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I'm not sure why more games haven't used a "do cool tricks to heal your vehicle" system. Blowtorches are downright plebeian in comparison!

Great stuff here, as usual. Hope you're doing well!

Why not both?

Honestly, I don't really know. Having not played the update, I'm not sure what the rarity of this new crafting juice is, but given how much inventory space it would take up if you had to stockpile it as ammo (and how tedious it'd be if you had to reload the guns after every shot), I'd imagine that the "guns" that would use it would be able to hold multiple crafting juices at a time as ammo, and each shot would use a portion of the juice. That, or the guns would automatically use whatever special juice was in your inventory - although that wouldn't resolve the issue of special juice taking up a load of inventory space.

Personally, I'd totally go for the "juice guns" being like water guns, where you'd fill the guns with crafting juice and spray out juice bullets of a certain kind affected by whatever you filled the gun with. Perhaps filling the "juice reservoir" of these super-soaker-esque guns with multiple kinds of juice would mix their effects, either allowing you to stack juice with a certain effect or create synergies of different effects that you prefer. Just spitballing.

POCKET CAR

POCKET CAR

The difficulties are represented by the minimum wage of the company. To increase the minimum wage, beat the final boss and choose to yeet them off the building afterwards - then you'll have the option to increase minimum wage. You only have to do this twice to unlock the hardest difficulty of $25 an hour. (I think you have to beat the game on the second hardest difficulty to unlock the hardest difficulty, although I'm not entirely sure of that.)

Oh, and before I forget, do you plan on having any interactions between the elements and the environment? (Like, using lightning underwater shocks you, and/or fire being extinguished for entities that go into the water?) Just figured I'd ask while it's still on my mind.

Whoa, a bunch of really neat stuff here! A lot to update on the wiki, too...

Actually Saitama is still in the game. If you get the option to "hit the gym" after finishing a run (which I think is exclusive to completing the game on the hardest difficulty), you can unlock him. Once you're in the gym, you'll know what to do. ;)

No, I doubt it. And if you see art vandalism, you can always report it - with enough reports, the offending edit is rolled back and the original is reopened for editing.

Who knows? This is a longer wait than usual, for sure, but that might just be because things came up in Fish's personal life. I think we'd all be stoked to have a big update, but without any confirmation (or teasers) from the man himself  we'll just have to wait and see what's in store. There are plenty of big, heavily requested features that would take a mountain of work to develop (multiplayer, a fight against Swirly D, an oversized spoon weapon), but as of now there's no telling what the update will actually be about.

That said, I know that occasionally Fish releases pre-release information for each update on the Discord. Perhaps he's said something enlightening on there.

Juice galaxy is in development, and there's a lot that has yet to be completed. In some respects, though, it really is a "wander around and stumble onto stuff" game. The quests can help point you in the right direction; I'd suggest talking to NPC's in the graveyard to get hints on where to go next (the sign with googly eyes is particularly helpful). Also, several of the areas you visited have bosses in them, and beating them unlocks quests from other NPC's. Basically, get some equipment you like and keep exploring!

Also, know that the further out you go into the wilderness, the more powerful the monsters become, and the weapons they drop become stronger and stronger. Right now, the "endgame"  gameplay loop is basically just grinding for the most powerful items with the best modifiers you can find while fighting comically powerful enemies.

Not in my experience, no; it turns to face the graveyard. If it's pointing up, the graveyard is in the direction you're facing, if it's pointing down the graveyard is behind you, etc.

Also, if you're really far away from the graveyard, you can always use a juice portal to take you back.

Thankfully, fish thought of this; use the compass in the upper right corner. The arrow should point you back to the Graveyard.

You can select older versions by pressing the "View All Posts" link under the development log category. The development logs for each version should have a download as well.

As of now, Juice Galaxy is exclusive to computers - I don't know if Fish will ever make a mobile release.

Hey Fish! Hope you've been doing well.

