Cadence here! In our one-month retrospective we discussed potential plans for updates, so let’s talk about what we’re actually doing!
Art by Jingocide.
The Boss Update will add three new bosses, one new character, and a handful of new spells, statuses, etc. (and maybe, even more… ?) Since the game is out and we’re under less financial pressure, I’ve been taking the time to make these new bosses feel like a cut above the rest of the game in terms of visual presentation and polish. You can expect the update to be out this November unless I run out of amphetamines or die unexpectedly.
If you haven’t seen it already, we actually surprise-showcased one of the new bosses a few days ago for the “Hazel Plays Hazel Clearance” stream.
Big Sister is an aerobatic space probe requisitioned by the Party for surveillance, and a century of basking in radio waves has given her a special interest in football… She is an obvious reference to 17776, but a lot of her design was also influenced by Flywrench. I’ve always loved the way that Flywrench controls, and I really wanted Big Sister to feel similar; she flaps in place and glides into a calculated, out-of-control somersault before ricocheting off the player and recovering her position. Essentially what I am saying is that I love Flywrench.
As for her gameplay…
Big Sister parallels her fellow Act 2 boss, Brutalist, by restricting the number of tiles in play. However, the way she does this is a little more open-ended: Big Sister replaces your entire board with faceless shadow tiles, which can be clicked on to reveal harmful radioactive tiles. It is entirely on the player how many tiles they reveal and when they cash in on the usable tiles at their disposal.
To compensate for the fight’s restrictiveness, shadow tiles are also easily manipulated by spells, as any status-applying effect can be used on them to generate non-radioactive tiles.
I actually meant to launch into talking about the new character first, but then I realized we already revealed Big Sister and that meant if I had any thoughts about her I really wanted to share then now would probably be the time to do it, etc. etc.
Introducing Sam Sara, the Cryptologist!
Sam Sara is a normal human who is totally not concealing any kind of bug-related illness. It starts with BUG-13, a cryptographic device that shifts faces similar to Shift Cipher, with the additional capability to ROT13 a tile by selecting its center.
As a passive effect, all spells have their charge character rerolled at the start of each battle. This is to mitigate the tedium of shifting for a few specific letters across an entire run, but it’s also just a fun gimmick on its own.
When designing the characters for Pronoun Palace, I really wanted each of them to feel totally distinct, both for filling out different parts of the worldbuilding but also in gameplay. I think this is largely to the game’s benefit, but this also results in a large part of the cast being somewhat polarizing to play and leaves Lexicographer as the only true “vanilla” option for the game. So while it might seem contrary to Big Update ethos to add a character who is closer to baseline than the rest, I think it does a lot more to round out the game.
Thank you again to all the people who have played our game and supported us! I’m very excited to finally finish this update, but until then…
Art by Soul.