Weekly update - 30 september 2024

It's devlog time.

This week I've been working mostly on a new playable character (Carnivorosa), Evolution system, polishing the UI and the new game's capsule art.

The new character, Carnivorosa, is a tanky fiend that focusses on melee combat and survival. So far it's my favourite unit.

Let's get to the list:

• Added Carnivorosa, a bruiser-type playable fiend with heavy focus on melee combat and sustain;
• Started the Evolution system, which adds strong bonuses to existing mutations and active abilities upon reaching the requirements. This is a work in progress, and only a few mutations and active skills have evolutions, such as Wraith Knight's Blade Nova being able to poison and Heatblaster halving its radius but granting a huge POWER bonus;
• Added the Enrage mechanic: if the player stalls too much in the same stage, the enemies will become enraged, and will be much stronger (without giving increased EXP). This is needed otherwise the players could farm forever the same stage instead of progressing;
• Added a lot of new variations to the first stage, such as a new trap+rewards area;
• Added a new lootable object: SPEED BOOST. This is a common object which grants a huge speed to the player for 10 seconds, to explore the stage quicker;
• Lots of UI improvements and new features;
• Buffed Wraith Knight's Blade Nova: it now pierces enemies, which heavily improves the character especially when the stage gets crowded;
• Corners' visuals are now fixed;
• Heavily buffed EXP shards' magnet pull area (backtracking is never fun);
• Added an UI panel in the right-bottom of the screen, that tells the player what's going on and what should be the focus. It's like a quest tracker;
• Various bug fixing;

The demo has been update on https://starcrit.itch.io/fiendrise, please give it a try and let me know what you think about the latest playable character, Carnivorosa!