Here's a major event that brings together a ton of good and upcoming metroidvanias: Fearmonium included! I recommend you to familiarize yourself with the list of games of the genre, look for something interesting and explore, explore and explore a bunch of new worlds! Event page: https://store.steampowered.com/curator/41046058/sale/MetroidvaniaFusion

I'm here to announce that SongofSoil who is a member of speedrun community (speedruns.com) offered a challenge and ready to reward for those who love breaking games!
You have an opportunity to win $150 from him. Current deadline is March 1st, so you need to hurry! All the rules may be found here: https://www.speedrun.com/speedrunning/thread/kfyts/1#vl73o

In version 1.0.5. many changes have been made. Everything was based on your feedback: - New languages were added. Now Fearmonium is available on: Russian, English, German, Portuguese, Spanish, French and Japanese; - Fixed the balance in battles with bosses: no more enemies that took some players 10 minutes to kill. However now the main character also receive more damage; - Improved the impact from the attacks; - Changes affected sections that annoyed some of the players: for example, an escape from a crowd of schoolchildren is much more easier now; - Changed the behavior of some mobs; - Changed the arrangement of mobs on some levels; - Changed the way some abilities are used. For example, the Wizard now deals more damage, but since now while using an umbrella stamina doesn't restore.
Hope the game gets better. Feel free to report any issues you find in the related thread: https://steamcommunity.com/app/1068360/discussions/0/3117032860239491802/

[previewyoutube=EFPN80TBVdw;full][/previewyoutube] Immerse yourself in a world drawn by neural network and invented by a person. Make decisions to change the course of a complex story. Find an answer to the question: what is "humanity" in a world where a mechanical heart can also break? https://store.steampowered.com/app/2241450/Mechahearts/ Mechanical dolls are already able to mingle freely and undetected amidst humans. They can buy human skin to feel the wind on a face. They can buy a human tongue to have the sense of taste. They can buy eyes to see right through you, human: a predictable and fragile being stumbling through a dark time of change.
In this visual novel, you will take on the role of a creature whose nature you will determine yourself: whether you turn out to be a human or a mechanical doll depends on the decisions you make. You will interact with more than 30 unique characters, and your choices will direct the course of the dialogues to build complex relationships with all the NPCs and help define yourself. Hundreds of small dialogue options will determine how your friends or enemies will behave at the next unexpected plot twist. Other people's actions, provoked by your remarks and actions, will govern which of the ten game chapters you visit and which of the many endings you will come to. Players will find something new every time they play, as their own doubts about their natures lead them down varying courses in the story.
You start a career as a criminal, but a simple heist gone wrong throws you into a war with powerful enemies. In order to survive, you will have to choose your friends carefully: take care that your words and actions earn the respect of the characters most sympathetic to you, or else your story will end with a knife in the back.
A flexible "chronology" system will allow you to load any of the key scenes to give you the opportunity to explore the intricate story from all sides and emerge alive from a series of intrigues and betrayals.
None of the characters will tell you the whole truth at once; no one will inspire confidence; everyone can betray you; and anyone could have a mechanical heart ticking in their chest. The whole game was drawn with the assist of Midjourney. https://store.steampowered.com/app/2241450/Mechahearts/

Here goes a big DreamHack Beyond! https://store.steampowered.com/app/1068360/Fearmonium/

Here goes a big sale! https://store.steampowered.com/app/1068360/Fearmonium/

A small patch affecting a couple of rare, but very unpleasant bugs: - Disappeared the possibility of "breaking" Vincent with a very rapid improvement of abilities disappeared; - Disappeared the possibility of losing one of the three keys. If you defeated three bosses in a certain chapter of the game, but you have two keys in your inventory - do not be afraid, go to the door to stepfather's office, it will open; - Fixed a few more "joints" at inclined platforms, where the character could stuck into an invisible wall; - The ability to fly off the screen in one of the places with trees has disappeared. Important information: [/ b] Even minor changes can lead to unexpected bugs. A bug I know caused by updates: the likelihood of losing the file where the game settings are stored. This happens in 1 person out of 100 and is fraught with the fact that when you try to load the game, each slot will show the inscription "new game". If you are sure that in the main menu on one of the slots you had a save, but you see the inscription "new game", to load your save, select the desired slot and simultaneously click on "1 + 2 + 3" (not on the numlok). The game should load. If something doesn't work out - feel free to write to me at redblackspade@gmail.com

Now you can choose out of four languages!
All the thanks for Portugese goes to Grgory Rodrigues Teixeira! For the German thanks goes to Martina Seemann, Steven Korkowsky and Marcel Weyers! If you found any mistakes in these translations - please let me know!

