Slime rescue events

Wild slimes have been captured and need your help! Imprisoned slimes can be randomly found in the desert biome, and will trigger an invasion-like event on interaction. Completing these events will award rescued slimes, which can be used to build infrastructure objects - a new type of buildings that don't consume village slots.
These events also serve as a replacement for the old, clunky village invasions: upgrading the village now requires a certain number of rescued slimes instead. The old invasion events can still be triggered by consumable items, but are no longer required for upgrading the village.

Post boxes

After defeating the Decomposer, you can unlock a Remote access module upgrade on the stockpile building:
As soon as the upgrade is unlocked, you can build post boxes, an infrastructure object that requires one rescued slime and 25 wood.
You can build as many post boxes as you want, gaining remote access to the village's stockpile from anywhere.

Updated robot enemies

All robot enemies have been updated with new visuals, slightly altered behavior, and were made slightly bigger to make them easier to hit.

[ 2025-04-21 17:20:00 CET ] [ Original post ]

Village building upgrades

This patch brings a way to upgrade village buildings, adding a form of meaningful long-term progression without directly affecting player power.

First batch of upgrades

• [Stockpile] Pocket Dimension - Increases your inventory capacity by 1 slot per upgrade point, up to 10 extra slots
• [Alchemy lab] Efficient brewing - Chance to not consume materials when crafting health and mana potions
• [Alchemy lab] Bottomless bottles - 30% chance to not consume the potion item when drinking a potion
• [Trading post] Fire sale - Torches will no longer cost money

Gatekeeping of boss-specific crafting

In addition to actual upgrades, crafting items from boss drops is locked behind symbolic upgrades that cost a small amount of the corresponding material. The goal is just make it more obvious that this NPC will craft items from these boss drops. Here are the upgrades in question:

• [Forge] Stormforged arsenal - Unlocks crafting of accessories from storm essences
• [Forge] Arcane craftsmanship - Unlocks crafting of items made with arcane power orbs
• [Engineer's workshop] Light it up - Unlock the crafting of lamps
• [Engineer's workshop] Drop-tuned innovation - Unlock recipes that require Mysterious energy cores
• [Engineer's workshop] Ghost in the gears - Unlock recipes that require Advanced AI modules

Minor changes and bugfixes

• Fixed a bug that prevented flower seeds from actually spawning flowers
• Electric herb grinder is now significantly faster (10X the previous speed)
• Fixed the size and alignment of DPS text above the damage analyzer

[ 2025-02-03 02:45:15 CET ] [ Original post ]

Realm system / what's taking so long?

The game was initially designed with just one "dimension" in mind, meaning that one savefile only had one primary world. The chaos rifts and the pineapple altar, under the hood, actually took place in the same realm, but in a small enclosed area that's normally inaccessible to players. As the development progressed, it became clear that having many realms as part of one world will become a core part of the game someday. Think of it as every biome having its own realm, where you can visit newly-added biomes without having to start over, and can even create multiple "instances" of a specific biome within the same world. Although this feature won't be noticeable right away (besides an extra-fancy teleporation effect), it will eventually allow me to add more dimensions and proper instanced content.

Other changes

• The size of player bullets and the intensity of their hit effects have been reduced for the sake of visibility.
• Added a trail to player's character.
• More of the game's code was rewritten in C++, which may or may not lead to some performance gain.

[ 2024-12-30 17:18:31 CET ] [ Original post ]

Performance improvements

• Some of the code responsible for lighting and world chunking has been rewritten in C++ (instead of Godot Engine's scripting language), which should (hopefully) result in considerable performance gains, especially on lower-end CPUs
• This should also eliminate the micro-stutters when moving quickly through the world, along with the occasional freezes when using any kind of teleportation - both caused by inefficient loading/unloading of the world

Poor slime blast got reworked again

• In an attempt to make the main ability more satisfying to use, it's been reworked to fire many small projectiles at a fast rate
• Overdrive remains unchanged and still increases the fire rate by 400%, allowing you to fire insanely fast

Other news

• Frostfire Pineapplemental got a small update and feels slightly less disgusting to fight, but only slightly
• Fixed an issue that was causing the character to stick to walls and ceilings (although I could've pretended that it's intended)
• The raccoon has somehow found a second trash can. This is getting out of hand, now there's two of those!

