Most of our time this week went into the new player experience. We tore down the old intro and rebuilt it, and gave the HUD and UI a solid cleanup pass so your first run feels less like getting thrown in the deep end. Here's what changed.
The whole intro is rebuilt to teach you one thing at a time instead of dumping everything on you at once.
You start with just the Suckler. The Tentacle and Goo Gun stay locked until the tutorial actually hands them to you, so you're not fumbling a tool you haven't learned yet. When a new tool unlocks, its icon pops up big on screen before it drops into your weapon wheel.
The movement prompt got a lot less annoying. It clears itself a couple seconds after you start moving instead of making you press every key.
Each lesson sticks to one idea: moving around, sucking and shooting, popping and depositing bodies, tethering, and cleaning.
Arrows now show up right over what you're supposed to be looking at. The body you need to pop, the Doomba that got stuck, the Abomination that just crawled out of one.
When the tutorial wants you in the book, the book icon, the right tab, and the exact upgrade all light up so you're never left hunting around.
Steps run in order now and won't skip ahead, so you can't accidentally get stranded.
New HUD that's easier to read.
The HUD stays hidden until you pick up the Suckler. Your first few seconds are quiet, then everything fades in once you're actually armed.
New outlines on Doombas, Grinders, bodies, and brute limbs, so you can tell what you can grab, tether, or feed to the Grinder without guessing.
Unlocking the Tentacle or Goo Gun now plays a little reveal animation.
Cleaned up the upgrade book and the shop cards, with clearer "new" and "buy this" markers.
Added mouse look settings. You can change sensitivity and invert the Y axis from the settings menu now.
Rebuilt the settings menu.
Added a creep toggle.
Added Wwise occlusion, so sound actually muffles through walls now.
New audio feedback on a bunch of actions.
Grabbing and tethering use a raycast now, so you grab what you're aiming at instead of whatever happens to be closest.
Tools unlock as the tutorial introduces them, so new players build up slowly instead of drowning.
Finally killed that Grinder and Abomination bug. Took a few tries.
Doomba behavior and outline fixes.
A pile of tutorial, scene, and balance tweaks.
General cleanup for the Next Fest demo build.
Thanks for playing. There's more mess on the way, so send any bugs or feedback our way.