Vanquish Evil News

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META EQUIP ITEMS UPDATE

The concept for this is that each upgrade is its own "item".

To simplify the process, I've created entirely a collection of RINGS. These rings each represent an upgrade. When the ring item is equipped, that upgrade is added to the UPGRADE POOL.


What's cool about this concept, is that it enables players to customize their own builds before each run. If no upgrades are chosen pre-run, then only the base upgrades will be in the upgrade pool. Most of these base upgrades are infinite, so there's always an upgrade for the player to choose. (+Damage, +Life, +Armor, and Stun). Stun is a "temporary upgrade attack" meaning after the upgrade is chosen, all enemies on-screen are stunned for 3 seconds (can't move). Stun has a 3 second cooldown.

Upgrade choices are also saved, so that players don't have to re-select upgrades every time before a run -- they can set their favorite upgrades once and they're good to go.

These Meta Items are available in the UNLOCKS menu.

UPDATED DEMO BUILD now published too (and hopefully players will want to buy the Early Access version after playing the demo!)

This is the build where Vanquish Evil goes from being a prototype to an actual game with meta unlocks. From this point onwards, even more content will be added (more enemies, bosses, map locations) and also the plan is to add upgrade synergies (but that's a little later, more news on that soon!). [/p]

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THIS IMAGE: Fire Nova + Frost Wave damaging enemies, the player character is Cosmic Wizard


NEW SHARED UPGRADES:

NEW Spell: Frost Wave

- Frost Wave glides across the screen and damages enemies on collision

NEW Spell: Time Bubble

- Time Bubble slows enemy movement when enemies move through the Time Bubble radius

NEW Spell: Flamethrower

- Flamethrower launches bursts of flames

NEW Spell: Energy Shield

- Energy Shield protects the player character and damage is absorbed by Energy Shield before Lifeforce (HP)

NEW Spell: Lifeforce Revive

- Lifeforce Revive revives the player character after GAME OVER, with a 3 second invulnerability

NEW Spell: Ice Blades

- Sharp blades of ice orbit around the player character, dealing damage to enemies on collision


ROADMAP (1-3 MONTHS):

- Add the majority of spells/abilities/upgrades/upgrade synergies
- Add at least half of the map locations (and their respective individual levels for each map location)
- Adding more enemies, more bosses
- Adding Power-Ups (temporary with varying time durations) that influence runs
- Adding more characters, each with their own Special Ability as usual
- Potentially adding better controller support (PS4 controller being used to test controller configuration, I don't own a Steam Deck yet)
- Frequent Quality Of Life updates


The goal is to accomplish this ASAP!









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[p]Animations updates for Character Sprites[/p][p][/p][p]The character sprite animations have been improved! In the future there will be idle animations for all 4 angles per character! The system is now set up to streamline that process for all the characters.

QOL improvements have been made throughout the game, for example the audio settings have an improvement (user preferences are now saved properly).

Lifeforce bar (player HP bar) visual adjustments

Various small edits here and there to improve the game

Frost Wave has been added to the shared upgrade pool for all characters to use. It's a frost attack that glides across the screen and can be upgraded (damage, cooldown, duration)

More content on the way soon (more shared upgrades!)

Thanks for playing Vanquish Evil!

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[p]A small content update + QOL update:

New shared spell upgrade "Frost Wave"
[/p][p]- This spell is a wave of frost that glides across the screen, destroying enemies on collision.[/p][p]- Update to switch "on mouse click" to "on E key pressed" near treasure chests, coffins, talking to NPCs, etc. There's a new "E" icon that shows up when this is an option.

Thanks for playing! Have fun! More content on the way (lots more spells/abilities/upgrades that will be SHARED, meaning all characters will be able to use them).

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v0.5 hotfix attempt #3 (3rd times a charm)