[ 2024-06-22 01:42:01 CET ] [ Original post ]

Ability empowerment mechanic

• Your next cast of Slime Blast can be empowered with up to 2 mana points, increasing the strength of the projectile with each mana point
• Wrecking Ball can be empowered with a mana point to immediately gain full charge of the ability
• If received well, this will become a core mechanic of the game's combat and will eventually be applicable to all skills in the game

Talent tree reorganized for the 20th time

• The talent tree screen - hopefully - no longer looks like it was designed by a blind hedhehog
• Frozen Orb, Ultimate Regeneration, Instant Teleportation and Great Combinator have all been temporarily removed until these are reworked and re-introduced in a better form
• You might think that at this point I have no idea what I'm doing, and you'd be exactly right

Minor changes

• The character should automatically climb onto 1-tile-high obstacles
• Vertical slopes no longer slow down the character's movement as much as they used to
• Slime Blast auto-attacks by default, since playing without auto-attack kinda sucks
• Trees in the forest biome now have random height and colors, to make the biome look less bland
• Slightly adjusted the positioning and tint of biome backgrounds
• The character will always face the direction they're shooting in, even when moving in the opposite direction
• Quest description window is now 2% less ugly
• All quest descriptions have been rewritten to maximize the amount of cringe experienced by the user

[ 2024-03-14 01:10:48 CET ] [ Original post ]

It's a bit weird to release a Christmas update after Christmas, but here it is anyway!

New mini boss: Festivius, the Festive dragon

• The summon item can drop from elementals or loot containers in the snow biome, as long as the player doesn't already have the item
• The boss can drop two new pieces of cosmetic headwear - a green ribbon and a red ribbon - to give the character a more festive look
• Due to time constraints, that's all the boss drops for now :(

Villager slimification

• All villagers (except the raccoon) are now slimes, which is important for the game's narrative direction moving forward

Other

• The game's base resolution has been increased, to make the graphics look more crisp
• The camera will now smoothly follow the player, rather than always being anchored to the center of the character

[ 2023-12-27 15:23:59 CET ] [ Original post ]

New ultimate ability: overdrive (Q)

Note: I feel like the existing ultimate abilities didn't feel "ultimate" enough. An "ultimate" ability should make the player feel really strong, and not just do an extra 2% damage to the boss.

• Previous ultimate abilities have been removed from "ultimates" and turned into regular abilities that cost mana.
• There is now a single ultimate ability called "overdrive".
• The new ability has its own keybind and its own UI element, so it doesn't need to be moved to the action bar.
• While overdrive is active, your attack speed and mining speed are increased by 400% (which is really fast!).
• Future patches will introduce new gear items that improve this ability (e.g. reduced cooldown, longer duration, multiple charges, ...)

Action bar

• Village teleportation ability is now on the action bar by default
• Skills and items on the action bar will now show tooltips when hovering over

Dash ability update

• Dashing now costs 1 mana
• This still allows the player to dash very often with almost no cooldown, but at the same time provides an incentive to avoid thoughtlessly spamming dash, as mana can also be used on damaging abilities

UI

• Fixed various UI-related and font-related issues that were introduced in the last patches because of my spaghetti code :(

[ 2023-11-23 02:30:42 CET ] [ Original post ]

Auto-save

• This feature is long overdue and should've been added much earlier, but it's finally here!
• The game will auto-save after every major event (i.e. after defeating bosses or invasions), as well as every 5 minutes during gameplay.
• You can also manually trigger a quicksave by pausing the game and selecting "Quicksave" in the pause menu

Action bar and key bindings

• The default keybindings have been changed. The bottom action bar is now using the number row (1, 2, 3, ...) , while the top action bar is using the function row (F1, F2, F3, ...)
• Firstly, this addresses some people's concerns about the W keybind being very unintuitive
• More importantly, it frees up Q, W, E, R and T for some brand new actions coming in the next patch.
• Action bar key bindings will be reset when you launch the game for the first time after the patch.

[ 2023-11-14 20:51:47 CET ] [ Original post ]

Engine

• The game has been filly migrated from Godot 3 to Godot 4
• The performance on lower-end hardware should be a bit better now
• This also means brand new bugs and issues, yay!

Cosmetic items!

• Two new types of items - Headwear and Dyes - have been added, and can be equipped to customize the character's appearance.
• Cosmetics can be found by exploring the world and defeating enemies.

Bosses

• Arcane Containment Unit now has a second phase with new mechanics
• Storm elemental now has a longer and slightly more diverse second phase

Questing

• "Find cookie" and "Catch wisps" quests have been removed, as they aren't that interesting and don't fit the "action-focused" style of the game.

General

• Light sources are now brighter and transmit light further
• A bunch of minor aesthetic upgrades all over the place

[ 2023-10-05 17:05:27 CET ] [ Original post ]

Greetings! As some of you might know, Gelatine is made with Godot engine. This year, a new version of the engine was released - Godot 4 - and the game is currently being ported from old-fashioned Godot 3 to all-new Godot 4. In the end, this should result in better performance and easier mod support in the future. However, it's a long process that can introduce new issues. At this time, engine migration is mostly done, but the game hasn't been tested thoroughly enough to push it live. So, the switch to Godot 4 will happen together with the next content update, after doing more testing and ensuring that everything works. For now, the Godot 4 version of the game is available in the "dev-latest" branch of the game, which you can select in game settings (if for some reason you want to check it out).

