- Michael now slides into doors more easily.
Before this, if you continued moving and held up to enter a door, chances are you'd be slide a little past the door and the fade out wouldn't look good. Not anymore.

- Fixed Invisible Michael Glitch when going through doors.
This glitch may not have happened to you, but if you were to go through a door, and right after Michael fades out, you pause the game, go back to the title screen, and then reload your saved, Michael will then become invisible and you'd be required to close and reopen the game. This is now fixed.

- Doom Statues won't slide anymore.
Speaking of sliding, Doom Statues will no longer slide when they go off-screen. If they go off-screen or are far enough away from you, they'll return to their initial starting point and not slide around anymore.

- Nerfed Doom Statues a bit more.
Speaking of Doom Statues, they also now do 2 units of damage instead of 3. 3 was way too much.

- Fixed a puzzle "soft-lock" in Level 3.
In the eyeball puzzle in the upper part of level 3, if you push the first eyeball against the door, and not put it on thee switch to get to the second part of the puzzle, and then opened the door by stepping on it yourself, the eye would slip past the door, and would become inaccessible since the door would immediately close when you jump off the switch. This effectively made the puzzle impossible, and you would have to kill yourself in game or reset. As of this update, the eye will not go past the door if you push it to it.

- The eyes on moving platforms will now point in the direction the platform is moving in.
This was an intended feature but wasn't implemented on release. Now the platforms eyes will move, and it looks a tad creepy.

- Added a checkpoint past Level 3's pile of bones.
Past the pile of bones across the bridge in level 3, if you break through a crack in the wall, you'll find a secret checkpoint altar. Some people found the section under the bridge to be quite difficult, and having to restart at a faraway checkpoint made things more frustrating for them, which is why I added this.

- Added a secret spring underneath the bridge.
I realized that, if you were to go down underneath the bridge after the collapse and not get the treasure on the bone pile, it would become inaccessible until you got the Pick-Spin, due to the size of the gap creating from the bridge collapse. Now, if you hit the pressure switch that creates the two small bridge platforms, it will also reveal a spring that you can use to get to the pile of bones post-bridge-collapse.

- Polished the creyers a tiny bit.
After slicing off the eyeball of a creyer and then destroying the eyeball, the creyer's stalk would no longer be solid after regenerating its eye, allowing you to pass through it. This has been fixed, and the stalk will now be solid when a creyer regenerates an eye.

-More enemies have hit sounds.
Enemies like Speyekers, Winged Waywards, and Wayward Rollers now make sounds when whacked/pogoed with your pickaxe.


If you know of any other bugs or quality-of-life improvements you'd like to see, feel free to let me know in the comments!

To those who beat the game's boss and have gotten the post-boss item, the pick-spin, I'd love to get your thoughts on it, and how it's used. I've gotten feedback in the past on how it's not the most intuitive, and doesn't feel good to use since you activate it by pressing the jump button again when you descend instead of activating it by simply holding down the jump button.

Originally, that was how it worked, but my concern with having it that way was that people may repeatedly activate the pick-spin's glide by accident if they do a full jump. Nevertheless, I'd love to hear any feedback you all have on it, and you think I can improve on it, thanks!

Hey all!

I recently created a community Discord server for Lost Caves players to join! There, you'll be getting first-hand new on the game's development, and also be able to discuss the game with other players! Join via the Discord link below!

https://discord.gg/kqPTZzUjam

EDIT: Updated the Discord link. I'm dumb and didn't realize it was a temporary link.

-Nerfed Doom Statues (by a lot).
-Since you don't get much time to react when a Doom Statue awakens and begins to chase you, I
-After noticing that players will try to attack the Doom Statue, I now have it so that you can knock them back a little bit by hitting them with your pickaxe. It does no damage to them, but it'll give you some breathing room.
-Also, if you're next to the Statue's initial resting spot while it's offscreen, it will no longer teleport back and chase you.

-Tab key now opens Treasure Inventory
-Originally, the backtick/tilde key opens and close the treasure inventory. That was a poor decision on my part, since international keyboards may not have that key, so the icon for it in the inventory screen may not make sense to the user. The Tab key should be more recognizable. You can still use the backpack key though for now.

-Made it easier to escape lower pyramid doom statue if cornered
-In the lower section of the pyramid in level 3 where you have to lure the doom statue onto the pressure switch, if you for some reason get the statue to chase you back through the hallway you lured it from, you now have more space to escape the statue than before.

-Blue Boulders should now be better at hitting the boss.
-If you're particularly unlucky, when blasting a blue boulder at the Wayward Queen, sometimes the boulder would harmlessly bounce off and not stun her. I don't think it's 100% fixed, but it should happen less likely now.

-Backgrounds are now less shaky.
-After receiving feedback regarding the background being very shaky, especially when the camera slows down, I made a fix that reduces most of it.

-Fixed Level 2 super-spring.
-Some people, when using the spring at the very bottom of the pit in Level 2, don't go all the way to the top because they hug the right or left wall, which slows them down, even though the spring fixes you in place. I updated the spring to make it more difficult to get misaligned so you reach the top every time.

-Fixed falling through lava.
-If you were hit by an enemy and immediately knocked into lava, you would fall through it unharmed and end up out-of-bounds. This was due to Michael still having invincibility frames while falling through the lava. This has now been fixed.

-Music fixes.
-When reloading back at a checkpoint or going back through the boss door in the pyramid, the ruins music will not play, and instead the normal level music will. This has now been fixed.
-Music should now be playing in the title screen. If it is not playing for you, feel free to let me know.

-You can now jump on Killbugs.
-Originally, if you decided to hop onto the back of a billbug, you would be unable to jump. Now you can.

-Fixed a soft-lock in the game.
-There's a killbug spawn point in level 3 outside the pyramid, and if you hang around there when a new killbug spawns in, you'll be pushed up and be stuck between the killbug and the wall/ceiling, soft-locking yourself. I added some more space around the killbug spawn point to fix this.

-Checkpoint altars in dark areas will emit some visible light.
-Since the inscriptions and torches light up on checkpoint altars when activated, they should also light up dark areas. Checkpoints altars will now do that (and they look pretty cool).

-Added some extra health vases in the creyer eyeball puzzle in level 3.
-In case you get sliced a few times by the death guillotine, or if the killbug blows up in your face, there are now a couple of health vases that have been added to the creyer eyeball puzzle in the upper portion of level 3.

-All big switch doors will now make sounds when opening.
-The only one that did was the first switch door you opened to enter further into the pyramid in level 3. All of them now make a sound.

-Added a spring in the pyramid back entrance.
-A spring has been added at the bottom of the hole you go down before the switch door in the back of the pyramid. It appears after opening the switch door, and lets you get back up in case you fall down by accident.

Hey everyone!

Tonight at 9pm EST, I'll be on the SML Podcast live on Twitch! I'll be talking with Joe Camnet and others about Lost Caves while I'm there. Be sure not to miss it!

https://www.twitch.tv/thesmlpodcast

Lost Caves, after over 3 years of development, has now finally hit virtual Steam store shelves! Venture through the depths and collect treasure and defeat any who stands in your way, and hopefully find a way back to the surface from the lost caves!