This is a very small patch release, adding some extra validation to downloaded replay files. As always, if there are any issues with this build, please let me know on my discord server.

[ 2024-07-05 12:52:40 CET ] [ Original post ]

Hey everyone, Spring Dash has finally been released! Thankyou to everyone who played the demo, play-tested the game, and stuck by my side during development. I'm so happy to have finally released my first game, and I can't wait to work on more projects and build more fun stuff! That's not to say Spring Dash development is completely finished - I will be very active on discord, looking for bug reports, listening to suggestions, and engaging with the community. I hope you enjoy Spring Dash!

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Join our discord server to provide feedback and chat with other players!

[ 2024-03-29 07:12:08 CET ] [ Original post ]

Hey everyone, As we approach the release date, I've been focusing on performance and stability improvements, as well as addressing a few of the most common pain points. The demo has been updated with a number of these changes. See the full patch notes below!

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Join our discord server to provide feedback and chat with other players!

Patch Notes

Added

• Debug menu to show FPS and GPU/CPU usage. Keybind is F3 by default.
• Setting to limit FPS. Defaults to 144.
• Shader precompilation to reduce stuttering when playing the game for the first time
• New splash screen, starting in windowed mode to help ease display issues when first launching the game

Changed

• Reduced physics tick rate from 180 to 120 for performance reasons.
• Optimised dust particles, which were utilising too much GPU processing
• Stunned insects now update foot placement to look a little less janky
• Increased player wallrun angle tolerance to make starting wallruns easier
• Player death tune now adjusts with "Music" volume slider

Fixed

• Fixed an issue where eliminated enemies would cause obstruction & unexpected behaviour with grappling
• Fixed an issue causing the "shadow" setting to have no impact
• Reduced instances of beetle moving too close to edge of islands

[ 2024-03-02 00:25:03 CET ] [ Original post ]

Hey everyone, Small QoL update to address a common issue with accidental wallruns.

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Patch Notes

Changed

• Player must now be facing (roughly) parallel to the wall in order to start wallrunning. This is mostly to avoid accidental wallruns when holding space and trying to mantle.

[ 2024-02-09 14:31:30 CET ] [ Original post ]

Hey everyone, Thanks to everyone who has tried Spring Dash, everyone who has streamed the game, and everyone who has provided feedback. I've just released an update introducing some balancing changes based on recent feedback and watching people stream the demo!

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Join our discord server to provide feedback and chat with other players!

Patch Notes

Changed

• Increased Ice Weaver chase delay from 1.0s to 1.5s
• Increase player starting health from 3 to 5
• Checkpoints now release a blast wave eliminating nearby bugs

Fixed

• An issue where player would stop sliding near the end of ice

[ 2024-02-08 10:12:19 CET ] [ Original post ]

Join me at the Steam Next Fest!

I will be monitoring the stream and actively answering questions from Februray 8th 10PM AEST! Feel free to pop in and join me.

Wishlist & Follow

The release is just around the corner! https://store.steampowered.com/app/2093070/Spring_Dash/ I hope you enjoy the Next Fest! - Dillon

[ 2024-02-06 12:09:20 CET ] [ Original post ]

Hey everyone, Small fix for an infamous issue - restart positions should now be consistent!

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Patch Notes

Fixed

• Jumping off a downward-angled ice platform now works correctly
• An issue causing inconsistent player start positions when restarting during a slide

[ 2024-02-04 20:56:32 CET ] [ Original post ]

Join me at the Steam Next Fest!

I will be monitoring the stream and actively answering questions from Februray 6th 9PM AEST! Feel free to pop in and join me.

Wishlist & Follow

The release is just around the corner! https://store.steampowered.com/app/2093070/Spring_Dash/ I hope you enjoy the Next Fest! - Dillon

[ 2024-02-04 04:50:03 CET ] [ Original post ]

Hey everyone, More bugfixes and quality-of-life updates. Thanks to everyone who has been playing and giving feedback! It's really nice to see.

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Join our discord server to provide feedback and chat with other players!

Patch Notes

Changed

• Improved staff animation blending
• Enabled player collisions with enemies
• Extended hitbox of ability unlock area
• Maximum walkable slope angle has been increased
• Improved player "mantling":
  • Player collision size reduced during mantle
  • Mantle cannot be interrupted by touching the floor

Fixed

• Some potential inconsistency with sapling growth hitbox

[ 2024-02-03 08:15:23 CET ] [ Original post ]

Hey everyone, More bugfixes and quality-of-life updates. Thanks to everyone who has been playing and giving feedback! It's really nice to see.

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Join our discord server to provide feedback and chat with other players!

Patch Notes

Added

• Simple "sliding" SFX added when player is sliding on the ground or wallrunning
• Multiple window options - windowed, fullscreen (borderless), or exclusive fullscreen. Fullscreen (borderless) is the default.

Changed

• Improved visibility of ability pickups
• Reduced volume of some piercing sounds - grasshopper slam, ice spike slam, ice spike shatter, etc.
• Reduced volume of footsteps
• Reduced volume of moth wing flaps

Fixed

• Ensured player is on the ground at the start of all levels
• Vertical component of movement is now correctly included in momentum transfer to ice slide
• Fixed a crash that could be caused by invalid replay files
• Fixed grey screen when restarting the level with an undownloaded replay selected

[ 2024-02-02 11:44:04 CET ] [ Original post ]

Hey everyone, Another small update to the demo to address some issues introduced in the previous release. See below for the full patch notes.

