you'll get along the way too - a lot of the movement-upgrade-required paths that exist at the moment currently have nothing on the other side, they're just there to make the game APPEAR bigger than it is.

Stay flippin', folks! I swear I'll get this thing done EVENTUALLY. And hopefully I'll figure out some better way to do early access content updates where you folks actually get to ACCESS the stuff at a more regular pace.

/Yal