Hey guys! It's been a heck of a long time since I've posted here. The game's not dead or anything, and I've mostly posted occasional progress updates on my Twitter.  In the time since the last update, I've actually started working on One Step From Eden as an artist for icons and other assets (there's a ton of them), so development here has slowed down a bit.

However, I figured I'd give you guys a bit of insight into what I'm doing behind the scenes. I'm not going to show too much off yet as I want this to be a pretty huge rework and enhancement to how the game currently feels to play, as well as finally adding my planned things that can give you tons of replayability out of even one level.

This is NOT a new update, but a look at what's in store. 

TL;DR 

You'll be able to move and fight a ton more fluidly and aggressively, levels are getting much needed reworks in response, you'll be able to customize your experience and there's a ton of other little things. 

Movement

In my honest opinion, movement in the demo is way too jagged. "Jagged", meaning there's a lot of "GO, STOP" between the moves. You "GO" at extreme speed when you dash, only to grind to a halt immediately afterwards. You  perform an attack and all of your natural momentum is gone immediately.  While having "absolute" control of your position this way can be strategic, it ultimately doesn't flow well. If the player dashes or runs fast, they very likely expect to decelerate naturally, same with performing attacks. 

With the upcoming updates, Neon's mobility and physics have been tuned to incorporate momentum into virtually everything they do, so they overall feel much better to play. This alone counts as a fundamental rework, as EVERYTHING, down to the level designs themselves, have to be adjusted to accommodate everything you can do. 

Tons of little extra changes have been made too, and the result is a completely different gamefeel out the gate.

Combat

Combat, like movement, also felt "jagged" (I mean, in part due to the movement), but there have been changes taken to make combat feel even faster and more open to the player. 

Resonance now offers a scaling damage buff to ALL of your attacks. This makes it a ton more effective as a snowball mechanic, and makes it feel useful even when you're not using charge attacks. Speaking of...

Remember those charge attacks you could do? They can all be executed instantly. Charge attacks are now Break Attacks, which are executed by pressing "Dash + Punch + Direction". These cost a dash to use, and don't scale as high anymore, but they also don't deplete your Resonance anymore. Overall, your moveset will functionally be expanded by 4 moves that you can execute whenever you want, rather than having 4 finishing moves that are less viable to throw out.

Speaking of, you still have a charge attack, but its power will scale much more dramatically with your Resonance than it does now. You'll get to see that later. 

Finally, a lot of stuff revolving around movement with your normal/aerial attacks have been addressed too. Just for one small example: That barrage Neon performs on the ground can now immediately chain into its aerial version by jumping. (The barrage now also fires off 10 hits per press so you don't have to strain your finger spamming it)

No dashing required

Oh Neon also has a dedicated forward aerial™ now so the barrage doesn't overstay its welcome. 

Levels

The changes to Neon's movement are actually so fundamental that several levels don't work anymore. With this in mind, the levels after the first one are going to be majorly reworked, if not entirely replaced, to be more cohesive and freer flowing. This is something that needed to be done anyhow, but now it's a straight up requirement. 

The potential of level designs have also expanded thanks to adding sloped tiles (top image), but even those have their bugs that need to be sorted out when going really fast. Tons of backend work going into those, but just their existence makes the level visually feel much less restrictive. 

Customization

There's a reason why your total Nodes persist through levels. That's all I'mma say for now lol. 

Tons more coming along with these changes! I hope you guys look forward to it, and I really appreciate you all's support!