Howdy! We're a few days into the Scrabdackle public demo release, and I've been collecting all the feedback I can get and planning some adjustments. First, immediate takeaways; second, longer-term plans; third, quick patch notes.

Early feedback takeaways

I wrote out some thoughts on twitter from going through the feedback I've received to-date. Here's the breakdown of the biggest stumbles and highlights from the demo first impressions.

• Drown mechanics are way too problematic; both the frequency and ease that people clip the water and the respawn being locked to the entry point of the room. I'll shrink drown range, expand platforms, and also will track a live 'last safe position' to respawn to rather than just setting it once per room.
• Dialogue and characterization were a big hit. I'll revisit my NPC dialogue pipeline to streamline it, seems like I'll be writing much more.
• Gameplay abilities need to come sooner; even for a demo, move-and-shoot isn't enough. Up-prioritizing the ability moveset.
  • I'll be starting with the Dash, which was the first planned utility ability. After that, one of the other combat abilities. Originally, you were supposed to receive the Dash as a reward for beating Little Lord; a few comments have led me to reconsider this to make walking around more interesting and to give another angle to the fights.
• The magic meter mechanic seemed to be well-received but hard to visually detect. Gotta add some UI *by* the player or mouse cursor.
• A few suggestions to add in some puzzles to mix it up. Probably not a bad idea-- it started as a pure-combat concept before shifting to an adventure game, so there's room to move further that way. But also a LOT of scope creep. Will have to think about it.
• More visual/audio cues for some gameplay elements, generally. (Particularly being able to tell WHO is talking when there's multiple NPCs in proximity!)
• Best suggestion: Some kind of bestiary to learn more about the creatures of the world. I really like this! I'll think about how to implement it without intruding on in-the-moment gameplay. I might need to spend more time on menus than I'd planned.

Some long-term plans

Junk Heap was always intended purely as a tutorial area, where the minimum requirement to progress was to get the wand and thereby demonstrate some comfort navigating the world and defeating basic enemies. In earlier iterations, you HAD to leave the area through Peanut Village; in the current plans, Peanut Village and Little Lord are purely optional and you can explore northwest or east as soon as you've got wand in hand. But until there's other areas TO explore, the LL fight had to be the focal 'end point' of the demo.

So... that's next on the chopping block! New abilities and new areas. Junk Heap connects to one town (PV) and two 'exploration' areas, which in turn will connect to further exploration areas as well as challenge areas, planned as more linear dungeon-like experiences. I'll put PV on hold and work on either Ducklands or Rubble Ruins next. I want to get some more enemies out so there's more to play with once some abilities are in place.

Speaking of abilities, I've currently envisioned 12, with the basic wand shot counting as one. Subject to change, of course. But prioritizing those next also means finally working on the rest of the HUD sidebar, which will hold those abilities and have quick-change to choose which are active. Plus the minimap expansion! Lots to do, lots to do. I'd like to find a way to make my roadmap and task list public, as well.

I'll share a larger version of my plans for the game in the future. A majority of core systems are in place, so content-building should be pretty smooth and steady, but that said - the demo is about 3-4% of how large I envision the final game being, trying to account for scope creep and estimating realistically. So there's plenty more on the way!

Patch 01 notes

• Linux version now available!
  • (Mac version upcoming once some Godot exporter issues can be resolved.)
• Garbage Eater health lowered from 5 to 4.
• One room adjusted so you can't start infinitely drowning on entry and get stuck being unable to respawn on land.
• Some dialogue no longer auto-proceeds (specifically, for some important info dialogue).
• Added descriptions to UI sidebar to make it clearer which is health and which is magic.
  • To be clear, this is just a band-aid solution - the next milestone will include finalized UI with the ability to hover over an element and see more information about it. I'm intending to keep the UI as text-free as possible when you're not actively looking for information.
• Tweak to sensitivity on water drown
  • Further changes to come; this is just some quick low-hanging fruit.
• Added new test abilities to Peanut Village as a reward for completing the 'main goal' of the demo; specifically:
  • The Bomb Throw attack, arcing high and flying over obstacles.
  • The Dash utility, for quickly scooting around enemies.
  • The Jump utility, for hopping over difficult terrain and dodging some low projectiles and enemies.
  • (All of these require further polish and proper names - it's WIP content)

By the way - the version code is [Full Release].[Milestone].[Release Count, zero-based]. So this will be the second release of the 0.1 Milestone, aka the demo.