Minor graphical improvements, including visible gridlines on water tiles to make many of the levels easier to "visualize" and navigate.
Streamlined quite a few levels, especially post-World 3. The solutions aren't necessarily more obvious or simplified, but they're easier to carry out once you've figured out how to solve them.
Happy squaring!
DLC de-listed from purchase -- for now
Until the DLC is verified to work (i.e. to unlock the next 80 levels), the option to purchase it has been disabled.
Again, although this is an Early Access game, it's not exactly fair to purchase something only to find out that (at least at the time you purchased it) it's literally nothing other than a checkbox on your Library page. It's sort of like a pre-order, but still... nah. We still don't want to do that.
If you've already purchased it, your license will still be valid when it's verified working and released into the wild again. Not many of you are affected by this, but if you are and would like a refund we'd be happy to accommodate.
ver 03/16/2019 - A pretty big music update
New music for Worlds 2 and 3. And others!
There are seven tracks in total so far. One or two (or seven?) are still rough around the edges.
The tracks that were used in Worlds 2 and 3 are now used later in the game. But if you're impatient for a working DLC and want to listen to those tracks now, try Features > Music Test.
The DLC's up. But PLEASE read before checking it out!
Full disclosure.
The DLC has been released, but keep in mind that it's DLC for a game that's still in Early Access. The base game may have bugs associated with reading the DLC in the first place.
We'd recommend holding off on purchasing until it's confirmed to, you know, actually work.
ver 03/12/2019 - Slight tweaks
First, the official release date's going to be postponed for a few months. At some point, we're going to start casting an even wider net for feedback; and we want to allow some time for that.
That's good news, mostly, because the paid part of the game is discounted during Early Access. Hooray!
Second, this version includes:
Title screen animation
Menu layouts matching features to be included, even if just as placeholders
Reintroduced Achievements to the Level Select screen, as a way of collecting all of your level goals in one place.
Minor bug fixes
That's it for now.
Quick patch: version "02/28/2019 ... etc"
A few changes, some substantial, some not.
It's with a heavy heart.. or something.. that we announce that Steam Achievements no longer grant Stars for level progression. It's a decent idea, and it actually worked pretty well, but there are some logical and logistical nightmares there.
For one, if we think of a hundred cool things that would be worth granting achievements for, we would have to rebalance the game progression: figuring out when achievements could be earned vs. stars needed to unlock new worlds, and so on. For two, it doesn't allow room for growth in other potential game modes, or even in new level packs. Everything would have to be tied to the main game. For three... not that this is your problem, but the code behind it was a mess. Especially in making sure that earning achievements didn't actually depend on Steam running, but making sure that the list in-game and the list on Steam were consistent, and being able to sync achievement unlocks to Steam later and.. yeah.
Achievements will still be tracked and will be listed in some in-game stats summary page, along with progress in the main game and other game modes too. You can just think of achievements as a separate set of collectibles. (Other game modes and level packs would have their own collectibles too.)
It's a bit harder to advance to new worlds, because some achievements (and therefore some stars) were "gimmies." You'd get a star just for showing up. You'd get another star just for getting a star. And so on. But the number of star requirements for each of the world were based on the "normal" stars anhyway.
Menus dynamically resize, so long menu options don't get botched graphically.. So... hooray...?
Fixed an issue to do with the turn-based gameplay and automatic time advance. When not in "Bullet Time" speed, the game advances the clock automatically. But if you'd issued a command to move right when the game was just about to take a turn for you, you'd basically take two turns in a split second. That would mess with timing, because you might, say, have a bullet move two spaces when you'd expected it to move one. Now, there's a "buffer" around when you take a turn so that that doesn't happen. It plays much more fairly.
By the way, you can use the keys < and > (buttons LB and RB) to adjust the speed and you can hold TAB (button RT) to fast forward.
Other small things.
As if Sokoban weren't enough...
While we're concentrating on the main Little Square Things game, we're also keeping an eye toward other game modes to include in the future, more than likely post-release. There have been some good ideas and some bad ideas in the hopper. Here's one that hasn't yet been a victim of the chopping block.
Think "basically The Incredible Machine" as a layer on top of "basically Sokoban." Here's how it would work.
