Ups and downs (8/1)

Not sure if anyone noticed, but I missed my bi-weekly devlog two weeks ago. Sorry about that, for a variety of reasons I didn't have much to share at the time and I apologize, I'll try not to make a habit of going silent without warning.

As for this update, I have bad news and good news. The bad news is that I wanted to release a new build today, but I'm going to have to delay it by one week due to IRL stuff getting in the way. But the good news: When that build does come out, it'll finally bring with it something I imagine players have been missing for a while: the proper return of Maya's inflated form, and with a brand new ability to go with it

Now when holding the jump button while inflated, Maya will start charging up move where she deflates all at once and launches herself high in the air. This is an ability I've been wanting to give her for a while, I always felt it'd be nice if there was an easier way for her to deflate from full and this felt like the perfect way to do it. And I'm happy to say that it is just about as fun as it looks to pull off, adds a nice amount of depth to the form that wasn't there before being able to choose between many small jumps or one huge one.

Additionally if you look closely, you might spot one other movement option that wasn't in the previous demo: Maya can flap her wings by tapping the jump button, and slow her decent much more than she would just by holding the button.

This change is a lot smaller, but makes her aerial movement much more precise than it used to be, allowing her to carefully descend and chose exactly where she wants to land. And it improves her ability to convert falling speed into running speed even more than before, which is always fun. Both of these features are things that I had wanted to add before reintroducing this form into the game, and I'm glad to finally be able to bring this rework forward now that things like the level editor are mostly sorted. Been working on other things as well, like this cloud platform that can be bounced off of to gain more height, especially when fat (this one took a stupid amount of time to get right).

Hoping to get all this stuff and more fully ready to play by next week when I'll do a build for real this time. As for what'll come next, well...

I've been thinking, with inflation added to the game, that'll be more or less every feature from the original release brought back in this new version. So with that in mind, it might be time to finally release the game publicly again. I'm still trying to figure out how I want to go about it so bear with me for a bit, but my current plan is that the build I release next week will be made public exactly one month later, with more minor changes and a focus on polish based on feedback rather than adding new content. And in exchange for supporting me up until this point and not getting an exclusive build of the game, current patrons can have their names included in the credits, the opportunity to provide direct input on what the public release should look like, and potentially even the chance to have your levels featured in that release.

That last bit I'm still not sure about, since I don't know how much you guys are interested in making these levels (and tbh I still need to test the editor more myself), but it's an idea I've been toying around with and would love to hear if people are interested. But yeah, even if it's not next month I'm definitely planning a public release sooner rather than later. And don't worry, I'll still be doing a monthly exclusive build too as next month I'll be going back to A Suki Game to get that ready for release as well. Lots of stuff to look forward too so I hope you guys are excited!

Also uh...
personal note at the end where I'm sure most stopped reading: I got sick over a month ago around the time I released the last build. And every day since I've been constantly blowing snot out of my nose even though I'm not even sick anymore. Shit sucks lol, so much time wasted blowing that could've been spent gaming/game making...