Hand Almighty

LeaderboardsFor a long time, I've wanted a competitive element in the game to encourage players to find optimal strategies for speed-running. So I've added leaderboards for the fastest times for beating each level with each character. I think it will encourage some friendly competition and, hopefully, some debate about how to optimise runs for each player.Design decisionsI had to make some design changes to make this workable. There are two elements to this:In Hand Almighty, enemies randomly drop treasure chests that can contain huge rewards like 1000s of gold or multiple upgrade level-ups. I didn't want players that got these treasure chests and cruised to an easy win to dominate the leaderboards. It's important that players with the best strategies and skills get rewardedAt the end of a successful run, you are rewarded with a medal. Bronze and Silver are rewarded when you lose a life. Gold, Platinum and Diamond are rewarded for no-death runs with increasingly difficult timesTo make leaderboards more fair, I added the following rule: treasure chests are disabled until you either die or take longer than the Diamond time (9 minutes). In other words, if you have no hope of getting a Diamond performance, you are given the game-breaking treasure chests. This makes it impossible for treasure chest luck to give someone a crazy-fast run with a faster time than someone who worked hard to earn their time.This has one side effect that I'm still not happy with. Leaderboard submissions are currently limited to players that get a Gold medal (no deaths, any time) or better. If I allowed Bronze and Silver runs to submit times, then someone with deaths and some decent treasure chests could post a world record. You can still submit Gold or Platinum times with treasure chests, but they will by definition be below legitimate Diamond times.This does make the definition of "leaderboard" slightly confusing. People who get Bronze or Silver runs will rightly be confused when they don't get...

4 playable charactersFor the first time, you can play with a different character. The current playtest build has a character select screen where you can pick from 4 characters, each with strengths and weaknesses.The HandThe original character will be one of the base characters in the final game. It attacks for 40 damage, 5 times a second, and has a modest attack radius. This is where I want new players to start and discover the game.WandaI wanted an "accessibility-friendly" character for people who struggle to aim, like my older parents, my disabled brother, and even myself when struggling with RSI after testing this game for hours. I want those players to be able to play through the whole game and unlock all the levels and upgrades.Wanda will automatically attack the nearest enemy or projectile. So no matter where you're aiming, you'll be hitting something. The trade-off is that its attack damage and attack speed are weakened, and you can't hit multiple enemies at once. This is countered by the amazing accuracy the character has (it never misses, unless there's no enemies on-screen).The PotatoThis is a conversion of one of the Cursed Upgrades. The Potato cannot attack, but acts as a manager of a team of Baby Hands that do damage on its behalf. Enemies are frozen in place when you put the Potato on them, and Baby Hands prioritise those enemies, meaning you can order them around. You start the run with 2 Baby Hands and Mittens, which allows your Baby Hands to deal effects like poison and fire.The biggest perk is that The Potato gets double upgrade levels. Every time you gain an upgrade level, you get a bonus one. This is a great way to build some powerful upgrades to balance the lack of direct damage.The MortalAnother Cursed Upgrade conversion. Does double damage and has a double-sized attack radius, but... the character itself can take damage from enemies. And if it dies, the wave is over. So you need to keep an eye on both your base's health bar and your hand's hea...

Another batch of challengesJust a small update this week, extending the challenges you can attempt:Challenge: Buy X upgrades after rerolling the shopChallenge: Win the treasure chest jackpotChallenge: Break X pinballsChallenge: Kill X enemies with pinballsChallenge: Kill X enemies with max damage pinballsChallenge: Deal X damage with a single pinballChallenge: Kill X enemies close to the baseChallenge: Get X critical hitsChallenge: Deal X damage to an enemy with one attackChallenge: Stun X enemiesChallenge: Set X enemies on fireChallenge: Deal X knockback damageChallenge: Push X enemies off the level with shockwavesChallenge: Win a run with X empty upgrade slotsChallenge: Hit X enemies with one attackI've probably gone a bit overboard with the challenges early on - you'll activate a load of them on your first run. They need some tuning so they get spaced out a little bit more."Win a run with X empty upgrade slots" is a particularly interesting challenge as it forces you to pick and choose your upgrades carefully, and sacrifice empty upgrade slots to boost the few upgrades you do have.All these challenges are the foundation for the game's progression system. The next update will have the first glimpse of that: a new playable character!