Just wanted to mention that - as of the last time I played - you can use the Grappling Plunger during the Swirly D. Cutscene, which means you can grapple your way all the way up the cave when you typically don't have control and wind up sticking yourself to Swirly D. in an amusing (but probably not intended) fashion. I'd imagine that fixing this is as simple as temporarily disabling use of your left-click items (grimoires and the grappling plunger) during cutscenes, but I don't know that for a fact.

Swinging weapons while flying? It's what I've always wanted! Might not be the flashiest update, but great work, man!

I'm a fan of that idea! If it were a debuff, then it would force the player to rely on other movement options (namely the grappling plunger, which I think is indispensable even with flight) in order to get around during a fight, and whatever enemy cast it would become top priority to defeat. Maybe consider adding other movement items before doing this, though.

(Like, you've mentioned adding a dash. Maybe it could be tied to an item, like a grimoire or the grappling plunger that allowed you to dash in the direction you double-tap towards while it was held, and it had a cooldown that prevented you from spamming it. In design, it could be like one of those air-cannon toys that the juiceling can point behind them to give them a burst of speed, I dunno. In any event, debuff or not, I agree with OP on experimenting with situations where the player can't fly, it seems like a cool idea.)

Good work on this fun little thing, SlamDunk! Happy to see this going to support a good cause.

Just curious, is there any way to alter the music/sound effect volume within the game? (Also, I'd have to agree with the commenter below me, projectiles passing through walls is a pretty big issue, both in the indoor level and drug-trip level.)

My personal thoughts on these changes:

I'll be blunt and say that I'm not a fan of the click-to-attack system at all. I feel like, although the game has evolved and grown considerably since its initial version, the drag-to-attack nature of melee (and to a lesser extent drag to aim for ranged) attacks are a core part of the experience and the game's identity. It's goofy, but that's what makes it great - it's like a refined version of what Fish had in Schwing and I'm for it, warts and all. But removing that and instead making the game click to attack seems like waaaay too drastic a move in service of streamlining melee combat.

I can tell that Fish is serious about improving melee combat, though, and although I like it I will admit that it's more than a bit clunky at times. But instead of throwing the baby out with the bathwater and ditching the drag-to-swing system, I think Fish should build on it and refine it instead. And you could probably do that by adding more camera control and aiming control options for the player.

In my opinion (not super informed- I'm not a game dev), I think the simplest and most effective way to both make melee combat less disorienting is to give the option to lock the camera to its current facing at will. Mind you, I'm not saying locking the camera onto nearby enemies or changing whether it's behind the back or in front of the player, but straight up locking it in the angle that the player is facing at any given moment and keeping it there while letting the player move around with the directional keys and letting them change the facing of the Juiceling and their held weapon with subsequent movements of the mouse cursor. The WASD/directional keys would move the Juiceling around in the direction corresponding to the way the locked camera is facing, which would allow the Juiceling to walk while facing sideways as Fish was proposing in the video (although you'd be moving the Juiceling sideways with the A or D keys instead of the W key, and you'd have to make them face sideways with the mouse). It would also let the player continue to swing at things by clicking and dragging the mouse without dragging the camera around, which would make melee less disorienting and would open up a few new combat moves. Unlocking the camera would have it return to the behind-the-back angle that we have now and re-couple the player's facing to the camera's facing, and the speed at which the camera moves to this new position should be configurable in the settings menu. In this system, you could continue to drag the camera to swing your weapons, but it wouldn't be required with on-demand camera locking, making melee combat much less dizzying.

I'd suggest that you do any of this camera control stuff with the C key, since it can be held by the player's left thumb while still allowing them to use all 4 of their other fingers to hit the WASD keys. Pressing and holding the C key would lock the camera in the direction that the player is facing, and letting go would have it go back to the normal view behind the Juiceling. (You might also make it so that double-tapping the C key keeps the camera locked without having to have the key held, and pressing the C key again unlocks it. Or you could have the nature of the camera lock be toggleable in the settings menu.)

