GutBuster beta v0.6 release

Update 1/27/25: The game is now released on itch.io and Steam! Betas have been removed and update posts have been made public.

Big Update is finally here!

Here's what was added:

• All 40 levels playable

• All 30 failure cutscenes and 40 success cutscenes done

• Shop prices rebalanced and some items tweaked

• New accessibility option: Custom Mode, with level select option!

• A SECRET unlockable....

• Music!! The game has a full original soundtrack created by... me! I made the music!

  

Known issues:

• Though all 40 levels are playable, there's still a lot of balancing yet to be done. I polished the difficulty curve as much as I could for the first 10 levels when I released the v0.5 demo, but there's only so much testing I can do myself. Plus the time I spent playing means I'm really good at the game, so feedback from others on this end is what I'll need the most, since others probably won't find it as easy.

• No new story cutscenes (the ones that appear every 5 levels to introduce the new food scenario) and the existing ones still need tweaking. The later levels have a placeholder video showing a script describing what'll happen. There's no new images or animation of Rebebcca yet either. There's a placeholder there too.

• Still no saving. I created the Custom Mode to compensate so you can skip around and not have to play all 40 levels in one sitting.

• Still don't know what causes the softlock where the level doesn't start, but I should have made it so that you can pause and restart the level as a workaround. Let me know if that still doesn't work.

• The coenzyme powerup level 3 doesn't do anything yet. More on that later...

• Massive Slowdowns and framedrops still occur if your Ghrelin Gat is at the highest level and you pick up a Bile Blaster/Tri-Glyceride. Haven't worked on it yet. Probably too many particles.

• Still has that graphical glitch which happens on one frame when food appears. Some kind of weird loading issue I think. I intend to have the food fall in from the top of the screen so it won't be seen as a workaround in a later update. Speaking of which...

  

Plans for changes and additions in future versions:

• Obviously, I need to rebalance the levels, items and shop prices.

• Add a "Money Magnet" item (there's already a level selector for it in the Custom Mode) which pulls in lipids from further away as it levels up.

• Coenyzme upgrade, which already makes item dropping Enzymes appear earlier and more often, is going to also make them take less shots to open.

• Metabolism (Money level) upgrade will have a new feature, where there's a random chance a shot will drop extra lipids on every hit, even if it doesn't destroy the target, and the odds increase as the level goes up.

• A save system. I intend to have the mode with saves not have cheats, but allow cheats in a "no save" mode. I'm thinking the cheat mode would be unlocked when you beat the game properly, but I might just allow it from the beginning.