It's been so long! 6 months, literally half a year since I made the last devlog, but I'm back!

Now, what has been added... right? No wait, this isn't my usual devlog, I'm here for an announcement.

The demo I've been working on since I released the prototype! It's pretty much ready, but since I can be a dummy sometimes and add things that are meant to be in future updates, I may have broken some things due to that, I'll spend this week testing it properly.

What are notable things that have been added? Well, let's go over some of them.

1. I integrated the coop mechanic I announced at the beggining of the demo's development to singleplayer, what's this?

Before you panic! No, the second character controlled by the power of questionable pathfinding did not get downed by itself, just like in the prototype, it is completely invulnerable, so what happened?

Well, besides the fact that for some reason I took these two screenshots in two different languages (The game is available in English and Spanish!), you can now lose all your health in singleplayer and instead of receiving a game over, you'll be switched to the other character!

The requirements to revive the other character are still the same: Get to a savepoint or defeat 3 enemies (It also still increases by 3 each time the other player needs reviving up to a maximum of 9).

What does this mean? I guess pretty much just that the game becomes easier, but I mean, the other character CAN be revived in coop, so what? In singleplayer it just auto-dies? Well, this fixes that question and introduces an interesting mechanic!

Along with this, you can now immediately swap to the other player by pressing Shift (On keyboard, or Select on Controller, zooming has been swapped to the RS button), you no longer need to do it on the pause menu (Unless you are in coop, then you still need to press it on the pause menu).

2. Leveling stuff up!

It took me a bit to figure this one out, but I got it! Like I mentioned previously, I added a challenge-based leveling up system, by default all weapons need to defeat 20 enemies to level up to level 1 (Everything starts at level 0), now, it may come as disappointing news, but none of the weapons can surpass level 1 in the demo, however, leveling them up increases damage for all other weapons, which is how the Chrysallis Axe and Lance at level 1 (Which would deal 10 damage) deal 27 damage each!

Not only weapons, specials can be leveled up too, and they increase damage as well as your stamina bar! (Although not by much), the special that can be leveled up the most currently is the ball (Which can be leveled up to 4), most specials increase in size when they are leveled up too, so they have bigger hitboxes as well as damage.

It may also come disappointingly, but only the specials featured in the prototype can be leveled up currently, as challenges for both weapons and the new specials will only be accessible in future builds.

You might have noticed something that isn't quite right in these screenshots...

3. Damage system overhaul!

In comparison to the prototype, most damage you could achieve was 5, here I don't remember exactly which was the weapon that could deal the most damage but I think it might've been the Chrysallis hammer...

Not that big actually, but hey, I managed to balance it! Anyways, along with weapons and specials scaling off levels, I also added.

4. Enemy scaling

Now, don't worry, it may sound awful, but I got it right!

Leveling up things makes enemies scale off a small percentage of the things you have leveled up, this scaling is not very strong but noticeable enough to keep some enemies somewhat challenging, like, see that enemy that got hit with 51 damage but didn't get shattered? His starting HP is 12, if you don't have anything leveled up, it should be defeated in 3 hits from a Chrysallis Axe, after leveling everything up however it'll start getting defeated in 2 hits and of course will get one-shotted when more weapons are added. (To be fair, the save file I'm using for these screenshots is in Hard mode, which I'll talk about now).

5. Hard mode actually changes things up now!

In the prototype, hard mode only gave faster attacks to some enemiexs and that was it, just a select few of attacks too... Yeah, pretty disappointing. Ayways, now if you play in hard mode, you will be met with not only that, but also some changes in enemy behavior and a whopping 5x health multiplier to all enemies (Including bosses!). Man, the amount of health the new boss can get...

I recommend playing on hard mode! it's where most of the things I want to do end up in, everything gets nerfed for normal mode... like the first boss having very slow attacks! I'm a sucker for hard games, and while I still feel hard mode is not that hard (And normal mode is too easy), it is ultimately where I feel most of the game's experience is felt.

6. Increased chances for drops

In the prototype, chances for credit drops were 1/10 and item drops were 1/20. I didn't think it was too bad cause for some reason all the tests I did for the prototype I always got item drops pretty quickly. Well, that didn't happen this time around and I noticed how low of a chance for things that actually was, so credits now have a 1/3 chance to drop, 1/5 for item drops and 1/5 for the newly added tokens too.

Note that any of them dropping doesn't remove the chance of the others dropping, so you can get a combination of all of them from an enemy, though only the Sniper enemy has a chance to drop all three, Chrysallis enemies can't drop credits and facility enemies can't drop tokens, at least the ones for now.

7. I needed to push back some things...

Like I said in previous devlogs, this build is supposed to have 3  Chrysallis void missions/anomalies and 8 new specials, thankfully those are the only things I previously said that I didn't end up bringing completely in this build, this demo will only have 1 (plus 1-ish) Chrysallis void visits, with one of them being story related and the other one for getting resources (The way you access the Chrysallis void can be a bit unusual, but I hope it's not too confusing).

As for the specials, I ended up adding 4, none of the new Chrysallis enemies drop specials, but one of them drops the Chrysallis Dagger.

8. Final thoughts?

Well, I guess I'll just start working on the next build now that this demo is done, it took me an entire year to finish it coming from the prototype, but it was just because I had to change a LOT of the core of the game, I was having troubles running the first Chrysallis void visit that when I fixed the problem too long had passed, I also made a LOT of dialogs during all that time, with like 30% of them being cut, almost all of them having been changed or updated at some point, not to mention translating everything!

Now, how long to I expect the next build will take me then? Honestly, I have no idea, I have to do an entirely new tileset that will be just as hard to manage to the Chysallis void's and want to add a lot of new stuff too, I may be too ambitious for my own good but also too stubborn, oh well!

I will be returning to devlogs next month, let's hope I don't take an entire month drawing the next tileset (Foreshadowing? Nah, the Chrysallis void took me 2 days to draw, with 1 more to draw the background).

Is this project interesting to you?

When the demo releases, you can find a lot of details about the world in the extras menu (Which is unlocked after defeating the first boss, you get more gallery entries from progressing, for example unlocking an entry about the Chrysallis void after completing the first anomaly).