Post "Build 0.5.2.4" by "SilverEarsEntertainment" from patreon

AlextricBunyip

Of course, feedback is what helps to make things better, and is fun to sometimes shoot out ideas on things and see what does and does not stick :3

Brandon Cater

Oh yeah that's a good idea to have it where if you only inflate them once or twice that you just make them stronger and you have to hit them three times for it to actually disable them. I will definitely try my best to make it fun and avoid the frustration of it! And yeah I can just disable the HP drain for that particular boss to give ample time and even just make it so you only get hurt if you pop. I have a spot for ideas and I put it down. When I get to the point of adding the third boss, or possibly adding more after, then I'll revisit the idea more and flesh it out. So long as I can of course! Good luck on finding the extra areas! I hope the other hidden shrines are fun to do! One of the shrines requires the extra mana gem to complete too. Again, thank you for the feedback and of course feel free to give more at any time! I'll respond whenever I can.

AlextricBunyip

Heck I'd say to still go for some enemies that would get a power boost from being inflated, like in the case of this oni girl, and possibly others, have it be where inflating them once gives them a power boost but if the player can manage a second inflation it bloats them up even further and defeats them if you know what I mean ;3 And I 100% will want to find that unique inflatable snek girl enemy and the snek girl npc when she gets implemented~ (Look I love snek gals and would 100% comm you if the opportunity aligned with my money to blow up some sneks gals, or have them blow up others XD) Actually that sounds like a really good idea to me of a recolored jelly thay'valey that tries to grab Aria to blimp her while deflating her down to stage 1, if frustration for players does become a big thing I think there could be a few ways to go about it. One way would be to make the attempted grab not only very obvious but also very lenient, like make it obvious she's going in for the grab and if the player does get grabbed they have a solid time-frame to struggle out before they get blimped. Another way would be to put extra high recovery candies in some areas around the arena/location of these encounters that the player can't just bumble into, something like a few clusters of say 2-3 jawbreakers at max jump height that would hopefully signal to the player that "Hey you might not want to grab these just yet because of what's infront of you." as usually, key word being usually here as there are exceptions, when players see multiple clusters of big recovery items they tend to save them because they figure there might be something ahead that might drain them. And in the case of a boss doing this might be a good idea to disable the hp drain in a fight like that, maybe something of the boss being a temple guardian of sorts and since you'd be fighting on temple grounds Aria's hp doesn't drain or something about the boss wanting a fair fight and uses their own magics to prevent the hp drain, something to make it focus on the tug of war where your only priorities are to try to avoid getting blimped and popped while inflating the boss and can completely ignore any passive hp drain. Whitewicke and Melphi's dialogue got it, I'll talk to them again and see what I can do thanks! yeah I'll just be combing through the area's and seeing what's where, has been enjoyable to just see the game art and enemies so I'm fine going through the area's multiple times XD Sounds good on the map since I don't think it should be the prettiest thing ever, just simple and effective at pointing players in the right path if they're doing backtracking, and no worries on the bestiary and item list since those would take a lot of time to add, as you said would possibly be something for when the game is nearing completion.

Brandon Cater

Oh sure! I have played around with the idea of having a big oni girl enemy, but in her case it was supposed to be bad to inflate her similar to the golem. I will still probably do the oni girl, but I'll definitely consider adding more roadblocks where the objective is to inflate them. I also do plan on having at least one more unique inflatable snek girl enemy and there is 'technically' another snek girl NPC in the game, but you can't currently find her. Plus she won't be inflatable. (Though with the way the NPC poll is going there will probably be another who is inflatable) I was planning on having a jelly thay'valay recolor later on who would try and grab you while she was at stage 2 inflation and if she got you, you'd have to struggle and if you failed, she would blimp you and go back to stage 1. And that might be a fun sort of interaction though I think I have to be careful with something like that as an enemy as I don't want players frustrated their progress reset and their HP is still ticking down so it will probably come 'after' the upgrades which slow/remove hp drain. But I might also repurpose that idea or also use it for a boss in some way. I'll play around with the idea more, but it does sound like a fun idea. I just have to format it into a way that it will fit into the game, be fun, and have appropriate difficulty! Whitewicke, in the new Candy area, will tell you the two shrine locations. I tried modifying his dialogue to hint better, but I might change it more to make it even more direct. Melphi will also hint at how to get a new upgrade item. (Doesn't involve shrines) Oh then you have quite a few. Also sorry the Emar one is in the second section, first room. There's a golden wingmilk statue on the same screen. You have to go down past the fatty ratty and use the bubble shield to get in. Yeah I can probably make a really basic map without too much trouble, though it would definitely be ugly. After I get caught up on NPCs I might just dabble a little with the map idea. Bestiary and Item lists though to even get them to work would just require a lot of time so I'll wait on deciding to do them.

