Well shit. That 'Big Thing' I alluded to in my last update fell through. What a surpriseeeeee....... But rather than look at this as a failure, I'll take it as an opportunity to learn and grow.  As a wise man once said, if you want something done right you gotta do it yourself :p 

With that in mind, I've been trying to hit Punchy HARD. This update has a bunch of bug fixes and balance changes. Some little, some HUGE...

The biggest change is what happens when the player get's KO'd; When the player loses all their hp, they get 'knocked out'. But instead of getting a game over, I give them another chance! They stand up, with reduced health, and get to try again. However, enemies that they've defeated ALSO get back up, again with reduced health. If the player gets knocked out again after that, its game over.

Now, my intention is for this system to be more forgiving than other roguelikes where you die once and that's it, but also to emphasize the non-lethal aspect of combat, demonstrating that even if you or an enemy gets beaten no one is seriously hurt. But I've had a bunch of players describe it as feeling like a double punishment - you just got your ass kicked, now I expect you to beat everyone again but with less health?? Well, sure, you're supposed to feel like an underdog and overcome impossible odds! But rather than inspire hope and confidence, players feel like it's a brutal insult to injury. 

I'm toying with a few ways to solve this, but in this update I'm trying out the most straight-forward approach - any destroyed items respawn when you and the enemies get back up. The point of this game is to use the environment to your advantage, so it makes sense that if you break everything the first time you fight through a level, getting back up and having to fight everyone again without all the items won't be nearly as easy.

This may not be a permanent solution! I have a few problems with it; Mainly, it doesn't make sense in-world for everything to magically fix itself. Beyond that, respawning items might make it too easy, seeing as enemies already have reduced health. I do want it to feel like an opportunity to step your game up, rather than a simple retry. 

There are a number of other less dramatic but equally important changes too - thrown items work properly (you can actually block them now), enemies won't throw things at you from off screen, Pin is automatic and has a new placeholder sprite, fixed some crashes, and I -tried- to fix the late-game lag some players experience on not-super-powerful PCs. Almost definitely needs some more work though...

In other news, we got some mockups for the City Hall and Mansion areas!!! 

MAVW is such a damn good artist... I got the assets too so the next update will probably feature some awesome new levels! I'm very excited to play around with them, but I haven't touched the level generation code in a looong time... Hopefully I won't be tempted to completely refactor it! This is what happens when you work with the same codebase for 7+ years...

You should also check out the new trailer! I had a lot of fun making it :D

By the way, a lot of these balance changes and bug fixes were inspired by feedback I got from players. I really can't thank anyone who reached out to me enough! Shout out to Kage_Okami in particular ;) Not only does it make the game better, but it gives me the kick I need. As a lowly indie dev, it truly means the world to me when someone reaches out <3 Let's make Punchy the best it can be!!

- Drew