Third Spooky Forest update

Hey all! I'm back with another Spooky Forest update and the release date

The release date I'm aiming for is Sunday the 29th of October. I'll be switching over to focusing on polishing and tweaks after this progress update to make sure everything is as intended. I can't guarantee any more animations beyond what I have now, but you might be wondering what new animation work is coming, so here's the list of new animations:

• - Warp succubus animation (you've seen the teaser)
• - Cow lady animation (you've also seen the teaser for this)
• - Erisia UFO animation of first alien
• - Erisia UFO animation of second alien (teaser below!)
• - Pumpacle entity animation (full animation on socials)
• - Werewolf entity animation
• - Rump animation (small animation)
• - Ghostie entity animation
• - Flying book entity animation
• - Gothic lift animation

And the new areas:

• - Spooky outside forest
• - Pumpacle "maze" below forest
• - Farm / UFO crops
• - Castle (still in progress)

I've mentioned that this part focuses on the rump, and that's the case for everything except the castle. The castle is part of the next update, but it's partially there. I want to do more stuff with the castle and make it more content-dense, but I'm gonna leave it in this update so you all have some more stuff to do.

Teasers

I've added some more physics-based fun in this update - the UFO beam interacts with movable objects like boxes and pulls them up.

I'm also playing around with visuals when Erisia's pink gauge is fully charged - she now has a pink wave VFX. The reason I added that was because I want to make entity animations play a bigger part with gameplay, Erisia's pink waves can now activate things - for example hedges that disappear.

The castle has falling stone blocks that unlock shortcuts.

New difficulty mode

This won't be part of the first Spooky Forest update, but I've been working on an experimental new difficulty mode. This mode reverses animations from draining Erisia's hearts, to giving Erisia hearts. The hearts passively and slowly drain instead, encouraging players to keep doing animations wherever they can. The thing about this is that it changes, for example, the bar into a minigame where you have to keep getting animations from the customers or the minigame will end. Similarly, the floating island might have you stop the island intentionally to regain hearts. It makes the game encourage entity animations more, and can be a fun change for a second playthrough when you're familiar with the game already. It'll require a whole bunch of tweaks specific to this mode, to ensure things make sense gameplay-wise and are balanced appropriately - that's where most of the work is, but the core draining and gaining hearts is already there code-wise.

Next

The castle needs a quest or two added to it. I've been thinking of making the doors in the castle into functional rooms you can enter, much like I've shown off for the train. A quest would likely be tied to a minigame - I've been thinking if trick or treating is something that can be made fun with the mechanics, but it's still to be determined. If you have any spooky/Halloween-y minigame ideas, feel free to suggest!

I showed the train work in the last progress update, it's likely going to be part of the part 2 Spooky Forest update. Where it takes you is to be determined, but I do have some ideas here. The work-in-progress train station is also going to be on the roof of the castle, so once you're done with the castle you've made it to the train - in the future update.

The Pumpacle maze has a split off path that you can't access yet, where you can see some bat ladies, the idea here is that it will take you deeper and into a cave that is very dark and you need a lamp to navigate. This means entities based around and likely interacting with the light and darkness. Maybe spider ladies, shadow-y entities, and whatnot - we'll see :)

Also, in the weeks after the part 1 Spooky Forest release, I'll be working on more tweaks and stuff following feedback from you all - polishing things I didn't quite have the time for, and maybe adding another small quest + animation... maybe the scientist lady has something for you!

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That's this update done! I may or may not make another in between now and release, we'll see - if not, then the next one will be on the 29th of October with the release of the build. See you then!