Hello! It's time to share what I was working on since the Steam Next Fest ended. Most of the changes are influenced by feedback i got from this event. I hope you are going to like it.
Upcoming Features and Changes:
NEW Main Menu Illustration
The Artist Jakub Tito Kašiar made new main menu illustration for Hollow Mine. No more boring menu! Thanks to new illustration, game feels much more atmospheric and climatic. It should bring more positive feelings for the players and send a message that Hollow Mine is a real deal. I hope you like it, let me know in the comments what you think about the new main menu illustration.
You can find Jakub Tito Kašiar here: https://www.instagram.com/kasiarjakub/
Improved Lighting
Since the beginning of times I heard feedback saying that "Why I am blocked to dig" and during intense action combat players would say "I don't see what is going on". I definitely agree with this comments. I decided to try to fix it by introducing new room lighting.
After couple trials and errors I finally figured how to apply lighting to the rooms in the way that fits the game and it's not buggy. I managed to accomplish it! Now active area of the room is much brighter, beyond the room border - background is darker. It wasn't that hard as I thought it would be.
With new lighting players will be able to see the walkable and destroyable area more easily. It should also help with intense combat action moments to focus the eyes on the area that is actually relevant the most.
In forest biome the lighting gradient is less affecting the background, because it's outside area. Internal closed biomes, like mine biome, will have background blacked out.
I hope you will like the new lighting for rooms.
Bouncy Projectiles Ability
Do you experience issues with aiming straight on the enemies? Say nothing! Just try bouncy projectiles to increase your chance to hit anything!
Greater Fireball Magic Spell
Do walls stand in your way to get to evil creatures? No longer! Use Greater Fireball spell with ability to break walls on impact. The projectiles are, so big they can also damage surrounding enemies in small range.
* - And yes it's possible to break ore veins with this spell ;-)
Making Game More Challenging
Hollow Mine is suppose to be a bullet hell game, unfortunately it's still not there yet. Enemies in the game needs a lot of adjustments. I introduced a set of changes and improvements to make it possible, see below:
- Enemy attack patterns will be more various now, leaving less reaction time and making them more challenging.
- Dash will make player evade enemy projectiles and enemy attacks now.
- Enemies will be lighter to push back when player is body blocked.
- Enemy animations will be adjusted to improve signaling attacks to the player more
- After receiving the hit, player short invincibility ghost will last less time now (1s -> 0.35s, 2s -> 0.7s - with Double Ghost Ability)
These changes are aimed to make the combat more challenging and dynamic. Player gained the possibility to dash through the bullets unharmed, in exchange for introducing more complex bullet patterns - similar to Enter the Gungeon game.
If you are experienced bullet hell player with a lot of hours into games similar to Hollow Mine, please contact me on discord. I would love to chat and hear the feedback ;-)
Forest Biome New Floor Tiles Colors
It was always a case where I couldn't figured out the proper colors for Hollow Mine. I am programmer first and art comes second. I'm actually learning pixel art while developing Hollow Mine. Throughout the years I improved in pixel art style. I recommend to watch the old devlogs or articles about the game to see the difference. I hope I improved at least - let me know in comments :-P
As I get more knowledge about pixel art and colors, I use it to improve the game. These new floor tiles colors should be much more pleasing to see, especially during combat.
Picking Abilities NEW UI Effect
Level up and moment of picking new ability is significant. I decided to improve this moment with a small highlight animation for each of the ability card. I hope you like it.
Improved Screen Shake
Screen shake is controversial topic - most people don't like it and feel dizzy from watching it (no worries there is option in the settings to turn it off). Still I wanted to make it properly this time, it's no longer animated, and the shake direction follows the crosshair now. This change should make the hits more impactful.
Red Border Effect Indicating Player Receiving Hit
Short ghost character animation, SFX sound and hearts animation triggering on player receiving hit might not be enough to signalize this event. Now short red screen border animation will help to make that event more noticeable.
Under Player Stamina Bar Indicator
Stamina is one of things that players need to monitor at all times during combat, to strategies and plan next moves according to it's current status. Now it should be more convenient to see the current stamina status under the character feet.
Blood Axe Weapon
New unique axe weapon is coming to Hollow Mine, with ability to leech life on enemy death.
Whole axe weapon set:
Dash Icon
It wasn't always clear when the dash is available - there's small cooldown delay to use it. Now with a special dash icon on the player panel UI it should be much more visible.
Someday we will figure out how to put it on character as well ;-)
Forbidden Cheese Item
Bomb-like item that instead of exploding can poison the enemies and slow them down. It can be used to get a great synergy with demobilize enemy ability that causes foes to receive 200% while in poison state.
There are other features and fixes incoming like:
- UI base resolution from 320x180 to 400x225
- Fixing spear weapon range
- Improving rolling Item box behavior to be more intuitive
- Increasing experience requirements to level up
- Making level up pick ability UI appear instantly
- New room type with enemy second spawn event
- Further balancing for abilities, item drops, resources.
- Fixing double chest with spawn for unlocking room
- etc.
These changes were also partially influenced by Mr. Delightful huge feedback left on Hollow Mine Demo Page inside a review posted on 4th of March 2025. Having a review on demo page is really helpful - please do it :-)
You can find Mr. Delightful playing Hollow Mine on his YouTube channel here:
https://youtu.be/OLyxesLxUvE?si=8AkD4MXLO8LySMs8
Disclaimer: Please note that all features and adjustments mentioned here might be still subject to change.
When the v.0.8 update will be released?
You can expect to see it around 13 of April 2025
Thank you everyone for participation in testing the demo and giving feedback. The game is growing in direction to make it even more polished, engaging and fun.
Stay tuned! Cheers!
Michal Parysz