Hi everyone. With Frosty Games Fest now done (hello to our new friends!), it's time for another update. This patch ended up doing more than I thought it would. Most of these are from finalising the main game's world and features. Which btw, is getting very close to releasing!

Gameplay

- Feature: Map Screen now matches its colors to the terrain's colors (instead of generic grey).

- When recharging health at a station, after a few seconds the recharge rate will increase in speed. So total recharge time is now much faster when you have lots of health pips and missiles. This speed increase does not apply for bombs, as there's so few of them.

- When shooting a secret block, there's now a short sound effect to go with the reveal of the weakness hint.

- When a bomb detonates, there's now a short screen shake effect.

- The tunnel enemies will now auto kill themselves if they find themselves stuck for some reason. This mostly effects the main game, where there were some paths that was hard blocked if they got stuck inside a tunnel.

- When you do a moonwalk, there's now sparks. There is no gameplay effect, just a small visual nod to acknowledge the existence of the moonwalk tech ;). I wonder if there will ever be a practical use for it...

UI

- Fixed the navigation between Cancel and Accept buttons in the Virtual Keyboard screen to be neighbours.

- Fixed Virtual Keyboard layout: S and T were swapped by mistake.

BUGS

- BUG FIX: The DEL button on the Save File screen would run every frame.

- BUG FIX: The Map Hint that appears after some time or after fast travel can remain on screen even after the button was pressed.

- BUG FIX: Can't Ball-Dash in lowest grass terrain. This was due to counting that tile as terrain instead of as non-colliding tile.

- Bug FIX: Ball-Dash couldn't dash through pick ups. This is now possible, though note that since it's technically a short-ranged teleport, you don't grab the picks when dashing through them.

- Bug FIX: Potential silent crash when exiting to menu and playing the game again. This was related to a system from the full game that isn't really used in the Demo (though it's possible to trigger).

Hi, I wanted to let you all know that Microvania will be participating in Frosty Games Fest 2025 this weekend from 8th June! You can watch it on Youtube or Twitch. See below for times in your region:

• Australia: 9am AEST | 8:30am ACDT | 7am AWST (June 8)
• New Zealand: 11am NZST (June 8)
• Japan: 8am JST (June 8)
• USA: 4pm PDT | 7pm EDT (June 7)
• UK: 12am BST (June 8)

- Big performance improvement There was a system created a few months back that ended up costing a lot to run, which in turn would cause either very low fps and/or inputs being dropped altogether (I can confirm that Jump felt unreliable in this case). I've refactored that system and reduced the CPU cost by 44%. So if you had some performance issues previously, please try again now with this patch. - Any Map Marker's used in Map Screen will now show up on the top right corner of the game screen when you enter the room. - Minor resource optimisation for Map Screen's markers.

- Dying on the boss will now respawn player to before entering the room. This was always an intended mechanic, I just hadn't gotten around to adding it till recently. The boss will feel a little harder now, but hopefully you've found enough Health Tanks to mitigate that! :) - Added back the initial cannon fizzle (before obtaining Cannon upgrade), and instead made it appear more like a short puff of smoke. I recently had a playtester mention "oh, it looks like I have a gun, so why doesn't it work?". Which is a valid point! Adding the fizzle back in was the simplest solution here, as creating a new sprite without the gun is beyond the scope of the project at this time. - Fixed hidden paths and lava to correctly show the player as semi-transparent when inside. - BUG FIX: Pause or Map button required two presses first time in a session. - FIX: Intel Macs accidentally unsupported in last release (sorry!). - Bullets and Missile have new Physics Mass values. This was required for some features in the main game, but shouldn't have any effect in the Demo. - Improvement to various systems and features from the full game that aren't in use in the Demo.

BUG FIX: Ball Dash can dash into the terrain, or through a pipe's borders. There was a known "bug" where you can ball dash through the corner of a pipe to get inside it without using a proper opening, and also you can ball dash through a 'checkerboard' terrain pattern. This was kept in, as I thought it would make a fun exploit for speed runners (and I can always do the level design around this knowledge, so it wasn't too game breaking or something). But recently someone found that you can also dash into a pipe from anywhere, AND also you can dash into the terrain (very bad, and definitely unintended steammocking). So this patch fixes dashing into the terrain, and also fixes dashing through any pipe's borders. This unfortunately does mean the corner pipe exploit no longer works, but the corresponding 'checkerboard' terrain exploit still does. In the demo there was only one place this worked anyway, but in the full release I'll try to add a few spots where this can help speed runners.

Removed the "fizzle" effect, that is replaced once you obtain the Cannon. This was an effect I added early in development after some play tests, because some players thought the button was broken as it didn't do anything yet. But it seems now it causes more confusion, so I've removed it.

A minor patch to add a QoL addition that just got implemented for the main game. The Map Screen is polished up a little more, with nice movements to each room (instead of snapping to it), and a little bump when trying to move off the edge of the map. Also, I've hopefully fixed the dreaded undetected controllers issue for good! [cross fingers]

EDIT: This patch has been disabled for now, as it broke controller support. Will bring this back in when we can confirm controller support is working again. For now, these below changes are not yet live. I'm really sorry for the inconvenience this has caused! ------- - Revised Enemy Health values so they're less tank-y. I'll list the tier values here, but hide them in a spoiler tag in case you don't want to know: [spoiler]1, 2, 3, 5, 10, 15, 20, 25[/spoiler] Also, I'm not listing which enemies use which tier, but that's fairly easy to figure out. For reference, the player's attack values are: [spoiler]1, 2, 4, 6, 16[/spoiler] NOTE: not all these tiers are used in the Demo (but will be used in the full game). - Fixed missing projectiles on the two horizontal Wall Plant Enemies in the upper middle Grass Room.

UX FIX: Xbox Controllers (and some others) not being detected. Xbox Controllers (360 & Series X/S) should now work. Possibly, this fix may also apply to generic controllers, and maybe even the Steamdeck (hopefully). If you're playing on desktop, please disable Steam Input in the game's Steam settings. We have native controller support in the game already, and we've found that Steam Input may produce unwanted results.

• Reduced the Player's Knockback duration, so you are now spending less time out of control.
• Increased the Player's Invulnerable duration, so it's now actually much longer than the Knockback duration (over x2!).
• Reduced Enemy push force, making it less impactful but more fair to Player (allowing them to move through enemies, sometimes).
• When respawning, Player is now invulnerable for 1 whole second. This avoids player getting stuck on an enemy while respawning.
• BUG FIX: Player was still hittable while in Invulnerable state (flashing).
• Horizontal Spike's hitbox reduced, so they're now a little more forgiving to Player.
• Greatly reduced the high pitches in Door Open/Close sound effects, which were grating to some ears.
• Fast Travel colors are now marked on the map.
• Hints are now auto-dismissed if the hint itself has appeared before (eg, Missile Upgrades) and the player has entered 3 rooms since the hint appeared.
• BUG FIX: Map Screen's Set Marker button was BallMode button. It is now the Menu Confirm button (A for Switch/Xbox, X for PlayStation)
• BUG FIX: It was possible to lose the Selection Cursor when pressing up/down on Save File screen.

BUG FIX: Previously obtained Upgrade Icons appear as un-obtained in the Map Screen, when loading a save file.