Progress report 4
Added 2023-02-24 21:55:57 +0000 UTC
Firstly, some balance changes. I wanted to have some punishment for dying that wasn't just getting booted back to the title screen or losing money, so an obvious choice was to lose a level every time you die. The way I originally implemented it was sloppy, all it did was lower your level by 1 and reset EXP progress, potentially making you lose almost 2 levels if you were close to leveling up.
With the recent changes, Sumireko will only lose some EXP, and level down if EXP progress goes below zero. Additionally, there is a new item that will prevent EXP loss on death. It's very rare and limited in quantity!
Also, I heavily stepped back on danmaku difficulty. Everyone should be able to Hijack every Sleeper in the game without tearing their hair off. Originally I wanted to include a difficulty selection only for danmaku sections, but I didn't want to compromise on the game's only original gimmick.
The first act of the game is almost complete! Second act starts after you obtain the means to travel across Misty Lake to reach the other half of Gensokyo and will feature much less linear structure, as well as new battle music. More dungeons, more locations, more characters to recruit, more wacky story hijinks, etc. The idea is to let the player go out and explore Gensokyo without the invisible hand of the story holding everything back, so the overarching plot will take a back seat in favor of individual small stories for each of the new locations you visit.
You'd think I just slacked off for the month, but I don't know what to report on without spoiling anything, this is hard! And I have so much to say, too, but this is a story driven game.