AlextricBunyip

Very fair in not wanting to overuse it as a thing, I think it's neat and would love to see other enemies as well having it happen to them, like having a strangely big gobbo blocking the way, or one of those gummy snake Filimuri blocking a tunnel, just fun variety if the opportunity ever comes up XD and yeah I personally would heavily consider a boss who leans heavy into the inflation stuff to beat them; hidden, mini-boss, or otherwise; as not only would that be a unique encounter but I'd like to think a fun one. If anything my idea with a boss of this sort, if the programing is actually possible with it and not a pain to do, would almost be to have the boss be a sort of tug of war where the player would have to avoid their attacks while trying to inflate them, but where depending on what size of inflation the boss is it enables them to grab Aria and pull her into a puffkiss to deflate themself while inflating Aria, if that's even possible and easy enough programing wise anyways. But I'd still love to see a boss that leans heavily into it as a fight regardless~ I easily could of just forgotten the npcs telling me the location of this, I did exhaust all the dialogue of everyone I came across though but doesn't mean I didn't miss someone or some dialogue. If anything I'd say tell me the names of the two npcs so I can find/refind them again and I'll see if I can't figure it out from there XD ok wow I guess I missed a lot of the shrines then, because that's 3/7 I've found (as I got the one from the Aghaidhin boss, found the beach one, and got what I think is Candimus 2 as that one's just out in the open near the screen exit) so I'll have to comb through everywhere again to see if I can't find the other 4 shrines. Fair enough, didn't know if they were implemented yet as I just didn't see them. I'd almost say stick to your current plan with them to keep things on track for yourself. That hackneyed map is actually exactly what I was thinking of, just a small and very simple thing where a player can look at it and go "I'm on this part of the map, does it split? which path did I take last time and which one did I not take?" something that's just to help us who tend to blank on where we're going in these.

Brandon Cater

Glad to hear you like candy world! I'll definitely have another candy esq place much later too. I will likely have at least one more enemy type that you can't defeat by normal means (have to inflate with barrels or some other type of inflation), though I don't want to overuse it is all. I'll space it out a little bit. In regards to a boss of some kind, it's definitely a possibility! I'll take it into consideration for the third boss or maybe as a mini-boss or a hidden boss of some kind where it's more focused on you having to hit the boss with some form of inflation to beat them. I could possibly have it so you have to pop them to make them vulnerable by inflating them a few times, then you can hurt them. Or I could make it so that the whole goal is to just keep inflating them until they pop and the damage you do is to some mechanism which causes them to inflate when destroyed or inflates them based on the damage you do. Stuff like that. I am always open to ideas too! I definitely think that it would be appreciated to have a boss that leans hard into inflation. :D So if you want a hint, I'll let you know that one of the new NPCs that you can talk to will tell you about two shrines. (I think you found one of them) Make sure you're on the latest update too as I had to fix some stuff and the dialogue changes make this more clear. If you want me to just tell you I can do that too of course. Also I specifically added the Outsider Inn so you can bypass Lascidial so you don't have to drop your spell any longer. So you'll have to bring a spell from another area to use it there. Currently there is a shrine in Bristle (Heavily hidden), Ninestep, Emar 2, Aghaidhin(From beating hardmode boss), Telumur (Technically there are two here, but one of them is just a shell and has nothing in it so I wouldn't bother trying to find it. I won't be working on that shrine until I add the next spell since it will be required to get in there), Candimus (Factory), Candimus 2 (Factory). No you haven't been missing any of the expandable NPCs. They're just not in the game yet. I could add them as 'just assets' (No programming) if everyone just wants to see a few of them in game and where they will appear. They'll be non-interactive until I create the system for them to be expandable. I plan to do that sometime after the next boss. Bestiary, item list and map seem like popular options. I'll have to think about the best way to do a map, but I could just make a simple hackneyed map that's a bit like a left/right scroll that just shows the places you uncovered since the game is pretty linear. Anyway, all three seem popular. Definitely things that I'll put on the list as desired. Just adding features does take time is all and these aren't necessarily 'hard' to implement, just have a lot of time to add. Plus the later I implement them the better since I can just design the system and then dump all the information into them at once. And thank you for the encouragement and also just for playing! I really appreciate getting feedback!

