In-Depth Analysis 3: The Reboot

[Luminaire7]

Why hello, I didn't see you there. Perhaps you'd like to sip a glass of fine wine and join me in my long-awaited third installment of displaying why I never got a date for prom. It's been a good while since I've been around these parts, and it's clear a lot has changed while I was away. After taking some time to adjust to all the shiny new things the game as to offer, I will definitely say that overall it has made a big improvement since the last time I played it. However, as always, there are things I'm here to take the proverbial microscope to....


THE NEW STAGE (HOLLOW HIVE)

Honestly the new 4th stage is pretty cool. I have very little to add to it. It has a unique look, different (and annoying) enemies, and offers a solid challenge. I will say, though, that the giant worm hazard that is found throughout the stage should really do a lot more damage than it does. It's a large, space-restricting threat that comes with plentiful warning, the idea being that poor timing will put you between a rock and a hard place when being chased by swarms of enemies. However, it does a shockingly small amount of damage, which means if you are put in that bad position, the option is to take a small amount of damage from normal enemies (1 or 2 hits since you can't escape them).....or to take a small amount of damage from the big worm, but also be able to reposition yourself. This means jumping in front of the worm is actually the RIGHT choice, instead of it being a massive threat you avoid at all costs. This thing should do much more damage than it currently does.

NEW STAT PAGE

While it does lose the fun feeling the previous mutation grid had of "building" your web of powerups, I must admit the new stat page is quite clean and ultimately shows better levels of information in a much more direct and efficient way than the grid did. Combining the mutations with random status effects also isn't a bad idea either, however I think the status effect building system could use some improvements.
The new limit of 7 mutations is also.....arguable. Combined with the diminishing returns you get from stat boosts, there is a very clear "end" to your build, whereas before you were only limited by how long the run lasted, now you hit the wall of "finished" with your build much earlier and the latter portion of the run just involves sinking money into increasingly minor optimizations, which means the feeling of growth is continually weakened as the run goes on. This isn't the worst thing, since forcing players to make choices about their build instead of grabbing everything they see is also important and engaging gameplay, but you don't want to hit a point where progression loses it's meaning and the player feels like all the items they're picking up are basically pointless. You also don't want opportunity cost to make a lot of niche or weaker mutations a literal waste of space. I think an 8th slot is pretty reasonable here.

While the new status effect system is a neat idea, it definitely needs more fleshing out at the moment. Only having 4 status effects (weakness, fire, ice, poison) is just not enough, especially when we used to have more (shock, vulnerable). The "stacking" idea is also cool, as is that status effects can work on bosses now, but the status effects take a clear backseat to the mutations they're attached to, and with only 7 mutations allowed you have very little room to take one just because it has the status you want. The status changer is a nice help, but at 200 cells for a reroll and the stacking bonuses every 2 stacks, the reroller is regulated to a very optional very late game very minor optimizer that you throw some money into when you have literally nothing else to spend it on. As a result I would make some changes like this:

- Specimens start with 6 mutation slots. After beating the game with that specimen once, you unlock a 7th slot. After beating the game with that specimen 3 times (or beating it on hard mode, or within a time limit, or without losing your revive or some other challenge) you unlock an 8th mutation slot for that specimen.

- Shock and Vulernable are added back to the status effects
- Status effect stacking bonus' now scale like this:
1 stack = nothing
2 stack = extra effect (range, damage, etc)
3 stack = increased chance
4 stack = extra effect
5 stack = increased chance
6 stack = Big effect
7 stack = +1 stat boost to all stats (damage/deflect/health)
8 stack = Effects boosted further, chance increased to 100%

- Status effect reroll reduced from 200 cells to 150.
- Now offers 3 reroll options instead of 2.
- Status effect reroll machine now found in shops.

With this, the much smoother progression, more options, easier access and bigger payoff to the status effect mechanics should make them much more fun and tempting to interact with and spend your precious build space on.


