I wasn't happy with how confusing the game can be to new players and more casual players. So I tried to make the informational popups give a more general description of what the new thing does, with the hopes of giving the player a fundamental understanding rather than a technical understanding. It's easier to understand that the frost tower slows enemies down rather than understanding exactly how it slows them down and under what conditions. With this change average players can understand how to use the tower, while the hardcore players can read the exact descriptions to understand all the details and potential strategies.

I'm thinking about balancing the game around being able to beat each map without losing any lives, but you need to use a really good strategy to do so. I would reward players who are able to complete a map flawlessly with a special border or some kind of a visual indicator on each map. Flawless victories would only be available if the player doesn't apply more willpower than the maps intensity (because more willpower would make the map easier, thus making the pride of completing the map flawlessly less meaningful.) I am worried that it will make the maps too easy though. So more testing is required.



* modified frozen debuff: only applies if wet and chilled. if wet and frozen increases the duration of frozen by a small amount based on wet stacks removed
* modified water tower functionality: if frozen: removes some frozen duration and applies an extra stack of wet



* playing a new profile goes straight into the first map (skipping the map select screen)
* changed the way map names are displayed
* boss names appear red on the primary info panel when the boss is selected
* changed the final targeting filter for all towers to first (was last)
* reduced the duration of the victory/defeat popup
* reworked the new tower/enemy information popup, it now gives a general overview rather than exact stats



* reduced the cooldown before an enemy can be frozen again to 2 seconds (was 7)
* increased minimum boss damage to 4 (was 2)
* reworked victory and defeat bonus exp
* changed what enemies spawn in vision 3 and reduced the difficulty
* slightly reduced the difficulty of vision 0 and 1



* minor grammar and spelling improvements
* exp per minute now displays more than 0

Sorry for the small update. It took me a lot longer than I wanted to fix the "not being able to unlock things" bug. The bug was a simple fix by itself, but adding the system that retroactively awards unlockables when updating versions was tough.



* reworked the bonus exp gained for completing maps



* improved the way the map select screen chooses the default map
* renamed the "map default" enemy group and reorganized the enemies in it



* changed the amount of essence gained from enemies spawning (reduced for early waves, increased for later waves)



* updating the game should now properly give awards that should have been given
* game speed is saved even when the game is forcibly closed
* you no longer start with 5% interest

* unlocking new maps and other things now works properly
* updating the game awards unlocks that should have been given

This new gamemode allows players to see how far they can make it with their current power level. Based on how many waves are survived you are rewarded with permanent exp gain. I'm hoping this will encourage players to really try to optimize their strategies so they can push further waves. There are still a few features missing from the gamemode, such as being able to start at a certain wave within your highscore, and gaining rewards that help you push further waves but only in endless (essence per wave, increased damage, etc.) For now the gamemode is unlocked pretty early on. I will most likely move it to be unlocked somewhere during the Apprentice Vision Quest.



* added a new gamemode "endless", survive as long as possible against infinite waves gaining permanent rewards the more you do
* for now the endless is unlocked by beating vision 11



* modified the map select screen



* reduced the effectiveness of the automatic difficulty adjustment system
* removed continue in endless option
* reduced the multiplier gained from vision quest challenges
* slightly increased spawn count per wave scaling



* custom stats now update properly
* changing options on the map select screen updates the appropriate things

I'm getting ready to make the changes to the gamemodes. So in the meantime, I hope you enjoy more early game balance/polish. I like the water tower much more now, it felt a bit underwhelming, but now with the extra slow it feels so much better.



