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I had a great time joining you for this live gameplay and commentary session! For anyone who's curious, this video is only the first part of a four-part series covering the 1.2 update.

Definitely consider checking out Juli's Armored Arachnid playlist to watch the remaining videos as they get uploaded!

Nice work! I'll have to give this a try soon. Are you keeping some parts of 2D gameplay around as legacy content as opposed to replacing them entirely?

There are some currently in the game already, but I'll be adding three more boss-related achievements in an update that I'm fairly close to finishing up. I'd like to add a greater variety of achievements after the main game is finished, though!

That's pretty cool! You're welcome to include the game on your site if you want.

Ah, I see! A mix of 2D and 3D assets can still work well, so I'm curious to see how the gameplay will feel with the new 3D environments.

Looks interesting! Will you be making 3D models of all the characters as well?

My ranger got assassinated by a giant snowflake that kept teleporting on top of her and shotgunning her. :(

Pretty nice progress so far. The game definitely gets easier over time thanks to the purchasable upgrades (I think I defeated the second boss before it could even do anything). Some more enemy variety would help make the game more fun!

Sounds neat! Are you planning on having this mode be entirely separate from the main story, or will you also be incorporating procedural generation in the main story later on?

You're welcome! I'd like to see what you do with the game if you continue working on it!

Hi! I randomly found your game and decided to give it a try. Even though it's a work in progress, I had fun going through the content in the game so far!

I really like the spritework; the level tiles and objects are especially nice and varied enough to really give the feel of an enemy base. The controls are simple and work just like how I would want them to, and including Cirno's hitbox while strafing is extremely helpful for certain situations with a lot of enemy bullets. The only real issue I found is that some interactables feel like they don't stick out enough, particularly the ones with a single unanimated sprite. It's not a huge issue though, as the levels are short and simple enough that I was able to figure everything out before long.

I got stuck midway through Level 3, specifically at a green switch next to sewage that didn't seem to work even after I had picked up the green keycard. I assume that's where development has ended for now? After that, I used the debug menu to jump around to some other rooms, and the rooms that didn't have Cirno also didn't allow the menu to be reopened, so I had to relaunch the game a few times to check more rooms.

The side illustrations are cute! I'm sure that my friend will like them too.

I'm glad you had fun playing the new demo! If you end up playing more of the game, the items that the minibosses and bosses drop permanently unlock new weapons and passive effects on the "configure augmentations" screen that you can choose to use for future runs.

I'm really glad you think so! I wanted to try something a little different from my other games and was really happy with how the sprites turned out.

I felt like I should draw one of the protagonists, so here's Violet! She must be planning something...

In another timeline, the Blackstorm Empire reigns supreme after my sorely underprepared Rover receives yet another clobbering in the halls of the prison fortress. I attempt to appease Lord Xiomar with a painting in his image, so that I might not be the next in line.

I ended up taking a more spooky spin on his canon design, but I hope you still like it, regardless!

I'm really glad you enjoyed playing the demo!

I wanted to try and come up with unique enemies while keeping a consistent "theme" for each of the planets. Lejra has enemies that try to get in close range while Fabor has enemies that are slow but produce a lot of projectiles. The Trooper is definitely the highest-priority target, it's especially threatening since its speed gets buffed with the wave number, but it also has the lowest HP of all enemies so you can kill it fast.

The demo currently ends after the first planet, but I'm planning for the second and third planets you do in a single run to get tougher with more enemies per wave, new enemy types, and different boss fights at the end. I'm also thinking about increasing the active enemy cap beyond 3 and adding some environmental hazards for later planets, but I'm not 100% sure yet. I'm aiming to make the player's chosen level order much more impactful than it was in Dark Space.

I did try to give Volodiros some extra HP since it's pretty easy to hang around in front of him and pump him full of bullets, but I could increase his HP further or adjust his phase change thresholds if you think he goes down too fast. I do agree that he's the easiest boss of the three, and I also think that his planet is also the easiest one, but I feel like it might be due to the default weapon just being a strong pick there. I imagine Volodiros would be harder to approach with a melee-range weapon.

I did give Karkambian less HP than the other two bosses due to the i-frames in the jumping phases, but he is vulnerable for much less time than normal on Deadly Mode, so that ends up making his fight take a lot longer. There is a bit of a secret strategy you can use against Karkambian to speed the fight up a bit; you can bait him into jumping on the rocks in the corners of the arena, which does a portion of his max HP and stuns him for a little while.

