Ok, where to begin? It’s been nearly half a year since I updated the build but I’ve been working steadily on things since. Straight from my basement to your home, here comes version 1.03.

What’s new in 1.03?
– Player knockback. Taking damage triggers a knockback state.
– Player firing has some limits depending on the character. You may notice it more if you’re standing on a ledge firing bullets into a pit (bullets are on screen longer).
– Each world has a miniboss and world boss now. I left the original world bosses as world bosses and new minibosses are intermediate within worlds.
– Some old bosses may have gotten a health boost.
– Screenshake effects added in some instances for when impactful things happen.
– Worlds are longer, more rooms to them. These may get longer still.
– There are now ladders and jump through / drop through platforms. Adds some much valued variety!
– Added some checkpoints. If there are too many I may remove some. I’ve felt like dying and needing to retry a world from the start is kind of arbitrary difficulty for a while.
– Transitioning between rooms has a visual effect and looks less abrupt/choppy.
– New music for Bloody Mansion and Mystic Ruins (I keep calling it Forgotten Stonehenge accidentally)!
– Unlockable characters! There are three hidden in the game so far (look for hidden or not hidden pink doors). You need to find them and win your run to successfully unlock, but then the unlock should stay persistently. Unless you reset your unlocks (you can if you wish…) Unlocks save separately from your configs.
– Control config saving may have never worked properly, but I think I fixed it this week.
– Separate music and sound effect mute toggles. Should save with config.
– 1 hp mode toggle if you want to be wild and go for a no hit run…
– I might be missing something else still. It’s been a loooong time, gradually adding updates. If I remember anything critical to mention I’ll append some stuff to this.

Some things that are missing still / need improvement:
– Some tile placement around levels can be a little patchy. Still needing to fill in walls and things so everything looks solid.
– I need to do a big sound effects pass throughout. Some things may be temporarily quiet and lacking some flavor.
– Still no achievements or trading cards. Looking at that soon. Achievements will probably get implemented last so they can be built around the fullest frame of content in the final build.
– New characters yes, but the endings are all Pumpkin Man endings. This should change.
– I haven’t extensively tested the secondary characters attacks. They’re fun and all generally more powerful or interesting than Pumpkin Man’s candy corn shot. I’m intending them to be fun NG+ options to play around with, plus the character skins add some fun variety. BUT, if anything seems grossly unbalanced or terrible let me know. Open to revisions.
– The controls text on the title screen doesn’t reflect changes to your keyboard configs. I’m probably going to remove this.
– No gamepad config as of yet. It’s not awesome, but the keyboard config setup plus JoyToKey might be a robust option for people without an xbox form factor gamepad.
– Finish up world 4, finish up world 5.

With all the updates in 1.03 this represents roughly half of what I have planned for the final game (maybe a little bit more). I have some world 4 and 5 content already in the works and maybe we can wrap things up before Halloween 2016. I’m sprinting, having fun doing it and hope you enjoy what’s getting put into the game!

Please let me know what you think! ESPECIALLY if you are totally new to Halloween Forever and haven’t explored these levels or fought these bosses. I’m very interested to know how much time it takes you to clear the game (rough cumulative gameplay time, vs. how much time your winning run took). It helps me gauge the time-in players are going to get out of this experience. Since the big negative from early feedback was the game was too short for players I really want to address that.

Any bugs or issues you can find too, let me know!

Check out Halloween Forever on Steam Early Access to get the game. If you want a spooky and tough retro platformer to play, Halloween Forever is for you!
http://steamcommunity.com/app/425650

New content efforts have been trucking along nicely and I’m getting close to being able to release a substantial content update to the Steam Early Access version. If you prefer not to have new bosses or content spoiled for you, stop right here! For the rest of you, continue reading…

Level Design Additions for the Graveyard

This is bad when I can’t remember the literal name for a zone in my game! Either way, “World 1” is getting some new rooms and also will be the first place you encounter ladders in the game.

Check out those purple crows! They’re another proximity-check enemy (similar to what I’m doing with chainsaw maniacs and mashers). In doing them I learned a slightly more elegant way to check a distance radius vs. the player instead of doing a wide clumsy sweep for collision (will be helpful for future things.

New Miniboss: Giant Chainsaw Maniac

Here comes the giant chainsaw maniac ready to carve your pumpkin in a most dangerous way! I intended to make him the Graveyard miniboss but he might swap places with big bat to better pace out challenge ramping. It will take a little more testing from people and finding out their first experiences versus him, but so far giant chainsaw maniac seems like a good, tough boss challenge.

Level Design Additions for the Bloody Mansion

Bloody Mansion just screams “give me some cool tricks and traps” to me so I’m trying to oblige. We start to do some fun things with fall away platforms here.