[ 2023-09-01 20:11:47 CET ] [ Original post ]

This patch contains a few small improvements to the game's overall feel.

• Action bar slots are now showing the remaining cooldown as a number, in addition to the cooldown animation.
• Tooltips now have a much more readable font. Some pixel art aesthetic had to be sacrificed, but readability is more important here.
• Added a camera shake effect to accompany powerful events like explosions and lightning strikes
• Taking damage gives much more obvious feedback and shows big red damage numbers above the player
• Added a wind sway effect to trees, and slightly improved the animation of falling leaves
• Slightly improved the visual and audio feedback of slime blast (primary combat ability)
• Player animation speed now depends on movement velocity, rather than always playing at the same speed
• Learning a talent will automatically refresh the currently selected skill to apply any possible changes
• Applied a slight gradient tint to make the color scheme more pleasant (but that's subjective)
• Dropped items will now be noticeably larger (with the exception of placeable tiles)

[ 2023-06-25 21:19:17 CET ] [ Original post ]

[previewyoutube=jaCh5t-pEFI;full][/previewyoutube]

New boss fight!

• This boss is the final boss of Act 1.
• The summon item can be crafted by combining one Mysterious energy core and one Storm essence, and is craftable by the Engineer.

New accessories

Two accessories can be crafted from materials that drop from the new boss:
• Enchanted hourglass - Reduces the cooldown of your ultimate abilities by 35%
• Arcane feather - Allows you to quadruple-jump while in the air

Minor fixes

• Fixed a crash caused by selecting another ability while casting Annihilation ray
• Slightly reduced the effectiveness of accessories that speed up mana regen, because the gameplay starts to feel clunky and less satisfying when mana regen becomes too fast

What's next?

The game currently lacks content in areas not related to boss fights: exploration, invasion events, variety of items, etc. So the next few months will be spent on ironing out Act 1 and adding more "casual" content to the game. Once the amount of content in Act 1 feels satisfactory, I'll be able to move onto Act 2 with new biomes and more boss fights.

[ 2023-05-31 21:02:42 CET ] [ Original post ]

Wrecking Ball

• Slime Whip was kinda useless as a combat ability, so it's been reworked into a mining tool (although it still does damage to enemies and can still be used in combat).
• The reworked ability is called Wrecking Ball and can be used for destroying a small area in a single swing. Hold the button to charge up the ability, then release to smash the ground.

New accessories:

• Magic pendant: increases mana regen by 20% (drops from elementals in the snow biome)
• Storm necklace: increases mana regen by 100% (craftable after defeating the Storm Elemental)
• Mana battery: increases the maximum mana capacity by 2 (craftable after defeating the Metal Core)

New passive talents:

• Added an upgrade for Dimensional Leap that doubles the maximum range of the teleportation.
• Added an upgrade for Heal that causes this ability to also speed up the cooldown recharge rate of ultimate abilities.

Talent tree reworked for the 500th time

• Yes, again
• Let's see how long it lasts before it's reworked once more
• Organizing talent trees is more complicated than I thought

Other stuff:

• Stats in item descriptions now have icons next to them
• Village teleportation ability is now available from the start and doesn't need to be learned.
• Reduced XP requirements at earlier levels, but also increased those at later levels, which results in much faster leveling at the start of the game and less extreme level gain later on.
• Merchant window looks slightly better.
• Trees look less annoying
• Normal tiles (dirt, stone, etc.) will no longer give any XP for mining, because that was OP

[ 2023-04-22 23:47:49 CET ] [ Original post ]

Questing

• Quests are now split into acts. Completing the final quest in the act will allow you to move to the next act.
• Currently there's only one act, which will culminate in a final boss of this act (which is yet to be released in a future patch). Then, act 2 will begin.
• The quest list is now shaped like a tree, which should make it easier to understand the progression path through the act.
• Quests can be completed and turned in even if the quest hasn't been unlocked yet - for example, if you manage to defeat a boss without unlocking its quest, then the quest will be completed anyway and you will be able to turn in that quest.

Village invasions

• Invasion soundtracks have been replaced with more thematically fitting music.
• Invasions last just a little bit longer.
• Some enemies during invasions have been improved, and some have been removed completely (and will be re-added after a total rework).