You could, potentially, also press something like the F, E, or Q keys to have the player character's facing and weapon direction snap back to the locked camera position instead of having the camera face behind the character's current facing. If the Juiceling had started to point the wrong way and the player had the camera focused on a dangerous enemy that they didn't want to have out of sight, pressing this key (while having the camera locked with the held C key or something like that) would have the Juiceling swing around back to the right facing. You might even make this a combat move if you held the heavy swing button, where the Juiceling's weapon would whip around and smack anything in its way as it went to face the locked camera position. Again, this is just a proposed idea, and I'm not sure how hard it would be to implement, so you shouldn't follow it verbatim. (I've also mentioned similar systems before in other posts, so maybe Fish really doesn't like this idea or it's too hard to implement and I should have taken the hint by now.) But I think something that gives the player better camera control, or that decouples the ability to swing melee weapons from having to swing the camera around, would make melee combat a lot better, and is at least worth considering before adopting a click-to-attack system. Also, there's nothing saying that you can't have both systems, either - maybe make it an option the player can choose in the settings menu, rather than making it a skill they have to invest points That seems like the easiest way to avoid any controversy, selon moi.

True story: I wrote up this whole post once before, but I accidentally deleted the tab and now I have to write it all over again. That's fun, innit?

Anyways, Fish recently posted a video to his channel where he detailed some potential changes he would implement with regards to melee combat. He's asking for feedback from the community, and as far as I can tell he hasn't made a post on this page, so I'm taking the liberty of making one. The video is attached below (and you should really watch it, it's not even that long):

Interior crocodile alligator, I drive a Chevrolet movie theater.

(Cool stuff here, man! Happy new year.)

(Shamelessly bumping my own post now that Fish is reading them again, lol.)

Hey Fish!

Firstly, I wanted to say that your work on Juice Galaxy as of late has been very cool, especially the new lore that's been added in Mr. Fox's dream (which I won't spoil :p ). The new boss looks really cool and intimidating as well, and the new music is a wonderful. Quests are also a huge addition, as they allow for the development of a lot more content, and the addition of little quality of life things such as effective use of ranged weapons while flying make the game feel much more polished.

With all of that said, I just wanted to ask in what direction you see things going in for the next few updates. I'd imagine that you're going to capitalize on the new quest system in some way, but I'd be curious as to how you're thinking of implementing it. Will we see a select few NPC's becoming central quest-givers, new NPC's in the wilderness with procedurally-generated or "secret" quests? Are you going to focus on new instanced areas similar to Mr. Fox's dream or the Toilet Realm? Or will you be focusing on bug-fixing and optimization for the time being given all of the new content that's been added?

I know that it's quite early to be asking all of this, given that the last update was only recently released, and it's perfectly acceptable if you don't have a set plan for the time being. I was just wondering if there was anything on your mind regarding the game's future that you'd be willing to share.

(Also, even though this hasn't been a problem for me, how do you think you'll address the recurrent issues that people have been having with the Toilet realm? I'm supposing that it's tied to the shaders, so perhaps you could make an emergency "accessibility" version of the Toilet Realm without the fancy lighting or textures that is guaranteed to work - despite looking kinda bad - that people can switch to if the toilet realm is bugged for them.)

Oh, and out of curiosity, is Mr. Fox's new voice sourced from your dog/the dog that you can hear in the background, or...?

//SPOOKY TIME INBOUND//

(also, wow, this is a big update from the looks of things! great work man.)

I noticed that you weren't taking much damage from flinging yourself into the ground with the grappling plunger...did impact damage get reduced at some point, or were you in godmode?

In any case, very exciting developments here. Best of luck with ironing out the bugs!

Noted! Was it due to computer slowdown concerns, or just a design tweak?

Wait, when was that Klown feature removed?

