Posted October 09, 2024 by Lummie Thief
Hey everyone! I want to start by saying thank you all for the great feedback and for continuing to play the game! Based on that feedback, I've made some fairly major changes to the game to remove unintended red herrings and make certain levels have easier to follow logic.
Minor changes first:
More significant changes next:
This final section will contain spoilers for the game, so its not suggested you read it unless you've beaten the game:
The changes to Siege, Tape, and Crab were to make the meta paths easier to find and follow. A lot of the time, players would reach Crab, go into Salsa, and wrongly conclude that they are supposed to exit Salsa into Melon to get through Melon's alternate exit. When they couldn't do it (because it's impossible), they would then give up and start looking at Tape or Title to proceed, instead of going back to Crab. By removing the link from Crab to Salsa, it makes it much harder for players to get lost in this way. They now simply go to Washer and back, then to Amoeba and Washer and back, and then directly down to Tank. Also, when looking for where to get a ball to solve Melon, players would sometimes think they had to bring it from Crab. By removing the link between Salsa and Crab, it makes it much more obvious where you get the ball for Melon.
Finally, Tape was a nightmare because the solution path wasn't good on its own AND it had an extra pipe that couldn't be accessed without coming from Siege, which was a huge red herring for players looking for the entrance to meta paths. It was also possible for players to reach Tape through Siege before ever reaching Tape on the main path, which caused for a ton of confusion. Additionally, when reaching End 1 and looking on the map for the other 3 endings, there would be 4 undiscovered levels because of the impossible pipe from Tape to Engine. By removing the link from Tape to Engine, there are now only 3 undiscovered levels which more obviously signals that these are the ways you go for the other 3 endings. Dipping into Tape from Siege was cool and thematic, but ultimately the benefits of removing the link from Siege to Tape severely outweigh the costs.
I hope I didn't accidentally introduce any game breaking bugs in this update, but if I did, please be sure to let me know!