The blue bar will eventually be an energy meter for secondary attacks and buffs on right-click, but there aren't any in the game yet, so it currently doesn't do anything, haha. It (along with the score) will have a purpose in the next version, once I get around to implementing the equivalent of the orbital system from Dark Space.

 The next update will be focused on adding new weapons and upgrades. I'm planning for enemies and bosses to drop permanent upgrades that you can manage on the menu to customize your loadout. In particular, Karkambian and Mizerantha will drop alternative weapons (including the fan-favorite snowflakes), Volodiros will drop something that utilizes the blue bar, and the "minibosses" will drop general or weapon-specific augments (for example, the Sand Ghost "orbital" will change the default weapon to shoot two converging bullets like the enemy does). I'm planning to put a hard limit on how many upgrades the player can have equipped at once, but I'm planning for the limit to be able to be raised by reaching certain high score thresholds.

Can't fix what's already perfect!

Monk OP

Just got 100% in the main story mode, planning to try the bad guys story at a later point. The end-game levels are definitely very good, I agree! The only thing I'd really criticize is that the "snaptrap" enemies in one of the chase sequences that's super zoomed-out are really hard to see since they're small and blend in really well with the color palette of the level. They were easy enough to avoid once I knew they were there, but I ran into them a handful of times without seeing them.

I did run into one particular glitch during my playthrough; I managed to clip right through the rotating "graham cracker" platform twice. I think I got into wall-jump position right before it started acting as a floor, so I ended up falling right through the platform entirely. Not sure if you're aware of this already!

I was going to suggest that the homing fireball projectile (the thing that gave me the most trouble for sure) should be an unlockable character as a joke, but then I got 100%...

I can't believe you're adding a third story mode! What are you, some kind of super-freak or something?

I see you've been working hard on polishing up the game and adding lots of features! I've been wanting to get back to your game soon (I remember the last version I played stopped at an empty room in place of the last world's first level, so it's been a while), and 2.0 looks like it'll be a great way to experience the endgame for the first time. I'm about to bump up your download count; keep up the great work!

Please delete Greenwood Forest   :pleading_face:

Haha, you too? I once had the ending theme for one of my GMS 1.4 games randomly get overwritten with one of the sound effects, and I had no idea why it happened... I knew it wasn't my fault!

I'm glad you think so! Dark Space 1 was the first game I uploaded to itch, and I've learned a lot about programming and game design since then. I've been wanting to reboot the Dark Space universe with a more refined sequel, so I hope this current project turns out well.

This game is a soulful experience

It was my own birthday, haha. I'm glad you like it!

Just managed to get Strato-Scruffy to work on my computer and played through all of it! Ten out of ten game

I think I remember you saying something about adding health drops to enemies in one of your devlogs, which definitely seems like a good idea in hindsight. There's definitely a few moments throughout the game where you can get chunked by a bunch of cheap hits, although the rest of the game feels easy in comparison. It's probably for the best that a really old and somewhat janky game like this is on the easier side, so as not to turn into something too frustrating.

Also, this is my first time actually playing the game. I remember seeing your various videos and clips of it on your old YouTube channel way back in the day, so it was a pretty surreal experience to actually play the game for the first time, over a decade later, haha.

This is the game that introduced me to your channel back in the day, haha!

You're welcome! I hope my wall of text didn't come across as too negative, since I did have a very positive experience with the game overall, but I wanted to try and focus on the newer additions and didn't want to repeat stuff from my other comment.

Also Happy New Year to you too!

Just finished playing through all the levels! Yeah, I did find two small bugs:

I assume that the volume is supposed to increase or decrease in flat increments of 5%, but sometimes it offsets and increases by 4% or 6% instead. I'm assuming that might be some sort of rounding error?

This small tunnel in the Barrel Canyon level where the rolling spike balls filter out instantly kills you if you touch it. I assume the game thinks that I'm being crushed between the platforms.

Aside from those, I thought that most of the new levels and all of the bosses were solid! The game definitely has a steep difficulty curve, as increasingly difficult level designs combine with new, also increasingly difficult mechanics. I found myself starting to feel frustrated with the ice and the darkness mechanics in World 5, though. You seem to maintain the friction if you jump off the ice, and your jump ends up being locked into an arc that you can hardly adjust; it's completely different from how jumping off any other ground type works. This ended up really messing with me at multiple sections of the level and caused me to jump with nearly no horizontal speed and fall right into the adjacent pit a handful of times. I don't think the darkness is too bad, but I feel like the player could use a slightly larger viewing radius. I found myself being unable to see some of the hazards, especially the big spike ball enemies, until I had already moved right into them. I started feeling the frustration of being stuck with 0 hearts every time I respawned at the checkpoint at the final section of the level, and I ended up giving in and taking the 10 hearts freebie after dying a whole bunch of times.

