Took a lot of the feedback I was given last month and put a bunch of work making the game more fun.
Enemies have much less health than before.
Majority of the feedback was about how not interesting it was to fight such spongey enemies as a result of me thinking it was a good idea to force players to use element damage to have fun. Enemies should be defeated in about half the time now either way you fight them.
Fire and Ice Ninjutsu have been reworked
Players felt there wasn't much freedom in having all ninjutsu target the player so I've changed how two of them work to help variety
Fireballs now fire in front of the player in bursts of 2 and 3, they also have a unique animation now.
Ice Ninjutsu has been given a hitbox three times the size, since it directly targets the shuriken this should make crowd control with it a more viable option.
Recalling the Shuriken teleports you to it
There weren't a lot of movement options before so this should make melee a bit faster and some hopefully interesting level design to get more use out of it
Also the shuriken deals damage to more enemies when it returns to the player
Ki reworked with a combo counter
Players felt defeating enemies was pointless so this system should make it more fun to aim for a high kill combo before they finish the stage. I took inspiration from Kamiko which uses a similar system that links this kill combo meter to the player's currency. I might build on that in the future if I can find a way to put my own spin on it.
Ki is built significantly slower through melee and now drops from enemies and chocolate bars.
The Ki that drops from enemies increases as the player maintains a higher kill combo.
A new linear stage replaces the old one.
I attempted a much more open ended stage initially not knowing what kind of design goes into making a stage like that, it also didn't give players much of a tutorial to ease them into learning.
There are a bunch of locked doors, floor gaps, hidden treasure, and winding paths that hopefully still feel fun to explore.