Start with a partially constructed level and an inventory of parts, such as walls, switches, or even Square Things.
Place some parts to make the level (hopefully) possible to clear.
Then, play your level and clear it!
If you can't clear it, just head back to the drawing board. Either way, play around!
The concentration here would be less on solving a puzzle, and more on designing your own solutions. There's no one solution; more a whole solution space. There would be room for exploration, creativity, and replayability.
Early Access is a place to bring up ideas and give you, the gaming community, the chance to help shape the games on the whole. This is the earliest of the early.
And here it is in Sharpie.
Quick patch: version "02/24/2019 ... etc"
Your feedback is invaluable, and there's a lot of momentum behind development. Please keep it up!
Fixed a crash that occurred when you press 'reset' twice within the span of a second or so, which is very easy to do. That was a major source of crashes.
Enhanced the aesthetics on lasers somewhat. It's easier to tell where they're coming from and where they're going. There are a few graphical bugs to iron out, and there are plans for even more 'intuitiveness' in our lasers. If you have suggestions, please let us know!
Added another achievement for grabbing all 30 stars in three worlds. For the shareware version, this means having cleared all of the first three worlds.
Made some UI aspects very slightly more intuitive based on some feedback from some folks who have next to zero experience with video games.
Questions? Comments? Usability features? Grandiose ideas? Please let us know.
Quick patch: version "02/21/2019 21:45:44"
Version "02/21/2019 21:45:44" (on the BIOS) is up. It'll be 22:03:03 for insiders.
A few minor changes/fixes:
Increased the difficulty of a few of the Shard Stars (the "third star" that becomes available when a level is cleared). See 2-3, "The Squareshank Shapedemption", for one example.
One reason for this is that, in some levels, the shards might be way too easy to collect because the level layout doesn't call for any sort of challenging ways to place them. Easy is fine once in a while, because some levels are hard enough that clearing them in the first place makes you deserving of more stars. And a break!
But there shouldn't be many cases of "just enter the level again and grab the shards because they're just right there," because that would defeat the purpose.
Fixed a crash that occurs clearing 3-10, because 4-1 doesn't exist in the "shareware" version. If you encountered this, the game shouldn't think that you're on 4-1 any longer, and you should be able to play again. Please leave a comment if it still does.
Removed the splash screen, because the DOS bootup screen is basically one anyway. Credits and "Special Thanks" will be given in-game soon.
On selecting "Play", the game now takes you straight to the last level you were on... at least for now. Because loading the level select screen too quickly after just launching the game causes crashing, and we haven't pinpointed the issue just yet. We'll be fixing it "for real," of course, but in the meantime you we think you should have as bug-free an experience as possible. Plus, you're getting to the action a fraction of a second earlier!
Clearing a level takes you back to the Level Select screen, with the next level highlighted. This is more intuitive than the "Where next?" menu while also giving a clear-cut way to allow you to re-enter a level, or choose another one, pretty quickly.
Making sure that the game is actually playable -- cutting out those crashes -- is still top priority. We don't want to release any paid content until those are fixed. Because even though we're still in Early Access, it's simply not fair to pay for something that doesn't work like it should.
There will be incremental updates even when those aren't fixed, though, because we don't want to hold back what will at least be in the free version. In the works are some graphical updates and music. Along with some of your feature suggestions... so keep those coming!
...loud and clear!
Thank you for your participation in Square Things's Early Access! In the span of just a day or so, we've received quite a few great suggestions and insightful comments. They're already shaping development.
And that's what Early Access is all about. Your feedback is invaluable. Please, keep it up! You can find the discussion board right here.
The game is meant to be accessible to a broad audience, and so we welcome your broad-based feedback from your many different perspectives. Even slight adjustments can have a significant impact on user experience. So do grandiose ideas.
And so do bug reports.
There's a nasty bug in particular. There have been reports that the game can crash, mostly when the game is launched for the very first time. (Though in those cases, it seems to work as expected the second time around.) If you experience a crash, please drop us a line. Your reports on when and where crashes happen will help isolate the problem and get it fixed.
You can expect to have the first update in your hands soon. Of course, fixing that bothersome crashing issue is top priority. That means that the very first update to be pushed out probably won't be super flashy. But flashiness is in the queue for future updates.
