We made it everybody! One day early from the 10/26 release projection too! Anybody who has been playing the game during Early Access and offering feedback, I want to thank you for the help and insight. Especially during the last sprint getting ready for release. I don't think Halloween Forever would be nearly as good as it came out without the assistance.
If you like the game, please tell your family, friends, anyone! Tell your dog. Whisper its name in a pumpkin patch at midnight.
Stay tuned for any new additions to come. If you run into any issues don't hesitate to let me know.
I'm going to be updating store screenshots and the trailer soon. Also Trading Cards and all the associated bits and bobs will be coming soon.
Thank you everyone! YOU RULE!!!
Halloween Forever 1.101 update. F12 screenshots, no more infinite jump
Good morning my creeps,
Small update to Halloween Forever this morning. Steam overlay F12 screenshots should now be supported. Might take a minute for your overlay to initialize and be available. This should work from anywhere in the game, even menus, but keep me posted.
Also I put in a fix to stop you from doing infinite jumps while jumping against a ceiling. Good riddance to bad glitches!
Halloween Forever 1.1 is live. Credits, final release soon
Hey everybody,
1.1 is live! Game credits are in. Also a new enemy in w5. There's still a couple known bugs present but I'll be working on those post launch. I'm waiting on the new price to be approved before I can go live. So let's see how that goes. Thanks all for the help and support. I'll post again once we've launched.
Halloween Forever v. 1.036 now live. Character endings, Blue Devil grabs, small level tweaks
Hey folks!
It's late! I wish I was sleeping like that lazy frog. Here's a weekend update for you.
- Character specific endings are in. Each character has a normal and best (6 rune) ending. They're all sort of similar but each has a different flavor. Especially the best endings. I'm hoping this adds some fun to trying out new characters to complete runs with.
- There is now an achievement for winning the game with Pumpkin Man. Yay!
- Blue Devil's grab attack and throw is also skinned per character. I fixed a bug with BD where the game would soft lock if he died after grabbing you (Butternut and Ms. Witch could do it I think) but there still seems to be a soft lock glitch if he grabs you at the right time that I thought I fixed previously. Looking into this.
- I went through and filled in some outside tiles to better get things looking consistent. Most of the Spooky Church walls are 2 tiles thick since it made more sense to me representing a rickety old church. There's some small new enemy placement in Spooky Church that adds some more slight challenge on the way to Manleech.
- Eyeskuller's eyes have a slightly shorter timer before they start self destruct. Shouldn't be a huge debuff but I'm hoping it can smooth the edge for some people.
- Necroking got some collision tweaks.
- Some ux consistency stuff is making it in (better input prompts at game end, "you got 6 runes!" messaging, etc.) Still some way to go but getting there.
I think that's it for now. Catch you later!
Halloween Forever v. 1.035 now live. Boss tweaks, extra lives. Launching Monday?
Hey all,
New update today. Mostly this has some boss tweaks and a couple other things going on. The details:
- Red Devil and Necromancer, some collision tweaks and turned off their collision while they're warping or re forming. No more telefragging players if you stand where they respawn and get touched by the first pixel of their animation. You can't hurt them while they're reforming either, so it's a little trade off. Feels better and more fair this way.
- Manleech, doesn't run as far when you aggro it with a bullet. The leeches have a slightly lower max speed and their jump height is smaller making them a little easier to jump over while they hatch. The fight can still get out of control if you're careless with your bullets, so watch out!
- Frog King, starts his drop states higher up so he's harder to hit when at the top of the screen. Spawns some fireballs when he lands and also spits a baby frog when he starts doing his tongue attack.
- Now when you visit a unlock coffin room if you've already unlocked a character in your run or you previously unlocked them you will find a 1 up trick or treat pumpkin instead! I'm hoping to hide some more of these around the game too since right now you can only get them from those three rooms. It's possible to die and respawn after a miniboss and go get the 1 up pickup again.
- Victory music after boss fights shouldn't loop anymore.
A couple people have been reporting some inconsistency with achievement unlocks triggering, specifically for winning with Butternut Bro, Ms. Witch, or A Skeleton. Looking into this.
Hoping for Monday 10/24 Release!
Once I get the character endings and a few other small things in I think we'll be ready for release. If the weekend goes well I'm going to try pulling the trigger on this come Monday. This means that the price will go up to $4.99 at that point. If you're following updates and interested in getting the game at the current discounted price, here's your heads up so you can act on it.
If I wind up needing to take longer to release I'll look at the status day to day until 10/26 and treat that as close to a drop dead as I can for launching.
Maybe if I'm very lucky I can sleep in on Sunday! Hope everybody is doing well and that you have some fun Halloween plans afoot.
Halloween Forever v. 1.034 now live. Achievements and more
Greetings ghouls and goblins! Much midnight oil was burned last night to bring you a raft of 30 achievements for Halloween Forever! I wish you luck in completing those you choose to tackle.
On top of achievements, I went through and made a few quality of life balance changes.
- Your health now returns to full at a world start after a boss fight. No more whittling down your hp because you took some hits but otherwise beat a level boss.
- All respawn checkpoints should be in place in the Spooky Church and Porphyry Palace. This includes checkpoints after miniboss rooms and in the rooms before world bosses. If you're still having trouble with any of these not setting properly let me know!
- Unlockable characters now unlock once you've collected their pickup. It's not dependent on you clearing a run. Also I swapped Ms. Witch and A Skeleton's unlock positions since Ms. Witch is pretty powerful. You can still only unlock one per run. While you can get them all quicker now it seems better to give players who are trying to clear the game and finding it challenging to have an intermediate reward. In the future when I have more unlockable characters in this will lead to some fun secret finding (I hope!)
