Hey! Here's a video:

Catacomb Kids - Level Gen Update 0.2.0 Vlog!

If you don't want to watch that here are the same words below, followed by some extra words: I know it's been a long time since the last update. There are a lot of reasons for that, but to keep things short, it's because I'm much busier now than I was before - in a good way, working on UFO 50 with Derek Yu and Paul Hubans and a couple other Super Rad Dudes - and because I was working very very hard on rewriting a pretty fundamental part of the game. Namely: the level generator. So, here, have an update.

The Generator

The aforementioned rewritten level generator can now produce proper lock-and-key situations, or switch-and-gate situations, or switch-and-furnace situations, or whatever other kinds of "need to get X to go to Y" kinds of scenarios I decide to add in the future. The new generator also features many, many other tweaks to the levels that are probably less immediately obvious but no less impactful. There are also a boatload of new premade rooms that take advantage of some fun things now possible in the new level generator. I finally made myself a proper editor for making premade rooms that makes the process significantly faster and less of a headache than it was before, so just about every update from now on will probably feature some new premade rooms and setpieces to some degree or another.

The Rewards

While I was making all those fancy new premade rooms, I realized that there weren't enough things I could use as general reward type items other than Fancy Chests, so I added a few!

• There are now Soul Chests, which are special treasure chests that power up by consuming the corpses of nearby slain enemies. The more corpses they consume, the better the loot they drop will be!
• In addition, you can now find extra learning points and free spells just floating around sometimes.
• I've also added a new kind of item called "Blessings", which are permanent passive powerups, sort of like never-ending trances but a bit less potent. You can only have one blessing at a time though, so choose wisely. There are only three implemented currently but more are definitely on the way.

The Boons

I've also added four new leveling boons, two STR and two SPD.

• Weapon Master lets you use any weapon skill that you have access to with any weapon regardless of its type.
• Living Weapon lets you use weapon skills while unarmed and removes the damage penalty on unarmed attacks. When you first learn it, it forces you to pick a weapon class to hate, but you then gain that weapon class' full moveset as unarmed attacks.
• Breakthrough lets you charge up a super-jump to launch high into the air, bust through single-tile-thick walls and ceilings, and crash through crush traps and boulders.
• Spider-Spin lets you charge up a roll that clings to surfaces as you zip around.

The Other Stuff

• I've completely rewritten a certain boss enemy from scratch, so look forward to that.
• I've completely overhauled the way the encyclopedia looks, and added a few new illustrations and entries to it.
• I've added a stats screen on the encyclopedia where you can see things like your best depth, total kills, and most frequently cast spell.

That's about it for the major new features, but there are also a lot of smaller changes and big bugfixes. I know, I know, there's no new environment yet, but part of the reason for the level generator rewrite is that as I was working on the Deep Dark I kept running into a lot of things I wanted to do that just weren't supported by the old generator. In any case, I hope it was worth the wait, and now that the generator rewrite is done I'm going to be laser-focusing my attention on adding the midgame boss, the Deep Dark, and bringing back wayward kids in a way that isn't crashy and buggy and broken.

The Plea

As I'm sure you've noticed, I'm really bad at keeping these here forums up to date on the game's happenings. I'm...super active basically everywhere except on Steam - especially the Catacomb Kids Discord, and my Twitter, and my weekly Twitch Dev-streams - the ones that I've been doing pretty consistently for several years at this point. Even on the Subreddit, when it's not super quiet there. I kind of hate using Steam as both a player and a dev, and frequently forget it exists. I will probably always hate it, especially now that Slack and Discord occupy the space in my life that forums used to. BUT! Now that I've finally admitted that to you all - and to myself - I figure it's probably only right that rather than continuing to neglect this significant part of the community, doing a great disservice and injustice to all you great many players who have and continue to support the game, I should reach out for help! I'm REALLY BAD AT COMMUNITY MANAGEMENT, but I know there are people who are NOT THAT and would probably be willing to help out with keeping folks here appraised of the game's progress in a way that I never could. So uh. Yeah. If you're good at community management and want to volunteer to help make this steam forum an informed and welcoming place to new and old players alike, hit me up at tyriq [at] ckgame [dot] net. Thanks for stickin' with me. Sorry I'm bad at this. Hope the update is fun. I'm not dead yet.