Whoever chooses [Leave] in the saloon is a heartless monster. I mean, come on, who could say no to that face?

don't say it don't think it don't say it don't think it don't say it don't think it

Thanks for the detailed response, Fish! I appreciate it - I wanted to fact-check some stuff on the wiki, and now I can. Hope the new content is going smoothly!

Alright, these are some pretty straightforward questions - nothing about the "lore" of juice or anything like that. I just wanted to know how the game determines the amount of Juice that an enemy or entity should drop when it gets damaged. To this end, I have 2 questions.

1) It seems pretty obvious that dealing low amounts of damage to an enemy will only give a small amount of juice, and dealing more damage will give more per-hit. However, what I remain uncertain about if there is a maximum amount of Juice that an enemy can give per high-damage hit - that is, do juice blobs summoned by hurting enemies have a maximum value below the integer/decimal number size limit? If so, what would that be? Additionally, do juice blobs have a maximum physical size? (It kind of seems like their size is logarithmically-scaled or asymptotic rather than linear based on the amount of JP they give, but I don't actually know that to be true.)

2) When playing around with the old Draginslayer, it seemed like all enemies, regardless of how low-health they were, would have the tendency to drop a lot more Juice. This was most obvious with trees. My guess for how the system worked is as follows: if a pollywog with, say, 20 HP, would drop 20 JP if you were to whittle its health down by 1 HP at a time with a weak weapon, hitting it for 40 HP worth of damage would give you 40 JP, even though the Pollywog only had 20 HP and should probably not give you that extra 20 based on a direct HP-to-JP conversion. Of course, I don't actually know if the system works like that, and I wanted to ask so that we could have a clear understanding of it for the record.

Thanks for your time, and best of luck with the next update!

Well, I'm glad you made those cabin walls "thiccker." Good work, man, and I hope the home renovations are going well!

Panda Dome is an antivirus, and in this case OP may also be dealing with parental controls of some sort.

Hey all! Yes, I am making another suggestion, here, on a forum already clogged by suggestions (many of which are mine), but I’m doing my best to make sure that this one is well thought-through and based on things that have already been suggested in part by Fishlicka. (If you’re seeing this, Fish, you might want to break out the Slitherss Text-to-speech. This post ain’t short.)

The premise? Well, Fish mentioned offhandedly while discussing future updates and the notion of reworking the skill system that he was considering adding perks/modifiers that the player could opt into (“fallout style”), presumably when creating the world but possibly through the skill system, and that these would add replayability. I’ll go with the notion that they’re fixed upon creating a save file, and might be togglable through cheats/commands but not otherwise, meaning that a player can only normally opt into one at a time. Each one would impart some significant changes to the game, hopefully changing how the player approaches things or adding more challenge without simply upping the difficulty. Fish mentioned a few ideas of his own in the original thread (see here), and I wanted to run with them a little bit, as well as adding a few of my own. Each one will have a potential name and a short description of the changes beneath it.

Strap yourselves in. There's a lot of reading here.

“Hyperchondriac”

• The player is unable to become a vampire by any means. That means you can’t suck up corpses for health and Juice, ever. You won’t become a vampire after beating the creator, or by being bitten by Batty. If some alternate ways of getting the “sucking” power are added in the future, you won’t be able to get that ability through those methods either.
• All forms of health regain are increased by a factor of 4, applying mostly to health from the Holy Hammer and the Health Regen stat. Consumable items that increase health (currently only the Good Juice does this) will always give a baseline level of health that is added to the health they’d normally restore, then being multiplied by 4.
• Slight changes to the Vampire Bat’s dialogue if you use the Good Juice, where he gets confused about you not becoming a vampire and apologizes for wasting your time.

>Implementation Difficulty: Easy. I think? Yeah, probably.