The bosses don't seem to scale in difficulty nearly as much as the levels, especially since you always have two free hearts to grab and the fight checkpoints after you've done half of the boss's life bar. I felt like Larry was an extremely easy boss and not much tougher than Cinge from the first world. Francis was definitely an interesting fight, but I quickly figured out his pattern and didn't struggle with him at all after that. In my opinion, Mega Klaw is probably the most challenging boss of the bunch, but compared to the normal levels, they're all pretty easy.

Nice! Downloading it now and planning to check it out sometime soon.

Glad to see that you're still moving along with this project! I've been meaning to try out the game again at some point since you've pushed out all these updates for it.

Is this really a Scratch game? This is probably the best one I've played on this site so far! Congratulations on making a surprisingly fun game!

I decided to play with all three extra difficulty settings on, which probably made the game more enjoyable. I chose to keep the axe in my first run, but I kept getting lots of upgrades for bullets. It wasn't clear if they would benefit the axe's projectile, so I chose to ignore them.

I got to the Venomite battle on my second run, but I ran out of time to finish the fight before the next wave started automatically, which made Venomite's health bar and the boss music go away. I feel like more time should be given to finish the boss waves with the Enemy Territory setting active, as I got run over by the mobs that spawned in while the boss's patterns were still going on.

Just an advisory for anyone interested in playing this game - the two downloads are exactly the same, with the exception of one technical setting.

The first download (the "VSync Enabled" one) should run perfectly fine for everyone, so I suggest that you get this one. The other download may run at an unchecked framerate on certain systems (basically meaning that the game speed could be faster than it's supposed to be) and is mainly just there for posterity and because this is a silly jam game with no proper in-game menu to toggle the setting.

You're welcome! I just noticed you added browser support, but when the game finishes loading, I receive this error each time:

An error occurred running the Unity content on this page. See your browser JavaScript console for more info. The error was:

RuntimeError: indirect call to null

Hello! From the video, this looks very cute and well-animated. Has this only been compiled for Mac? I didn't find any other executable in the download.

Glad you enjoyed the game! I did end up altering the three-slugs room during development to allow you to defeat them with falling arrows (arrows will dislodge and fall when you fire at a wall up close, and I ended up liking it as tech to defeat certain enemies), but I do think the lava-themed rooms with bats ended up being a little harder than they needed to be. I have gotten a similar comment about how shooting the bats in the room with three of them only makes the room harder to complete than it initially is, haha.

Does your controller come with software to map buttons to keyboard inputs? I know others who wanted to play some of my games with a controller as well, and that ended up working for their needs. I have been interested in implementing custom keybinds for future games if it feels warranted, but it's something you have to specially program for in GMS. I would have to rewrite and reorganize a bunch of this game's code for it, and yeah, it's just something I wanted to quickly throw together.

I have a friend who occasionally schedules posts on Twitter to showcase random GIFs of his game development in process. He says that it's something you have to regularly keep up with if you want to see some traffic, and games that are visually interesting are more likely to get noticed. I tried using it a long while back to show off some of my own game development stuff, but I found it to be too much of a hassle to keep up with, especially because I don't particularly care about trying to get attention.

As for more text-heavy devlogs... I'm not sure if there's any special place you could go to post things like that. I have gotten some hits from all the devlogs I made for my larger games here on itch, but part of that might be because I'm in the pool of "featured" users on this site, so anything I do shows up in a special featured feed. Honestly, I think the best thing you can do is to just continue making games if you're passionate about it! Your follower count will only go up if you keep putting stuff out, and I've had several bursts of traffic on random things I've made across my time on this site.

The bugs are really no problem! My playthrough of the game wasn't negatively impacted at all by any of the little things I came across, but I just wanted to mention them in case you ever wanted to touch this game again. Sorry to hear about the issues with RPG Maker MZ; I didn't know that it had compilation issues, and I can see how that would be really annoying to try and work against.

I did think this was a very quality RPG Maker game, so I'm definitely going to look forward to anything you have coming next. Is there anywhere else you share game development stuff? I would be interested in keeping up if so!