Rack and Slay News

Smaller demo update today, but some important tech improvements to ensure level generation can much more easily be maintained and expanded further in the future! Thanks to everyone who keeps enjoying the demo (and left their feedback on the Discord), good to see the increase in player numbers wasn't just a flash in the pan!
[h2]Patch notes (v0.71)[/h2]

• Balancing
  • Trinity now doesn’t triple itself, i.e. only works on (and will only be consumed by) other items. (Sorry about that, it's often fun to see things get out of hand on lower difficulties and there are still plenty of ways for the game to go crazy, but Trinity stacking could render even higher difficulties trivial sometimes, which was a bit much.)
  • Small tweaks to make difficulties 5-9 a little more intense on average.
• Improvements & fixes:
  • Added option to change target FPS in the advanced settings (default is uncapped as before). Should not affect most players, but potentially help performance on some lower-end devices.
    
  • Refactored level generation code to be much more robust in edge cases and be way easier to maintain or expand in the future. (You should not notice this for now unless you ran into a rare level-gen crash before.)
    
  • Fixed a few typos in tooltips and item descriptions.
    
  • Fixed a few minor visual bugs.

Today I'm excited to bring you the biggest demo update so far! All items in the game received brand-new artwork. You will face a variety of mid- and end-boss enemy balls in your runs, that spice things up by asking you to defeat them last in a level. Additionally all difficulties have been rebalanced, more art assets have been added, and all kinds of tweaks and fixes made their way into the game.

[h2]Patch notes (v0.7)[/h2]

• Bosses: Added 8-ball “boss” enemy variants. Meet them in levels 5 and 10 of a run.
  
• New item art: Added brand-new art for all items in the demo.
  
• Other art updates:
  • New look for the shot power gauge.
    
  • New “open” animation for treasure chests.
    
  • New art for hole bridges.
    
  • New mouse cursor.
• General:
  • Rebalanced all difficulty levels. Game is slightly harder on average, lower difficulties got a little extra spice, and difficulty scaling per level throughout runs was adjusted accordingly.
    
  • Added option to hide blood / skulls.
    
  • General wording pass on items and tooltips.
    
  • Lots of miscellaneous fixes and tweaks.
    

Also a big heartfelt thank you to everyone who checked out the demo recently (and to Olexa, Skoottie, CDNThe3rd, vampirechicken, wolvesatmydoor and Wallacetaa for showcasing it). Every bit of visibility and every wishlist helps a tiny indie operation like this one a ton. ❤️

I hope you continue to enjoy the demo, and as always if you have any feedback please let me know via Discord or Twitter or leave a post in the Steam discussions!

There's a new teleporter variant in the game that reverses the movement direction of any ball using it and opens up new room for tricky plays. Ball and bomb cannons have also been spiced up a little and now rotate a random amount after each shot meaning you may have to adapt your plans.

If you want to show off your latest trick shot, have suggestions for what else could be added, want to provide feedback, or you found a bug, please drop by the Discord or let me know via Twitter!

[h2]Patch notes (v0.61)[/h2]

• NEW:
  
  • Added "reverse" teleporter variant that flips movement direction.
    
  • Ball and bomb cannons now rotate after taking a shot.
• BALANCE: Nerfed a few items granting healing or max health cause they were able to make playing even on higher difficulties feel too safe.
  
• POLISH:
  
  • Made hole attraction radius a bit smaller.
    
  • Tutorial now only shows controls for your currently used input method.
    
  • Various minor fixes.

A more sizeable update before the weekend. I added new fonts in pretty much all places throughout the game (menus, shop, tooltips etc.). This is a first big step towards the improved look-and-feel we're aiming to have ready when Steam Next Fest arrives early next year.

[h2]Coming Soon: New Item Graphics (WIP)[/h2]

Another super important part of the improved visuals will be brand-new, hand-drawn item graphics. They're not all ready yet, but here's a first teaser:



[h2]Out Now: New Demo Patch[/h2]
With future plans touched on, let's get into what the latest demo patch brings right now!

[h2]Patch notes (v0.6)[/h2]

• New shiny fonts everywhere! 🎉
  
• Improved how bonus shot power is displayed on the power gauge by adding a small red “danger zone” overlay to it.
  
• Bombs within the range of an explosion now have a short “ignition time” so follow-up explosions don’t all happen at the same time.
  
• Small improvements to the look of particles.
  
• Hidden feature: When using the keyboard, you can now rotate your aim more quickly via the A/D keys (in addition to Q/E for slow rotation) if you prefer to adjust your aim via keyboard-only means.
  
• Notable fixes:
  
  • Mouse movement detection to switch back to mouse controls is more robust.
    
  • You can now properly aim even when ending your turn at the edge of a hole.
    
  • Turn won’t end prematurely if a ball is still being slowly dragged into a hole.
    
• Various balancing tweaks and minor fixes.
  

I sincerely hope you enjoy the latest changes and thank you so much for checking out the demo. If you have any feedback, would like to discuss games and their design, or just want to say hi, please swing by via Discord or Twitter! ❤️

Small update, but those difficulty tweaks are quite delicate. If you have feedback on the difficulty curve during a run or when going up difficulties (especially 15+), please let me know via Discord or Twitter!

[h2]Patch notes (v0.58)[/h2]

• Slightly increased difficulty scaling throughout a run (i.e. later levels are a bit harder).
  
• On difficulties 15+ you now get a random starting item (to help deal with early levels on lower health, and also increase long-term variety when starting a run).
  
• Super minimal mouse movements do not disable controller mode anymore.
  
• Various balancing tweaks and bugfixes.