TENDERFOOT TACTICS: THE FOREVERLANDS

DEVELOPMENT UPDATE

• Expanded and refined the first tier of evolutions - those that will be playable in the Foreverlands - with a bevy of new skills, a first pass at sound and visual effects, some tweaks in general appearance.

• Built a system to associate overworld biomes with different combat map types, enemy types, enemy team compositions, and natural system settings. So for instance an arid, rocky biome might now: have large rocks instead of trees in combat, start with no water or plants on the map, have a very low rate of moisture input from map edges (normally soil moisture is replenished from the edge of the map to replace the moisture extracted by growing plants - now, a low moisture zone won't naturally support plant life unless you bring a lot of water into the map with spells), have maps that start with more cliffs, and feature a certain subset of enemy types, like our new 'ember' enemy, arranged in team compositions designed for a certain player level range. This adds a lot of texture to exploration and progression across the map.
• Made a huge amount of quality of life updates. Added UI displaying more specific information about the simulation state, clarifying time passage during actions. Improved keyboard/mouse camera feel. Added hotkeys for the action menu. Et, cetera.
• Expanded our cast of non-playable enemy types!

• Enemies in the overworld now have a wider aggro radius when you're significantly lower level than them, and a very narrow radius when you're higher level, making low level zones easy to traverse as you level out of them. Enemies also now 'leash,' eventually giving up if you run far away from where they originally saw you and started chasing you.
• Finished replacing our 'steep ground is difficult' system with cliffs, and subtley modified the way earth spells interact with those cliffs for more naturalistic effects.
• Added a 'jump' button in the overworld because, I don't know, I have a grudge against games that don't let you jump, and I don't have anyone to stop me. Very seriously planning on adding a 'crouch slide' button when I have a manic moment and can allow myself to do something so nonessential.