Introducing the Rubble Ruins . . .

Something that's been important to me is that multiple regions are accessible in the demo - even a small section - so that players don't mistake the Junk Heap for all there will be in the full game. The Ducklands ""preview"" (it's really just music and nothing else) acted mainly as a tiny reminder that areas would be interconnected, but I've really wanted to have enough of a preview that you could really explore  a bit of a proper, different area.

Well, the Ruins are here.

East of the Junk Heap lies a rocky land burnt by dark magic, canopied by a crackling cloud curtain, with strange monstrous inhabitants. And some... magic constructs? What could have happened here, and who could have built these things? What were these ruins long ago?

You won't find all the answers in the demo, but if you're brave (and dashing, hint hint) enough, you may find a few more secret stars for now.

Patch 04 changelog (content update!)

• New area added: Rubble Ruins
  • New enemy: Ruins Ghoul
  • New enemy: Ruins Hound
  • New enemy: Grinble
    • A note on these new enemies - I haven't 100% locked in their tuning. I'm interested to see what initial feedback is here, and I'm planning to make adjustments based on that. In particular, I'm likely to revisit the Hound AI.
  • New OST track:Rubble Ruins theme (link goes to Bandcamp)
  • Added [???] secret stars in total
• Other content changes
  • Golf minigame added. It's in a temporary location for the time being. (I don't know how many minigames there will be, but I was pretty happy to organically stumble upon the idea for this one. Hint - bring Magic Bits with you when exploring the new area...!)
    • As with everything, I will probably rebalance this after getting initial feedback.
  • Dash ability added back to the game. It's found in the Peanut Village, after the Little Lord fight.
    • It hasn't been perfectly fine-tuned yet, but with the new availability of the Ruins, I wanted to make sure it could be obtained. The Ruins are very treacherous without it.
  • Added switches.
    • In the future, I'll be introducing more 'puzzle' type content, with this being the first step in that direction.
    • Switches stay activated/deactivated when you cross rooms, allowing for more complex puzzle design (and shortcuts).
  • Also added switch-controlled magic bridges.
• Bugfixes & technical this'n'that
  • Updated ambient FX system to be more flexible
    • You'll notice area effects 'linger' a bit after you leave them, as well, and take a little more time to 'build up' upon entering a region
  • Massively reduced game filesize
    • I hadn't even realized how big it had gotten - a huge chunk of the old filesize was made up of some very long SFX loops that I'd saved as WAV instead of OGG. One of them was like half the size of the game 😅 I can still cut em down more from here in the future with a bit of time to investigate.
  • When I doubled health/damage values in the previous update, I forgot to update saves to heal you to the new max. Big whoops! Fixed now.
  • Some more misc minor bugs and glitches dealt with.

What's coming next?

Per my last devlog, What's Coming Next?, I'll be working on Peanut Village. Specifically: lots of dialogue, unique buildings and art, and some functionality and features. For that, I'll need to improve the dialogue creation pipeline, and rig up the Peanut NPC mob with a full set of animations, expressions, and some simple behaviours like walking and hopping. The village needs to feel lively and full!

The game's also getting large enough that a real save system is becoming relevant, which is a somewhat overdue task. When that's all done, it'll be Ducklands and final systems last for demo-specific content.

See you next time! Or, if you want to see what's coming up before it comes out - see you on Discord!