So, friends, the moment has come for the most serious update of all that I have planned. The new version of the game has revised balance, controls and key animations.
What's new?

• Added a separate stamina bar for the dash;
• Increased hammer attack radius;
• Increased hammer attack speed;
• Dash now gives invulnerability even without a special item;
• The time of invulnerability after taking damage has been extended;
• The "unconscious" item increases the invulnerability time after receiving damage even more;
• The character moves forward during the attack only if the key is held in the direction of movement;
• Changed the way to control the wheel for selecting skills and items - now the button to the right moves the cursor clockwise, and to the left - anti-clockwise;
• Scooter control should become more convenient;
• Changed the ability "Audric" - now his head flies off, check it out yourself;
• Significantly increased "coyote time";
• The school jock, throwing cheerleaders, now throws them a little more slowly, and the cheerleaders can be destroyed;
• Changed the ability "Agatha";
• The wizard can now damage mobs;
• Increased missile speed;
• Reduced the price for improving the consolidation - (was 800, now 300 balloons);
• Antidepressant is now less greedy and has dropped the prices for hints on the map by about 10 times;
• Huge discounts on Vincent's services. If earlier he took 200/300/400 balloons for improving abilities, now he takes 50/75/100);
• Felix fights much harder now;
• Reduced the amount of HP of the final boss;
• Reduced the amount of HP at the pre-final boss, but physically he became stronger;
• Thyroxine now drops even more frequently.

• Fixed bug with Pendelweiss on the swing;
• Fire now deals damage to a huge trees;
• Changed the hitbox of the big knight - now it is impossible to be killed by touching his leg;
• Fixed a bug when a pumped-up cat fell off platforms;
• Fixed a couple more places where the character rested against an invisible wall at the junction of the platforms;
• Soap bubbles are now destroyed after damaging the character in order to avoid repeated damage;
• In the place in the city where many players were disoriented due to hearts, hearts are now removed and only appear during the battle for the lighter;
• Fixed a rare bug when the whispers of hylophobia did not stop after killing the boss;
• Removed the possibility of accidentally losing one key when there are more than three of them in the inventory;

They are here.

Hello everybody! I carefully read the reviews of the game and now I am making a list of what I will improve with the next patch. Therefore, what I am planning: - Increase the range and the speed of the hammer attack; - Reduce the amount of HP to the last bosses, increasing their attack power; - Make a separate scale of stamina for the dash so that it does not "compete" with the abilities; - Increase the recoil speed when firing missiles or increase the power of the missiles (not yet decided); - Give an opportunity to dash through the enemies without equipping a special item; - Reduce the price for improving abilities in Vincent's shop; - Improve the wheel for changing abilities and items a little more; - Revise hitboxes of some enemies: for example, a knight with a shield. Write down whose hitboxes still bother you; - Increase the time for the coyote jump. These are serious changes and I do not promise that they will appear earlier than in a month / two months. If you have any other suggestions, I will be glad to hear them in this thread. If you want to take part in testing this patch, you can also write here, and I will give you access to the test branch as soon as I bring some changes in the game. Thanks for your feedback!

Second patch is here!
What has changed? Changes in the game:

• The probability of getting balloons while breaking lamps is increased;
• The cost for buying a hint from Melfice has been reduced;
• Increased reward for additional thyroxine for Sadness;

• Fixed most of the inclined surfaces, the joints on which the character could not overcome without jumping;
• Boss "Bully" can no longer move abruptly to the center of the screen after bouncing off the wall;
• Girls-basketball players were sometimes letting shells pass through. Now this is fixed;
• Fixed a bug when Vincent could take double payment for improving an ability;
• Final Boss now cannot be provoke into an attack that cannot be dodged;
• Fixed a rare half-second stuck of the character in the air in the battle with the final boss;
• The ability to accidentally run into a shortcut, which confuses the order of walkthrough, has been removed;
• Appearing of the log in the wrong place in the woods should now be fixed;
• Several typos were fixed;
• A bunch of small bug fixes, which I myself have already forgotten.