TIMER STAGES (UPGRADES)

While I do like that a unique challenge gets you a unique reward, the timer stages are simply too short. They're completely free and no challenge at all when they last a mere 30 seconds. They should be at least a full minute. Right now you barely even need to interact with them to get your prize.


NUCLEOLUS (ACTIVE SKILL UPGRADES)

These are a nice touch, but a few of them are just not pulling their weight and need buffs.

Charged Boulder - this is awkward to use and doesn't do anywhere near enough damage to justify how wonky it is.

Protective Pond - Completely outclassed by Stone Skin. Why take less damage in a certain area when I can take zero damage wherever I go?

Jetpack - Outside of some very niche builds this is just plain never worth taking. It should have a damage effect on it like Slasher's Fast Clone evolution.

Lightning Storm - Random is bad. Make it target enemies and then we're cool.



(continued......)

[Luminaire7]

MUTATIONS

The new mutations are very welcome, and I do very much like the rebalance where they will scale off of your deflect or health stat instead of everything just scaling off attack. While attack is still, and will always be, the most important stat, this does a lot to even out the playing field. However, I would like to see the damage numbers on screen also reflect the source they're attached to. I.E. Attack-based effects do red numbers, deflect-based damage is blue numbers and health based damage is green numbers. This would be a nice QOL touch to make it more clear to the player how their build works, when certain effects go off and what powerups are doing what instead of just seeing a pile of all-red numbers that overlap each other constantly.


RED MUTATIONS (ATTACK)

Bolstered Strike - Decent but becomes crazy good on certain characters. This is right where it needs to be.

Homing Laser - Is red now. Still very good.

Link - Seems to have been nerfed significantly. It's just ok now. Requires level ups to be worth it.

Unstable Cells - Was good. Still good.

Disc Orbit - Still good.

Spiral Strike - still good.

Offensive landing - still good.

Guided Projectiles - All the "do X on active skill" mutations have now been pushed out of relevance by opportunity cost of the new build system. Despite being buffed a lot back when the mutation grid was a thing, only having 7 slots means these should almost always be ignored because of how infrequently they actually help you compared to the other mutations that are always relevant. They require some new buff to keep up, maybe also they can reduce the number of deflects it takes to charge your active skill? Or should that be a new mutation on it's own?

Projectile storm - this used to be insane, broken even, but now it's pretty meh. The damage is less, the timer on it is kinda long, and upgrading it only makes it hit more enemies. I think upping the damage from 80 to 100 and having upgrades reduce the timer on it instead would be a good idea.

Bones From Above - "Do X when you run out of dashes" is a neat mechanic, and this is a niche but useful mutation.

Electrical Storm - The restrictions on getting this to proc make it very inconsistent and difficult to test, but it really doesn't seem worth it. It does nothing against bosses, and only rewards you for already being very powerful, it does basically nothing to help you BECOME powerful. The "kill 2 enemies quickly" thing should really be changed to something else, maybe hitting multiple enemies at once?

Impale - Good in theory, but it's just too weak. 30 base damage is far too little for how infrequently this will activate in a game about being swarmed by tons of enemies all the time. This should reward you for isolating a target or be a help in fighting bosses, right now it's numbers are just too low.

Death Mark - New and interesting but.....just ok. The reward feels too low for the effort it takes to utilize this. Could use a buff I think.

Bouncing Star - It's new and it's great. Very useful.

Blossom - Oh hey powerpuff girl references. This is ok. I wish it fired a bit more often but it's not terrible.

Hunters's Call - Too weak. For something that only helps you against bosses, the current boost (about 7%) really doesn't feel worth it. I would say make it at least 10%, maybe 15%.



BLUE MUTATIONS (DEFLECT)

Virus Bullets - Was good. Still good.

Piercing Bullets - were buffed to do more damage the more stuff they hit. Definitely better now, still just decent overall.

