Weekly update - 23 september 2024

New monday, new devlog, new demo.

I've been working a lot on the game in the past week, and not only on the code and sprites, but on the audio as well!

It's been a lot of fun making the new playable character, the Wraith Knight, especially coding its first skill, Blade Nova, which is a tribute to one of my favourite archetype of skills ever in top-down games: it fire 12 daggers in a nova pattern, and upon reaching at least 7 POWER, the blades become poisoned, applying the poison status on the enemies.

Anyways here's a list of the most important changes and updates I've done this week:

• Added a new playable fiend, the Wraith Knight, which is pickable in the Fiend Selection screen;
• Added the very first "Elite Encounter", which is a rare area containing 3x loot chests guarded by a strong unique enemy, the Knight. More to come;
• Added the Paladin enemy, which is a slow melee tanky enemy with a healing skill, but low damage. Rarer than the Scholar (mage) and Hoplite enemies;
• "THE FIENDONOMICON": added the screen for the unlockable content, such as new playable fiends, new mutations, and so on. It's just for show during the DEMO version, will be unlocked for the launch version of the game;
• Added the COINS lootable, which is a common lootable object spawned randomly in the stage that grants some SCORE (aka POINTS aka COINS, I'll pick a name soon);
• Added the very first "Pact Encounter", which is another rare area containing an object similar to the existing Shrines, however it's not free: upon paying a cost, you get some benefits, such as the Dead Mage helping you in combat for a few minutes upon sacrificing some HP. More to come;
• Started adding more depth to mutations, such as the Veggie Gun being able to apply poison once the player reaches 5 ATTACK: this will enrich the gameplay a lot, give more meaning to augmentations, and in the end a sense of build strategy;
• The first stage has now some music! 
• Made and added a lot of SFX to the game;
• Added some audio settings, more to come;
• Upon getting hit, the player has now an UI alert, which shows the player's HP bar on top of the fiend. Easier to notice when something hits you;
• Made the save&load system for the current settings (keybindings and audio);
• Some game balance changes, such as poison buffs. The game is not balanced yet: many combos trivialize the game, while others are somewhat underpowered;
• Main screen has now more buttons, such as the settings;

The DEMO has been updated with all these changes (and more). Please give it a shot at https://starcrit.itch.io/fiendrise and let me know what you think!