AlextricBunyip

Will say after playing for till the levels don't go further, I'm enjoying this so far Candy world is very fun so far for me, and I'm loving seeing those Jelly Thay'valay swell up through this and it immediately makes me want there to be various other enemies who are used to block the way and we deal with them with inflatable barrels. Maybe even a boss where there's no hp drain in their level but you have to keep trying to inflate and pop them with the barrels to progress, but having to be weary about the boss grabbing you so they don't inflate and pop Aria one too many times XD outside of that rambling I'm curious about this hidden room you mentioned in the newer update/edit, as it's somewhere in bristle fields but I have no idea where it might be nor what spell would be used as at least two spells don't show up in the fields, so I wouldn't mind some vague guidance there. I'm wondering how many of the temple/shrines are currently available as well, I've encountered 3 so far, the one within the mountains i think it was that I think is the very first one, the one on the beach that needs 67, and the near unmissable one on candy island; but I'm wondering if there's more that I've just missed or not? Have I just missed the various npcs from the polls? I figured they would be somewhere in the game but I haven't seen any of them, so I'm wondering if I just missed them or if they just aren't implemented and I'm being silly XD I will also second a bestiary and item list of some sorts for later just so players can know if they missed something along their path, maybe even a very simple map of sorts to show and log branching paths so backtracking through things could be easier for people. Other than that keep up the work on the game, enjoying playing it and eager to see more from it!

Trombones

The wind blade is decently long so you definitely dodged that range bullet.

Brandon Cater

I'll see if I can get that one too then and I guess I'll be experiencing the pain then too. Might help me to see where I messed up!

Trombones

The GBA plays Gameboy and Gameboy color games, so you technically can play Xtreme 2 (just make sure the cartridge don't jostle too much). Gotta warn you; Xtreme 2 as Zero is 5 times worse than the frustration I described today. His attacks are functionally 4 pixels long I swear-

Brandon Cater

I don't have a gameboy color, but I do possess an original PS1 and a gameboy advance so I can definitely play at least X4 and Zero. The last megaman game I remember playing was actually megaman 2 as a kid so I guess it's time to catch up on the series and get some new ideas from them. And no worries, I avoid buying old games via re-releases unless I really can't avoid it.

Trombones

I'm 99% sure that the original releases are all cheaper than the re-releases on steam (the ones with more input lag). Tho this only applies if you have the hardware to play said games. Otherwise you'll be stuck using the steam release, which might cause you to get a gimped feel for their combat, and then approach your game with a gimped sense for how it should feel.

Brandon Cater

So long as the method to play it is 'legal' then it's ok to tell me. I do have to avoid certain things being on my Patreon just in case! Another idea, if I remember to, then when I release the game onto itch.io I can make an companion downloadable zip file with the sprites in them. I think at least. I'll have to double check that, but then it would be a permanent way to get to them so long as you have a copy of the game. Again, I'll have to check that method though, but it's the easiest solution of all of them.

