A Vibrant Melody Patch notes 0.21d

Escaping through the portal, metagame structure, and eggplant growth

Hi everyone, 

We’re on a hat-trick with another great patch. Since I’ve got most of the game systems working well together, I decided to spend this patch upgrading the meta-game systems. This should make the process of learning the game, and going from novice to expert a whole heap easier.

To support these changes I made one major system change: Escaping through the Flower Portal. In order to escape from the desert, and claim your escape bonus points you will need to feed the Portal Flower enough emotional energy for it to summon its portal. Once it has enough emotions it will start vibrating, then you can sing to it to summon the portal. Then simply step through to escape completing the match and get your bonus points. To help with this I also added a little counter to the Portal Flowers score text to remind you how much you need.

Two other changes, which go hand in hand, are the new pre-game screen, and the meta-game progression. The first few times you escape the desert, it gets a little bit harder to make it out. In your first match the portal plant will only require 10 emotional energy before it can summon the portal, but after escaping that amount increases. To help you keep track of this goal, the new pre-match screen tells you how many emotions it needs, and reminds you of the goal. It will also tell you about other possibilities once you have overcome your initial challenges.

I’ve also made some pretty big changes to the scoring system to help enable a more diverse range high-scoring strategies, and added a post-game screen that gives a detailed breakdown of what contributed to you final score. I’ve rebalanced the amount of points you get for escaping, and for soothing the Tumbler (see bullet points for details). I’ve also added a score multiplier which you can get by escaping with time still left on the Portal Flower’s match timer (see below). But keep in mind processing Emotional Energy through the Portal Flower is still the core mechanism and required to access all of these bonuses.

I’ve added some new art to all off the Eggplants and the Portal Flower, that will help you see how much emotional energy is needed to unlock their next state. All of these plants now steadily fill up from the bottom as they eat more Emotional Energy. And to remind you once they are full, they release some of their own emotional energy into the creatures they carry.

There were a whole heap of small changes and I’ve fixed all known major bugs with this patch, so read on below for those details.

Please let me know what you think of the changes. I think the path to becoming an expert soother far more clear now,

Trev

@Trev_Murray on twitter

Gameplay features and changes

• Added animations for the significant events in the match. The story and events should be much clearer now.
• Portal Flower escape: you now need to step through the flower portal in order to complete the match, and gain your escape points bonus. To do this feed the Poral Flower the listed amount of Emotional Energy then sing to it. Once the portal appears you can walk onto it to escape and get your bonus.
• Goal meta-game system increases the difficulty of activating the Portal Flower over the first few matches, but also increases the reward for doing so. Minimum 10, maximum 25 bonus points.
• Pre-Match screen states the goal, and what you will need to achieve it.
• Post-Match Screen states each of your sources of points and what your total score is.
• Rebalanced Soothing Tumbler bonus points (40->50, 80->75, 160->150).
• Added Time-Banking system. The more time the Portal flower has left when you step through the Portal, the bigger your score multiplier will be at the end of the match. (10s = x1.1, 20s = x1.2, 30s = x1.5, 60s = x2.5, 90s = x5)
• Adjusted the tutorial to teach the new Portal Escape system, and reduced the amount of emotional energy required to summon the tutorial flower portal.
• Soothed Pricklers now re-enter Pinata mode, instead of just shooting out emotional energy at randomish times.
• Rebalanced Happy and Ecstatic Pricklers, they will produce less emotional energy than they used to.

Bug fixes

• Calm-Happy-Ecstatic scarab sprites now give unique buffs to final light (50%, 100%, 150%).
• Fixed all issues that can trigger a complete loss of input. Please let me know if this is still occuring.
• Fixed a bug that allowed other creatures to walk onto Scarab Hosts current tile in some circumstances.
• Egg Plants no longer get stuck opening because they are too happy.
• Fixed implementation bugs from the 0.21d preview with the cost to open the portal not actually increasing.
• Fixed the hard crash bug. Please let me know if it still occurs.
• Tumbler no longer enters pinata mode after the match ends.
• Fixed many sprites and animations from 0.21d preview which we not displaying properly in game and in menus

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

• 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 par-score system, and medal system. (Par score will be reworked in a future patch).
• The Boss timer becomes unreadable for some values.
• The tutorial is very choppy, to the point of being unplayable on some systems.