Combo-less (May 01 2026)

The Relentless Waves update is still making progress. I’ve gone ahead and added some sound effects, as that’s the least fun part. I also have each enemy display its health in the corner, since that seemed useful and necessary when I now have weapons that can deal multiple amounts of damage. 

The things I have right now are pretty simple. The Compass shoots bullets at an angle, and the Crown is like the Planet, it creates bullets that spin around it. I also have an energy rule where you have to touch different flags in order to get energy. I think 5 weapons and 5 energy rules may be good enough for this game, especially since it’s very simple.

What makes it a lot harder with coming up with ideas is the lack of combos. With All Shapes and Sizes, the game is about combining different kinds of shapes, and that allows combos and tricks. With Randomly Generated RPG, each player has multiple abilities and the ability pie forces you to make them work together. With Crafts Fair, the game is about assembling combos for the customers and using the twists effectively.

But with Relentless Waves, there aren’t combos, because you only have 1 weapon. And I don’t know if there’s a way to add combos into the game. This means I can't really use the classic trick of making things that combo with existing things, and have to find some other way to get ideas.

Update Setup (Apr 24 2026)

This post will be pretty short. I started working on the Relentless Waves update, and it’s going a bit slow. It may take upwards of another 2 weeks to finish everything. A lot of the work was figuring out the new UI and code for the changes I want to make.

While trying out some ideas for player weapons, I realized that the game probably needs something else to mix up the gameplay. If only one thing was changing each time, that variety is completely linear. If more things change each time, that variety becomes exponential very quickly. I considered letting the player have a 2nd weapon, but it just seemed like you would only use 1 of the weapons you’re given. Then I considered having the 2nd weapon not attack and do other stuff, but if they both require energy to use, then you’d only use the attacking weapon.

Instead I found another way to mix up the game: change how you gain energy. The default way to gain energy is, balls of energy drop from the sky and you have to move to pick it up. But if I vary the ways that you can gain energy, that would make the game much more different, especially since gaining energy is necessary in every single playthrough.

ASAS Update (Apr 17 2026)

The update for All Shapes and Sizes is done. I had to add 4 more bonus shapes, and these ones were definitely harder to come up with, as I’ve done a lot of the easiest ones. 

The first one I made is me resurrecting the game mode where you try not to merge shapes. It’s an egg that transforms into a star if you drop 5 shapes without merging any, but if any shapes do merge, the egg instantly shatters. It was at this point that I realized that I’ve made 3 shapes that are basically stars that require more effort (egg, multiply sign, ghost star). The default shapes end at the diamond, which is why these 3 become stars, to be more exciting. But I don’t want too many bonus shapes that are too similar, which is why the last 3 bonus shapes didn’t want to be fancy stars.

I wanted something that cared about merging shapes. I tried some bonus shapes that rewarded you for getting lots of points, but they weren’t interesting, it made you do what you normally do during the game. Then I thought of a shape that prevented shapes from merging with each other, and you could only get rid of it by merging shapes that were somewhere else. This played a lot better, and it felt like I could get away with a 2nd bonus shape that wasn’t actually good for you.

I wondered if there was more I could do with the idea I had for the bag of circles: creating differently colored shapes that can’t merge with each other. I also wanted a way to duplicate a shape, except that would be stupid because the duplicate copy would immediately merge with the original shape, and I had already tried that before and it was way too strong. I realized I could combine the two ideas: this shape could turn itself into a copy of the first shape it touched, except both shapes would become cursed (meaning they can’t merge with each other). This worked great, and I changed the bag to create cursed circles instead.

For a while I tried to figure out if I could make a treasure chest that collected shapes for later. It just didn’t seem like there was a way to make it make sense. If it just got rid of a set number of shapes before doing something, it just seemed too similar to bombs. If it cared about the exact shapes it collected, there would be no real way to see what it’s already collected. Eventually I gave up on it and made a shape that automatically upgraded squares around it into arrows, and that worked well.

Now that All Shapes and Sizes is done, next is Relentless Waves. While I don't really need to add more enemies, I will have to add sound effects and weapons, and that may be harder to figure out what to do.