Demo's out, and some updates !

Hey ! So as you might have known by now, we released the demo for Gooey Ghoulies half a month ago. And the reception was very positive ! We had over 30k views and 6 thousand downloads on the first fifteen days ! I wanted to take a bit of time to thank everyone that was able to leave a comment, supported us, or simply downloaded the game and played it !

However, of course, we are not done just yet. That'd be too easy now, wouldn't it ? :-)

Since the demo came out, we gathered feedback from different sources, and we plan on updating the game with theses in mind.

One that came up often was the UI.

Updating the gameplay UI

We're considering updating the gameplay menus to remove a click (The jar will open instantly compared to the demo) when trying to buy a ghost, and add as well powerup items. The player may drag & drop powerups onto the desired ghost for different types of bonuses. Our ideas are either a color outline or an small sprite powerup icon but the latter may make the game too visually noisy. Here's a sketch idea for it and a couple example animations :

Haloes and new Ghosts, new Behaviors

We are also considering ways to make the "enemy" halos less irritating by adding things like a Necromancer Ghoulie to revive them before they exit the screen. We'd also like to change how halos function, albeit we have not decided on a new design just yet.

The Necromancer Ghoulie behavior is already functional, the design sketch and animations will be worked on soon. The Succ Plant has also been added as a special stationary ghoulie that is only submissive. Ses' ghoulified sona Boostard and the Tiger(Sebastian from Fur-Rumble) ghoulies will also be added soon since their animations are complete. Standard behavior ghoulies such as Boostard & Tiger are simple to add but Ecto production metrics and output will need lots of tweaking and testing to tune correctly.

New victory conditions and technical stuff

We have added new victory conditions for advanced levels. In an attempt to raise your heart rate a little bit, we have added a "Collect X ecto within Y minutes" and a survival mode, that needs you to have a least X ghosts remaining at the end of the timer, all the while being assaulted with halos, and possibly new mechanics :-)

Many users have reported the main menu button being annoying to click. That has now been fixed, and will be published on the next version.

Finally, we have made public the Trello board we've been using for the game's development. Feel free to take a look to follow the game's progress ! You can also upvote on cards that you'd like to be worked on in priority. (https://trello.com/b/PIYl3Bni/ghostgame )

New version of the game, when and where ?

We have yet to decide when we want to upload new versions of the game. Since both me and Ses have been working on the game on our free time so far, it's hard to give a definite update schedule, especially since this is not the only project that I am working on right now, but we will do our best to keep you informed. And the best way to be informed about the game is on Ses' Discord that's linked in his Patreon. Feel free to ask questions and stuff over here as well !

As for where, we have yet to decide. The demo we published is free, of course, and we do plan on keeping the final release free, or at a very low price point. For in-development builds, we will probably post them on Ses' Patreon.  (Feel free to take a look : https://www.patreon.com/SesVanbrubles/posts)

Again, we are working on this game during our free time, and we couldn't do it without all of your support.

Thank you for your support and feedback !