XP Bottler / a way to spend extra talent points

• The XP Bottler is a placeable object that can be purchased from the Merchant
• You can interact with that device to put a talent point in a bottle
• Bottled XP can be sold to the merchant for coins, as a way to make XP useful when all talents have been learned
• Bottled XP can potentially be used for crafting in the future (but not yet)

New craftable items

• DPS analyser (crafted from AI modules): can be attacked to measure your average damage-per-second. Basically an advanced training dummy.
• Portable freezer (crafted from Storm essences): freezes your slime blasts, turning them into shards of frozen slime that have a much longer range and do slightly more damage.
• Potion of ultimate power: instantly resets the cooldown of your ultimate abilities, but places a cooldown on all potions depending on the remaining cooldown of your ultimates

Special rewards for challenging mode

• In addition to more loot, defeating a boss on Challenging difficulty will now drop a boss-specific crafting station.
• These crafting stations can be used to craft all of the items that are crafted from this boss' unique drops.
• Some items will have a slightly reduced crafting cost compared to crafting them at NPCs.
• (note: Frostfire Pineapple's crafting station is currently useless)

Frozen orb changes

• Frozen orb is now considered to be an ultimate ability and shares a cooldown with other ultimate abilities.
• It no longer costs mana.
• The damage of the ice shards has been increased.
• Added an upgrade that allows the frozen orb to be hit twice before it disappears.

Annihilation ray

• Channels a powerful beam for 2 seconds that destroys all tiles in its path.
• Is an ultimate ability (which means it shares a cooldown with frozen orb).

Various tweaks

• Boss health was slightly increased, because the fights still felt way too short
• Metal Core's rockets (in phase 2) will have a smoother launch animation, but will reach a much higher velocity over time
• Storm elemental will no longer have a permanent rain of bullets on challenging difficulty, as it's challenging enough as it is
• Frostfire Pineapple's dagger attack will now give the player more time to react
• Slime Jackhammer's jump functionality works much more reliably, and the sound of jumping is a bit quieter
• Improved the visual effect of Heal ability
• Improved the visual effect of slime blast projectile explosion
• Items will now be greyed out on the action bar and will not show a placement preview if you don't have the required item in your inventory.

[ 2023-03-31 00:20:00 CET ] [ Original post ]

Boss fight upgrades

• All bosses now have two phases, with slightly different sets of abilities and a different part of the soundtrack playing during each phase
• Decomposer and Metal Core have a couple of brand new abilities and have been slightly changed visually
• Every boss fight now ends in a results screen where your performance is graded with a rank

Here's a preview of what the updated Decomposer looks like

[previewyoutube=shU6GcxZ-GE;full][/previewyoutube]

Combat rework

• The combat is currently in the process of being completely reworked, taking user feedback into account
• A new ability is now available from the start - Slime Blast
• The ability has an upgrade tree that adds extra mechanics to how it's used, with more upgrades to come later
• Accessories that previously affected slime spear, will now affect slime blast instead

Other

• Mana points will now be shown below the player, in addition to the health bar
• Metal Core's summoning item can drop from barrels in underground ruins, if it hasn't been obtained yet

[ 2023-02-25 15:09:43 CET ] [ Original post ]

First of all, a small announcement: from this point, the game is shifting from weekly updates to monthly. The amount of work going into the game will stay the same, but the updates themselves are getting larger in scope and take more time to complete, which makes a weekly schedule way too restrictive. Starting next month, a new major update will be released at the end of every month. Moving on to this week's update!
Smart cursor changes

• The smart cursor is now much more obvious and intuitive, and can be toggled on and off by pressing CTRL
• Trees, gems, plants and mechanical traps will now be targeted by the smart cursor

Underground changes

• A new type of enemy will spawn underground: harmless wisps that drop torches on death and make it easier to locate the nearby points of interest
• Gem clusters will now immediately drop gems instead of spawning an enemy, which felt a bit weird and out of place
• The light from torches will now look less yellow

Boss changes

• Decomposer will now shoot a spread of bullets at the end of each "laser fan" attack

UI

• The health bar in HUD is now green, to make it more obvious that it represents health
• You can now start the game by double-clicking the world in the list
• Deleting a world now requires a confirmation

Other

• Added a bit of multithreading, which should further help with performance issues on weak PCs. More optimizations coming later.
• The "sprint after dashing" ability now works more reliably and won't be canceled prematurely unless you start moving in a different direction
• Slightly improved AI spawning and pathfinding

[ 2023-01-27 12:01:44 CET ] [ Original post ]

• The Dimensional Leap ability now has an upgrade that makes the ability instant, without the need to charge it up first
• Dynamic tile loading has been slightly optimized, to somewhat alleviate the issues that some users are having where the world isn't loading fast enough to keep up with the player's speed. This whole system will be completely overhauled in the nearest future, which should solve these issues entirely. But for now, this is a small temporary fix.

[ 2023-01-21 07:37:37 CET ] [ Original post ]

From now on, every boss in the game will have three separate achievements: 1. Defeat the boss on any difficulty 2. Defeat the boss on Challenging difficulty 3. Defeat the boss on Challenging difficulty without taking any damage This should reward players for challenging themselves and potentially give the game a slightly higher replay value. The new achievements have already been added for all existing bosses, and this pattern will continue for future boss fights.