Firstly, I just wanted to acknowledge that “hyperchondriac” is not a real word, and doesn’t even make sense when considering the origin of “hypochondriac,” but I’m calling the perk that because it’s funny. Anyways, exploring a way of getting back health without using the game’s ubiquitous “sucking” mechanic seems like a cool idea. Not too original or novel, by any means, but it could be fun for players that want to change things up. Also, I’m not sure if a 4 times multiplier is too extreme for health regeneration, since it might render you basically invincible at low health (since health regen already gets faster as your health decreases).

“Grungo Mode”

• All melee damage is multiplied by 2, Arm Strength is multiplied by 2, and the player starts the game with 5 levels in Arm Strength.
• The character is basically a caveman. As such, they are unable to drive or enter Signy’s Sweet Ride or use ranged or magical weapons. The player can equip these weapons, but they can only be used to hit things. (In other words, right clicking with the Ordinary Pineapple doesn’t fire a projectile - you just swing the pineapple harder. You can never get the gun to fire, not even on accident.)
• Because the player is a caveman, any form of interactive dialogue is totally changed; the player can’t complete the pop quiz at the start of the game because they can only grunt loudly, forcing them to jump out of the window unless they want to die.

>Implementation Difficulty: Moderate.

This takes the idea of “increased melee damage but you can’t use spells” to the logical (or illogical, as it were) extreme, maybe even too extreme. But, if the goal is to make each modifier change the playthrough drastically, then I think this is the appropriate amount of nuttiness. Also, the thought of Mrs. Slitherss getting progressively more frustrated as the player grunts at her questions before she just lasers you is pretty funny to me.

“Emphasis on Galaxy”

• It does not cost any energy to fly.
• You can swing weapons, use spells, and aim ranged weapons while mid-air, so long as you aren’t “flying” (i.e. holding the Spacebar/flight button).
• Gravity is disabled everywhere, and can’t be re-enabled.
• All enemies can fly a little, but they’re pretty bad at it and very slow. Enemies will still mainly spawn on surfaces, but can rarely spawn in mid-air.

>Implementation Difficulty: Moderate. (Zero gravity already exists, but control changes + mediocre flight AI is harder.)

This is just a modification of Fishlicka’s suggestion of “you can fly for free but there is no gravity,” which I think perfectly encompasses the spirit of what these perks should be like. I also wanted melee and ranged combat to be possible in some way, as well as not trivializing regular enemies that can’t normally fly. Combat would probably be a big, awkward slugfest, but hey, some people might be up for it.

“Only Got One Shot”

• When the player dies, that’s it - their save file is deleted, or at the very least they can no longer play it.
• When above the baseline HP equivalent to half-health (i.e. not a lot), any single attack or burst of damage that would be fatal will instead leave the player with a sliver of health left and a brief period of invulnerability. This ability has a cooldown, and can only be reactivated once the player reaches full health again. A small HUD icon will let the player know if this ability is ready for use. Scripted sequences are not changed by this ability (i.e. answering Slitherss incorrectly in the pop quiz will still kill you, and Swirly D will not trigger the effect).

>Implementation Difficulty: Moderate.

As I understand it, Juice Galaxy used to have a Permadeath option, but it seems to have been taken out - and, given how the player can easily die in a myriad of potentially unfair ways, this seems reasonable. This perk re-adds Permadeath as an option for players who want the challenge while also giving a bit of insurance to make dying to unseen damage less likely, and hopefully make permadeath seem more fair/appealing. (Side note: the “saved from death” mechanic that I’m suggesting is basically the “Strong Spirit” mutation from Nuclear Throne - I think it would work in this context.)