First patch is here!
What was changed?

• Fairies in the Forest now don't chase the character for the whole eternity - now it's possible to run away from them - thanks for this idea to steam user Miles Hikari.
• Now it's possible to zoom the map - thanks for this idea to Adze who made a wonderful review of the game on YouTube.
• Fixed stucking in some inclined surfaces in the Forest and School area - thanks to users Cpt.ButtHurt.
• Fixed a situation when player was able to stuck after picking up the Noradrenaline - thanks to steam user Carnagik.
• Fixed possibility to "stand on" some walls - thanks to steam user happygiggi.
• Fixed a rare case when sellers take double cost for items - thanks to steam user suharki.
• "Bright Memory"'s health points were lowered - thanks to all the streamers who suffered from this boss on my eyes.
• In rare cases "Vampirism" didn't appear in the hidden wall - now it does appear always - thanks to steam user SHiSH.
• Monsters drop a little bit more balloons right now.
• Several really minor issues.

Hello everyone! Finally this day has come and my third game - Fearmonium - is able to purchase on Steam! [previewyoutube=FMqDePE7CTU;full][/previewyoutube] Now everyone can try to take an unusual role of a phobia in the mind of a teenage boy! The most important thing for me now - your feedback. I really wish to make this game as good as possible and I can do it only with help of your words! Your reviews and support now are super important for me and for the game. Also, as the game is already on sale for a little while and I'm a little bit late with this announcement - I can already say that thanks to my testers there will be no "patch of the first day", as no serious issues were found by players. However, If you face any problem - you're welcome in Discussion section - I read it all the time and will respond you ASAP.

There is several Days before the release left! And it's perfect time to add Fearmonium to the wishlist not to miss that day: https://store.steampowered.com/app/1068360/Fearmonium/ Three years of the solo-development almost ended and I cannot wait to introduce the world of Max's mind to the players.
See you 20th of May!

Hello everyone! I'm here with the news again: Fearmonium Official Soundtrack page is life!
Fearmonium Soundtrack is a collection of 27 different tracks from Expecte Amour. Everything is here - from jazz to chiptune, rock and witch-house. All Tracks Are Presented both in MP3 and Flac format.
You should add it to your wishlist right here: https://store.steampowered.com/app/1617470/Fearmonium__Official_Soundtrack/

Hello everyone! I'm glad to finally show the final trailer of the game - now it's really clear how it looks! Check this out! [previewyoutube=FMqDePE7CTU;full][/previewyoutube]

Who said that walking on feet is the only way to navigate in metroidvanias? This short video demonstrates the variety of ways to explore Max's consciousness. [previewyoutube=OHoptzH2R1M;full][/previewyoutube] I played tons of metroidvanias I want to note the extreme scarcity of modes of movement in some games of this genre. While linear platformers most of the time can offer a big variety of mechanics in metroidvanias player is forced to run and jump all the time till the end of the game. I decided to dilute the running around with a bunch of other ways to move around the map.

Hi there! I decided to make some devlogs and here is the first of them! [previewyoutube=JFNQer7YraM;full][/previewyoutube] In this episode I talked about the idea of the game, about Cuphead, Pinocchio, disclaimers and censorship. Let me know what else you want me to speak about in the next episodes and I'll try to cover these themes :)

Hi everyone! Fearmonium currently is in the development and I decided to stop keep silence in Steam community. I wish to bring you some information about the game, it's progress and mechanics. Today I'm gonna speak about how does the camera work in Fearmonium. [previewyoutube=_tgRgL8a-Ac;full][/previewyoutube] Russian-speaking users also can read this article: https://vk.cc/avuxvi If you're interested in materials like this - please leave a comment below and let me know! I'm gonna to make a Devlog video with voicing and I really want to know: are you guys will be interested? If so, about what elements of the game to you wish to hear? Cheers!

