I'm still super drained after all the family Christmas shenanigans but I did promise to keep doing devlogs every two weeks; I'd feel terrible if I missed something just because of being human so here you go, a status update and some game design.

What Have I Been Working On Lately?

There's five total levels mentioned in the patchnotes, some of which are entirely new and some of which are additions to old levels (City of the Ancients' fourth Crystal Burger is now obtainable, featuring a new gimmick where the level changes behind your back in noneuclidean ways). I've started to work on a new blob of story stuff which is why I don't feel like releasing any of the new content yet - it's not gonna be a fun experience going through a lot of story buildup and then things just kinda end with a "NOT DONE YET" wall in the way, right?

I still haven't figured out how to decouple story and gameplay bits - not sure if it even is possible? - and I still don't actually know if people play the game for the gameplay or the story so I don't know what to focus on.

 One thing that's really turned out well, though, is going with my ROMMS system (available as a free asset pack) as the basis for the game. Basically, every area is a single Game Maker room and objects are used to indicate camera scroll regions, and while I have some additional limitations in place (levels can't be larger than 30x30 screens - that's the size of the data structure that keeps track of which rooms you've visited) it's not really gotten in the way yet (900 screens is still a LOT to work with) and ultimately is a pretty soft limitation (rooms outside of the 30x30 area CAN be used, they just won't be drawn on the pause map).

Some of the new systems I've added recently actually use this to their advantage - I added new interior areas, which are actually just in the mapping deadzone. The Nexus was running out of available space (did I mention everything turned out like twice as large as originally anticipated?) so being able to just place more rooms offscreen somewhere is going to help a lot. And there's a system that lets me place markers on the doors taking you to these indoor areas that basically says "pretend the player is here when they open the map" which will indicate your position on the building you're allegedly inside, perfecting the illusion.

Together with noneuclidean connections and the Bigger On The Inside and Behind Your Back systems there's potential to do all sorts of confusing shenanigans later, I've already done one level based on each of those but it's just baby steps where I figure out what works and what worksn't. Stay tuned for when I've finally figured it out!

I've also added some new stuff to previous levels - there's a giant (obvious) secret path in Chessmaster's Tomb that lets you unlock a dodgeroll, for instance - and yes, I only added this in because of the joke in Iron Pineapple's latest video about how the only defining feature of a soulslike is having a dodge roll. I mean, the game already has tons of build options (over 100 charms to choose from now!) and a pretty high difficulty, might as well go for the low-hanging fruit as well? (No estus flask yet though, sorry)

Oh yeah, and because I added stacking crates it's also an immersive sim now, why not. Burgertale must be ALL the genres, ALL the genres, muahahaha

Will it actually contribute to the core gameplay though?

...that's a trick question, because I still haven't figured out what the core gameplay is, lol. If the core gameplay is "going fast" then everything involving lifting and pushing things around is a total failure because it slows you down. Still trying to figure out a way to make it less of a drag (it's possible to hit liftables with spells to knock them around but then mana regeneration is going to be the thing slowing you down).

The Dumb Bell accessory was meant to help with this, but since you still can't run while holding something (derp) it didn't help as much as I thought, which is ultimately why it needed those extra tweaks to make it also boost damage from thrown weapons so it at least contributes to potential builds.

What's Next?

I've ran out of ideas for cool systems to implement so for now I'll probably just try to get the story for Nugget Mines back on track. The giant level screenshot above is from the latest story level, and there'll be a whopping THREE story-locked levels for this world so the next update might take a while.  I can't promise the next update will be done in time to be a late Christmas gift, but hopefully it'll be done before it becomes an easter egg... if that makes sense?

Stay flippin', folks!

/Yal

Oh yeah, and it'll probably be until easter before I remember to start dates with "2025" instead of "2024" lol