[ 2023-01-19 08:53:56 CET ] [ Original post ]

• Fall damage has been reduced by 50%, and the "safe" height tolerance has been increased
• Boss modifiers should no longer affect invasions
• NPCs are no longer affected by gravity
• FIxed an issue with automatic sliding doors not being harvestable
• Fixed an issue with flamethrower visual effect not being visible if the FPS is low enough
• Dimensional Leap ability will no longer work if you try to teleport into solid blocks

[ 2023-01-15 08:57:04 CET ] [ Original post ]

This patch consists mostly of boring quality-of-life changes. And one new learnable talent.

• New learnable talent - Momentum - that greatly increases your movement speed for 3 seconds after dashing, as long as you keep moving in the same direction
• Added a shift-click functionality to quickly move items between your inventory and the village storage
• Better sounds of damaging ore blocks with mining skills
• Storm Elemental's sprite is now brighter and thus much easier to see
• Tweaked the Frostfire Pineapple's attack patterns and made them more challenging, as it was way too easy compared to the other bosses
• Village menu will no longer re-open after successfully placing a new village improvement in the world
• The "Careless wisp-er" quest now requires only 5 wisps (down from 10), in order to keep it from feeling tedious and drawn out
• Slightly improved the boss summon screen
• Fixed a visual issue with village storage window being slightly misaligned

[ 2023-01-14 00:47:17 CET ] [ Original post ]

Decomposer's attack patterns have been noticeably changed, hopefully making the fight more engaging and fun.
The Frostfire Pineapple experience has been improved as well. Its dungeon now consists of a single room with a summoning altar, without any of the unnecessary extra rooms.
The pineapplemental's attack patterns have been changed as well, and are a bit more interesting than before. The boss has a 100% chance to drop an accessory called "A bottle of ice and fire", which summons a miniature version of itself.
On another note, a very subtle bloom effect has been added to the game. The colors should be a bit more vibrant and smooth, the dark environments will be slightly less dark, and light sources will be more effective at providing light.
And lastly, combat abilities have been balanced to be more or less equally viable. All three base abilities can be unlocked before fighting any boss, and all "secondary attacks" require defeating the Metal Core.
Since Slime spear and Flamethrower are harder to use and have a higher skill ceiling, these skills will have a higher damage output when used correctly - but the slimethrower is still a perfectly viable option if that's your cup of tea.

[ 2023-01-08 17:25:51 CET ] [ Original post ]

Today's weekly patch is dedicated to new ways to mine ores - with explosives! Explosive charge is the basic ingredient for all explosives. It can be bought from the Merchant, or crafted by the Engineer using sand and molten ingots.
The most exciting thing to craft is the bomb launcher, craftable right after defeating the Metal Core.
This fearsome weapon will use explosive charges as ammo, firing small bombs that will stick to surfaces and can be detonated by pressing the "secondary fire" button (or they will detonate automatically after 6 seconds).
Another thing that you can craft are explosive blocks, the same ones that you can randomly encounter underground.
Activating explosive blocks by hand might be a bit tedious, but after you defeat the Decomposer, you can craft a wireless detonator to do so remotely!
The device will detonate not only the bombs placed by you, but also the ones that were originally generated underground!
Backpack size has been increased from 28 slots to 36, since the current size feels a bit too small for the number of items in the game. At some point I'm going to add a way to increase it even further.
And finally, lamp blocks have been changed and they now (subjectively) look better than before.
And some minor things:

• You can now rapidly buy multiple items from the Merchant by holding the right mouse button, just like with crafting.
• Explosion sounds have been moved to a separate audio channel with a volume limiter, to avoid damaging the eardrums of whoever decides to detonate 500 bombs at once.

[ 2022-12-30 14:48:16 CET ] [ Original post ]

Talent tree changes (Again?!) The ability tree has been reorganized once again! In addition to that, learning most abilities no longer requires any items - just the talent points. The only nodes that still require items, are special "gateway" nodes that exist solely to lock certain upgrades behind killing certain bosses. Hopefully the structure of the skill tree will now be more intuitive and more logical.
Corrosive Slime rework The "Corrosive slime" ability has been completely reworked into a combat ability called Slimethrower. It seemed to work well as a starting ability, so that's what it now is - with more complex abilties being unlocked later. (if you have already unlocked the later abilities, they will stay unlocked - no need to worry about that!)
This ability also has an optional upgrade that lets you deal twice the damage by using your health as a resource. Glider rework The Portable glider accessory has been removed, and instead turned into a learnable perk in the talent tree. Since there are now less accessory slots, other accessories will inevitably be more optimal than the glider, making it a tough choice between fun and optimization. With this change, you can have both!
Flamethrower tuning The Flamethrower ability now has a longer reach (as this was an issue on some boss fights), and the beam of fire was made slightly thinner, so that it doesn't block your view as much.
Alchemist's charm This new accessory can be crafted by the Alchemist, and it might be useful if you rely on using potions often.
Bug fixes

• Fixed an issue with biome detection that caused enemies to either not spawn in their biome or spawn in a biome they weren't supposed to spawn in.
• Added an upper limit to XP requirements per level, to ensure that the increasing XP requirements don't make unlocking later talents too grindy.