Deflect Burst - Was decent, still decent. Could maybe use a small damage buff.

Minefield - was decent, still decent. Only one of the "random stuff" mutations to stick around, which is fine because it was the best one.

Lightning Strike - Is blue now. Still good.

Deflective Weapon - also blue now, as it should have been. Still just ok since you can't really adjust your playstyle to utilize it, it's just a random save roll you sometimes get.

Deflecting Turret - Definitely much better than it used to be, however, 8 deflects is still just way too many, and this just doesn't go off nearly often enough to be worth it. The number of deflects needed still really needs to be reduced. 5 or 6 seems fair.

Bone Claw - Is blue now. Good.

Long Barrel - Is also blue now. Good.

Repulsive Wave - This was the worst of the "on active skill" mutations from before, and they are definitely the biggest victim of the new build system, which makes this basically worthless now.

Deflecting Wave - Eehh. It's subpar still. It does a deflect as a reward for you doing a good deflect...which you don't need.....because you just did a good deflect. It fixes a problem you don't have and thus is rarely relevant to you.

Fast Deflect - this takes some getting used to, and I'm not a huge fan of the deflect having to be immediately after the dash, but the damage payoff is big and this can be fun to get the hang of. Not amazing but better than I initially thought it was.

Explosive Bullets - These are new and they're amazing. Thanks.

Bubbles - The blue cubes are now orbs. Still does the same thing....still pretty meh as they are again just an occasional save roll you can't rely on. At least this one doesn't twerk.

Root Growth - The damage upgrade is huge (2.5x), which can make for a few cool plays, but a most of the time it's just not worth it, plus it's massively held back by the fact that 2 of the 4 levels have deflectable objects that don't do damage at all, making this very useless.

Charged Discs - These are.....awkward. Really awkward. The payoff seems solid since you get a big aoe attack with nice damage, but the cost of going long periods of time without doing.....the thing the game is named after.....is a cost you just can't afford to pay, especially when you really don't know how long it takes for it to reach full charge, so you're just guessing at it while hamstringing yourself. This one could be useful but needs some strong buffs/QOL changes.



GREEN MUTATIONS (HEALTH)

Shield Bullets - Was just ok. Still just ok. Still better than deflecting wave.

Deflective Swiftness - Not terrible, but completely outclassed by Fast Dash.

Root Strike - Has been reworked, but still one of the better green mutations.

Instant Shield - This does work on deflecting your own stuff, so it's better now and decent on certain characters. Otherwise not worth it.

Explosive Metabolism - This now does damage....a LOT of damage. Big Fat 300 D's. As much as I don't like rewards for screwing up (getting hit), the ability to turn the tables this hard is pretty tempting. Could easily become a crutch to newer players. Might actually need to be nerfed a bit. (300 damage down to 200 would still be very respectable).

Decoy - Now totally outclassed by explosive metabolism, this has always been pretty meh. Not the worst thing but there are just so many better options. I feel like this would be better as part of a new character's kit rather than a random mutation.

Electroshield -Yay. It got the changes I wanted. Definitely better now and a decent defensive option to pick up early in the run.

Survival Armor - Eh. Obviously better later in the run when there are more enemies, but then becomes useless against bosses. The situational-ness of it really hurts it's viability.

Protective Deflect - This is bad. It rewards you for doing well and THEN making a mistake, but actually it hardly does anything at all since it resets when you dash, which is......extremely confusing and singlehandedly turns this from weak to garbage. It should not reset on dashing, period.

Protective Dome - See above comments on "do X on active" mutations, though this is probably the best one of them.

Fast Dash - This is S tier. Always take.

Extended Immunity - Terrible. Only prevents sheer catastrophe. Taking this is a raw display of your own lack of confidence. Git Gud.

Cleaning Wave - Turns strong offense into strong defense. Actually not bad at all but gets outclassed hard by a certain purple mutation.