Trombones

If you want, I can explain the ways I prefer to play those megaman games I talked about (somewhere not here lol). They'll set you back a lot of cash for a sub-par, input lag ridden experience if you go the wrong way lol. Also i just hope I'm still able to be subbed in the event your bestiary and item list plans don't turn out-

Brandon Cater

So for the boss, yes, the forest area had been nerfed a few times. I released the demo and got a lot of feedback on the difficulty of it and, as a result, I nerfed several elements from it. Though most of the stuff I nerfed was just players getting knocked into pits too easily and removing a few enemies and adding more candy/buff items to certain areas. I also changed it so Shopia doesn't show up until the end of the forest as I saw someone quit playing because they got stuck at a difficult part and were stuck with the wind blade they purchased. So I got a lot of feedback on the forest, but because the boss wasn't in there it's gotten a lot less feedback on it's difficulty. I'll have to see about playing that megaman for research purposes. I think I understand what you mean though. I'll have to consider it since adding in things that make the core gameplay more enjoyable would have more of a lasting effect. I know that I do want to make the wind blade weapon more enjoyable to use for sure so that will happen at some point bare minimum. I gotcha for the music and sound mixing. I'll see about equalizing it a bit more so it hopefully doesn't drown things out as much. I was actually worried the molten cocoa ambience would drown things out a lot so I will probably tune that volume down a little lower too. For the mana vs candy, I tried to make it so that it was clear between them since Mana vials have a light blue outline and all candy, including golem chunks, have a pink shader generated outline. Though maybe the weapons and symbols having a pink outline makes it blend together. Doesn't help that mana vials themselves also look pinkish purple. I'll probably see about adjusting things a little to make them more clear at a glance. I might add a bestiary and an item list to the game when it's much closer to finished. That's something that is just laborious and I'd prefer to have almost all the enemies in the game done so I can just put them all in at once if I do something like that. It's another thing I'd like to add, but don't want to guarantee it just yet. If I can I will add it, but otherwise I'll upload the sprites here on my patreon for subbed patrons.

Trombones

As for the reply to your reply of my feedback: I think that the boss designs aren't bad, tho I do have a bone to pick with the stone statue + gargoyle tag team. They do feel like a big difficulty spike where they are, largely due to the lack of a checkpoint between them. Before them, I'd say the difficulty is at a 4.5, and they're a 7.5. Would def fit in with candy island's current state of difficulty tho. If the game before it was harder, it'd feel less spike-y to me, especially since after a few deaths I was able to blow through them mostly (absolutely comes from my affinity for harder 2D games). After some thought, I think the first boss isn't too bad in its execution. As for combos: I referred to the normal, non-spell attacks doing something like what Megaman Zero does. As you level up in that game, you gain more attacks you can do in rapid succession. It goes from one single slash to a 1-2 combo, to a 1-2-3 combo. They don't come out anywhere near frame 1, but are quick enough to be viably gone for before retreating. I think looking at some Megaman Zero, Megaman X4, or Megaman Xtreme 2 gameplay as the character Zero would be a good visual aid. Your idea about letting spells and normal attacks have combo synergy is also good too. I just hope that, if something like these ideas is implemented, the extra spritework ain't a bitch. With the voices, I meant all the NPC voices and Aria's voices. They sounded like those Sonic Adventure 2 cutscenes where the music drowned out the voices, making it seem like they were whispering a bit. I remember the boss voices and grunts being ok, but only after i tinkered with the audio settings to get something kinda ok. That read signs idea would be great, too. Speaking of stating the obvious: in game, knowing what was a health pickup and what was a magic pickup was real difficult. The diamond candys seemed a lot like alternate magic sources. Could just be me, so idk if a popup saying "this is what magic looks like" would be needed. Also another question: would the sprite gallery be in the final game at any point? Or would it be basically a subscription DLC in the form of this patreon?

Brandon Cater

I do wanna have some inflation mini-games, but there's no guarantee on them just yet. That'll come when the game is closer to completion if I have the time and resources to do so. Having one where you have to manage how inflated you are or you pop is definitely on the list of mini-games I'd put in though. For now if you pop it just does additional damage to you, but yeah, I would definitely like to have some inflation mini-games!

Trombones

I gotta try and find em lol. Will there also be sort of mini-game segments where she'd inflate, but if you over do it, then she pops and game over?