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Join our discord server to provide feedback and chat with other players!

Patch Notes

Changed

• Updated physics engine version
• Improved calculation of health bar position to take into account player camera orientation
• Health bar is now semi-transparent

Fixed

• Fixed an issue causing the player to slide down slopes
• Fixed some crashes caused by restarting the level at certain points (e.g. just after picking up the grapple ability)

[ 2024-01-30 09:00:12 CET ] [ Original post ]

Hey everyone, A number of quality-of-life improvements & balancing changes have been released to the demo based on player feedback. See below for the full changelog.

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Join our discord server to provide feedback and chat with other players!

Patch Notes

Added

• A "compass" that can point the player to the next checkpoint. The default key for this is "F".
• Updated menu backgrounds with more islands & trees
• Bounce animations for mushrooms
• Attempting to spawn a sapling on stone will create a spark effect. An ability charge will not be used.
• Extra checkpoints added to a number of levels
• Mushroom bounce tutorial added to Forest3
• Tutorial for 'restart' hotkeys to Forest1

Changed

• Dashing while hooked now cancels the grapple
• Ice spikes are now removed when resetting to last checkpoint
• Replay button is now hidden for current user in leaderboard UI
• Relevant parts of crosshair are now added gradually as abilities are collected
• Reduced moth chase speed & acceleration
• Increase grasshopper jump delay by 25%
• Reduced frost exploder speed & acceleration
• Increase Ice Weaver slam delay by ~42%
• Replay ghost particles now fade out if they are close to the player camera to avoid the player being blinded by the trail
• Reduced opacity of leaf guides & added distance fade
• Dashing now transfers momentum on ice
• Updated medal times for all levels to be more achievable for the average player

Fixed

• An issue causing breakable platforms to misbehave and shake violently at low framerates
• Ice weaver will no longer spawn spikes if they are stunned
• Stun SFX is now correctly affected by the "SFX" volume setting
• An issue with the centre crosshair opacity not correctly reflecting the spawnability of saplings
• Player can no longer "mantle" when on the ground, which fixes some issues with constant mantling when going uphill etc
• Fixed an issue where player would "hop" downhill after performing a wall-boost
• Fixed an issue where the player replay ghost trails would 'pop' in/out of view

[ 2024-01-28 13:31:21 CET ] [ Original post ]

Hey everyone, One of the most highly-requested features has just been released to the demo - downloadable replays. There is now a "replay" button next to eligible leaderboard entries. Toggling this button will show the ghost of that particular entry in your next run. v0.40.0 also has a number of other quality-of-life improvements based on player feedback.

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Patch Notes

Added

• Ability to download ghost replays

Changed

• Player is now invincible for a short duration after being damaged
• Grapple hook now uses enemy hitboxes, making it much easier to hook onto enemies

Fixed

• Player is transitioned out of "hook" state after meleeing enemies
• Improved consistency of damaging moth via hook melee
• Holding grapple key down after the hook breaks will no longer automatically hook you onto another object.

[ 2024-01-10 14:57:03 CET ] [ Original post ]

Hey everyone, I'm back from my holiday and I'm getting back into the swing of things. I've started with a bunch of small quality of life improvement and some balancing changes. The biggest change is that high-health enemies (such as the ice-weaver) can now be stunned by the player! Thanks to everyone who is still speedrunning the game and providing feedback.

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Join our discord server to provide feedback and chat with other players!

Patch Notes

Added

• "Danger UI" is now adaptive. The opacity and size represents how close / dangerous the enemy is to the player
• Centre crosshair will reduce opacity if 'spawn sapling' ability is not available due to distance or material type
• High-health enemies are now "stunned" if they are shot with full-power attack

Changed

• Player damage multiplier now resets when respawning at a checkpoint
• If players are holding down the grapple key, they will instantly hook onto something once it enters the grapple range
• Ice spikes now shatter when they damage the player
• Widescreen support - aspect ratio is no longer locked in at 16:9

Fixed

• An issue causing main menu music not to play
• Cooldown time is now correctly reset on abilities when respawning from checkpoint
• Player starting position in some levels was inconsistent due to intersection with the islands

[ 2024-01-09 04:09:38 CET ] [ Original post ]

Hey everyone, Thankyou to everyone who has played the Spring Dash demo - especially those of you engaged in the discord server and providing active feedback. I'm working hard to continually improve the game and your feedback is very valuable. This update mainly includes a number of quality-of-life improvements based on player feedback.

Join the community

Join our discord server to provide feedback and chat with other players!

0.38.0 Patch Notes

Added

• "Top 10" view for leaderboards

Changed

• Respawning at a checkpoint now refreshes all ability charges
• Increased angle of desert sun to reduce distracting reflections

Fixed

• Some issues with island texturing
• An issue where leaderboard scores are not immediately refreshed when a level is completed
• Replay grapple & player grapple not being rendered at the same time

[ 2023-12-20 10:50:06 CET ] [ Original post ]

The Spring Dash demo is finally available! While the scope of this demo is quite limited, it should be enough for you to determine whether you're interested in the full version of the game - and the demo will continue to receive updates until the final version is released in Q1 next year. I'd like to start gathering initial impressions from a wider audience - so feel free to join us on discord to give your feedback and chat about the game. I'd love to meet you! Enjoy! - Dillon

[ 2023-11-11 12:54:09 CET ] [ Original post ]