* if the list of custom enemies is blank, it will pick random enemies from the unlocked enemies
* added "random", "random plastic", and "random non-plastic" to the list of possible custom enemies
* the random enemies will only pick unlocked enemies

New Features:
* new water tower functionality: if the target has armor deals bonus damage that ignores armor completely
* changed the "hard water" skill to work with the new tower functionality

Polish:
* swapped the first skill unlocked for a different lightning skill
* changed many tower effects and skill tooltips to explain values in percentages instead of flat values
* reworded many tower effects and some skill tooltips

Balance:
* increased "frost blast" skill first step to 1.2 (was 1)
* reduced water towers armored bonus damage to 100% (was 280%)
* reduced water towers max wet stacks to 40 (was 60)
* increased water towers slow per stack of wet to 2% (was 1%)
* increased water towers max slow to 30% (was 20%)
* increased water towers damage per stack of wet to 3% (was 0.8%)
* increased "flood" skill step to 0.3% per level (was 0.08%)
* increased "corrosion" skill step to 0.3% per level (was 0.1%)
* reduced earth base damage per missing hp to 1.4% (was 1.5%)
* reduced "crush the weak" skill max dmg step to 10% per level (was 20%)
* reduced "crush the weak" skill % hp step to 0.15% per level (was 0.25%)
* increased "shrapnel" skill step to 5% per level (was 1.25%)

* modified the enemy order in vision 3
* added more buildable locations in vision 4
* adjusted the difficulty of many maps to fit with the tower changes

I really like the new skills system, it adds a ton more strategic depth. There are still very obvious skills to use for certain scenarios, I'm hoping to fix that after more playtesting. As it stands now the first 30 scenarios are very close to what I want them to be like. So let me know what you think of the new skills system.

Moving forward I want to balance and playtest the game one chunk at a time. So this update I focused solely on the first 30 maps (essentially the entire Novice challenge). In the next update I want to focus on the next challenge level. I feel like this method of balance will improve the quality of the game faster. The way I was doing it before, ment that I redid almost everything whenever I changed some aspect of balance. This way I shouldn't have to change as much, but even if I do, you will have a more complete experience in the early-game.

Some modifications to how the gamemodes work have been made. I plan to make the gamemodes even more distinct and add a 3rd gamemode in the near future. I haven't decided how much of my time working on the next update will be spent on gamemodes and how much will be spent balancing the Apprentice challenge.

*Sorry for the delayed update. I decided to move the weekly updates to Saturday, and last Saturday my internet died. It's fixed now, so expect weekly updates to resume.



* reworked the order things are unlocked (primarily redistributed skills to help enable strategic choice)
* most skill unlocks have been temporarily removed (I will add the remaining skills over the next few updates)
* rebalanced many scenarios (hopefully they are more inline with the intensity)



* reworked "dream X", changed buildable locations, and available towers
* minor modifications to other scenarios



* unspent willpower now gives exp gain (1% per)
* fire tower aura skill now actually applies burning instead of just dealing damage
* reduced the base level up cost to 250 exp (was 500)
* increased the intensity of most vision quest scenarios
* sell refund has been reduced to 80% (was 90%)
* removed skill point reward for completing Vision Quest scenarios on higher challenges (they now all give exp gain instead)
* removed reward for completing Lucid Dream scenarios
* changed how quickly Lucid Dream modifiers are unlocked from completing Lucid Dream Scenarios
* burning damage no longer scales with elemental resistances/vulnerabilities
* increased dark towers % health damage to 10% of max health (was 5%)
* reduced light towers damage to extra enemies to 30% (was 50%)
* reduced light towers damage per speed to 5% (was 10%)
* absorbers essence tear ability now increases with tower damage

I think this new skills system will be much more interesting. There are now more skills to choose from and with the skills being linked, it means you will have to choose what skill you want. This will be a hard choice because many skills are extremely strong when used properly.

I still need to work on the balance of the skills and the unlock curve. Hopefully I can make great progress on that next update. I want the maps to be interesting and challenging from start to finish. I also want the player to constantly be unlocking new and exciting things. So expect that soon.



* complete redesign to the skills system
* tower skills now have another skill they are linked with, points can only be applied to one or the other
* unspent willpower now gives starting money instead of exp gain



* removed lightning tower armor ignore
* revealed now stacks up to 10
* light towers ignore 3% armor per stack of revealed



* newly built towers wouldn't target enemies in range that weren't moving

This update comes with some changes to how the gamemodes work, they are now more distinct and separate. Vision quest is more focused on completing challenging scenarios, while Lucid Dream is focused on letting the player openly choose what kind of scenario they want to have. I plan to make "endless" an entirely separate gamemode where you face off against infinite waves and see how far you can get. You get a "highscore" based on the furthest wave you've reached. The highscore gives you bonus exp gain and you can choose to start from your highscore wave (so you don't have to beat waves you've already beaten again). I don't know when I will implement the new endless gamemode, but it will be sooner rather than later, since it will be part of how the player progresses through the game.

