Or:

Yeah, I tweaked the numbers a little.

I got into an exchange a few months ago in the comments section of the game page regarding difficulty as it relates to unlockables, which was valuable feedback and gave me a decent amount to think about (shoutout to Impy - great dev btw, check their stuff out 👍). Ultimately, the tweaks I've made aren't in line with what had been discussed, but do go a fair way to mitigate slog - even I was finding trying to attain that relatively elusive 199 smashes in a single run could feel pretty tedious after a while.

Crucially, I was finding this at the lower difficulties. As I'm sure I've mentioned elsewhere, the difficulty level determines how much delay time there is between a smashable appearing on screen and when it starts to move.

Enjoy this peek behind the curtain - the delay times are as follows:

• Easy: 0.5 seconds
• Medium: 0.3 seconds
• Hard: 0.1 seconds

Playing the game on Hard showcases the game at its most frantic (well, obviously), which in turn makes the game flow at a decent pace, making that target of 199 smashes seem more like old-school arcade goals and less like work.

Conversely, Easy mode... that delay time weighs in at a hefty five times longer than on Hard mode, and I was finding I absolutely felt it when trying to hang in there and hit the 199.

Cutting that number in half made that difficulty feel more like it should - a relatively chill time in which the player can get the feel for the mechanics while also gaining rewards in the form of those Easy path unlocks.

Specifically, the changes look like this (original targets in the left image, tweaks on the right):

Between this and the implementation of actual RNG I wrote about last time, the game is feeling a lot more complete. I won't be updating the first two builds, rather by the time of the final version's release each build can be seen as its own chapter in one heck of an odd game dev journey...!

Soon...