“Bathe in Juice (or dry trying)”

• The player has a 3rd meter on their HUD beneath Health and Energy that is filled by getting Juice from enemies or the environment (but not by de-leveling stats). Maybe it should be flashier-looking than the other meters, who knows.
• 1/2 of all Juice that the player receives will be diverted into filling this meter, unless it is full (at which point all Juice will go into the upgrade pool). The meter has a maximum capacity of 100 JP, but will drain at a rate of 5 JP per second. This meter starts off full.
• Completely filling this meter will boost all stats by 5 levels and stop the meter from draining for 5 seconds. Getting more Juice will reset this 5-second timer, even if it’s only a small amount.
• Using a Juice Fountain will stop the meter from draining for 10 seconds and reset it to 50 JP if it’s currently below that.
• When the meter is totally empty, the player will rapidly take damage and a crinkling/cellophane sound effect will play. This damage scales with the amount of maximum health the player has, and will kill a player from full health in 10 seconds. If the player dies like this, they will visibly shrivel up.

>Implementation Difficulty: Hard.

This is based on a bit of a discussion between “probablynotthere,” “talin o wag,” and myself. Before then, I had thought of making a perk that would benefit speedrunners, and initially I figured the player should have permanent speed and flight boosts but would have to manage this meter. I think this take on the idea is better, since filling the meter boosts all stats and can thus apply even in non-speedrun scenarios. It might be the case that the perk becomes obsolete by the end of the game, since 5 levels doesn’t mean that much when your hat boosts certain stats by a comical amount, but it’s still not an insignificant boost.

“Directed by Matthew Lagoon”

• All explosions - both player and enemy - deal 10x damage (that is, a whole order of magnitude more). Player-based explosions can have this damage increased further by the Damage stat.
• All explosions have their blast and damage radius increased by 1.5x, and knockback force increased by 2x.
• Players will be lit on fire and take full damage from their own explosions.
• Some minor sound-effect and particle changes to make explosions look/sound more powerful/meatier.

>Implementation Difficulty: Easy, I think?

Yep. This one is just meant to be fun chaos. Can you wipe the floor with everything once you get a meteor spell or Ordinary Pineapple? Maybe. Will hitting anything at even medium range, or a wall, or the floor, or running into your own bullets, instantly kill you as well? Maybe. Does the Wawsp Queen suddenly become the true final boss of the game? Maybe. Is the perk’s name a Michael Bay joke? Maybe. But hey, we’ll never know for sure until we try it out!

Hopefully, some of these ideas seem intriguing to anyone reading, and if Fishlicka gets inspired by any of these in developing his own perks or other ideas, then my work will have been a success. Have a nice day!

Oho! The Hydrangela is finally here! Nice work as always, fish.

Actually, that sounds like a fun gameplay modifier; you have a separate juice meter that isn't connected to the juice you use for upgrades, but still gets filled by Juice you collect. It drains pretty quickly, and when it's full all of your stats are boosted by a few levels, but when it's empty you take damage over time. I think it'd be a fun way to force the player to be aggressive or move quickly, to make sure that the bar doesn't run out, but it'd be better if it was something the player could choose to do rather than having it forced onto them.

I support the notion of the black hole spell not providing any Juice, just as a concept, since it would also give more utility to the "Telekinesis" spell as applied to controlling enemy movement. (With the black hole being predominantly offensive and Telekinesis being mostly practical/support, with the latter making it easier to get Juice while the former makes it more difficult/impossible.) The fact that it also affects performance provides a non-balance incentive to change this as well.

Oh, and that jukebox glitch seems pretty obscure - does it work on any other weapons?

Not sure, but I think it'd be funny if it were related to what the player wore. If a wizard hat was added in the future and you wore it, then maybe their tolerance for you attacking them (incidentally or directly) would go up before they retaliated, thinking that you were one of their own. Conversely, if you were wearing the Wawsp queen helmet, she'd call the wizards names when you got close to them, making them attack you on-sight.

Hey, thanks for reading that whole spiel of mine! Having Slitherss read feedback seems like it'd be fun, perhaps you should do that with all of your user suggestions.

I'm glad that you're considering a lot of the feedback the folks on here are putting forwards. As you say, the game is still early in development, and it makes sense that you'd want to iron out game fundamentals before adding loads of story content. Just don't let all of the suggestions overwhelm you. :p