Obligatory Life Update During the Crisis

Greetings everyone! I hope you're all well. I'm sure many of you are wondering where the new levels are this month. I'm afraid there will not be any new levels this month. These past two months have rocked the world, and I'm afraid my life has been no exception. Luckily, Covid-19 has not impacted my life in any irreversible way, I'm happy to report that no one in my immediate group of friends and family have contracted the virus. With that said, my work situation has changed, and it has altered my ability to work on the game at the same pace I used to. To pile on top of that, my fiancée and I are in the process of moving to a new apartment, which has also taken up much of my time in April, and will certainly take up my time in May as well while we actually move our stuff to the new place.

So, What's New With The Game?

First let me first assure you all that while I've gotten less work done on the game than I'd like, the game is still progressing very nicely. I've been taking your feedback to heart, and implementing some changes which I believe you'll all enjoy! The largest piece of feedback I've been tackling has been a complete rework of Adventure Mode.

With this rework, the game is no longer going to have the player run through full chapters in one go, instead, the player will move from one level to the next one at a time. When they beat a level, that unlocks the next level. When you beat all the levels, it unlocks the next chapter. In addition, all beaten chapters will be playable in "Marathon Mode", in which the player can run through all the levels in one go, much like Adventure Mode's current iteration. Lastly, if the player collects all of the gems in a level, it will unlock the "hard mode" version of that level for play.

In order to accommodate this change, we've been hard at work recreating the entire Adventure Mode menu from scratch. There's still quite a bit of work to be done to get this to 100%, but the core functionality works! Here's a sample of what the new Adventure Mode looks like at this exact moment.

Leaderboard Reworks

You'll notice one of the biggest changes to the menu is the newly changed leaderboards section. I've completely reworked the Leaderboards to show more than just who's #1 at everything. Leaderboards now come in 3 flavors.

• Nearby Scores: Shows the 5 scores that are closest to your own, giving you a more attainable goal to reach than just the top score. This is the default tab that shows.

• Top 5 Scores: Shows the top 5 scores for that level, whether you're in them or not.

• Friends Scores: Shows the top 5 scores among all of your friends.

Each leaderboard contains an Any% and 100% variant, so you can try to dominate both sides of the leaderboards!

Does This Game Have a Story?

Easily one of the things I'm asked the most with Cloak and Dasher is "Why am I doing this?". I'm happy to say that with this rework to Adventure Mode, my artist and I have also nailed down a story for the player to progress through. This story will be told through "chapter images" which will be associated to each chapter. As you unlock new chapters, the images will tell the story of Cloak's adventure to seek an ancient treasure. In addition, some levels will have environmental clues to help you understand what's going on. I think this is a great way to allow players to enjoy the game at it's intended pace, while still presenting the players with a story. In addition, in the future, I'd like to include more info about the world and its inhabitants through unlockables by completing 100% runs of the game. Stay tuned for more info on this!

When can I expect the next update?

In all honesty, I don't have a straight answer to this. I'm hoping for things to normalize in my life sometime between the end of this month and the beginning of next month. Hopefully, I'll have some sort of update for you all before then, but I really don't want to promise anything right now. Now is were we get into the heavy stuff, so I suggest you skip the next paragraph if you don't want yet another Covid talk.

We're all in uncharted waters around the world right now, and I believe it's everyone's top priority to take good care of themselves and those around them, both physically and mentally. One thing that's been slowing my work recently is I've been making more time to do game sessions with my friends, in order to keep all of our spirits up now that we can't see each other anymore. I feel guilty about doing this after I've made a promise to you all to get levels out each month, but I hope you can understand why this is important. In fact, consider this my call to action for you all. Please make yourself available to those important in your life. We're all in this together, and your friends and loved ones need you now more than ever, whether it's for a phone call, video chat, or a online gaming session. Some people have a harder time in isolation than others, and you could be the one to pull them out a a funk they themselves don't even know they're in.

Thank you so much for your continued support. Please everyone, stay safe, stay healthy, and stay positive.

See you on the other side,
Kevin