Dear Lawyer Enjoyers, A new level, 'Electric Forest' just released. Like the previous level, you can launch it from the Steam menu that appears when you first open the game. Thanks to everyone who has tried out the game so far! This stage should be a little easier than the last one, although it's also a bit longer. Other than the new stage, the biggest changes to this build are to do with the user interface, which I'm hoping to fully update this year.

• Redesigned UI elements for the main menu and status screen
• Smooth, animated transitions between screens
• Completely redesigned results screen to be less boring (it also has music now)
• New 'now entering' screen showing the level's name and music

Plus, there are many small fixes and quality-of-life improvements:

• Lawyer Guy can now exit out of a jump almost immediately
• Fixed a few visual inconsistencies, including making all blacks the same shade
• Remaining checkpoints are now shown the lives screen
• Lawyer Guy can now crouch and shoot
• In horizontal scrolling areas, you can now longer make the camera judder by jumping at the top of the screen
• Bullets now 'ding' from invincible objects instead of passing through them
• Lawyer Guy is now ejected vertically from solid objects as well as horizontally

As always, please let me know what you think of the new stage. My next jobs will be: finishing the UI refresh, implementing a save system, and adding the hubworld, which should keep me busy for a while! Rob

[ 2021-05-05 11:04:32 CET ] [ Original post ]

A new level is now available for Lawyer Guy! When you start the game, a menu should pop up asking which level you want to play. 'Desolation Zone' (build 410), is new, ruinously difficult, and full of crumbling platforms\lightly haunted enemies. This level is intended to appear later in the game, so you also have access to a new ability, the dash! Thanks to everyone who has tried Lawyer Guy so far. Even though this level is arguably more difficult than the previous one, the build incorporates some of the most-requested changes from build 401, which should make the game easier.

Some of the major changes:

• Difficulty adjustments: the game now has (optional) difficulty tuning. If you're having a hard time, it will let you restart with full lives from your previous checkpoint.
• Hitbox changes: enemies are now a lot easier to hit with Lawyer Bullets. In addition, some enemies have longer hitstun periods and windups.
• Spawner cooldowns: the game will not respawn certain enemies if they've just spawned. This means the game won't spam those enemies at you if you walk back and forth.
• More tutorialisation, including a new controls screen shown when you boot the game (note: this change was backported to the previous build).
• New and existing menus now have icons and diagrams to make them frendlier to non-english speakers (note: this change was backported to the previous build).
• Continuous music: the music no longer stops when you die. Instead, it fades out, then fades back in where it left off.

Plus, bugfixes and small quality-of-life changes:

• Fixed a number of audio bugs that resulted in sounds playing too loud.
• Fixed an input bug that resulted in menu inputs being repeated on Linux. Note: this still happens on some menu inputs and I can't figure out why, but at least you won't be trapped in the volume slider menu anymore.
• The game will now tell you if you try to place a checkpoint on a temporary platform.
• Bonus briefcases will no longer despawn if they're onscreen.
• Enemy spawners now have a visual indicator of when they'll spawn enemies.

The previous stage has NOT been updated yet

Please note: these changes have not (yet) been backported to previous levels. Clockwork Gadget is running on the old engine version (build 401). As the game gets closer to release, and the underlying engine stabilises a bit, all the levels will be brought forward to the latest engine version and merged into a single executable. For now, I will probably backport hotfixes and other important changes, but leave the rest as-is.

What I'm working on

Right now, I am in the middle of a new level, which I hope to release this spring. After that, I want to focus on adding features to help tie these disparate levels into an underlying structure. That means: a UI/menu refresh, save games, an opening sequence, and making the first steps toward a hub area, to replace the current level select menu. I'm particularly excited about that last one!

Thank you for playing!

Putting this game on Steam has been exciting, but it's also scary to recieve so much judgement in so little time. The game will always be very difficult (that's kind of the point of it!) - but watching people play and seeing what they said made me realise that they were experiencing difficulty in ways that I hadn't intended, like poor tutorialisation, lack of polish, and bad enemy placement. I also had no idea how many people would play the game who don't speak English - I hope the changes I've made can help them better understand the game. Producing a translation of Lawyer Guy would be very difficult, as the assets are not easily interchangeable, they're baked into the game itself (in fact, any text that moves has to be baked into sprites). Also, I barely speak English, let alone other languages. But I want to do my best to make the game accessible to everyone, so bear with me, and let me know what you think of this new build! Much love, Rob

[ 2021-01-20 15:53:49 CET ] [ Original post ]

The Windows build has been updated:

• The Clickteam Fusion runtime has been rolled back to R284.10.
• Runtime compression is now disabled.

This seems to have fixed both the antivirus false positives, and the steam overlay glitches, though the overlay has been disabled anyway. The downside is that the old runtime will be a bit slower, maybe about 25%. Let me know if you encounter any performance hiccups.

[ 2020-11-10 23:08:36 CET ] [ Original post ]