Update 1.1: Reset and Balance changes


Hello everyone!
After reading and watching feedback, I've updated the game with several requested features and some balance changes.

====================

Features:

- Added a Reset function and a life system!
  If you die, you can try again in the same level at the cost of one life.
You'll get 3 lives, when those are gone, it's game over.
As a trade-off, you'll no longer restore health when going to the next area
- Score now shows on defeat, even with lives remaining.
- Remaining lives added to the score, for those willing to do it deathless.

Balance Changes:

Kalynn:
- Arrow cost reduced from 25 to 22
- Melee now cost 1/8th of the ammo cost instead of nothing at all.
- Melee range decreased from 0.5 to 0.4
- Melee damage increased from 1.7 to 2 (so now it can one-shot enemies with 2 HP)
- Melee can now activate even when running out of ammo
- Melee detection no longer activates by nearby vertical enemies (as they're out of reach)
This is done to make the melee attack more of a risk/reward system, 
you'll need to get a little closer, but it can now defeat enemies better.

Serene:
- Bubble shield no longer does bonus damage to shadow enemies (It's still strong on it's own though)
- Range of the bubble shield slightly reduced (from 10 to 9.5)
- no longer heals when standing in water

Enemies:
- Reduced the collision hitbox between player and enemies, to avoid getting hit by enemies while standing right next to it.
- Eyeball now has a new texture to fit better with the other shadow enemies.
- Blue Bugs no longer warps all the way to the top when colliding with the map.
  (the bugs still blend inside the map though, that behavior is intentional)
- increased the chance an Eyeball can appear from the dark arrows shot from the sky
- Toucan now has twice the HP

Boss:
- Projectiles no longer collide with the Boss' lightning
- There's now a spawn indicator for the Boss' horse

Map Changes:
- removed background objects in top layer of the forest area so the enemies don't blend in too much
- moved some enemies around to allow more breathing room/combo streak potentional
- changed the vulcano level a bit to fill up spaces in blind spots and give more routes to move around
- Updated the spiky branch sprite to match the hitbox
- Colliding with the stairs/hearts is now easier
- Some misc changes

====================


I've seen several comments and videos of people liking and playing the game, I'm really glad about the feedback so far.
Optimising my code was for the first moment pretty fun, but as the easier parts were done, and there were still some bugs present, then I really had to look for space to cram in the last bits of code without removing features. And that was pretty rough.

This is quite where the limitation of Pico-8 shows, but despite that, it's still an incredible engines.
Sometimes, deciding which kind of features are most efficient for the content delivered can be quite satisfying, and it greatly helps to reduce the scope of the project. Because sometimes, a game can be just that simple for entertainement.

Files

Fallen Star v1.1.zip 495 kB
Apr 02, 2023

Get Fallen Star

Leave a comment

Log in with itch.io to leave a comment.