Most of the week was tweaks and ensuring that things run well enough to get all the way through. Thanks to someone on the forum for helping with the shader. I’d point out your name, but you might get a flood of other requests for aide. The bloom is still a bit much, but it will all get tweaked in time. At least now it runs at 60 fps rather than 30 or 60 depending on how the game feels.

Now that the game has secret courses, I’ve been dumping some of the Twitter demonstrations into secret levels. I feel like a lot of them are too difficult and elaborate to be in the mainstream trails of the game, but they’re perfect to stumble upon.

HERMITURRETS

Well… they shoot and they’re metal hermit crabs. Hermiturrets are the most complex foe in the game, which isn’t saying much, because several of the enemies are quite basic, but more versatile. While they’re still a work in progress, these metal crabs shoot four bullets before walking again. When you approach them from the front, they retreat to their shells where they’re invulnerable. If they’re ever in the air, which is rare, they will retreat as well until their shell hits the ground. The only way to defeat them is attacking from behind, but when they take damage, they hide in their shell once their stun animation is triggered. So you need to kill them before they retreat, otherwise it consumes more time, because they won’t come out of their shell until you’re far enough away.

Since these hermiturrets fire vertical bullets, there’s a new way to deflect the bullets, in different directions. Originally, all projectiles could get sword deflected back where they came from, but this doesn’t make sense with vertical projectiles as you’re facing left or right when you hit them. You can still leap into the air and down slash them to send them back down. Every bullet deflected goes faster and can affect objects like barrels. Foes can shoot through barrels as it’s not shooting through, it’s shooting by or past. Barrels are more cover objects for foes to give the player a tougher terrain to navigate. With that said, projectiles can still hit switches to make for some interesting game play.