This week has been patch week, meaning we’ve spent a ton of time doing bug testing/fixing, AND that the Frontline version of the beta finally has an update! This patch adds the final two floors, new event rooms and some adjustments to Arcade Mode. We still got some things to add, such as sound effects and some minor additions (some updates to the high score interface, among other things), but once that’s done it’s finally back to Story Mode and the final updates of that mode.

The Desert and Lost Ship floors are now added, as well as a load of new Event Rooms, revamped challenge-rooms, more perks, and more stuff that can happen during runs! Arcade Mode now also has its very own map, instead of using Story Mode’s, which.. really didn’t do anything.

Finishing a run awards players with Golden Essence which can be used to purchase rewards, both power-ups and cosmetic. After the run has “finished”, the player can also fight a final battle against two different bosses – the one waiting after a finished Three Catalyst run is an entirely new boss that’s unique to the mode.

Full patch notes as follows:

Additions

• The two final floors have been added to Arcade Mode
• Beating all Arcade Mode floors now provides many extra rewards, as well as a final battle for the Catalyst
• A unique final-final Arcade Mode boss can be encountered if beating the mode with three Catalysts activated
• Nine new types of ?-rooms has been added to Arcade Mode
• The Arcade Mode challenge-room pool has been revamped
• Arcade Mode now has its own map
• Experimental change to new network API for Steam

Changes

• The Arcade Mode shop and most event rooms now has unique looks
• Vastly improved load times when travelling between zones, especially ones already visited during session
• In regular challenge rooms, damage taken no longer reduce health or score
• The player can no longer attempt to brute-force themselves into Pine’s office
• Taking a photo in a Arena Boss Rematch now shows a bag tip explaining the failure
• Salmon can now be caught in the Pillar Mountain ponds in Arcade Mode!
• Arcade Mode Shrine Buffs now last the entire floor, and have more powerful effects
• Enemies in the Temple of Season Gauntlets in Arcade Mode no longer counts as true elites, reducing their item drop rates
• The Crabby’s ‘charge up’-sound is now louder

Bug Fixes

• The game no longer crashes when trying to read the dragon puzzle inscription after solving it without the translation tome
• When a client drops an item, that item no longer uses the host as its spawn-position
• A poorly timed skip of the Desert Rose cutscene no longer puts the main character in a locked animation
• The Butterflown quest can now be skipped if the character has completed it in multiplayer
• Fixed a bug where spinning autumn knights would occasionally leave behind hurtboxes after being killed mid-spin
• The Throw-skill’s damage should now be properly modified by Pins
• It should no longer be possible to get two pins of the same type, even on the run pins are unlocked
• Plant Summons now follow their owner in and out of Twilight, attacking ghosts correctly
• In the rare event that two pins are collected simultaneously, they are now equipped separately
• The ‘Blink casts Ice Nova’-pin now works properly on clients
• When entering a cutscene, the Frosty Friend UI will disappear if up
• Clients should now see the game over screen after dying on floor 1 with a timeshift crystal active

This means we’ve also been spending some time working on the proper achievements for reaching the final two floors, meaning some graphics for that and a nice Solem Hat as a reward:

The Trophies that will serve as awards for finishing each challenge in a floor needed their own drop appearances, so that’s something we’ve been working on as well:

And of course, the wings are now available as rewards! Here’s what they look like, including Fred’s neat animations:

So, what are you waiting for – go ahead and try things out, and let us know what you think! As always, we value all of your feedback and would love to hear back from you guys! :)

Today we’ve been playing around with a bunch of different options for what the gate will look like when you reach the final Arcade Mode floor and it’s time to either go back to Arcadia or proceed on to the Bishop or Grindea battles. Starting off with the portal back to Arcadia:

The portal to Bishop meanwhile has a more sinister tint of purple and shows a dark sky:

The portal leading up to the Grindea battle will look a little different and more abstract, illustrating the fact that something rather strange is about to happen. Playing around with a couple of colour options here:

Now, as I mentioned before we’re gonna add a little statue shop with housing items, so I better start making a bunch of statues right? Let’s have a look at some of the ones that will be available:

In Fred’s department, there’s more final dungeon stuff, including a spring version of the hydra and the summoning animation for that platinum level Frosty Friend:

Finally, Teddy put together some words on our design decisions behind the final dungeon! Here goes:

So a while back we shared an intention of overhauling the final tower quite substantially, shifting from a large surrealistic “travel through the game again but weird”-type dungeon, to having it be a boss rush of sorts.

Nearly all feedback we received on this has been negative! We actually were expecting some feedback like that, but not of this magnitude. The main worries were:

* Shorter dungeon = less content

* Without a proper dungeon there won’t be storytelling

* It violates the game-design philosophy of a final dungeon being an exam on the rest of the game (think Wily’s Castle in Mega Man)

All these things are very reasonable, and because of this feedback we sat down and talked it all over again. But to even our own surprise, we’ve decided to stick to our guns! We’d like to share our reasoning, since it would be pretty weird to invite feedback, get it, and then ignore it silently.

