A Vibrant Melody Patch notes 0.21c

Voice Over, Tumbler sounds, balancing, and fixes

Hi everyone, 

I’m really happy with where the game is at after these last two patches. I think it’s a lot of fun to play when trying to maintain high scores. The low level risk-reward gameplay of the song power system works really nicely, and opens up a lot of trade-offs that ripple out beyond those low level tactical decisions.

This patch focused on adding polish, rebalancing around the major changes from 0.21b, as well as fixing a lot of long standing bugs. 

You’ll notice newly recorded voice over lines throughout your matches. This will give hints about the story as well as offer guidance to the player.

I’ve added a few more sound effects to the Tumbler encounter, which should make this a lot clearer and more interesting.

Two important balance changes are the Song Power change and the Egg Plant bonus time nerf. With all of your new abilities it was getting a bit too easy to open all the Egg Plants before the end of the match. As such, I’ve slightly reduced the amount of bonus time you charge the Flower Portal for when soothing any Egg Plants. But I’ve also buffed the maximum Song Power rank. Once you have 8 song power (hat starts flashing) you next note will always unleash a fully charged Final Light, including soothing multiplier and knock back.

I also tracked down a couple of game breaking bugs, so input and hatching should be a lot more reliable now.

There were a whole heap of small chances with this patch, so make sure to read below for all the details.

Please let me know what you think of the changes. and thanks for reading and playing,

Trev

@Trev_Murray on twitter

Gameplay features and changes

• Added lots of voice over for each of the significant events in the main game. These act as both story and player advice.
• Added sound effects to the Tumbler, that encounter feels a lot better now.
• Happy Scarab not have different emotional states, and provide different multipliers to the player’s Final Light. Instead of being summoned at increasing rates. Calm +50%, Happy +100%, Ecstatic +150%.
• Scarab Hosts have improved Prepare animations which along with some bug fixes, should mean it’s much clearer when they are about to rear up and attack.
• Once you’ve fully charged your song power the next Note is always Final Light, with full soothing multiplier and knockback effect!
• The music changes when you are at low hp, to help make the danger clearer.
• All three types of Egg Plants give slightly less bonus time to Flower Portal (match length).

Bug fixes

• Fixed several bugs around Royal Gelee.
• Eggplants can no longer eat Royal Gelee
• Fixed several bugs with creatures crossing multiple emotional boundaries at once.
• Extended double move window to 0.25 seconds
• Fixed some issues that can trigger a complete loss of input. Please let me know if this is still occuring.

Known bugs - Though still let me know if you are seeing these

• Calm-Happy-Escatic scarab sprites look the despite different effects.
• Projectiles only check the player’s current tile so you can walk into a valid projectile tile at the last second, but not be hit.
• Frogs/lizard singing ignores armour, and can make scarabs happy instead of flying home.
• Display issues with the meta game and scoring, and medal system.(Meta game stuff is taking a back seat while gameplay changes solidify).
• I’ve seen a single hard crash. If you have any ideas what causes this please let me know.