Demo v0.0.9876 — The Story, 14 Scrolls and Levels With Their Own Rules

The story

A prelude before the first level. An old phone, a snake made of little squares biting its own tail, something tearing the loop open, and the fall into the Pit. Full length in SKILL MATCH; one line in ARCADE.

14 scrolls to recover. Every SKILL MATCH level you win, 1 to 6 plus hell, in both chapters, hands you a scroll. When the boss falls, the light of the Pit tells it to you over that level's song.

The Library, inside THE ARCHIVE, keeps the scrolls and the OATHS in two tabs. Redeemed oaths' memories can also be read from the OATHS screen.

Every level makes an entrance. The floor cracks, the snake bursts out, and a 3-2-1-ATTACK! countdown lets the world go.

Levels with their own rules (SKILL MATCH)

• LEVEL 4 · THE BAIT. A golden node appears: close a bite around it and an escort of elites comes out, marked with arrows. Take them all down before the wave ends for an extra MOLT, with a full-screen ceremony.
• LEVEL 5 · THE TIDE. Half your snake glows gold, the head or the tail. Reach the kill goal with that half for a MOLT. Miss it and you lose nothing.
• LEVEL 6 · ON TAB. The merchant lends you a TIER II weapon that enters at the head. Pay it off with kills and it's yours (hit the second goal for TIER III). If you don't, his roulette spins and takes a segment.
• Every rule and every boss is announced with a mosaic sign in the chapter's colours.

Your snake

• Stamina. Boosting costs stamina, with its own bar. It refills when you stop boosting. The shield is now drawn inside the health bar.
• The body stretches when you boost, and the tail never piles up or moves backwards. Segments join with a new outline.
• 5 STRETCHED items: STRETCHED-OUT SWEATER, STRETCHED GUM, STRETCHED PAYCHECK, CRANED NECK and THE STUCK-UP SNOB. They stretch the body further at the cost of turning. New STRETCH row in the stats panel.

The Nest

• GROWTH SPURT (ring II): +3% XP per level, the base your XP items multiply.
• BELLOWS (ring II): +8%, +13% and +21% stamina.
• THE BROOD (ring III): choose where the segment from the marked card is born. TWIN attaches it to its copy and they fuse at once; PARTNER attaches it to a segment it reacts with.

Shop, cards and art

• The shop is redesigned: two panels, the merchant's and your snake's. Cards are dealt face down and flip over, and a reroll burns them. The level-up uses the same cards.
• PIN is a pushpin on the card.
• All 61 items and the 4 consumables have their icon. The chests, the altar and the pact have their own art in the arena.
• DOUBLE MOLT shows the 11 weapons as cards, with scrolling.
• Keys and buttons are drawn everywhere. Hints show the key, mouse or gamepad button icon instead of the word, in every language.

Chapter 1 in SKILL MATCH, friendlier

• Enemies hit softer by level: −30% at LEVEL 1, then −25%, −20%, −15%, −10% and −5% at LEVEL 6. Their numbers don't change. Hell stays the same.
• Ramming the boss hurts 40% of what it did (outside hell). Its attacks don't change.

Languages

• You pick your language first, and Traditional Chinese joins: 19 languages.
• Danger is called LEVEL across the whole game.
• A review pass over all 19 localisations before this update.

Fixed

• D-HELL showed up as "LEVEL 7" on the selector and the OATHS screen.
• The leaderboard subtitle named a different level from the selector.
• Seven Spanish words showed up in the other languages.
• In Chinese, Japanese and Korean, long text lost spaces at line breaks.
• The discovered-item card spilled out of its panel on the victory screen.

Found a bug, got an idea, or just want to show off a run? The Discord is here: discord.gg/BkN5qwQs9S