Lots of updates this time. We've been working on things across the board: new artwork,  more player abilities, better critter behavior, balance tweaks, and bugfixes.

Visual improvements

Relic and level-up cards have been given fancy new graphics, effects, and animations. We also hammered out several visual glitches.

Abilities

We added two new abilities this week, along with relic cards to unlock them: Decoy and Midwife.

Decoy

The decoy ability occasionally produces a holographic decoy when you dash. Decoys will stick around for a few seconds before fading away. If you're being chased by a critter or nemesis bot, a decoy will distract it and allow you to escape!

Midwife

In the past, if you ran over eggs you'd crush them and kill whatever was inside. Now, there is a small chance that the critter will instantly hatch. The Midwife ability increases your chance of hatching critters when you crush their eggs.

Be careful: newly hatched critters can still hurt you!

Smarter critters

Critters are now aware of when something is hunting them. Woodlice and worms run away from their attackers, while spiders and centipedes fight back. Be careful mixing spiders and centipedes; your boss fights could become much tougher.

More Rewards

You now gain some Guided Evolution Points based on time survived instead of only when you win. Guided Evolution Points allow you to engineer your critters' stats for future runs. This way, even if you lose, you still get something out of it.

Full Changelog

• Optimized timer boss spawn and victory checks
• Optimized food decay checks
• Optimized time of day controller
• Optimized CreatureController AI loop
• Optimized camera zoom checks
• Added decoy relic and ability
• Added midwife relic that increases chance of critter hatching when smashing an egg by running over it
• Fixed bug where experience orb could spawn off arena navmesh
• Updated some relic art
• Updated game name to Critter Keeper
• Updated critter and relic select menus with better visual effects and backgrounds
• Added fleeing behavior to critters that are being attacked
• Added retaliation behavior to predators being attacked
• Fixed save file pathing to use the game name subdirectory
• Updated fonts to ubuntu and kreon pair
• Reduced arena size by .4 X .4 meters
• Put critter dice relic into the main pool and not unlocked by biowaste processing anymore so chance of it showing are higher early on
• Reward player with Guided Evolution points based on minutes survived so they get points when they lose as well as when they win
• Fixed possible bug with input system when switching between scenes in a particular order
• Added H keybind to toggle UI for screenshots and recording