[ 2022-12-23 04:10:41 CET ] [ Original post ]

Most items in the game will now have a monetary value, and can be sold to the Merchant if you ever feel like some of your items are no longer useful.
In order to summon the Merchant, you will need to build a new village improvement - Trading post.
The Merchant's inventory is still very modest, but they do sell two notable items - flower seeds and a sickle, providing a way to consistently farm herbs for making potions.
Gardening in Gelatine has a bit of action sprinkled on top. Launch a handful of seeds in the air and make sure they don't land on your head - that hurts!
Seeds that land on grass will grow instantly - there's no downtime before harvesting your herbs. You can then use the sickle to efficiently harvest all plants.
P.S.: The number of accessory slots has been reduced from 7 to 5.

• I wasn't too sure about this change, but seven slots felt like way too much, considering that a lot of things that could have been an accessory are instead learned in the skill tree.
• Any accessories that may have been equipped in 6th and 7th slot will be automatically unequipped and placed in your inventory.

[ 2022-12-17 20:34:48 CET ] [ Original post ]

• Fixed an issue that was causing the bottled elemental to attack the alchemist NPC. To be fair, that behavior was understandable - who do you think put the elemental in the bottle in the first place?
• Fixed an issue that prevented the herb grinder from being harvestable.
• Equipping the Automatic targeting system along with Spectral spearhead will no longer result in projectiles endlessly chasing enemies and trivializing all content. The projectile will now only track enemies until it deals damage to the first enemy, and will just keep flying in a straight line after that.

[ 2022-12-12 11:17:00 CET ] [ Original post ]

To get started with alchemy, you'll first need to build the Alchemy table that summons the alchemist NPC:
Before herbs can be used in potion-making, they need to be ground up into a herb mix using a herb grinder, crafted by the alchemist using a small amount of wood.
Grinding herbs is a tedious process that involves manually turning the handle. If only we had the technology to automate this process...
In fact, we can! After defeating the Metal Core, you can use one of its energy cores to power the electric herb grinder.
You can then use the herb mix to craft some potions! Four potions are currently in the game, with more to be added in future updates.

• Healing potion instantly hestores 40 health
• Mana potion grants you 3 mana points
• Potion of momentum gives you a significant speed boost for 7 seconds
• Potion of divine protection makes you immune to all damage for 3 seconds

All potions share the same 1-minute cooldown, so you'll have to choose the right potion depending on circumstances! Other

• Now that alchemy is in the game, the "Heal" ability has been nerfed from 12 health per second to 8 health per second, and has been moved slightly further down the skill tree (so that it's no longer a requirement for learning the dash skill).
• All item tooltips are now showing the item type
• Slightly tweaked item rarity colors

[ 2022-12-09 12:37:51 CET ] [ Original post ]

Slightly improved questing experience

• Removed some particularly boring quests
• Added a couple of new quests, arguably more interesting than the old ones
• The quests are now more obviously categorized into main quests (i.e. boss fights) and side quests

New equipment item: Shotgun boots

• Crafted by the Engineer
• Requires Mysterious energy cores to craft, a material that drops from Metal Core

Other

• You can now jump even when the character is slightly above the ground, which makes timing your jumps a bit easier and removes the frustration of your character not jumping when you hit spacebar a couple milliseconds too early.
• Fixed the issue that prevented the character from jumping when moving up or down a "staircase" of blocks.
• Fixed the issue where the character was not taking damage from being inside the map border, which allowed the player to use the teleportation ability to venture outside of the game world.
• Balanced the volume of the cave background music, the later section of the track should no longer be ear-piercingly loud.

[ 2022-12-03 06:09:10 CET ] [ Original post ]

The Decomposer

• The summon item for the new boss can be obtained in two ways: either by killing the Metal Core boss, or asking your local engineer to craft the Personal threat analyzer for 1 Mysterious energy core (a crafting material that also drops from Metal Core)

New items

• The Decomposer drops a new type of material - Advanced AI modules - that will be used to craft AI-themed stuff moving forward
• New accessory: Automatic targeting system. Makes your slime spears automatically target nearby enemies, but deal 10% less damage. Craftable using AI modules.
• New object: Automatic sliding door. Opens and closes automatically based on proximity to the player. Craftable using AI modules.