Brandon Cater

Oh! Thanks for asking about that actually. I will start to upload the sprites for patrons to view on here. Then you won't have to backtrack of course! And yep! You can make Aria pop. You just have to take damage and she'll burst! There's only a few locations that you can become a blimp and pop right now though. Later on there will be more ways to become a burstable blimp.

Trombones

Will respond properly to this soon, but gotta quickly ask: will there eventually be a way to view all the sprites and animations that are in the game as sort of a gallery in or out of the game? It'd be a shame if the only way to see the Jelly TH. expand would be to backtrack a lot. Also, is there any way to make Aria burst? I got this question after accident getting 2 doses of the inflation gas used to defeat the Jelly TH. enemies lol

Brandon Cater

Thanks for playing and giving me feedback on it! Sorry about the poor experience at the end : / . In regards to her power drain, she drains a small amount passively and then a larger amount as you move about though the energy drains are flat values. So that would likely be why the jelly roadblocks are significantly harder since you do a lot of movement. Plus unlike the golems the jelly girls don't give you energy back until you completely defeat them so I can see where the issue lies with energy drain being punishing. I have planned to add in an upgrade which reduces energy drain and eventually there would be an upgrade that removes it entirely. In regards to the boss fight, I do want them to have some challenge where even thinking about 'what candy to pick up at what time' is something to consider, but if they seem too hard, I can always nerf them or add in more ways to get back energy during the fights. That's the same for things like the jelly ladies where I tried to put candy around out of the way to pick up while you try to juggle the barrels. I can definitely see the part where you had trouble at as being a problem though as I didn't put enough candy there and the ceiling is a bit low making it difficult to precisely juggle. I'll add a little more candy there and raise the ceiling in front of her. For the areas with extra monsters, I did try to make it so you could juggle the exploding barrels to handle some, though I suppose it is a bit awkward and difficult to do so with some weapons. I'll see about making them a little easier, though I did intend that one spot after the jelly girl to be a very hard encounter since after that then you get to have the blueberry powerup. (Well after 3 more gobbos) And it's a bit smoother to the end of that area. I'll definitely reduce the difficulty a little bit here and there (And the number of enemies). I have also wanted to make it so enemies don't stack so heavily on top of one another and kind of move to the side so you can clearly see how many enemies there are instead of them stacking directly on top of one another. Since I spend so much time testing I tend to underestimate how difficult things will really be until they get out there to everyone else to test! I think I might also just take another look at some of the weapons and see if I can improve them or add an upgrade that makes them better. I'll also likely nerf the hp totals of the enemies just a tiny bit and significantly reduce the amount the filimuri snek girls can block before their guard breaks as they are significantly tankier than I intended. In regards to possible combos, do you mean between the main weapon and spells or do you mean multiple hits on a target from the same weapon? I could possibly have synergies between weapons and spells to help with that. The next Boss upgrade you get I aim for it to make the player more versatile too. When you were referring to the voice and sound and such, do you mean Aria's voice? Or like the bosses voice or something else? I can definitely come back to the SFX volume and modify them. I can also see about adding in another audio group just for voice FX too. That one might take a bit to do though as it requires a lot of work labeling all the audio files, but I can do it if the SFX is overpowering the voice FX that much. For the death pit in the final area, that one is completely my fault. I tried to make it so the sign was pointing to the other skull sign to indicate that it was a death pit and not another path to go. I forgot completely about the beach area having the skull sign for a completely safe path to go. I'll remove the arrow pointing sign from that spot and change the previous signs so they're more uniform. I think I'll add the ability to 'read signs' and have Aria tell the player what they mean so there is no confusion.

