Patreon Weekly #16 - September 20th, 2019

Hey patrons!

Just last week I mentioned that we were on track to reach $100/mo, but I definitely wasn't expecting that we'd hit it in just another week! In celebration of hitting the goal, and also to test out Patreon's polling functionality, I might do a "patron poll #0" in the next few days. This will be in addition to a regular poll for the next Shattered update, and will be on a fairly minor topic, just to get everything warmed up. Thanks again to all of you for your support!

Now, regarding content. The 0.7.5 beta has been out for a couple of days, but one major thing absent from it so far is the Tengu rework. I'd like to explain what has changed and why things were delayed.

You might recall that I previously teased a mirror image ability for Tengu. This ability was going to be a part of his third phase, but after testing I've decided to axe it for now. Mirror images are really thematically cool, but once a player realizes how to tell which Tengu is real, the images become a non-factor for player decision-making, and just make the fight more complicated without any real benefit. This is an issue Tengu's fight already has in its current state, where figuring things out is very fun on the first try, but not so much after repetition. I do still think mirror images or shadow clones or similar could work really well, but I think I'd need to design the entire fight around them. If I ever do that 'Boss Variations' idea that I mentioned in the 2019 plans blog post, Tengu will likely get that as a variation.

So, what is Tengu going to do on his third phase instead? Similar to how the new stage 2 is keeping the maze theme but making it much more focused, I'm going to have stage 3 keep the 'chasing Tengu' theme but make things much more focused.

Phase 3 will now happen in a totally open arena that is smaller than what I teased previously, but still bigger than the phase 1 arena. Just like in phase 1, Tengu will blink around this arena to evade the player, but he's going to do something else instead of laying traps. In addition to chucking regular shurikens, Tengu will use a few new AOE abilities which are intended to make the process of chasing him down more interactive.

I'm currently planning three separate moves, which spread danger in different patterns. These moves are all avoidable with good positioning, but you might need to think a turn or two ahead:

- Tengu will throw an improvised explosive device in front of the player. Similar to Goo's pump up attack, this will build power for two turns and then explode in a 5x5 radius! Ideally, the player will avoid the blast while still moving toward Tengu.

- Tengu will throw an improvised shocking device (likely made out of DM-100 parts). These devices will shock and damage adjacent cells, alternating between a + and an x pattern. Unlike the other two abilities these will persist for the rest of the fight, but if movement is timed wisely you can dance around the shocks!

- Tengu will scatter a flammable powder infront of himself which repeatedly momentarily snaps into flames as it spreads forward. This create a sort of slow-moving wave of fire which the player can avoid if they run through at the right moment.

All of these attacks take two turns of Tengu's time, and won't be used constantly, so ideally they'll provide some great strategic variety without being overwhelming.

I'm hoping to get the fully reworked Tengu fight ingame in the next few days. After that there'll be the usual bit of time spend on polishing the update, and then it's on to 0.7.6!