Swiftness Steal - It's ok. Fast Dash and Deflective Swiftness are better at doing the same thing.

Speedrunner - Sounds neat but for the life of me I can barely notice the speed boost. It shouldn't be too much because you don't want to lose control of your character, but right now it's just too weak and its' effects are barely noticable.

Buttercup - I'll tell you this right now, Buttercup would never choose to play the healer. That being said, this is probably the best of the "save roll" type of mutations, but still just ok overall.



PURPLE MUTATIONS (SPECIAL)

Overcharge - has been buffed and nerfed over the course of development. Is currently in a pretty good spot.

Spinning Dash - has also been changed repeatedly, and is also in a pretty solid spot right now.

Tesla Orb - Still one of the best mutations in the entire game. Bonkers good.

Bomb Orbit - Still great.

Walking Tesla Coil - Still great.

Protective Wall - This and medkit are the worst purples by far.

Shield Master - Pretty nice, actually. This is an auto-take on Gunslinger.

Punisher - Seems to do a lot less damage than before, still decent.

Energy Wave - Very good, though it is odd it scales off attack instead of deflect stat.

Spike Armor - Is purple now. Niche but very useful on melee characters.

Clear Landing - This is what invalidates cleaning wave. This is fun to use, allows you to play extremely aggressive and is also crazy strong.

Blood Extraction - At lv1 this is ok and a decent grab early. At lv2+ this will keep you at full HP for literally the entire run.

Clean Zone - This has been noticably nerfed since I last saw it. The damage is still nice but the size of the aoe has been restricted so much. It is now way harder to get and to keep it at a large size, to the point that even for melee characters who should love this still tend to struggle with it. It really should be buffed a bit.

Portable Medkit - .....Not good at all. The fact this doesn't HELP with healing but REPLACES the healing you would get from heal rooms is not good, and while the idea is that you would then pick other rewards from the map instead of being forced to heal to survive, the fact is that there are lots of times the path you want to go happens to include a heal room anyway, which means you are actually being hurt by taking the path you want. This really shouldn't shut off healing rooms and punish you for using them.

Bliss - Literally just Blossom but way better. Extremely good.

Corpulence - It's new. It's also stupid good. The ability to stack HP and get consistent damage is extremely powerful. This is top tier for sure.


(continued.....)

[Luminaire7]

SPECIMENS
New characters and new reworks lets go.



ERADICATOR

(Has PTSD flashbacks of Eradicator Beta damage glitch)
Having had very few changes since the last time I saw him, there isn't much to say about the "default" character of the game that I haven't said in previous posts. There is new evolution mechanic, though, which is cool.

Growing Boomerang - Just doesn't seem that great. It takes a long time to build up and the size increase isn't that much. Could use a buff.

Side Boomerang - Same as before. Good.

Quick Boomerang - New and neat. I like it.

Linked Bomerang - New and neat. I like it. Seems a bit weak though. Maybe a small damage buff is in order. (15 -> 20 damage)

Explosive Boomerang - Also new and also neat, however it really seems to fall short. The damage and aoe, while nice, just plain take too damn long to happen for this to feel rewarding, which also forces it into being way too situational to be relied on. Having the explosion happen every other bounce instead of every 3 bounces would make this feel way better.



SLASHER

Slasher has gotten a rework while I was away, and in general I like where he's going, though I MUST mention how badly the sword throw functions right now with not having a minimum charge time, causing you to constantly throw it by accident and waste your rage. (I have been told this will be fixed though).
While the rage mechanic is neat and his active is much better than before, there is the issue that having the rage be spent by deflecting is extremely counterintuitive to his kit. The point of spending rage by throwing the sword this that you get a "reward" of a good ranged attack by playing melee for a while, which is fine, but deflecting is something you HAVE to do in this game, and do it often, if you want to survive. This means that going long periods of time to build up rage without deflecting is just not viable in the later levels, and your deflect button and attack button feel like they are constantly fighting with each other instead of working together. Almost every deflect feels like a "waste", especially since 0 rage throws do 0 damage. I would recommend that rage only applies to the sword throw, or that it gets changed to be spent in some other way than deflecting. You could reduce the amount of rage attacking gains but have deflecting also gain rage, there are plenty of possible solutions, but the current way it works is highly contradictory.

