Oh man, lots to share today! I took a bit of a development break at the start of this month and did a ton of planning and preparations for a larger and more robust experience for the game. Let's dive in!

Campaign Mode (kinda)

This is still a very heavy work in progress, but the groundwork is being laid for a campaign mode! This lets you play multiple games and gain ecto, the currency that necromancers use. Ecto can be used to unlock blood or skull tiles between battles and also used to change the composition of your puzzle board. Want less dirt? Spend ecto to get rid of it!

This is still a very barebones system, but it gives you a good idea of where things will progress. Eventually, there will be a map that you progress through in order to fight rival necromancers and grow in power before fighting a boss. Similar to games like Monster Train or Slay the Spire.

I have lots of plans for this system, but I'd love to hear your thoughts on it!

The Ugly UI update

I did a LOT of changes to the UI this time around. Partially because I was getting sick and tired of the flat gray boxes for any kind of interface. I stole my panel image from Death Drives A Bus and just used that everywhere for the time being. It's not a huge improvement, but it's something at least.

I also changed around a lot of the flow of the UI. The main menu flows into the campaign mode. You can change the game's settings from pretty much anywhere in the game now instead of just on the main menu.

It's not great, but at least it's better than how it was. There will be a lot of work still to make everything fit better, but it's a start!

Better Gameplay Accessibility

One of the things a lot of people suggested was to create a much better experience for playing the actual dang game. Now when you select a tile it'll fade out non-valid selections and it will also draw a line for your selection if you want to back it out. It will also give a little blue or gold indication around the tile if you will be collecting mana or evolving a tile when making the match.

It's probably easier to explain with a picture.

Lots of Invisible Updates

I spent an obnoxious amount of time cleaning up the behind-the-scenes stuff. Making the game easier to expand and create content for. Nothing really to list out here, but I just wanted you to appreciate all the hard work that was done. 😎

Other Changes

I covered the big stuff above, but here's some little things:

• Made the check marks for option boxes more obvious
• Added gravestones to the main game as another "junk" tile
• Earn ecto by completing battles
• In the campaign mode, you can customize your crypt by spending ecto
  • Modify the chance of getting certain tile types
  • Unlock Blood and Skull tiles
  • All the mods and game modes into the campaign "Customize your Crypt" area for free (for now!)
• Reduced the hitbox of tiles to make diagonal selections a bit easier
• Tweaked enemy "AI" so they launch larger groups of monsters at a time, but less frequently
• Unlock tiles by spending mana now
• Coins are completely removed, they will come back later :)

I have lots of ideas to keep moving on this, but I'm quite proud of the progress made here. Until next time!