Dev diary - December 2024

Hey,
Dev is a bit of a mess at the moment, with a lot of unorganized changes and me changing my mind a lot, but it's going on. It's a big update, mainly focusing about improving gameplay and meta-progression. Fetish content is supposed to be included via a more dynamic growth system, events and menu.

• Improved room system (80%)

I tried a few things when it comes to the room system. The objective was to make it feel more interactive, to have you make decisions about what you were about to encounter based on what you need, and to remove the need for more and more floors and quick starts. I created a map system, which I teased in a sneak peek, but ultimately decided against it, and tried a few other things.

Ultimately, I went back to something similar to what previously existed, where you choose the next room based on room type and reward, but improved the choices. I changed the dynamic between rooms, and added more room types, including treasure rooms to get guaranteed relics for unique runs, but also event and character encounters with small dialogs.

I removed quick starts as well. The idea was that as you kept leveling up, you would need harder and harder floors, and you shouldn't have to go back from the start every time. Instead, the maze is going to have an end after several floors. In future updates, when your character will grow bigger, you'll be able to make the maze harder for more exp.

Most of it is done. I mainly need to polish game over, game wins, and add some event logic.

• More everything (25%)

I want to add more diversity. More floors with unique enemies to complete the maze, but also enemy and boss variety for existing floors, and events should be an interesting way to add sexy characters and interaction. Some of them could change your run long-term. Relics are also an interesting way to make runs feel unique, and I'm trying to add a lot of them for each character to change the way you play.

I'm trying to create a bit of everything as things go, and implemented a better map logic and relic pools, but will focus on variety once the rest is done.

• Level system (80%)

I went back and forth about how I wanted meta-progression to be implemented. Just like the room system, I developed multiple systems, and not everything is going to go through. Last week, I made a post about how levels are going to be permanent, and half went back on it.

Currently, every run starts at level 1. Levels now progress in smaller increments (level 6 is roughly equivalent to what level 3 used to be) and they no longer unlock unique card pools. This keeps the growth more gradual and avoids drastic power spikes. There is no longer a story-based max level restriction; the only limit is the current cap in the game. To aid progression, levels you’ve previously reached require less EXP to reach again, while new levels take significantly more EXP. Once you reach a new level, it causes a "level break," making it easier to reach that level in future runs, and unlocking new cards or items. This system should help streamline progression over time.

Most of it is done, as long as I don't change my mind again. I mostly need to polish animations, EXP balance, and card/item unlock.

• Card changes and upgrades (30%)

With the changes to the level system, cards need to follow suit. Levels don't have their own cardpool, and your entire cardpool is what you can use during each run.

That said, some cards might fall behind as your grow to higher levels. You need up to date cards as you grow, with stronger effects, and up to date art. There will be ways to upgrade your cards, and I'm currently working on implementing this.

To add variety and make runs feel unique, I added a rarity system, distinct from the upgrade system. Simple cards are common, especially early, while you can have game-changing and buildaround effects at rare slots and later during the run.

With these changes, as well as compensating for level changes and scaling reduction, cardpools are going to require a lot of tuning. Most of my attention went to the general changes, and I did one character for testing, but I still need to add and update a lot of cards.

• Shards and traits (30%)

I added shards as a new currency, you can obtain in the maze, and keep after the run. Alongside level breaks, these will be one of the ways serve to improve your future runs, by purchasing traits.
Traits are permanent upgrades that make you stronger, so you can better explore the maze in future runs. Such traits include for instance starting runs from a higher level, hp regeneration or improving relics.

I'm currently working on this feature, with simple traits to start with. Once the main features are done, I'll be working on adding more traits.

• Improved menu (0%)

Haven't worked on this yet, but my goal is to split the menu by character. That you select your character, and feel like you are them. You can check your cards, your traits, your previous runs, your body in the mirror, etc, with an evolution based on your level. Ideally, being able to connect with characters and interact with them, but I might not have the time to do it.

• Mobile adaptation and story implementation (0%)

I'm gonna need some time at the end to polish everything. I put the story apart to focus on the changes, but am going to need to insert it back in. Mobile play, bug fixes, animation polish, etc... are part of the late update process as well.

Sorry for the long explanation. I spent a lot of time on it already, but am unfortunately far from done. Hopefully things clear up once the new core gameplay is polished, which was my focus these last weeks.

Oh, I almost forgot! With more intricate levels, the size difference was hard to make obvious with the current chibis. Plus, I felt like I could use sexier models when working on character events encounters, so I tried changing the style a bit. What do you think?