It's been a while, but here we are again, time to do another round of testing. What's been added to the game is another core area which players will potentially visit during their gameplay. Unlike the tutorial/intro level, the map and the store, which are all core elements that exist independent of the real levels, this one is optional...sort of.
Remember the old arcade games where when you lose all lives you have that "Continue?" screen and you have to insert a coin? Well no coins here (how ironic) but every time you lose all lives you'll get a "Game over. Continue?" popup, and number of available continues goes down. You start with 5. When you get to 0 it's a game over for real...
Actually not, you go to the Underground, which is a sort of difficult level where you need to collect 5 golden leaves to assembly a golden branch, which will resurrect you back to the map with 10 new continues.
There's no boss in this level, only traps and some rare lost souls as enemies. I might add more later, based on the test feedback. Goblin will be in it's ghost form (not even breathing while in idle state) and the environment is cold, washed out of color and sprinkled with some old bones and spiderwebs.
In theory, an amazing player who never loses initial 5 continues will never see the Underground. And someone who dies a lot will see it a lot... which will prompt them to buy a 99 continues upgrade from the clerk at the store (for in-game virtual coins that goblin collects).
What is also new in this build is option to turn on hints, which will show you exclamation marks where there's some action to be done, or question marks where you should look around to find out more. This will also cover existing color-coded halos for keys and chests. Default is turned on, for now.
I've also added an option in the settings/gameplay menu to skip all the popups (level end screen, continue? screen and so on) for potential speed runners, but it's not fully implemented yet and will be tested later. This will basically provide GnC1 atmosphere, where you just glide through without selecting options in in-game menus.