During playtesting, levels 7 and 12 have been sources of frustration. I've taken a long look at them together with Auri, and we also compared how they played in the original and thought about why they were now more difficult than they were before.

There are several reasons, let's start with level 7.

In the new version, the creators shoot in this pattern constantly:

It's hard to move around because the seeker is a little faster than the enemy drones, and there's a big chance you have to use the turning ability to block some of the enemies, which is not ideal in a stressful situation (you have to de-select your seeker, build, and re-select your seeker - there is a key for this, but it's not optimal at all).

I looked at the old level again, and I immediately saw why it was easier back then:

The pattern dissolves very quickly, leaving more space to move between rows. I opened the original Flash project again and saw that, yep, there was code missing for an additional interval setting. Each creator could also have 2 projectiles alive concurrently, it's set to 4 in the new version because of the 16:9 resolution ratio.

It's so fascinating to me that small changes like that can lead to a frustrating experience.

As for level 12, one of the issues is that Commander Neek - or rather, the uncontrollable seeker - is ... not dumb enough. In the old version, it would move 100% randomly. Sometimes it wouldn't move at all if the RNG didn't choose a direction. But that meant it was easier to catch!

In the new version I made it so that uncontrollable seekers always choose a direction, and that they never go back to where they just were (unless there's no other option). But this means they can escape quicker and go further away faster and you feel more powerless. Which results in frustration.

In addition to that, the game field is now larger, which means it requires more time to go from point A to point B and collect all crystals, meaning you have to endure the attacks longer. And the flying enemies were a little bit faster than in the original version.

So yeah, sorry to my early testers, especially SaimizZ, Millie, Chara, Daniel Floyd and Auri. They definitely played the hard version. 😬

One final thing that I want to mention about this is that... I understand that this is not the best designed game. In 2006 this was a project for me to unwind and to experiment and to have fun. There was no design document or anything like that, I pretty much just went wherever the project took me. My mission with this remaster is to bring it to Unity and improve certain aspects if I can. But I definitely don't want to make it harder or worse, in fact, quite the opposite. Yes, the difficulty is a bit all over the place, and I think in some cases I have to make it clearer that it's Neek messing with you. But in the end it still should be a fun experience with chill music.

Drawing Fast

One additional source of frustration was the fact that you could not draw fast enough with the mouse cursor. There was already a bit of a fix in place for this (lower sensitivity while building, the same as in Catty & Batty), but it was still sometimes missing fields. Without this fix, it looked like this:

I added a new function that checks the lines between frames and applies the current action, here's the debug output where you can see that it's still missing fields, but the red line is already part of the new solution.

And here is the solved version. The green lines represent the points where the system checks for missing actions. (It's using Vector.Lerp to check between old and current mouse position.)

Here is the final solution without debug output! I can honestly say this feels a LOT better already, and I think this will also help with missions where you have to catch the uncontrollable seekers.

This was on my list before, but I thought maybe it's not an issue. Until Khimitsu came along and told me that he noticed it as well. Khimitsu also was one of the testers back in 2006, so I'm glad he's back at it again with a lot of useful feedback!

Full Changelog

Here's the full changelog for the past few days:

• Clicking retry resets the level without the cutscene now. You can also press R on the keyboard. Not sure if I want to add this to controller, there is a "restart" option in the menu which is quick to access on controller and avoids accidentally hitting one of the buttons. (thanks to everyone who mention this, I think it was... everyone haha, mainly Veven and Khimitsu though, I think!)
• Restarting a level no longer unloads all currently loaded assets, so it's a lot quicker.
• Updated some phrases and sentences in dialogues. (thanks Auri and Khimitsu)
• Improved level 10 by letting the player go through the wall at the bottom. This actually makes sense regarding the cutscene where Neek says "and then blast your way through". It also speeds up the level and makes it possibly more interesting and a bit easier.
• Improved level 12: Moved uncontrollable seeker a bit further up, added more crystals, slowed down projectiles, and moved crystals closer together. (thanks SaimizZ)
• Added a bit more randomness to uncontrollable seeker when it has 3 or more squares to choose from. It will still walk forward when enclosed with turned squares to reduce frustration, but out in the open it's a bit easier to catch this way.

And that's it for now! I still have around 20 open issues/things to do regarding feedback, so that will definitely keep me busy for next week!

Thanks everyone for playing!

To be continued... 💎