Hey, everyone! The next update is here at last, and there's a lot to unpack in this one! Plenty of options have been added to bring more replayability and quality-of-life to the game; so much that a lot of it needs to be split up into its own categories!
Arcade Mode
Grab your quarters! This mode was made in mind for being played in an actual arcade setting or for those who wish to play the game with an authentic cabinet. Many of the options are cut down, but there are several new ones designed to accustom a classic arcade experience. Toggle the game to require credits to be played, enable or disable continues, or tweak how many lives are available by default!
Also exclusive to arcade mode (for the time being) is 2 player swap mode! Two people compete with each other to end the game with a higher score, and swap control if a player loses a life or clears all the levels. This is not all that's in store for multiplayer, so look forward to future updates that expand on it more.
You can read more about how to activate arcade mode and its options by reading this guide.
Cheats
After beating the main campaign and unlocking practice mode and random mode, you'll now unlock a third additional menu option in the extras category: cheats! These can be toggled on or off to make small or large changes to how the game is played. There may also be some additional cheats hidden among the rest...
- Turbo Annalynn: Make Annalynn run twice as fast! Stopping on a dime may be difficult.
- Infinite Jumps: Up, up, and away! Take to the skies by continually pressing the jump button.
- Snake Order: Lets you change the order in which the snakes will appear in the level. Multiples of the same snake are allowed! They won't change roles during cutscenes, however.
- No Snake Speed Caps: The snakes become faster and more aggressive as you advance through the game, but eventually they'll reach a maximum threshold in random mode. Turn this restriction off and see just how fast they can get!
- SN-4K3's Revenge: SN-4K3 wasn't too happy about getting trashed and is back for revenge! All levels now have SN-4K3 flying around in them. And there's no way to damage it, so... good luck!
- Hard Mode: For those who somehow thought the game was too easy. Tweaks the AI for the snakes and the boss to be even tougher.
- Strange Mode: Blinding rubies and bonus foods can cause weird things to happen in this mode. Not every snake may be blinded, the level could go completely dark, or all snakes might turn invisible while being worth double the points. Each level also gets an alternate color palette in this mode! (Also worth noting: getting a perfect score in this mode is straight up impossible most of the time, so "perfect scores" are not achievable when this is turned on.)
- 2016 Mode: Party like it's 2016! Tweaks Annalynn's design to appear how it did in the original prototype, and also adjusts the game's physics to play similarly to it. The bonus foods are also changed in this mode.
- Voice Clips: Annalynn is a silent protagonist no longer! Turn this option on to hear her chitchat as she treks through the mines. Thank you to Elspeth Eastman for providing her with voice lines!
Achievements and high scores are disabled when certain cheats are active.
Other Tweaks & Fixes
- Mike now has a consistent movement pattern during the first 10 seconds of a level.
- Hitting snakes with a pickaxe in random mode now rewards 500 points instead of 250.
- Minecart levels reward more points based on how many times the player has reached that specific minecart level. For example, the second time playing the mineshaft's minecart level in random mode rewards double the points, the third time rewards triple the points, and so on.
- All menus can be exited out of more easily due to the addition of a back button to the controls. By default, this button is set to X on a keyboard and B on a gamepad.
- Menus that can be scrolled up or down now have a scroll bar on the right-hand side.
- The pause menu in practice mode has an additional option: quick retry. This provides a faster way to start a level over again.
- "1 Player" is now labeled as "Campaign" on the main menu.
- Added a CRT filter option in the graphics sub-menu. Credit goes to Vortex Game Studios for the use of their CRT shader!
- Toggling fullscreen is now split up into its own option instead of being shared with window scale. Fullscreen is now also on by default when booting up the game for the first time.
- Round 16 now displays "DEATHLESS!" text on the practice mode menu if it has been cleared without losing any lives.
- Fixed a bug where the game can rarely take the player to a wrong menu.
- Fixed a bug where the title logo disappears for a single frame during its animation.