Rage Control - Helps with resource management. Currently useless because of sword throw issues.

Sky Sword - Without question his best evolution. Massive upgrade to his basic attack. Might actually need to be toned down a bit with how much it outclasses the other options.

Powerful Spin - Currently useless because of sword throw and rage mechanic issues. After changing the rage mechanic this could still be buffed and kept in for the people who still like trying to save up rage for a deflect.

Triple Sword - Is good.

Fast Clone - Cool, fun, and useful. No complaints.




GUNSLINGER

This character has had a bit of a rework, and most of it is good.....most. I previously advocated to buff his turrets and his deflect, and both have been done, which is great. HOWEVER, he still has one major issue. While he lost the strict negative of his battery mechanic, his new mechanic is also a strictly negative thing rather than a buff like everyone else's special trait is. Sure, you can hold the deflect button down and walk around with a wall up, but your weapon damage goes WAY down when you do that, and his deflected bullets only do 30 damage compared to everyone else's 50. I get that the idea is "making deflect super easy = make deflect weaker to balance it", but the easy deflect wall really doesn't mean much when you are kneecapping your own damage in two separate ways to do that (not to mention slasher still has the best deflect). This makes Gunslinger into a "newbie" character who is designed to act like training wheels and be dropped as soon as you know what you're doing. Shooting slower is enough of a detriment alone to keep the wall up, you don't also have to make his deflected bullets weaker. This also makes investing in his deflect stat basically pointless, since you get so little return on your investment. (This also applies to his low health stat as well, which means you basically have no reason to boost anything but his attack stat). Just make his deflect shots do 50 damage like the rest of the cast and we're cool.

Turret Protection - Not Bad.

Split Shooting - More bullets = less problems.

Explosive Bolts - seems odd that a dash-themed powerup is on the character with the least dashes, but it's still decent. Maybe buff it and make it work when you run out of dashes instead? That would make more sense.

Bolstered Bolts - These are great.

Area Shoot - .....In concept, this is fine, but the fact that it nerfs your damage in exchange for the small aoe is really unnecessary, especially since gunslinger has low damage to begin with. Just make it do your regular damage.




SPARK

And now we're onto the ladies of the lab, and I've got some things to say about them. Spark has been reworked significantly, and while I overall like the changes, she still has a few issues to address. Turning her old active into her basic attack and giving her a bigass laser for a new active is cool, but the way she currently interacts with powerups makes optimizing her and learning to play her well a huge guessing game. She basically has 2 main builds: You either go all in on expanded orbit (and totally ignore deflect/active skill), or you go all in on her orb deflect/recall mechanic (and totally ignore orbit/active). Each form of attack has a couple of mutations that synergize with it EXTREMELY well and cause the "best" way to play the character to drastically swing on a moments notice, or leave you constantly unsure of which button will get you the best DPS.
The orb deflect build has the advantage of double-dipping your damage from your deflect stat (since they hit on the way out and back), and has deflect-powered mutations you want like bone claw, which is great and I actually like that a lot about Spark, but since you then ignore her attack stat, the orbit mechanic and her active fall completely to the wayside and are basically useless the entire run.
By comparison, the orbit build takes more investment to get going, but with the right mutations/evolutions you become a 1-button blender god who wins by literally just walking around. And since you cannot deflect at all while orbit is on, there is literally no point to investing in your deflect button at all. Her active is also then outpreformed by the blend-o-matic you've become, so there's little need to ever use it.
Note how in either of her best builds, her active, while better than before, is still basically never used. This comes from the core issue with it. Lets compare:

Eradicator Active - Augments basic attack
Lightfist - Augments basic attack
Gunslinger - Passive extra damage
Slasher - instant burst damage
Spark - REPLACES ALL OTHER FUNCTIONS. CANNOT ATTACK. CANNOT DEFLECT. CANNOT PROC MUTATIONS.