The update to the skills system is coming. I've decided to make each skill linked with another skill, meaning that you can only have points applied in one or the other at any given time. My current plans are to give each tower 6 skills, that's almost triple the amount of skills currently implemented, which means it will take me some time to finish the system. I may start with just 4 skills for the towers to save on time, and add the other 2 in the update after. I also want to change it so that unspent skill points give you a 1% boost to starting essence (instead of the 2% exp gain). I feel like experience gain should be more directly tied to completing challenges, not just spending time playing the game (gaining willpower).



* upgrade a random skill cap (from a select set) every 6 willpower gained after 200 total willpower
* removed archmage+ challenge
* reworked the challenge levels to make them more distinct
* removed wave count slider bar and vitals per wave incrementer
* lucid dream mode now starts with the ability to customize challenge stats
* lucid dream only has one challenge level "custom"



* added icons to the stats that the challenges change
* added confirmation popups to many areas (profile delete, quit, reset, main menu)
* added a few more tips
* modified the unlock tooltips for challenges



* cost to level up now scales with each level (makes higher levels harder to get)
* vision 13a and 13b no longer unlock modifiers, the modifiers they unlocked are now tied to lucid dream victories
* reduced the scaling rate of speed and damage when playing higher challenge levels
* increased water armor tear skill step to 0.5 armor removed (was 0.25)



* fixed challenge stats displaying when they shouldn't
* fire towers would sometimes think they could hit targets just outside their range
* spawn points are now properly pruned when there are not enough enemies spawning to use them all

In the last update I made a few changes to the skills and how they work. After testing I realized that those changes didn't fix the problem. I didn't even realize what the problem was, I just knew in my gut that something was wrong. I realize now that the skills weren't offering any strategic choice to the player. It was either apply skill points towards towers that you will use, or apply skill points towards just increasing all towers damage. Either way it led to the very boring choice of: "should I increase all tower damage by 10% or just this towers damage by 10%?"

I have a few ideas for how I can make spending willpower a more strategic choice. The first idea is to tie certain skills together so you can only apply points into one or the other at any given time (example; you can only increase water armor tear or slow effect, not both at the same time). I like this idea because the player would have to choose what skill they value more for any given scenario. This idea could be expanded to some sort of "skill tree" where applying points into one skill lets you apply points into a chain of other skills, but blocks the ability to apply points into another chain. This idea could also be expanded to limit/allow skills based on the number of skill points applied, not just if points are applied (10 skill points into this skill unlocks that skill, but 15 points into this skill disables that skill). This idea gives the player a lot of choice, but would be the hard to implement.

Another idea would be to limit how frequently the player can reset their applied points. Right now it's free and unlimited. So the player can adjust their choice on a whim. If willpower was more permanent, players would think harder about what they actually want to spend it on. I would probably implement some kind of currency that is awarded naturally from playing, and then you spend that currency to reset points (cost would increase the more points being reset).

My third idea would be to increase the amount of willpower needed to increase each skills level based on the level, maybe it could cost 1 more than the current skill level (level 1 costs 1, 2 costs 2, 3 costs 3, etc.) This alone would not be enough to promote strategic choice. It would need to be paired with a different bonus for unspent willpower, perhaps +2 starting essence or +1% tower damage. This gives the player the choice between not spending their willpower for a small boost or spending their willpower for a large boost. The cost increase would add an interesting dynamic where more willpower into a single skill means less efficient use of willpower, but more focused effectiveness for an individual tower. This is my least favorite idea of all the ideas, but it would be the easiest to implement.

Perhaps none of these idea or a combination of all 3 would be best. I am still thinking about it and what will work best for the kind of game I'm trying to make. Feedback and suggestions are welcome. Sorry for the delay.