The Largest Patch to Date
Hey everyone, I've been messing around with trying to draw real sprites for the enemies in this game basically since before it released, and I finally decided to just bite the bullet and finish. The game will now fully support both the launch "classic art" mode which were simple 12x12 character arrays with 4 colors, and the new "modern art" mode, which has normal enemies as 48px SNES era sprites with bosses being 96px all created inside of Aseprite. The art mode can be toggled via an option in the settings menu. Honestly, I'm still sort of partial to the classic sprites, but I think the new ones are a monstrous improvement to the visual quality of the game. Anyway, here are the full patch notes:
Added SNES era sprites for every regular enemy in the game
Added SNES era sprites for every boss in the game
Added 4 total sprites for each boss so players will be able to see the boss weaken as the fight progresses
Added new boss BGM (it absolutely slaps)
Added unique BGM for Aiful fight
Both of these tracks came from the wonderfully talented Hydrogene. Check out their work here! https://hydrogene.itch.io/high-quality-16-bit-music
Added new boss death effects so they no longer just pop like regular enemies
Added a unique death effect for the game's final super boss
Added enemy "jiggle" effect as well as "hover" effect so enemies in battle come across as more animated and alive. This effect is present in both classic and modern art modes
Fixed some issues with party sprite inconsistency
Improved party sprites a smidge
Fixed a bug that would allow players to delve deeper than floor 100. (It was a strange one)
Separated out IP attacks as a distinct battle menu option. Players were accidentally mashing through and wasting limit breaks when they didn't intend to. Previously, you could swap "Limit" back to attack via left/right, but a player who didn't do that would often just waste their IP attack. Now, "Limit" is just an entirely separate menu option
Added a pity chest on floors 91-99. Blue chest rate has always been tripled on those floors, but unlucky players could still occasionally not find one. At least one blue chest is now guaranteed from floors 91-99
The final super boss in the game now RP's for a turn to allow the party to establish a slight foothold. He's without a doubt the hardest boss I've ever fought in a JRPG, and I don't want players effectively getting rolled turn 1 before they get to see the fight
The final super boss single target physical attack now hits for 20% less damage. Up until recently the final super boss has basically existed as a personal challenge for me since no one else had reached him. I tuned him to the point where even I have well below a 50% win rate. One of the last dials I turned up was buffing his damage across the board, and I thought the change landed well, but it did mean that if he ever physically attacked Corvus it was almost guaranteed that Corvus would die. It created a lot of dynamic challenges in the fight, but it also leads to fast snowballs to defeat. My hope is that this will strike the balance between, "still the hardest boss in any JRPG" and "this is ridiculous and I don't want this much challenge." I will continue to monitor player feedback now that others are reaching him, and I'm definitely not opposed to further refinements in the future.
This patch was a monstrous amount of work, and I wanted to take the time to personally thank everyone that has reached out to me on Discord or through other channels with their thoughts, feedback, messages of appreciation, and even complaints. The fact that people care about this game motivates me to keep making it better and better. As always, do reach out if there's anything you think I can do to make this game even better!