Quarterly Update 25

Man, time flies. RotA got a couple updates this summer, mostly dealing with intro and tutorial improvements to explain the chaos meter and how to use it.

Instead of spawning portals automatically when full, now chaos is only spent when the player holds down left click. A portal will be summoned if the meter was completely full,

...or you'll get a meat instead if the meter was at least 1/10th filled but not full. A portal costs 100% chaos and each meat costs 10%, essentially.

Witnesses that see at least one demon and escape the map will inform the next level and increase its initial alertness level accordingly. The next level will also start with one extra keep defender for each escaped witness.

I also updated some graphics, tweaked the lighting and fixed a bunch of bugs

Moving forward, the plan is to break away from demo-specific work and focus on creating new levels. The biggest thing I need to work on is the campaign, but I can't create levels and call them good in any way without getting feedback from players on each and every one. So, the second level will be replaced in a future (but not too distant I hope) demo release with the next new level, whenever that's ready.

Also, RotA now officially has a professional artist! Shablo5 and spouse have agreed to make more demons for the game at the same or better quality as the Croakers for a price so reasonable its almost exploitative! That means that I can justify it - and more importantly get my wife to agree to it - to invest more real dollars into the game. For the new folks, this is something I do only after maximum hesitation because if the game earns fewer real dollars than get invested into it by the time its released it counts as maximum failure.

The one bit of improved tutorial mechanics worth mentioning here is what happens if the player fails to pick up the chaos meter in the first 2 minutes or so:

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