Coming up next I'm working on some boss balance tweaks, custom character endings, and trading cards. I'm hoping to do another pass through Spooky Church and Porphyry Palace level design and enemies before launch as well.
Keep the feedback coming if you have it. It's much appreciated!
Stay spooky, crew!
Halloween Forever v. 1.033 now live. Small updates and fixes
Happy Saturday, folks! There's a new version up (1.033) with some fixes and small improvements.
- Fixed broken level cues stopping players from advancing from world 3 to 4. The full game flow should really work now! : ]
- Some audio cues were broken for w4 and w5. W5 has a rough cut of the Porphyry Palace theme but it sounds nice in there as a placement track.
In doing some test runs with the current length of the game and difficulty I do think I'm going to allow you to unlock characters without clearing a run. You will still be limited to 1 per run but I think they're good as an intermediate reward building up to a game clear. Especially if somebody is having a hard time. I'm seeing them more as being about secret finding during a run than a run based unlock. Not for today but I'll look at getting that in this week.
Also something I'm going to enable in is refilling your health back up to full at the start of a level. It stands out a lot more now with the five worlds and each world being much longer...your health slowly getting whittled down as you go. Should be an easy fix.
Keep the feedback coming if you have something to share! Many thanks everybody!
Halloween Forever v. 1.032 now live. Content complete build
New update today! Now you can play through the full sequence of the game, worlds 1 - 5 start to finish. All bosses are in and getting a character unlock is a little more difficult now because of that. W5 (Porphyry Palace!) is our most vertical world yet, so I'm interested to see what people think of the feel of it so far.
I'm hoping that this doesn't mess up any unlocks users may already have. If you wind up losing unlock history in your save unwillingly let me know and I can try helping you fiddle around in your unlocks .sav file.
Instead of listing off additions I'm going to go through some what's missing that should make it in for final.
- No Steam Achievements yet. Going to start looking at that this weekend.
- W5 still needs some polish and a couple more new and old enemies.
- W4 and W5 bosses might need a little more attention. Frog King is very easy right now.
- There's a known infinite jumping glitch you can trigger if you jump rapidly under a ceiling. Easy to trigger in a handful of places in W5 so I'm going to try to sort that out.
- You can soft lock the W5 miniboss fight if you get caught in the right frames of his jumping animation. Something else I need to sort out.
- Big Blue Demon miniboss needs some custom frames to support new characters too. If he catches you it will show he's holding Pumpkin Man's head right now for all characters.
- W5 music is made but we're waiting for a final cut from Rob Mostyn. What I've heard sounds really good!
- New endings for new characters need to be made.
- Trading cards, etc.
Beta branch is still active in this update for anybody who has access to that. Debug keys may not be available for non western US keyboards though...Indie Luchador and I discovered that this morning! If you don't have beta branch access but would like to, ping me.
If have any issues with the build don't hesitate to let me know!
Halloween Forever v. 1.031 now live
Hey all,
New version with some small updates today.
- Updated the Bloody Mansion music from Rob Mostyn. Turned out I had a rough cut version in. New version has better percussion and the levels match the other music better.
- Cat bullets from Ms. Witch have a smaller firing limit. Also cat bullets had an issue where you could soft lock the game by firing them inside some drop through platforms. This should be fixed.
- The infinite jumping glitch should be fixed!
- Platform collision got a small hierarchy / parenting change. Should be under the hood changes but it's something to keep an eye out for if some new issue comes up from it.
- A few small visual quality tweaks fixing out of place things.
- I enabled an opt in beta branch for anybody interested in some in depth testing. Mostly it's some shortcuts for skipping to specific rooms from the start screen. Also shortcuts to enable locked characters. If you want access to this dm me.
That might be it for now, but I'll circle back if I remember anything essential.
October release plans and future thoughts
Hey all,
It's nearly Halloween 2016! I've gone way past my completion estimate of Summer 2016 at this point, but the end is in sight for Halloween Forever progressing toward final. I still have some work to do but I'm working hard to have the game wrapped up this month. I keep talking to people directly and on Twitch about release schedule stuff but it's time to just make some of these dates public. If all goes well here's what we are looking at:
10/14: Bosses and levels should be content complete by now. This might spill into the weekend. I'll still need to get achievements and a few other characters hooked in at this point. Secondary goal to the 10/14 date is to have a version ready we can send off to reviewers with some time left before release.
10/19: Everything should be mostly finished. Going to try giving myself some time between then and launch for polish and testing.
10/26: Target release day! Just in time for Halloween. This could go live sooner if it turns out we're ready to go early.
On top of dates, Eric Lewis / Indie Luchador is going to be giving me a hand with PR efforts during and after release. This will help me getting the word out a ton.
I wanted to give everybody a heads up over a future price change too. Looking back at my original scope plan for Halloween Forever in Early Access, I'm realizing that I've exceeded that by a bit. For one thing, there are going to be 10 bosses in the final version, not 5. Also the unlockable characters add some fun and variety to replay. So here's the details:
- Halloween Forever will stay 2.99 as long as it's in Early Access.
- When it leaves EA, the price will go up to 4.99 (minus a launch discount)
- If you already have the game, you're all set!
- Timing remains unseen, but I do want to continue adding additional fun stuff to Halloween Forever post launch. The way I make updates will be a little different since it won't be EA anymore. Less sweeping big things and more filling in gaps, adding interest. I have ideas for how I can add in some good new secrets and level branches without disrupting the core flow. Also new character unlocks are very measured and easy to scope in.
I'm daydreaming of a nice Halloween 2017 update but that's so long away from now...
I'm going to work on getting all of the messaging consistent on the Steam pages coming up. Any questions, don't hesitate to reach out. Thanks to everybody who has been checking through the build and communicating bugs and issues back to me. I'm hoping to have an intermediate build or two out in between dates to start addressing things people have been reporting.
