Patch Info

Recommended Level: N/A

Summary

Arcade Mode additions + changes, and enemy balance changes

Details

About the patch

Arcade Mode used to be a hellish and monotone experience for most players - even those who usually enjoy roguelites. One might've beaten Story Mode on Hard and then struggled to make it past Pumpkin Woods in Arcade Mode.

While we do think the toughest challenges of Arcade Mode should be brutal (and Triple Catalyst runs with curses surely still are), we needed to do a better job of easing people into the pain, like frogs being boiled slowly alive. Wait, what were we talking about?

Anyways, the base difficulty of the mode has been lowered, and a lot of unfair situations mitigated! By beating the mode (currently this means beating Tai Ming), you'll unlock the higher difficulties.

As for addressing the feeling of every run being the same, we've introduced a mechanic called "Pins" that grant a plethora of modifiers to empower the player in many different ways. Play a few rounds and they'll unlock, changing the mode drastically!

More details of the changes and their reasoning is pretty well described in the Frontline post, so check that out!

So far the feedback has been almost entirely positive, though there are some people that mourn the old version and the length of each run! We'll think about ways where players who want to can get some of that feeling back - though this would be in the form of optional modifiers, since most players seem to greatly prefer the new, shorter experience.

Note that this update does not include the Desert or Lost Ship floors! They'll arrive a few patches down the line, after we've focused on Story Mode for a while again.

Patch Notes

Patch 0.890b - July 19th 2020

Changes

• If you have the Hide Hat or Hide Facegear option selected during an Arcade Mode run, the game will now remember this preference
  

Bug Fixes

• It's now possible to clear the Frostling Boss Dojo challenge even on Catalyst 0
  
• If someone had the Hard Mode curse equipped in the old Arcade Mode version it will now be unequipped
  
• Pressing the cancel button during the dojo victory screen no longer makes it repeat
  
• The dojo challenges now unlock properly using the new floor numbers
  
• Killing a Wisp in Arcade Mode exactly as it spawns no longer causes it to rise again as an unkillable demon ghost to claim vengeance for your unsportsmanlike behavior
  

More Insight

If you want to follow the progress and get a glimpse of the wonderful hell/heaven hybrid that is game development, you can check out our DevBlog! Be warned that it contains spoilers, though!

What's next?

Those following the blog will have seen a lot of Story Mode related graphics, and now that there's a sizable chunk of that we'll switch focus to Story Mode for a while!

For those who aren't in the loop, before we begin implementing the final dungeon we're going to plug in the holes of the world (the growable plants, inaccessible areas, unfinished quest lines, etc).