Tumbleseed getting massive “4 Peaks Update”, post-mortem

Tumbleseed was released on May 2nd, and was among the very first indie games to be released on the Nintendo Switch. Unfortunately, while we’ve already have some success stories, it looks like we now have our very first “failure story” on the platform.

Earlier this week, the developers posted a rather lengthy post-mortem, where they explain why they think Tumbleseed failed to live to their expectations. The central point is that Tumbleseed was, quite simply, too hard, and put off many potential players. Click here to check out the pretty lenghty (but quite informative) post-mortem!

Also, they announced that the Nintendo Switch version was soon getting a massive update called “4 Peaks Update”, providing not just a lot of fixes and changes, but also some brand new content.

Here’s the full patch notes for this “4 Peaks Update”:

New Modes

 

• Forest, Jungle, Desert, Snow mountains: Individually themed mountains that are the same every time you play. You can also complete quests that will unlock new auras for you to use! (more info below)
• Weekly Challenge: Every Sunday a new mountain will be playable and you can replay it as many times as you want. Share strategies and tips with friends to optimize your score so all of you can race to the top of the Weekly leaderboard together!

General Changes

 

• Added new achievements for beating new mountains!
• Auras in the basecamp: Up to 12 auras can be unlocked that will be accessible in the fort in the basecamp. Unlock them by completing quests in the NEW Forest, Jungle, Desert, and Snow modes.
• Daily and Weekly Challenge will have 4 of the 12 basecamp auras randomly spawn (regardless of unlock progress)
• Removed teleporters from the game. You can still practice individual biomes in the new biome-specific mountains
• You can remove an aura at the shrine near the top of a temple
• Removed quests from Adventure Mode.
• Tutorial now enters the Forest mode upon completion instead of Adventure mode.
• Added rumble to XInput enabled controllers on Windows

Balance Changes

Auras:

• Added 8 new auras:
  • Power Copter: Increases bounce height and slows descent speed
  • Timestretch: Increases duration of time-based abilities
  • Capitalist: Enemies drop more crystals
  • Charisma: All town mini games and shops are more financially in your favor
  • Forcefield: All damage taken is reduced to 1 damage (including spikes)
  • Freefall: Don’t take damage from falling in holes
  • Thorn: Don’t lose thorns when taking damage
  • Sneak: Become invisible when moving slow enough
• Removed Poison Shots aura from the game
• Removed Teleporter Auras from the game
• Vampire aura now gives you some crystals back when killing 2 and 3 HP enemies
• Auras no longer fall off when taking damage
• Current aura now simply swaps positions with new aura when picking one up (no longer flies in the air)

Seed Powers:

• Bounceberry: launch height decreased back to previous value
• Bounceberry: price changed back to 1 from 0
• Missile Root: Missile now does 2 damage on impact. Shrapnel can no longer hit the target that the main missile hit.

Enemies:

• Banana Snakes and Purple flyers now have a slight variance in speed when chasing you
• Pit bomb is more visible in holes
• Corrected Black and Purple leaping enemy hitboxes (their back half used to not hit you)
• All flyers now obey invisibility

Misc:

• Limit on hearts now set to 30
• Added a clearer sound cue for when sink holes are opening up

Bug Fixes

• Fixed various quests being able to be completed in the seed power test chambers
• Flailflower will no longer continue to swing when in the seed select menu
• Fixed issue where Banana Snake’s mouth would continue to turn when in seed select menu
• Fixed a bug with the true ending where killing volcano flyers would make the boss softlock once hitting the last button

Source: aeiowu