Kappu, Bee, Shiori! Time Attack!!

We're on the home stretch!! Shiori is provided by new guest artist, Kurus Kururu!!! Bee has a second stage, once again provided by Behamu!!!

The ninth campaign character, Kappu, has been introduced!! He's Chino's boss.... and he's got a problem; help him fix it!!

All three (yes, definitely only three... ~w~) of these stages implement a new gamemode for experienced players: Time Attack!! Time Attack stages require you to reach the Clear line in order to add time and stay alive. If the countdown clock runs out, it's Game Over!! Time Attack is aimed to encourage a different playstyle, forcing you to play a little more precisely.

Special Guests are now integrated into the game's progression system, and will have unlock requirements.

Miscellaneous

• The gamemode tag, if there is one, is now shown on the character overview.
• Transitions between scenes have been improved.
• The character unlock screen has been updated.
• The intro for Suika stages has been polished.
• A new sound effect has been added for when a Refill is performed.
• Several new achievements have been added!
• The appearance of the gradients on the settings and bio overlays have been improved.
• The sweet highlight effect (when using a special weapon) has a new animation.
• "Mocha's Samba" has been replaced with a new song. An expansion to the OST will arrive later.
• Balance: Lambun's stage has been made more difficult.
• Fix: On Sencha's stage, Pop sounds were playing twice.

The web version of the game is now a demo. This was going to happen eventually for a few reasons:

• Having a fully-featured game available for free was less incentive for people to buy and support it.
• Should we do it in the future, there is no way to include any separate paid expansion content in the web edition.
• Due to limitations with itch.io, it is not (yet) possible to serve a different web build if you own the product.

The web version has been the source of a few problems during development, and while it was possible to fix them with a bit of effort, I wouldn't want to keep maintaining this in the long-term. 

Apologies if this change affects you. You can still export your save, so please consider playing the native version.

Pricing Change

As of this update, the sale price of Kemopop! has been raised to the final value of $4.99 on both itch.io and Steam. This value covers what we believe is fair, given the amount of extra work put in since the last price adjustment, and the niche audience of the game.

This won't raise any higher, as Kemopop! is almost complete.

The Future

The official "full" release of Kemopop! is around the corner. However, this does not necessarily mean the end of new content.

Achievement Icons: The plan is to make unique icons for every achievement, to replace the placeholder icons on Steam. These icons will then be reused in-game, on the Achievements screen.  The current Steam achievement icons for characters have been updated to fix issues with transparency.

Translations: These are starting to fall behind. I'll be asking our volunteers to have another look.

Extra Stages: Sorry, not sorry, achievement hunters!! We're going to continue adding more stages!!!! Both new Special Guest and Campaign stages are planned, even after the game is outta Early Access!!