I've been going over a lot of feedback in the month since release, and there were a few complaints that I've seen repeated. My general rule is that if one person mentions something I consider it, but if 2 or more mention it I take it very seriously. I won't always implement exactly what they suggested, but I will try to address the root of the problem. Today's patch addresses thee complaints I've seen repeatedly: being unable to assign minions to arbitrary snake positions, end-game screen clutter when you get lots of projectiles, and late game minions (Vlad, Dante, and Fang) being too rare. I've also made some changes to the scoring system.
When I first made the game, the minion queue existed solely at the front of the snake, but this caused problems when your snake got long, so I introduced the tail position. This seemed like a good fix at the time, but having the extra empty space along the rest of the snake introduced confusion among new players of why they can't assign a minion to those spots? In truth, there was really no good reason not to, except for a bit of edge case confusion. You can now drag a minion anywhere on the snake (or use the arrow buttons to move it up and down), essentially creating empty spots at the front of the snake in the minion queue. The tail spot still exists, and is still unique because growing the snake will push it back so it stays at the end. New minions are always added to the first empty spot on the snake, and if the snake shrinks to a point that the rear minion would be pushed off, the order will be compressed from the back to fit all minions if possible.
The next issue was a much simple fix: there's a new Effect Opacity setting in the Display menu, where you can set the visibility percentage of minion projectiles and damage indicators. This can go all the way down to 0% but I'm not sure you'd want to do that.
Third, the chance for the late-game minions to appear has been increased by 40%, so you're much more likely to see them come up, and as a result more likely to be able to combine them.
Finally, the scoring system has been revamped slightly. The base scoring for all levels remains the same, but two new score bonuses have been added every level. There is a fast-clear bonus that gives you up to a 50% boost on your score for clearing the level quickly, which should offset the need to stick around farming kills in order to get a high score. Additionally, there is now an ascension bonus of 10% per ascension level that's added to every level score. If you're trying to get on the leaderboard, playing at ascension 10 will now double your score, so it's well worth trying!
I've also added some more fixies for smaller displays, such as the steam deck, and cleaned up some text overflow issues on the end screen.
Full changes below, happy snekromancing!
Display and Accessibility
Added a Combat Effects setting so players can reduce the opacity of projectiles, damage numbers, tethers, and other combat visuals.
Improved settings menu layout so display options are easier to navigate.
Improved controller and keyboard scrolling, including horizontal scrolling where needed.
Improved readability for several UI panels and option rows.
Scoring and Results
Added fast-clear score bonuses for completing levels quickly.
Added ascension score bonuses.
Updated the end-of-level results screen to show the new score bonus breakdowns.
Gameplay and Combat
Added scaling pressure for enemies during long normal-room stalls.
Improved enemy summon behavior so spawned enemies inherit the correct scaling rules.
Fixed an issue where the snake could begin eating an enemy after stale collision contact from a previous enemy instance.
Adjusted Lich fracture damage.
Minions and Store
Added the ability to assign a minion to any arbitrary position on the snake (not just front queue and tail).
Improved minion slot handling so empty body slots are preserved correctly.
Improved dragging, swapping, selling, combining, and tail assignment behavior in the minion list.
Improved saving and loading for minion layouts with empty slots.
Improved minion recruit logic so offers respect occupied minion slots instead of counting empty spaces.
Adjusted recruit offer frequency for several minions.
Balance
Made Crimson Tear, Embalming Fluid, and Grave Digger's Spade non-repeatable.
Prevented overlapping relic effects where appropriate.
Localization and Text
Cleaned up UI, tutorial, item, enemy, minion, and upgrade text.
Improved Russian localization across several areas (thanks again to QuestLion).