Other

• The amount of loot from bosses now depends on the difficulty. Higher difficulty == more loot.
• "Heal" ability has been greatly buffed; it now restores 12 health per second, up from 5. Will probably get nerfed again after I add alchemy to the game, which will bring more ways to restore health.
• Pocket singularities (aka black holes) can now be crafted by the Engineer for 1 Mysterious energy core.

[ 2022-11-24 23:21:30 CET ] [ Original post ]

Replaceable tiles

• You can now replace tiles by placing a new tile directly on top of the old one, making it more convenient to build creative designs and change them on-the-fly
• Works both with foreground blocks and background walls

List of learned active abilities

• As the talent tree grows in size, it will get more and more inconvenient to look through the entire tree in search for active abilities that you want to put on the hotbar
• For that reason, there is now a list of all available skills, conveniently placed on the talent tree screen

Other

• Wooden planks can now be crafted by default, without the help of an NPC, to give slightly more variety of initially available materials
• Damage numbers will now appear near enemies each time they take damage
• Added sound and visual effects of picking up an item from an inventory slot and placing an item into an inventory slot

[ 2022-11-17 20:01:22 CET ] [ Original post ]

New learnable ability: Heal

• Hold the left mouse button to slowly restore health, at a rate of 5 HP per second
• Available at the very beginning of the skill tree

Black hole rework

• This was way too powerful to be a permanent ability, so it was removed from the skill tree and turned into a rare, single-use item
• This item drops from Metal Core boss in small quantities
• Fixed an issue that was causing the black hole to reward the player with massive amounts of XP for "mining" tiles that are already empty

Flamethrower changes

• Flamethrower's secondary ability is now a talent that has to be learned.
• This is to ease the learning curve and not overwhelm the player with an extra long description of a single ability.

UI

• Key bindings can now be changed for most actions, including the action bar slots, and key binding settings are now properly saved
• Nodes in the talent tree are now much smaller and closer to each other, making the whole thing easier to read. Currently the whole skill tree fits on the screen without needing to scroll.

Other

• Fixed a rare crash related to the frozen orb trying to target enemies that are already dead

[ 2022-11-11 12:07:09 CET ] [ Original post ]

The development is going a bit slower than I'd hoped due to very lengthy power outages caused by the destroyed power infrastructure :( The next few weekly patches will probably be relatively minor until the situation improves. New movement ability: Tornado smash

• Press S while in mid-air to quickly plummet to the ground
• This, along with the double jump talent, allows finer control over your vertical movement
• Landing on an enemy will deal damage to them and cause your character to bounce off the target Note: Since the "S" key is now used for this new ability, it can no longer be used to dash; use Shift instead.

Slime spear upgrade: Frozen orb

• Launches a slow-moving orb that doesn't do anything, but can be hit with a slime spear
• Hitting the orb with a slime spear will cause it to shatter into ice shards that automatically target nearby enemies

UI improvements

• Action bars are now vertically stacked on top of each other, and (subjectively) look better and are easier to see
• Inventory slots are now colored based on the rarity of the item in that slot, clearly showing which items in your inventory are more interesting and valuable
• A confirmation dialog will now appear before starting a village-upgrading invasion, to prevent doing so accidentally

Engine

• Very slightly optimized dynamic world loading, which leads to a small performance boost, especially on lower end PCs

Slime whip changes

• Added a more satisfying effect of hitting an enemy with the whip, so that it no longer feels like a wet noodle

Questing

• Removed the "Kill 25 enemies" quest as it's kinda boring and serves no purpose

[ 2022-11-04 12:58:55 CET ] [ Original post ]

Fixing some things that I forgot to do before pushing the patch live. - Turned multithreading back on (It was turned off for debug purposes, causing the FPS to absolutely tank) - Slightly modified the talent tree, reducing the number of initial options to just three (Way too many options were being offered right from the start, which is likely to confuse new players) - Fixed a dungeon-related issue where the small area in the lower-right corner of the room was not being loaded

[ 2022-10-29 18:11:00 CET ] [ Original post ]

A short video demonstrating the new stuff:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IK23QLiGe7s

Full change log:

New content: elemental mini-dungeon

• A tiny dungeon culminating in a Frostfire Pineapple mini-boss
• You can find the dungeon entrance in the snow biome, in a large castle-like structure (existing worlds should already have it, no need to create a new world)
• At the start of the dungeon, you will select one negative effect that will make the dungeon harder.
• The reward at the end of the dungeon will depend on the chosen negative effect.
• Added an achievement for defeating the dungeon boss

[ 2022-10-29 01:49:45 CET ] [ Original post ]

A short video demonstrating the new stuff:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MenPzc2NrnA

Full change log:

Updated quest log

• The raccoon will now offer up to 7 quests at a time, to make the questing experience feel less linear and more "sandbox-y".
• The quest log now looks nicer and clearly indicates the type of each quest (boss fight / exploration / etc.)
• The questline has been slightly changed and a couple more quests have been added.