Trombones

First of all, dis game pretty neat ✨ Especially the animations (even if I'm the type to like things going further but I digress) and music. My main point revolves around Aria's sweet tooth. At first, during the early game, it seems like a pretty interesting concept, having to constantly gorge on health pickups to stay alive for longer than 30 seconds. But as the game progressed, it started feeling very cheap in many ways. I found that if I had to analyze a section or boss for too long, I'd die; especially if it was a boss or a tricky situation since knowing doesn't equate to knowing how to do it fast enough. I'd say 80% of what I'd call cheap could reasonably be explained as a skill issue, given how today was my first time playing, but the last 20%, which includes the bosses, felt like way more. A good example is during areas with a lot of enemy density. They're placed in a way that I'd need to stay in one general area for a long time, chipping away at the health bars, especially if I just died, and even moreso if I chose an awkward default weapon like those ghosts. There ain't much candy in those areas usually, so it'd take something like 10 mins of attacking just to move 6 inches, what with all the dying and having to retrace my steps mixed with the long length of the fights. This was especially horrific with that section holding the three-stage expansion enemy after the save point next to some sexy lore you recently made a twitter post about. The section before it in the room is filled with tough, hearty enemies with long attacks in cramped terrain; if I did the intended route and tried killing em all, especially after I died the first time there, I'd be lucky to proceed with a sliver of life left after a long time of trying. So, I damage boosted through em 99% of the time. This tends to work as a last resort for situations like this, but this room is special due to the Jelly TH. guarding the way forwards. While there's a lot of candy in the room, due to the previous challenge, I'd tend to eat most of all of it while still trying to find out/execute what I had to do to get by. This gets really bad if I don't defeat the Jelly TH. enemy in one to four attempts at juggling the expansion air container. If I took or had taken damage at any point, which is easy due to the mushroom dudes behind her attacking as well, mixed in with the awkward-to-dodge motions of the Jelly TH.'s attacks, I'd run out of time to defeat the enemy and die, going back to the enemy gauntlet in the beginning of the room. Really felt like I needed to be a TAS bot to get through that, as if I missed a "cycle" of attacks that would let me easily juggle the expansion air, my chances of winning went down exponentially, even with the card attack equipped. I had to have spent some 30 mins there in just those 2 areas. And then after that, there's another enemy gauntlet area with even less candy to get to after I was already battle damaged. What really stung was dying after getting there and having to redo the first 2 sections I described all over again 💀. In general the later sections of the game didn't feel all too much like a good, fair challenge compared to most of the jungle area. Being stronger with those expansion purple floating relics helped, until I maxed them out, since I believe maxing them out, while giving the most damage, makes Aria's candy bar drain the fastest, exasperating the "time = health" issue. It just stopped getting fun after a while in what's currently the late game (I'm not finished yet) due to how often those roadblocks appeared and other questionable level design such as an arrow pointing into a bottomless pit as if it was a secret way to proceed; the arrow before it pointed forwards, so it was a good assumption that the down arrow also lead to a path. There's also a lot of bottomless pit deaths I took where I had zero clue there was a pit below me since I was on an upper route; I got hit, then fell and fell behind the geometry of the lower route and died, losing all my upgrades. Furthermore, some enemy collections feel a bit "enemy spammy," reminiscent of Sonic 06's shadow story, especially when there were literally 2 enemies overlapping each other coming from offscreen doing the same thing. I do also gotta say that while the music and effects are real stellar, tho I wish I could hear the voices better. No amount of audio tinkering could make em clear enough to go over the music understandably while being able to still hear everything else all nice. As for a potential way to fix this stuff (do bear in mind that I'm not a game designer): Perhaps a sort of combo system on larger enemies? Like faster follow up attacks so the very big gauntlets I talked about are more manageable. There's also those signs from Sonic generations that warn of bottomless pits in the area that say "hey, there's more risk here" instead of letting the player unfairly find out (not every high up platforming challenge is over instant death, after all). Seems like it'd be very useful here. Furthermore, a more in-depth audio balancing could help. Specifically, an option for "voices," and a little description as to what exactly is under the control of any given audio setting. Anyways, what do you make of my experiences?

Brandon Cater

Feel free to leave feedback here!

Trombones

Are we allowed to leave feedback on what we played here?

Brandon Cater

It is intended to be 67. You won't be able to unlock this particular statue until much later in the game. I plan to have a couple of other statues like this too, but most will be more reasonable for the power level.