Work has been relatively steady on this, there's been a couple days where I haven't touched this due to... uh, stress! As you can see, I've now whipped up a logo for the update, I think I did a nice job with this! I heavily leaned into Y2K aesthetics for this logo, just because I thought that'd be neat! You can't see it in the MB's default theme, but there is also a nice lil drop shadow to the logo. And I think this turned out well, it even scales down to pixel art quite nicely. Now, onto the things I've put in thus far!
There's now a cheats menu, that can be accessed once you unlock Omochao! Inputting certain cheat codes will enable certain things that I didn't think would fit as regular options, but can be used to mess around with the chaos experience. The code I showed there is "Disable Incompatibility Checks", which does what it says on the tin. If you're unaware, a lot of effects are incompatible with each other, either because they write to the same variables and would conflict with each other, or it would just become an unplayable nightmare. ...but if you
want more pain, you can enable this cheat.
So far there's 4 other cheat codes I've implemented, 3 of them are harmless and won't affect your ability to save, while the other 2 will affect your save, and have drastic effects. Have fun finding them!
I've also been hard at work getting Metal's Mayhem up to an acceptable state, and I think I'm getting close. The shops mostly function now, they'll give you a randomized selection of items to buy! This is where a lot of strategizing comes into play. What effects do you think you can tolerate enough to keep around? Which ones are a threat to your ability to play the next level? Can you tolerate adding more negative effects just to afford a really good one you saw in the shop? Or maybe you need an upgrade to increase the Ring Multiplier?
With this, you can see why I've wanted to make this update, this promotes some form of strategy amongst the chaos! The shop also functions for Chaos Cards, though it's currently incomplete at time of writing. Heck, the "Sell Back" option in Amy's Shop is also non-functional right now, I'll have to get to that!
Work's also been steady on adding mutators, like this! This is "Drunk Camera"... does what it says. It'll also affect your aiming a bit, so watch out with those thoks! There's other ones too, like "Blood Moon", where enemies have multiplied, and take 2 hits to take out now! And "Depleted Oxygen", where you need to keep collecting rings to keep up your air meter!
Oh, and how could I forget, I've also worked on the "Roll The Dice" interface a bit; now there's a lil coin to represent the Chaos mode you're going to play with! Additionally, there's a chance for the Chaotic Engine to be amplified; this is the same as the "Amplified Mode".
Finally, I've also implemented a better way to re-roll the dice: You can individually select which ones you can re-roll, if you don't like specific choices you're given. The strategy here is it's cheapest to re-roll everything, but if you think you'd do better with only one of the things getting re-rolled, you can choose to do so! The price will gradually climb higher the more levels you play, so keep some spare change if you encounter a hard challenge!
There's also other smaller changes, that includes stuff like "Bleeding" having it's effects get lessened when you have a shield (you can really tell I'm trying to add strategy to this update), you can jump off the frog when you use the "Frog" card now, and Tails' dialogue has been tweaked when you're playing as him! The changelog is nearly 80 lines long, and that's only scratching the surface.
Considering how steady progress has been going, I feel confident in my predicted release range of April! I don't want to rush myself to meet this deadline, so if I have to push it back to have absolutely everything I want, then so be it. But unless testing proves there's some fundamental flaws in this, I think we should be good to go for that.