And also there are going to be some nice decisions to make about how best to navigate deadly ladders like this in the same room.

New Miniboss: Two Headed Hydra

The new miniboss for Bloody Mansion is the fearsome two headed hydra!

Careful navigation of the drop through platforms and watching out for floating hydra heads that enter the scene is key here.

Level Design Additions for the Forgotten Stonehenge

I’ve been adding a few different wall tiles and decals to spruce up some of the level locations. The necromancer statues give a fun clue as to who you wind up facing at the end of Forgotten Stonehenge.

New Miniboss: Eyeball Skull

I’m really happy with how the eyeball skull miniboss came out.

Watch out for his giant exploding eyeballs!

Other Improvements and Incoming Features

I’m going to bullet list some of the other things that are going on that don’t necessarily have images to accompany them.

At the end of boss fights, instead of triggering a room transition at the end of the boss death, I’m introducing a new door that players can enter to go when they are ready. This gives me some options for timing and trade offs like creating a power up that players can grab before moving on. In general it just feels better for player agency.

When you transition from room to room, the immediate transition has always bugged me. It’s too snappy and if you start a new room at a different visual position from where you ended in the previous room that can be jarring. I put in a simple graphic transition effect that adds a nice visual break point to moving into a new room. Going to be working on a “walking into a doorway” state for Pumpkin Man to add a bit more polish to events like this.

I started the framework for getting alternate player characters in the game (read: Butternut Bro). It’s going to require a character select menu, new player skins, and wrapping your selects / unlocks into the save file but I want to have the start of this in for the upcoming Steam update. This and wrapping up Forgotten Stonehenge rooms are what I’m working on next.

Hope you enjoyed checking out the updates! Check out Halloween Forever on Steam! store.steampowered.com/app/425650
Also come join me on Twitch when I’m streaming gamedev or playing games! twitch.tv/imaginarymonsters

I wanted to call this “The Dev Blog to End All Dev Blogs” but that wouldn’t be true since I still have more work to do on Halloween Forever. Anyway, here goes! It’s been weeks since I published my last update but lucky for me I have been getting work done at a regular pace. Where to begin?

Blue Demon Boss is done!

Blue Demon Boss is in very good shape. He’s going to be a late game boss and I have his boss room decked out in the purple tiles I’m saving for the last world of the game. He won’t be the final boss though…

From either corner of the room he will either spit moths or do a jump attack (and grab you if he hits you). The trigger spikes and fall away platforms make this the most dynamic boss room in Halloween Forever yet.

Climbable Ladders!

After some research in tutorials and some good refactoring of the player state machine I should have done a year ago, I was able to get climbable ladders in and working.

With ladders plus drop down platforms and fall away platforms it’s feeling like I have a lot more tools to make some interesting level design come together. Even something simple like this long ladder with the fireball spitters feels super fresh to me.

I’d still like to add a couple more platform types if I can swing it. Maybe a conveyor belt (if it makes sense in the context of a world), or moving floating platforms. There may be another trick or two up my sleeve yet.

Frog King Boss

Frog King is the boss of World 4, the Spooky Church. He’s the biggest and fattest of all the frogs that have overrun this swampy abandoned place.

Here’s a small glimpse of some animation process. I sketched out some keyframes for the Frog King’s tongue whip attack. Keeping it loose and dynamic.

After some animation and timing we have the tongue whip attack plus effects ready to go in the game.

Screenshake

This came together pretty quickly. Now I can cause some screenshake to happen thanks to some added flexibility in my camera controller code.

I don’t think my screenshake will work in very small rooms (rooms where there isn’t any margin outside of the navigable level layout) but this seems acceptable to me.

New Spooky Boss Doors

This was another small addition that is going to add a lot. Now doors leading into boss rooms will look more like a setpiece, giving players a heads up that they are about to enter somewhere dangerous!

It’s not shown here, but I’m also in the process of adding checkpoints before boss rooms (similar to something like Mega Man), so if you die at a boss after traveling through what will now be a longer level you don’t need to start over from the beginning. This may change some things but I think it will let me add more real difficulty and challenge to the path that leads to a boss rather than having to restart over as sort of an arbitrary difficulty rule.

What’s coming up?

Next I am going to button up the Frog King boss and try to get the Spooky Church levels closer to final. This means probably adding a few new enemies and also working on another boss (miniboss!) for the Spooky Church. Once Spooky Church is done it can serve as the measure for filling out existing world content (Worlds 1, 2, and 3).

Hope you enjoyed checking out the updates! Check out Halloween Forever on Steam! store.steampowered.com/app/425650
Also come join me on Twitch when I’m streaming gamedev or playing games! twitch.tv/imaginarymonsters