Today's update is all about maximizing the fun. What's fun? Exciting chest and level-up animations. Crazy boss fights where they get to summon their own minions and attack with their own bullet storms. Eating hot dogs. Magnets that attract every gem on the map. Epic chests. Bosses dramatically exploding when you kill them.
I also tried to address what's not fun. Dense and incomprehensible UI screens. Boss fights where they just spam unavoidable attacks. Effortlessly OP ghost builds that take all the challenge away (to be clear, I all for OP builds, but they should take a little bit of work to get or they don't feel rewarding).
Major Additions
Added cinematic reward presentations for level-ups and chest openings.
Added chest tiers: Chest, Rare Chest, and Epic Chest.
Added new items, including Magnet and Hot Dog.
Added new late-game divine enemies, including Light Acolyte and Divine Minion.
Rewards and Items
Chests can now award higher-rarity upgrade choices based on chest tier.
Added an equipped item display during gameplay.
Improved held item handling, including clearer item names and better item save/load support.
Wall Hammer can now be used more directly when a valid wall target is nearby.
Bosses and Enemies
Refactored and rebalanced late-game boss progression.
Updated the Divine God encounter with new projectile patterns, summoning behavior, and a more dramatic death sequence.
Added support for radial enemy projectile attacks.
Added new enemy summon behaviors for divine enemies.
Adjusted balance across several late-game enemies and bosses.
Combat and Debuffs
Reworked debuff stacking so matching debuffs merge while different debuffs queue cleanly.
Rebalanced fire, frost, poison, acid, electric, bleed, and slow effects.
Improved fast projectile collision so shots are less likely to skip through enemies or walls.
Improved minion projectile behavior, orbiting projectile handling, and attack timing edge cases.
Reduced unnecessary off-screen combat feedback and sound spam.
Upgrades and Balance
Large balance pass across minion upgrades, stat upgrades, multishot upgrades, and relics.
Many repeatable upgrades now have tighter caps and stronger tradeoffs.
Elemental upgrade descriptions and behavior were cleaned up around level-based effects.
Adjusted minion names, upgrade values, and several late-run scaling options.
UI and Quality of Life
Redesigned parts of the setup screen to make selected snake, minion, relic, aiming, and ascension choices clearer.
Added hover details for more setup options.
Added coin display to the map screen, to help the player decide if they should go to a shop.
Improved upgrade icon feedback for inactive minions and cooldown-style progress.
Improved exit visibility once the exit is unlocked.
Save and Input
Added save version tracking for 0.8.0 compatibility.
Old incompatible active-run saves are now cleared so they won't load into a broken state.
Added remapping support for the use item action.
Improved scene transitions so game pause state is reset more reliably between screens.