Because of this, her active is doomed to become useless unless it can consistently be better than doing any of the other things she could be doing. The instant orbit + unstable cells does more damage than the big laser, why would you ever touch that button again? Fortunately, this is easy to fix. Just make that laser strong enough that it is always worth it.
The way she is now, it would take another rework to fix her "build A or build B" issue, but it's honestly not that big a deal to have one character who works like that and requires a knowledge check to be good with. It IS a big deal, though, to have a super move that's not super and to feel like doing the big cool thing is a mistake. And thus this one simple buff should put Spark where she finally deserves to be:

- Spark active skill damage increased 100 -> 120
- Spark active skill now scales off combined attack and deflect stats
Ok that was two buffs. Sue me.


Unstable Orbs - Great.

Orbs Expansion - Vital for Orbit builds.

Far Charged Orbs - I hated Spark Gamma, but these are a lot more tolerable now.

Powerful Orbs - Also vital for orbit builds.

Skillful Orbs - Garbage. This actually hurts you. It takes way too long for them to speed up and in the meantime you cannot deflect to defend yourself at all. If you're doing an orbit build, the other two orbit evolutions are far better. Without also having orb expansion this is not even close to worth it for the risk you take. This is only viable when you are late in your orbit build and only ever need to push the attack button once per room.




LIGHTFIST

The new kid in town, lightfist is neat and I swear I can SMELL the league of legends kit design on her. That being said, her kit is really fun to use, you have a lot of options and are rewarded for using them all, plus she has damage that scales off all 3 stats, which is unique among the cast. However, she also feels very wonky and unpolished and is currently easily the weakest character to use. She has a number of big problems to address...
First, she has the worst deflect in the game. The charge up mechanic is thematic and neat and all, but even if you don't charge it, it comes out slow and clumsy and leaves her open. This is supposed to be made up for with her gimmick of shoving enemies into objects for big damage, which would be a totally fair trade, except the whole mechanic literally just doesn't work. The game is VERY picky about what counts as an obstacle. Stage borders? No. Other enemies? No. Big objects on the edge of the stage? Sometimes. Big objects in the middle of the stage? Usually but not always. This makes her "crash damage" mechanic horrendously unreliable, unfun and frustrating to use, and sticks her with a bad deflect for no tradeoff at all.

Problem 2 is that her numbers are just too damn low to be spread out the way they are. Sure, it's cool that you have 3 main sources of damage (main attack, deflect, marks) that each scale off a different stat, but she should be baseline as strong as the other characters and then get rewarded with higher-than-average power for utilizing her full kit, allowing her to eventually outscale the rest of the cast by being able to invest in 3 stats for damage instead of 1 or 2. However, her base numbers are currently so low that she is below average as a baseline and has to work super hard just to keep up to normal strength. It also means that it REQUIRES investment in multiple stats for her to see results in damage output that other characters get with fewer powerups. This is then further compounded by the fact that of her 3 sources of damage, one of them just doesn't work (the crash damage) and the other (the marks) cannot be consistently utilized for full results in the later levels. It takes a lot of extra time and effort to proc all 3 marks on an enemy, mark them again, proc them again, and then have to do this to a whole mob of enemies one at a time. That is time and effort you don't have the luxury to spend in late game when you are being swarmed by tons of enemies. This means that her only CONSISTENT damage source is her basic attack, which is much weaker than the other characters'. Because of all this, while Lightfist seems solid in the first stage, she falls off in the later stages VERY hard and has an extremely difficult time keeping up with the rest of the characters.
Her third major problem is a very simple fact: She is a short range, single target character in a shmup game where you get swarmed by waves of enemies that shoot at you. This isn't automatically bad, but it further compounds the other problems she has and makes them that much worse. Slasher is short range, but has big aoe attacks and extra mobility. Gunslinger is single target, but has long range to say safe and has 4 evolutions that fix his single target problem while Lightfist has 2. If a character like Lightfist is going to exist in a shmup-style game, the idea that they outscale and outdamage the other characters is basically required for them to make up for their weaknesses. Because of all this, playing as Lightfist forces you to center your build around things that "fix" her. Instead of getting stuff that emphasizes her strengths, you have to prioritize things that try to cover for her many huge problems, which is not a fun experience. To try to repair this, she needs some notable buffs:

