New boss: Luminous Grand Slime, new enemies, items & more - Update Set 0.97.X

Hi everyone!

Here are some of the new updates we've been working on

New Boss: Grand Luminous Slime

This one serves as an alternative boss in the Grotto of Guidance area. It might look slightly smaller than the other bosses, but don't let that fool you. It's agile, deadly, and adaptable, with six different attacks.

Unlike the knight, it can't block damage from the player and is closer to a more traditional boss battle focused on pattern matching, dodging, and striking. However, throwing the environment around during this fight will give you an edge.

New Enemies Include:

Stone Stars:

These serve as a less aggressive and easier enemy to replace Slice Stars in the first area; they mostly bounce around the stage.
It's tricky, but with careful positioning, you can stun then grab, and throw them at high speeds to take out more powerful opponents.

Similar methods work for utilizing their more intelligent counterparts in later areas as well.

Poison Pitchers:

These pesky plants grow on the odd wall of the Gnarled Gardens, throwing spheres of poisonous pollen gas.

New Items

Gooey Adhesive:

Allows you to stick explosives to almost everything, including opponents and terrain.

Orb of Poison:

Shoots a bouncing ball of venom that will explode into a shower of poisonous shots when destroyed.

Graphics updates:

• Over 20 new sprites and animations.
• New randomized parallax for Ice World.

Balance Changes and Bug fixes.

• We wanted to focus more on easing new players into the game with this update.
• Grabbing a stunned enemy now adds to the stun timer to allow you to be more accurate with your throwing.
• This included making the Grotto of Guidance easier while still being consistent with the challenge aspect throughout the game:
  • Nerfed max enemy spawn cap for individual rooms.
  • Power orbs fire slower with fewer shots in the first area.
  • Slice Stars mostly replaced with Stone Stars.
• Various traps have been adjusted:
  • Flaming repeater dart traps have reduced projectile speed and fire rate.
  • Trigger Crossbow projectiles more slower, allowing you to rush past them with the right positioning (instead of having to temporarily disarm them each time).
  • Stalactite and rock traps now show the hit path below even if positioned on the screen.
  • Fire Brands from exploding lanterns/torches have reduced speed early on.
• Crossbow has been buffed slightly.

Numerous other improvements including adjustments to enemy health and damage outputs.

Follow up note regarding upcoming price change

Even without the sales factor, we've heavily discounted the game discounted during early access.
The game has been extended and polished with community feedback to become quite a different experience since 2017. You can see the list of update sets on the devlog here:
https://itch.io/dashboard/game/186129/devlog
We have continued to cover ongoing development costs with savings far more than sales.

As such, the game will increase in price (as mentioned back in February) later this month to help us continue adding extra content to the game for you as we approach full release.
This won't affect players who have already purchased the game.

Update 0.97.8

23rd of August

• 10 New Sound Effects 🔊!
• New Boss Animations:
  
• Razor Star enemy types now slow down more on being stunned.
• Fixed various rebound issues when throwing stunned razor star objects.
• Grotto area difficulty has been tweaked to be slightly easier on moderate and easy difficulties.
• Slime boss has been tweaked to be slightly easier on moderate and easy difficulties (e.g. it has less resistance to regular attacks).
• Added tips for early game bosses when defeated by them (these are only shown if they're not already both defeated on Hard mode).
• Fixed issues with parallax mismatch in ice world.
• Fixed issues with jittering in transparent ice background.

Thanks, everyone!

We hope that you enjoy the updates and keep well during these unusual times!