The answer is psychedelic metroidvania where you play as a phobia.
Hello everybody, my name is Slava, Im from Russia, and I am preparing the release of the third game that I made almost alone: music is the only piece Im not responsible for. I make everything else myself. Having only a masters degree in psychology, I dived into game development five years ago. I think its worth explaining a little about how it happened to bring a better understanding of what is going on in here. A small introduction will help to adequately perceive everything that jumps and flashes in the recently published trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ovoxPGS1AqQ&feature=youtu.be I was interested in psychology even at school, and not for typical reasons: I was not motivated by the desire to deal with my own demons or to understand people around me. At the age of 17, I went to programmers university preparatory courses. There I was surrounded by guys in knitted sweaters and with virgin moustaches on thoughtful faces. The next day I was brought to courses in a pedagogical university, where I was the only guy in the audience. Young girls all around me, and the audience full of fragrant scents of women's perfumes. Stunned by what I saw, I confidently decided to study in this paradise. Thats how I began to break my life.
In my career of a psychologist, the most reasonable decisions were: to drop dropping the psychology to hell; silently leaving graduate school; retirement from a kind of a foster home, where I worked for three years after graduating from the magistracy and fully devoting myself to game development. I made these decisions not because I wasnt interested in psychology anymore - on the contrary, while I was studying, I began to penetrate the structure of human minds. However, this profession did not allow me to express myself creatively. I always wanted other people to enjoy the worlds that were born in my mind. Knowledge of psychology helped in building my own life and in creating fictional characters, but its difficult to call it a high-paying profession in Russia. It would be possible to strive to open my office, but my heart wasnt in it, and Ive chosen another way.
Job in a social institution forced to constantly look for a part-time work. Although I enjoyed spending time with children from difficult families, moving from my parents and meeting with my second half forced me to earn a little more than I used to. The payments in social institutions in Russia are very-very low. I couldnt do anything except digging in peoples minds with a bottle of whiskey, but I was familiar with Photoshop. I knew how to draw using Macromedia Flash, so I decided to find ways to apply these skills. And I found it. People often look for artists on the game development forums, and those who had a severely limited budget doesnt need particularly luxurious graphics - I could easily draw a pair of sprites for 5 euros. My desire to get at least some money helped me to improve my drawing skills. I really didnt know how to draw. I simply drew and redrew everything until it satisfied the customer.
Thats what I used to draw back then. A year later, I realised that I could completely create graphics for my own game. I only needed to find money for a programmer. The whole thing was in the distant 2014th year, and nobody was aware of the coming indie apocalypse. The games were coming out at a crazy oace, and the tools for creating them became easier and more accessible. I saw that artists are no less in demand than programmers, and came to the conclusion that if I had improved my drawing skills to a level allowed me to create a whole game in two years, then how long would it take me to learn to code too?
It took no time at all. I installed Construct 2 and things rushed. Two years later, my first game came out: Reflection of Mine. It was a dark and hardcore puzzle about a girl with multiple personality syndrome. I chose this topic because I wanted to use all my knowledge and skills in this project, and by that time I was the most advanced in psychology. And the engine... Almost nobody takes Construct 2 seriously. This is an engine for creating two-dimensional HTML5 games, but when I started working with it, I didnt even know what HTML5 is. I saw that dragging the windows in C2 produces quite a working exe file, the launch of which opens the doors for people to the world invented by me and introduces to the characters invented by me. What else do I need?
I still do not know. The games that I created with Construct 2 work! They are played by thousands of people around the world, and all the difficulties and bugs that some players suffered from were caused not by a crooked engine, but by my own hands. I didnt face any problem that I could not fix in the future. Also I didnt see any 2D-game mechanic that I could not recreate with Construct 2. Now, however, the engine is dying, Construct 3, in my opinion, is horrible, and since the company making this product is moving into the abyss, at some point I will remove Construct 2 from my PC forever.
