0.4.0-dev: the foundations build

0.4.0-dev is out! In the last post I said this milestone was about making the basics solid rather than piling on more, and that's what the last few days have been: 145 commits, a feature freeze, and a full acceptance run with each Shape. It's still a development build (there's a lot of work to do before I can call this a full experience), but it's the most complete the game has felt so far.

You can grab it from the releases page.

The game can talk now

The biggest chunk of work in this build is accessibility, and it's something I care about deeply.

Narration. On Windows the game can read itself aloud: menus, selections, descriptions and notifications. There's a short setup the first time you launch it, and you can choose how chatty it is.
A personal danger rail. Threats aimed at you get a prioritized warning strip, and it works in multiplayer too. There are optional danger sounds to go with it.
Clearer bosses. Boss warnings are better choreographed, and each phase gets a readable caption.
Less reliance on color. The color trial motes now have distinct shapes, so you can tell them apart without seeing color at all.
Less motion. The reduced-motion setting now covers auras, effects and cooldown visuals as well.
Sounds that mean something. Notifications have their own sounds by priority, and repeats don't pile up.

Every Shape got a real run

For the acceptance runs I played each Shape from the start through the first boss and into the Recursion Board, and fixed what those runs turned up.

Square: charged slams got a much meatier impact, with a bass hit and a radial burst. The dash trail now only appears behind you once you've cleared the path.
Triangle: its damage payoff is back. Constellation setup is usable again, damage glyphs now apply to graph pulses, and Constellation Routing has an eight-second cooldown so it can't be spammed.
Circle: its opening rotation costs less Color, and you shouldn't run out of resources after every cast during a miniboss or boss fight.
Charged abilities now take priority over walking, so a held charge doesn't get eaten by your movement keys.

Passives that do what they say

Another goal from last time was checking that every passive actually works. Starter keystones now trigger properly in boss fights, bosses take damage from fungal and field-boundary passives, and "Nearby" now means the same thing everywhere: 200 units. The passive editor shows the real board layout with a live preview, which made all of this much easier to check.

A few new things (before the freeze)

The Color Studio in the Nexus, where you mix cosmetic pigments and earn new palettes.
Party chat for multiplayer, including a way to get unstuck if you wedge yourself somewhere.
Roaming hosts now look different depending on what they've absorbed, with animated growth effects that other players see too.

Around the world

Chromatic nodes only spawn in clear, finished rooms that you can actually reach from the start of the map, and they have beacons so they're easier to spot.
After a solo Recursion map, the next destination is picked for you.
Portals explain themselves better, and the selected one pulses so you can see what you've picked.
Boss clears are saved in your Nexus run history.
Tutorials now point at the actual gear slots and socket controls, and the big gear overlay is gone. That's the first part of the tutorial rework I mentioned last time.

A nerdy detour: letting bots play

I can't play every seed myself, so I let bots do it. I ran ninety bot campaigns and had them record everything: boss timings, which glyphs they swapped, and every place they got stuck. That gave me six maps where navigation reliably broke, which I could replay exactly and fix one by one. Bots now get into range for interactions, stop chasing floor they can't reach, and give up on hopeless destinations. As a side effect, players no longer get wedged in walls after rotating. It's really fun to see how bots perform for some reason, and it's easy to get invested in a run when I actually watch it play out in real time.

Some of the performance features that I've fixed for the bots themselves have actually informed the AI used by enemies and player summons, which has been a really useful side effect of the whole process.

What's next

Next up is 0.4.x: real balance changes, making sure multiplayer holds up, and a round of visual polish. If you run into anything, please report a bug or check the known issues. Ideas are welcome too, on the suggestions page.

Thanks for playing!

Jasmine