It's been a few months since I released version 1.2, and I originally meant for 1.2 to be the last update, at least for several months. Anyway I started working on 1.3 almost immediately.

The main focus on version 1.3 was to improve the menus. The main menu of the game was functional, but it was far from pretty. I changed it to be more pretty. I also made the character selection and level selection process quicker, and players other than player 1 can vote for a level.

I also made a tweak to gameplay where random bubbles now cause what I call a "bubble frenzy." A bubble frenzy is where, for a very brief period of time, a bunch of bubbles will come up from the ground. There's about a 10% chance when popping a bubble that's only worth a single point, and bubble frenzies do work when dodge mode is enabled and will badly hurt players that are still alive.

There are also the typical glitches that have been patched as well, namely a glitch in the cave level where the floor, on extremely rare occasions, would stop being a floor. I also fixed a glitch that caused certain loading screens to not show correctly.

Here are the patchnotes:

• Added "Bubble Frenzy" which causes bubbles to rise from the ground for a short period of time.
  
• Fixed a bug in the Cave level which, on very rare occasions, causes the floor to lose its collision.
  
• Made the UI on the main menu more user-friendly.
  
• Changed the sprites of the characters to have more personality and look less creepy.
  
• Made the experience of getting to the game faster.

Unfortunately not all news is good, which also leads to a little bit of good news. I don't plan on updating the game any further than 1.3, at least for the foreseeable future. I've been working on Bubble Bounce for over a year, and I'm ready to move on to developing new games. And the good news is that the demo of Bubble Bounce will be updated to include some of the features from 1.3, namely the new menu. The demo might take a little bit longer than the full game to get the update, however. The demo will keep the same functionality as it has, the two default levels, default mode, and 3 minute time limit, but the improvements to the menus will be implemented.

The full release of the 1.3 update should be out later this week, most likely on Friday. But if you want to play, and possibly delay the update, the "experimental" beta branch on Steam allows you to try the update out right now! If you have any issues or opinions, the bug tracker has been updated to support 1.3. Thank you for playing Bubble Bounce.

It's been awhile since version 1.1, and I thank you for your patience.

Updates after 1.0 have a focus on fixing issues that come up, and 1.2 is no different.

The main issue that I've noticed with Bubble Bounce is a lack of things to do. The game gives you everything right away, which limits the amount of time people want to spend on the game. Some games would go the route of locking content away from the player and forcing them to pay real money for the content. For a game that people have already spent money on, I consider this to be unreasonable.

I've added an in-game store where players can spend the bubbles they've popped on modes, levels, and a timer that extends to 59 minutes. The store currently only has two modes and the levels that the game has had since version 1.0, however more modes and levels may be added in the future.

You may have noticed that I mentioned the store having two modes. While one of those modes is "Dodge Mode" which is already in Bubble Bounce, the other mode is a new one. "Swap Mode" makes it so that players have the chance of having their position swapped with another player at random. This mode, when mixed with Dodge Mode, can lead to some interesting strategies!

Here are the simplified patchnotes:

• Added a title screen
  
• Added Swap Mode
  
• Added an in-game store
  
• Added the ability to extend the timer to 59 minutes

Unfortunately, the Bubble Bounce demo will no longer be receiving updates, including 1.2. Updating the demo for Windows, Mac, and Linux takes a long time, and it simply isn't worth the time it takes to end up with a slightly different demo experience. The demo will continue to be available for now, but will only have features from 1.1.

Honestly I don't think any of the features in 1.2 would carry over into the demo anyway, nor would any planned features in any future updates.