So what am I working on now? Fearmonium is a psychedelic metroidvania, where the player takes under control an unpleasant memory, seeking to become a phobia. The visual style is not inspired by the game Cuphead. To be honest, Im not a big fan at all - the eternal battles with bosses are more tiring than pleasing to me. But still, I admit that this is a great game. Im just a fan of exploration and I suffered from lack of it in there. Cuphead's visual style emerged from the twentieth-century classic animation, and my inspiration grows from there too. However, I have never been a fan of the drooling intensity of short cartoon films about Mickey Mouse and Betty Boop. Although I was fascinated by the frame-by-frame animation in these creations, I never found them inspiring. And just before working on Fearmonium, I understood why: it was all about the music. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=31j4DIpgY9U I saw several unofficial videos of the musician named GHOSTEMANE - the authors took cuts from the cartoons of the first half of the twentieth century, put some camera shake and glitches on it and mixed them with aggressive and dark music, reminiscent of my beloved Witch house. This setting hooked me up. I chose a dark palette, a dark plot, dressed it all in the style of old cartoons and began to work. The very procedure for bringing the game to its current state was as follows: in about two months I created a small demo version, where I had already chosen the visual style and gameplay. In February, I presented it at the White Nights conference in Berlin to look at the reaction of the players and to understand whether I was moving in the right direction. It turned out that in the right one. From February to this day, I worked specifically on the trailer, and, frankly speaking, I turned the project file into complete chaos from broken levels and a real mess from objects called sprite1, sprite2, sprite100, but order was never my thing, and I'm sure Ill get away with this.
Phobias arent growing from the void. Most often they are born from disturbing memories and bloom on the compost of negative states. The memory can be perceived by us as worrisome even without any obvious unpleasant factors: a person can see a clown or a spider under absolutely normal (seemingly) conditions, but these images are so firmly stuck into his head that it can transform into a serious neurosis. The unconscious will take care of this. Fearmonium begins with a story about a fair where a boy named Jimmy saw clowns, and although he didnt like them very much, he didnt expect to wake up in the middle of the night from their appearance in his dream. Sleep has an important function of squashing down memories of the past day. Things we saw during the day affect the things that we will see while we sleep. A person doesnt store memories in the form of text files or photographs, they dont even look like a movie: we think in images. And how one or another image is treated depends only on the person. Absolutely same images can mean very different things to different people.
Bright images, seen by Jimmy at the fair, became his "protectors" when player converted his dream into a nightmare. That is why the first enemies we met were all that he liked from the previous day. Interaction with enemies is not limited to waving a hammer. Two properties of phobias are involved in the battle with memories. First: neuroses affect the images in our memories. A patient suffering from a phobia will hardly be sure whether he saw a spider or a clown a year ago. It will seem to him that the subject of his fear was always somewhere near.
Secondly the phobia is not related to a specific item, it relates to a whole class of items. All that is associated with clowns becomes painful for Jimmy. People who are afraid of spiders will not divide them into types and panic from the appearance of some specific spider, they will be frightened by everything that their minds connect with spiders. In this way, we fake Jimmys memories by turning enemies into balloons that Jimmy strongly associates with clowns. Where there was something light in his memory bam and a balloon appears. In addition, we will meet other clowns in the memories of Jimmy that the boy has seen in throughout his life, and take them into our "army", using these memories as weapons against bright images.
But the very purpose of the game is not to drive poor Jimmy crazy. A phobia is not always as destructive as it may seem, and this is the main idea that I want to convey. Neurosis doesnt appear from a good emotional state. Stress, constant anxiety - a great compost for depression and phobias. Jimmy's life is not wonderful at all. His consciousness was already a chaos before our appearance. I will not go into the details of his life that drove Jimmy into the abyss of misfortunes, but I will say that in his situation, no one except Jimmy himself can save the situation.
And one of the features of phobias: the displacement of the objective fears. And "objective" does not mean "reasonable." For example, being late to school is an objective fear, but even such a minor phenomenon can be accompanied by an absurd amount of stress. Our indecision is often caused by the ridiculous amount of experience over trifles, which are perceived as something very important. With the presence of a real, severe neurosis, trifles are again turned into trifles, and only clowns seem to be a serious threat.
I briefly retold some things that I reveal through Fearmonium. The plot will affect the nature of depression, and standard methods of protection against neurosis, and a bunch of things that I caught at lectures at the university. But I remember an important rule - the best story in the game is the one that can be ignored. Fearmonium may well attract someone with funny pictures and dynamic gameplay, but scare off with its internal seriousness. So, in the game it will be impossible to get confused even if you dont get a grasp of all the subtleties of human consciousness, and the educational part of the game is purely optional. I believe that games can say more than click on X to win, and I try to develop this idea. Dont forget to add Fearmonium to your wishlist! https://store.steampowered.com/app/1068360/Fearmonium/