Hand Almighty

New character - MatchmakerI've converted an upgrade (Cupid Arrow) into a character (Matchmaker). When you attack an enemy with this character, it will produce pheromones that attract nearby enemies for 10 seconds. You can control the horde by redirecting them towards a "lover" enemy. This is vital for the Matchmaker, which has reduced attack damage as the trade-off for this enhanced control.New mechanic - KillstreaksI wanted to give players a new way to make money in the game. This new economic strategy rewards players for killing quickly and efficiently, which is also what's needed to get great runs! If you kill the next enemy within 250ms of the last one, you can build up a killstreak. Each kill in the killstreak earns you bonus gold - 2 gold for the second kill, 4 gold for the third, 6 gold for the fourth, and so on. I've added a new upgrade, Abacus, that increases this bonus even further.This synergises well with builds that kill a load of enemies simultaneously, such as Explosive and Lightning builds.

New character - Finger GunI like the idea of Hand Almighty feeling like a box of mini games with lots of characters that play completely differently. The Finger Gun character asks "what if the game was a shooter?" It fires 6 finger bullets directly upwards that can pierce multiple enemies before reloading. It's great at dealing damage vertically, thinning enemies at the back of the horde. It's weak in later waves when the horde fills the width of the screen and projectiles come into play. The 1 second reload time also needs to be timed carefully. With the right upgrades, it can be very strong though.Timed runsIn the last build, I wasn't totally satisfied with how leaderboard submissions worked. Submissions were limited to Gold medal runs and treasure chests were disabled until Diamond runs were impossible.I've added a toggle to the run setup screen where you can choose to turn off leaderboard submissions.When they're turned off, you can get treasure chests at any timeWhen they're turned on, you can only get treasure chests once Diamond runs are impossible. Silver and Bronze runs can now submit times, but are capped at the Platinum time due to their ability to get treasure chests. If you get lucky with treasure chests, you cannot jump to the top of the leaderboardI think this is a fair trade-off that prevents treasure chests from breaking the leaderboards while allowing everyone to participate in them.Loads of new challengesTo prepare for the progression system, I've expanded the number of challenges significantly. I also track your challenge completion % in the main menu. These are the new ones:Challenge: get a world record.Challenge: explode X enemies with Detonator.Challenge: kill X enemies with one explosion.Challenge: recover X base health.Challenge: survive being hit by Moon Phase 1.Challenge: take X damage in one wave.Challenge: kill X enemies by knocking them into walls.Challenge: kill X enemies with other enemies.Challenge: kill X enemies with lightning.Chal...

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...