- Stage walls and other enemies now count as obstacles. Shoving enemies into something will always deal damage. You could even have something like:
- Shoving into other enemies deals 100 damage to each enemy.
- Shoving into stage walls will deal 150 damage
- Shoving into big objects (not walls) deals 200 damage.
(in any case the point is her crash damage gimmick needs to friggin' work)

- Fully charged deflect fist is now bigger/wider.
- Health increased 120 -> 140
- Mark damage increased 40 -> 50
- Basic attack damage increased 65 -> 80
- Boosted attack increased 160 -> 180

Running Punch - This is her best evolution by a mile. It's fixes a lot of her problems and is absolutely REQUIRED to take. Not taking this is literally a mistake. She NEEDS it.

Ghost Fists - This is her next best evolution. Pretty good because, again, it fixes her problem.

Expansive Collision - Would probably be great if her collide gimmick actually worked. But it doesn't so neither does this.

Multiple Strike - This isn't good. Utilizing it requires awkward setup and tedious playing that she doesn't have the luxury of doing in the late game. This should at least also increase the damage the marks do for it to be usable. As it is now it's just a waste of time.

Weak Point - This is actually bugged and doesn't work properly. It would probably be pretty good if it did, but I've tested this several times and it seems that if you don't space out your attacks a few seconds apart, the marks will not proc correctly. The first mark works fine, the 2nd mark will be consumed but will not deal any damage, and the 3rd one will sometimes deal normal damage and sometimes deal none. As it stands Lightfist actually only has 2 "useable" evolutions. Running Punch and Ghost fist are good, but Weak Point and Expansive Collision don't work and Multi Strike is just bad. Please help this poor girl.

[Luminaire7]

OTHER STUFF

There are a lot of typos I've noticed in the current version of the game, particularly with the text on the mutations.

The electric orb challenge says the orbs "wander" around the room. They do not.
Link, Spinning Dash, Bomb Orbit, Bones from above, deflecting wave, fast deflect, impale, charged discs, bubbles (also when you upgrade bubbles), corpulence all have typos in their tooltip text.
Deflective Edge and Multi-Slash in Slashers tooltips have typos.


BUGS

- Choosing "give up" while on the stage map always crashes the game.
- Spiral Strike will never activate against certain enemies like the Entrails boss and the final boss.
- Impale has the same problem.
- Lightfists weak point evolution doesn't work properly. It will consume marks but not deal damage. (stated earlier)
- Slashers triple sword evolution constantly makes a big visual glitch across the screen.
- Gunslinger's turrets will sometimes fail to target enemies that are right next to them.
- The snake midboss in toxic sea cannot be targeted by certain things when laying on the ground after doing it's slam attack. (turrets, slasher active, other things)


IN CONCLUSION

Overall, the game is much better now than a year ago and I hear the full release is next month. I'm looking forward to seeing it, but it's clear there is still some work to do in the last few weeks to make sure the game is as good as it should be on release. So far thought, the dev crew has been doing a pretty good job of listening to feedback, so I'm definitely optimistic about where the game will go from here. Thanks for reading yet another big ass post of mine. Have a good night and remember to pet your Oogles.
(weeps for no corgi skin).... :'(