Patch Note # 1 (Post-Jam Update!):

First of all I want to thank anyone who played Gridlam on itch. This was my first ever game that I built for my first ever game jam - The SoloDevelopment 72 Hour Summer Jam #8 and against my wildest expectations Gridlam finished 4th out of 62, ranking #2 for gameplay and polish! I received so much positive feedback and encouragement that I have decided to keep working on Gridlam and hopefully release it on Steam at some point. I have settled on the long-term direction of Gridlam as a game that should reward players for putting thought into their actions instead of being a frenetic bullet hell.

I've got some semi-major updates in this patch, taking into account a lot of the feedback. The major highlights are below:

• Enemy updates: 
  1. AI: For the game jam submission I implemented a simple AI where the enemies would first move vertically towards the player and then start moving horizontally once they are in the same row as the player. However, as some of you realized, later in the round this led to the player just moving up and down to avoid the enemies. Eventually you would get crowded out by new enemies spawning and dying. I've updated the AI to now use Astar pathfinding, with each enemy choosing a tile around the player at each turn. This leads to more enemy variability in terms of movement
  2. Enemy sprites: I have updated the yellow and blue enemy type sprites to convey direction of travel
  3. Target tile indicator: When there were a lot of enemies on screen, it was hard to find where each enemy would land at the end of a turn. I've added target tile indicator shaders to ensure they get the assistance to understand where the enemies are going to go before they make their choice. Ultimately, I want Gridlam to reward players who put some thought into making their decisions and this is a step in that direction
  4. Health indicator: Along the lines of giving players as much information as possible to make their decisions, I've also added health bars for each enemy. I am not married to the current health bar style, but I think this should help players.
  5. Balancing updates: The yellow enemies were a menace for most players even though there were 2 more enemy types in the game with larger move ranges. So I've done balancing on how much health and movement range each of these enemy types possess. Additionally, I've also tweaked the spawn rates to ensure a more gradual ramp up in difficulty
• Weapon updates:
  
  • Missile Strike: In the jam version of Gridlam, it was pretty easy to get trapped in a corner surrounded by enemies. That can still happen now, but if players have chosen to unlock missile strike, this should now provide some relief. I've tweaked the missile strike to have a cooldown. Currently the base missile strike has a cooldown of 10 turns. Once the 10 turns are up, it should pick 10 tiles close to the player to spawn missiles. There is cooldown tracker added to the UI which should help players plan their moves accordingly.
• Meta-progression path:
  
  • Cash and kill combos: I want to add as much depth as possible to Gridlam, outside of simple character, weapon and level unlocks. How will I go about doing this, is something I am still working through. But for the moment, I wanted to establish a foundation to frame meta-progression around. For this, I've added a cash system where each enemy type will earn you a certain amount of cash upon kill. In addition, if you plan your moves to kill multiple enemies in the same turn, it should give you a kill combo multiplier which gets applied to the cash you accrued in that turn. So hopefully going forward, I can build something around the cash and number of turns statistics. We'll see how this pans out. 
• General visual updates:
  
  • Player tile indicator: I've changed the player tile indicator color to stand out from the yellow enemy tile indicator. In addition, mouse hover over any tile you can move to and you will see an X appear to mark the spot. Hopefully this will lead to fewer misclicks
  • Turn bar removed: In the jam version, the bottom bar counted down the number of turns before new enemies spawn. Most players didn't connect this, so I've made it a text based indicator instead
  • Cash tracker and kill combo animations: Another addition to the UI is a cash tracker. Also, when you do a kill combo, you should see an animation appear. The bigger the combo, the longer it lasts.
  • Upgrade options menu fixes: There was some visual misalignment in the upgrade options menu. This should now be fixed

In addition, there was some extensive code refactoring to make adding more upgrades quicker and more scalable. 

Immediate next steps:

• More movement variety: I have tested diagonal movement options. Some of you requested it and I will add it in the near future. I am just thinking through whether that should be a meta-progression unlock or just an upgrade during a run.
• More upgrades: I have brain-stormed some more upgrade ideas including new weapon types, tile modification abilities to block some tiles off, status effects on enemies etc. These will take a little while to include as I want to test them properly, but watch this space!

Known issues:

• With the addition of pathfinding and navigation layers, I have occasionally run into a bug where the enemies disregard movement restrictions and just drift to the top left of the screen. Unfortunately, this has not been very reproducible and I've only seen it maybe 4 times out of maybe 100 or so times I've played the game while working on upgrades. If you see this issue, please just reload. This is something I am keeping tabs on.