Posted April 18, 2024 by Demon
#0.3.29a
Some of the UI improvements we've made in this update include the introduction of Tooltips.
Now you can hover over Items, Abilities, Buffs or some of the Options Settings and they will display additional information.
This improvement is especially good for Abilities and Items because now instead of pausing the game to look at the statistics of your rewards, you can just hover over the icons on the fly.
As for the Options Settings, right now only a few - the most confusing ones have tooltips but in the future updates more options will include the additional explanations.
This is another major update of this Patch. It improves the UI of the Reward selection process.
The previous version of the UI tried to show both the currently owned rewards and the new ones to choose from at the same time. It was prepared for our initial vision of this system which was to allow for much more than just selecting the new stuff.
However, after the first wave of play tests we've received enough feedback to decide to change the idea a little bit and evolve it into something better. Thanks to that decision the UI is simpler, more intuitive and is utilizing the screen space in a more optimal way.
While switching tabs gave us a possibility to keep both windows (possessed items/abilities and the ones to choose from) in the same place seemed to be quite convenient, the switching itself was not as such. After the changes, the user experience has improved greatly as it's still possible to compare things, but without having to take additional steps to do so.
Among the UI/UX improvements, there were also some improvements to the Pause menu. This one is not as impactful as other changes but is still worth to mention as it hopefully improves the readability of the Player Statistics.
Adam: On a personal note, this specific UI element proved to be more challenging for me than the others, mainly because of so many possibilities for putting the rewards and stats information, while at the same time keeping the layout in a way it wouldn't make the player feel overwhelmed by the sheer amount of data. Another idea was to create additional panels to help separate character information, but these could quickly become problematic while increasing the overall complexity. The current layout seems to be the best of all ideas so far, but it doesn't mean it can't be further improved in future updates.
Until recently, the game introduced only one objective-based level, which included all of the monsters and mini-boss the demo has to offer. While the gameplay itself was already very well balanced, the map was quite difficult for novices, as they could be easily wiped out in the first minutes of the game.
With the current knowledge and feedback in mind, we decided to implement additional 3 map levels that would allow the player not only to have more content to play through, but also to have an easier start. They also have an additional description which makes an introduction to the game lore.
The maps go as follows:
Although the full leaderboard system is still a work in progress, some of its features are already finished, and now each map level contains your personal best score. The score is available while selecting the map you want to play.
The score is calculated based on various factors such as how long you survived, how rare items your character had, how many enemies have been defeated, etc.
We've added an extra option you can select for any map level.
When Hardmode is enabled, it reduces health regeneration effects by 50%, removes the Rebirth ability from the rewards pool and disables the Reviving mechanics.
When enabled it also increases the amount of final scores you get per run.
We plan to make this game mode more rewarding in the future, when more content will be added to the game.
Fixes, QoL and Improvements
Many small things have been fixed or improved in this patch. Among those changes, you can find things such as:
That's it for this patch.
Let us know what you think about these changes.