First off we completely get that it “feels off” that there isn’t going to be a huge old-school dungeon at the end of the game. On paper, it is pretty much objectively weird, considering our primary sources of inspiration!

That said, after designing the dungeon two times now, we fear there is an uncomfortably high risk that it wouldn’t become a very good one, and we really don’t want to end on that note.

So why would we say that? Well, we feel the best “dungeons” of our game were those with the most engrossing context, and we weren’t satisfied with what we came up with for this dungeon.

A “go-to” strategy for us has been to load the dungeons up with story. But we neither want nor need to give any more exposition on the main plot until you reach the top of the tower, and having a side-plot at this stage felt off-beat.

So the first iteration was a plotless chimera-design where we just made random rooms based on old areas in the game, sometimes with combined themes (like season change + time travel in the same room). This was in spirit of the “exam”-philosophy, combined with a tribute to old mechanics. But when going through potential room designs, it felt hollow and without the charm that made our best dungeons good.

So as a “plot substitute” we decided to design a version that’s a surrealistic recap of the entire game. It ended up very similar to the “Curse of the Moon”, but much much longer. We felt this version had more character, but it had some glaring holes design-wise, and when we imagined playing through it we got very worried that it would feel a lot like treading water.

For us (including you guys) a recap might seem like a cool nostalgia trip, but looking at it from a new player’s perspective, it might just feel like weird filler. And while we’ve seldom cared about workload, we also saw that to make this version enjoyable would take a huge amount of work. If we had been in love with our design that wouldn’t have deterred us, but while we felt optimistic about some of it, a lot felt shaky.

So having recently played some very well-received games that actually had done away with giant dungeons before the end (a couple skipping them entirely), the blasphemous idea struck us: how would that feel in our game? Thinking back on playing those titles, our hope and belief is that in the context of an actual playthrough, the player will likely go along with what’s presented, too focused on playing to analyze and compare (though we don’t doubt some players will react).

Another thing that weighed in favor of the light-weight path is thinking about the Catalysts in the context of an average playthrough. Many of our Early Access players have undoubtedly gotten these already as part of full completion, but seen holistically, it’s probably quite a small percentage that will get all three catalysts before going into the tower.

For such a playthrough, getting the (remaining) Catalysts will in fact serve quite well as the Wily Stage of our game: one catalyst for combat, one for quest/puzzles, and one for grinding.

Now, about the boss rush: we’re planning remixes of some iconic battles, and we’ll make sure they all bring something new. One commenter came up with a pretty interesting idea that we’ll likely try out, namely having the elevator stop at some point, during which a short puzzle-section could play out as a change of pace.

We’re quite optimistic that we’ll be able to make this feel like a cool transition to the finale, that will keep the tension of the latest story-beat fresh.

That said, we totally understand some of you still would’ve preferred a classic big dungeon. We hope we’ll be able to win you over when it’s all said and done!

This week we’ll start by adding the background of another Arcade Mode room, the one where Astrid tells you which boss you’re about the face and helps you change that fate, should you wish to:

When it came to the boss preview effect of Astrid’s room, we had a couple different ideas. Our very first one was that she’d have a well of sorts, that would show which boss would appear:

Our other idea was to use a goblet and smoke effects to show it:

Fred then made a prototype for a cleaner effect than just the smoke:

And here we have the current version, some iterations later! In the video below, you can see what it looks like when you change boss as well:

After we asked about whether you preferred statues or trophies as reward for getting the ‘complete all challenges on a floor’ achievement, we thought a bit about it and found that we’d like to have the stonecutter have a little shop in town instead, where you can purchase whatever statues you’d like. As such, I’m going ahead to not only make more trophies, but more statues as well! Starting now with another batch of trophies:

The second batch has trophies from Flying Fortress, Tai Ming and the Temple of Seasons:

And here’s all the trophies, one for each floor:

Meanwhile, Fred has been working on a cool platinum level Frosty Friend that will be summoned by someone really powerful in the upcoming final boss fight! First up we have a bunch of sketches, and at the bottom, the final version we picked:

This week is all about Arcade Mode rewards, namely the rewards you’ll get for managing to finish every challenge on each floor! We’ve been playing around with a bunch of different ones, and here’s some of the ones we’ve come up with, starting with the Pillar Mountains, Evergrind Fields and Pumpkin Woods floors:

The idea with the Jumpkin one is that it’ll have a candle in its mouth which will have a living, animated flame :)

Next up we have the flying Fortress, Seasonne and Mount Bloom floors:

For the Temple of Seasons, here’s a suggestion featuring the Hydra, with three different skins:

And here’s the Tai Ming, Desert and Ghost Ship suggestions:

Finally, here’s all of them side by side:

Which ones do you like the most? Would you prefer that every reward was of the same type, so that all of them were some kind of statue or golden cup? We haven’t really decided if we prefer this version where it’s more mixed or if one specific type would be better. Let us know what you guys think!

Meanwhile, Fred’s been starting work on the first boss in the boss rush we were talking about: the shadow slime! Here’s some tests and an animation of one of its attacks: