Hello again. In case you have not seen the recent updates, let me catch you up. Several bugs have been fixed, such as the dreaded bug where doors could not be closed randomly. New Relics have been added, 3 so far, as unlockable items. More will come soon!

Other balance changes have happened too, but not a whole lot recently. Overall, most people find different things overpowered, which is good; means it is mostly balanced, and players feel strong! Also, some things should naturally be better and some things naturally worse - what's the fun if everything just feels the same? Embrace uncertainty!

I have also been cooking up more new relics / items / unlockables for the game. Most of them I am pretty hyped with, because they can fill holes with the game as far as "I need something to do with this" or other easy lay-ups. Not much related to building & defenses now. Though... I have a master plan for that, but I'll reveal that another day.

Yup, a new run option - a fun one too! Start with your choice of relic, it comes with 2 major curses. Some are just stat changes, but some give unique or new negative effects. Any relics you pick after also give 1 negative effect, so not as harsh, but it can really build up.

It's like if you ate a bunch of uuranium or something.

Also gonna make this and "The Floor is Lava" unlockable. 99% of players won't (and shouldn't) pick these modes for the first run, and making it be unlocked adds an air of mystery and excitement. Beat one run for Cursed Relic, beat two runs for The Floor Is Lava.

In other good news, I learned that when I was doing my taxes this year, I didn't need any extra legal stuff to do business expenses for all the advertising & other essentials for making the game! So that gives me more leeway to run the ads to more people. Yippeee!! Most people forget that making games is a business, like, I have a mortgage, broski. So, if I can make money, and make the game, that is awesome! Also... will allow me to move if necessary. Either somewhere else nearby or even out of county, just if income is enough to be allowed with a visa somewhere so that they can collect my tax money instead. If I ever need to do that (either banning AI wife or "continued centralization of power" would cause it). A bit extreme, but I'm just talking side bets here.

I just posted a poll on my youtube for Bonelords (well, one of the two!). Do you guys want cloud saves or do you prefer having different accounts on different PCs? Vote now! I may make other polls in the future on there too! It would be cool if Steam integrated a voting / polling system too, that way I could add it directly, that would be awesome! Or maybe somehow I could do it in game with global stats...

Either way, subscribe to the Youtube, and vote now! Your vote matters!

https://www.youtube.com/@slimesandstrongholds/posts

In the meantime, I made my cat Speggy a gambling machine. It works by vibrating a controller to move the kibble down a clipboard loosely taped / nailed to the wall. I did this because learning actual robotics is hard - especially for a one off joke item I made over like 2 days lol.

There is also a game for her to play, it just drops things down and gives a small chance for some kibble. But, if she fills it to the top, it drops a full load of kibble down! Of course, just like real gambling machines, it's rigged so you can only win so much. If her mini-bonus is evil baby, most of the blocks go away, and it become more likely the more she gets.

She just has to press on the keyboard to get it to work. She still hasn't figured it out though, although house guests really like playing it to feed the cat, so that's cool!

Maybe I can use the Steam API to do something cool, like every time someone beats a run they have a chance to drop kibble? Or every time someone buys the game, it goes off? And just have a live-stream in the corner where the cat is (and most of the time, is not). That would be interesting!

Bugfixes and some balance changes. And tooltips to let the average player know what the different types of runs are! (also there is some code for the next update in here already).

• Added cool little tooltips to let players know what all of the different run options are and what changes it!

• The Type B wave "Oops Catastrophic Explosions" is now ~10% shorter, and has a boosted power-up drop rate.

• The Type B wave "A Thousand Cuts" is now ~6% longer.

• Reduced the amount of structure damage that The Amantacoumpass's stomp does by ~15%.

• Marrow Flasks now heal slightly less (~3% less) overall, and also now have a tiny amount of flat healing bonus that doesn't scale with total HP.

• Fixed a bug where Mintflash thrown projectiles would just stay in place forever when the player dies.

• Fixed the dreaded bug where doors would not be closable randomly. Turns out, the large concrete tiles / base of the fort was the issue! Placing on top of that would not let the door be closed, because it was being counted as a Unit, like a living creature, blocking the door, instead of as Terrain. Oops!

• Fixed a bug where eating the "Man Sized Dinner" would not actually cure confusion sometimes.

• Fixed a bug where the game would not give you an alert when trying to start a wave with no fort (which, is another bug that I have been unable to track down as of yet).

• Fixed a bug where weapon tooltips would not account for blessings.