Plangman v2.6.7 is now live!

• Fixed a bug where the Level 20 achievement would sometimes be triggered by beating Level 16.
• Added an arrow to the Level 1 tip that points to the dashes of the mystery word. Hopefully this will help new players, who sometimes don't initially notice the letters at the top of the screen.
• Lowered the intensity of the glow effect that appears when the Quality is set to High.
• Increased the radius of the bomb pickups to make them easier to collect. They're now the same size as the stars and keys.
• Revised a number of levels to make the game more challenging/interesting. This primarily involved adding more wrong letters (and opportunities to use them) and more enemies, plus making some of the shortcuts feel more clever.
• Made Level 23 slightly more forgiving by extending the "runway" where the jettisoned block needs to end up.
• Added a fraction to the completion percentage shown when you beat a level, to make it clear how many additional pickups, enemies, etc. you missed. For example: "50% (7/14) in 4:32". (Note that the mystery word is always counted as one item, no matter how many letters it contains.)
• Updated the pause UI to show the completion percentage. You can use this to track your progress while still playing a level, instead of only being able to see it after the level is complete.
• Updated one visual clue to make it slightly clearer.
• Moved the platforms closer together in the first Lost Level.

[ 2025-05-10 19:25:45 CET ] [ Original post ]

Plangman v2.6.6.5 is now live!

• Updated health star question blocks to provide +1 health, instead of +1/2.
• Added a max indicator to the health bar.

[ 2025-04-29 16:02:55 CET ] [ Original post ]

Plangman v2.6.6.4 is now live! Thanks to everyone who has posted gameplay videos on youtube. After watching some of these, I realized that there was a bit of health "inflation" occurring due to the abundance of stars. The stars made it so easy to reach (and regain) maximum health that collecting them became a low-value task for many players. I also realized that the mechanic of allowing multiple wrong guesses at zero health was unnecessarily generous and could contribute to the game feeling "too easy", or incentivizing brute-force solutions. In addition, I noticed a couple minor things in the Epilogue that I thought could be improved. I've made the following changes to address these issues:

• Stars now provide +1/2 health, instead of +1.
• The number of stars in a question block is no longer random. Instead, a star question block now always provides one star.
• Once you reach zero health, any action that subtracts health results in an immediate level reset. (Previously, you would immediately respawn when at zero health, but had three chances to avoid a reset.)
• The Epilogue now includes a couple more possible words, and the heart-hole in level 5 no longer looks smooshed.

Please let me know what you think! - Ehren

[ 2025-04-23 16:24:15 CET ] [ Original post ]

Plangman v2.6.6.3 r1 is now live! It includes the following changes:

• Fixed a bug where pausing, switching to a different application, and then unpausing would cause the screen to go completely black.
• Fixed a bug where the pause menu background didn't completely cover the far edges of the screen.
• Fixed a bug where the Windows screen resolution was defaulting to 1024x768 instead of the monitor's native resolution. (If you previously ran the game with this bug in place, you'll need to hold down Alt/Option when the game launches in order to reset the resolution.)

[ 2025-04-17 23:42:55 CET ] [ Original post ]

I'm excited to announce that Plangman is scheduled to release in two days, on Wednesday, March 26th!

For which platforms?

The game will be available for Windows, Mac, and Linux.

How much will it cost?

The game will be free, but the soundtrack will be $3.99 USD and will include a few surprises if you browse the local files.

Will it run on my Steam Deck?

Yes, the Linux version of Plangman runs well on the Steam Deck. I've spent the past week implementing expanded Xbox controller support for the parts of the game that previously only supported keyboard input (such as the menus). There are a couple places where keyboard input is still needed (namely, Challenge a Friend mode and the Level Editor). However, everything else in the game should now be controller-friendly. Here's the current list of known Steam Deck issues:

• Some of the text can be hard to read on a 7" screen.
• D-pad input doesn't work for some reason.
• For the parts of the game that still require keyboard input, you have to press STEAM + X to bring up the virtual on-screen keyboard.

That's it for now! - Ehren

[ 2025-03-25 00:04:28 CET ] [ Original post ]