Would Maya be cute as a Mermaid? Asking for a friend...

Hello there!

Development on the game is going well, and it feels really good to be on high gear!

IMAGE 1 - Chests will now spawn a funny surprise!
I've been redesigning the 2nd beach stage, with all of the shipwrecks, and I've added a lot of chests in that area. Normal wooden chests will reward Maya with basic items such as potions, weapons and even essence in bulk. Golden chests will be reserved for unique or important key items.

Now that I will be placing these chests all around the stages, it was finally time to fully integrate Vivian (i.e. the "mimic" hidden inside a chest) into the gameplay. Maybe with even a neat surprise! Unopened normal chests will have a very tiny chance to be a mimic. Opened chests will have a greater chance, and will definitely catch unaware players who are revisiting a stage and who thought they forgot to open up some treasure! Unopened gold chests will never be a mimic, but opened ones will also have a small chance to be one. So from now on, Maya better be careful when interacting with chests, or she might end in a "Frieren" situation!

IMAGE 2 - Beach Boss fight is now more difficult
Since I've redesigned the stage leading up to the merman boss, and balanced the values for the enemies there, the truth is that this boss had fallen behind in terms of difficulty. Sadly I don't have time to do a full rework, but I gave him just a few tweaks which made a big difference in play-testing. He now spawns a thunder cloud (similar to Clematis' skill), his waves now have collision and can push Maya into the ocean, and he spawns an enraged water jelly (blue slime) when he restarts his pattern loop. On paper doesn't sound like much, but give it a try and fight him again, you'll see that he'll be more of a challenge this time!

IMAGE 3 - Mermaid Maya? Patent Pending...
(image credit/source: https://www.patreon.com/melowh)
Speaking of the beach boss, I feel like giving him an extra ero scene or two, seeing as he just have a single and very old one. Here we see the good old and sweet Ariel from the Dsney movies (*mouse lawyer noises*), who also happens to have a bright red hair just like Maya. I've been wondering if in one of the possible new scene, or maybe even in the bad ending (all bosses are supposed to have one for version 1.0). At some point I did consider adding a mermaid enemy into the beach areas, but I had ifficulty in figuring out how to best implement it, so maybe using it as a theme for Maya instead could work. What do you think?

Anyways, for my subsequent work, I have to add new cutscenes and dialogue relating to Maya defeating the beach boss and acquiring the crimson scepter, which will then point her towards going back to the start of the hill area, opening the gate and continuing her adventure from there, and start to reshape/rebalance the hills area. That's all for now, so please let me know if you have neat scene ideas for the merman boss!

Best Regards,
Mega