Removal of the "threat level" system

• In my opinion, the "village threat level" mechanic was adding nothing of value to the gameplay and made upgrading your village feel unnecessarily punishing. Correct me if I'm wrong.
• Threat-reducing buildings can no longer be built, but might be re-added in the future with other functionality. Existing buildings will still exist, but you won't be able to build them again after demolishing.

Expanding the village through defeating invasions

• The village will start out with only two building slots available.
• The number of slots can be increased by securing additional parts of the forest - which involves defeating a small invasion, each being progressively more difficult.

Slime punch changes

• Slime punch now accumulates combo points when hitting enemies.
• The punch itself is slightly larger and has a slightly longer reach.
• Will now only harvest trees if the cursor is hovering over the tree.

[ 2022-10-20 21:50:16 CET ] [ Original post ]

A short video demonstrating the new stuff:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aPuexztolv0

Full change log:

New feature: Chaos rifts

• Chaos rifts are the primary source of Chaos ore, a new material used for teleportation-themed stuff.
• You can manually create a chaos rift by combining 3 water essences and 3 fire essences.
• In newly created worlds, chaos rifts will also naturally spawn underground.

New ability: Dimensional leap

• Teleports you to the location of your cursor
• Hold the mouse button to charge up the ability
• Releasing the button before the ability has fully charged will cause you to teleport only partially, losing a portion of your health

New tech: Vertical teleporters

• Crafted by the Engineer
• When interacted, teleports you to the floor directly above or below, as long as it's within 20 tiles vertically

New tech: Unstable wormhole generator

• Also crafted by the Engineer
• Teleports you to a random point on the map

Minor changes and bug fixes (i.e. nothing interesting):

• The player now starts very rapidly taking damage when stuck in solid blocks (e.g. after foolishly teleporting into a wall).
• All light sources (torches, lamps and sunlight) are now slightly stronger, with their light reaching a bit further.
• The skill tree screen now has arrows on the sides, to make it more obvious that the tree can be dragged around in all directions.
• Removed some walls from the ice castle in order to not block navigation for flying elementals.
• Jump pads no longer have physical collision with characters, as it was getting in the way and doing more harm than good. The functionality of the jump pads is not affected.
• Storm elemental: fixed a bug with the challenging difficulty where the boss' starting health was higher than the maximum health, making it seem like the boss is initially not taking any damage.
• Fixed a bug where you could get experience for "mining" air.
• It is no longer possible to create an artificial "underground" biome above ground by placing a bunch of tiles that are normally found underground.
• Increased the AI spawn rate in hostile biomes as I felt that it was way too low.

[ 2022-10-13 19:35:21 CET ] [ Original post ]

New ability: Slime whip

• Can be used both as a melee weapon and as a "hook" to traverse terrain.
• Learnable as soon as you gain your first talent point.

Slime spear updates:

• Slime spear now has an "auto attack" upgrade, making it more convenient for longer fights such as bosses.
• Added a neat animation of "preparing" the spear projectile before throwing.

New structure: Ice castle

• Newly created worlds will have a new structure generated on the surface of the snow biome
• You might notice a portal-like device inside the castle - while it currently doesn't have any use, it will be used to enter an instanced dungeon in one of the later patches.

Tweaks:

• Increased the XP rewards for initial quests, to allow the player to learn several starting abilities almost immediately after starting the game.
• Flamethrower's base damage has been greatly increased, to make the ability viable in scenarios other than boss fights.
• The cost of village improvements has been greatly reduced, to make the whole system more intuitive and reduce clutter.
• The talent tree has been restructured and is now scrollable in all directions, to give more space for its further expansion in future patches.
• Boss health was buffed by roughly 25% to compensate for the damage increase to player abilities.
• Fixed an audio bug where the background music was restarting multiple times right after the world has finished loading.

[ 2022-10-06 18:27:46 CET ] [ Original post ]

Initially, the only way to obtain the summon item for the Storm Elemental boss was by exploring the ice dungeon. Problem is, the ice dungeon is very easy to miss, causing the player to miss out on a whole boss fight. This hotfix is aimed at fixing exactly that.

• The "Moldy magic" quest text now clearly states that you should look for expired magic essences underground.
• The summon item for the Storm Elemental boss can now drop from normal enemies in the snow biome.
• The summon item for the Metal Core boss can now drop from normal enemies in the desert.

[ 2022-10-01 04:53:44 CET ] [ Original post ]