🦝Hello everyone! Coming at you today with a new build of Blobun, which makes a very significant change based on the recent survey we did. So, first I wanna talk about that change, and then I'll talk about some of the other stuff.

Stars Are Gone, Speedrun Times Optional

We've gotten lots of feedback about the stars and the timer. With the timer, people said they didn't like it, and that it made the game a lot less chill than they thought it'd be. As for the stars, people found the system overall confusing.

The reason they were there was, in the beginning, it was only puzzles where you touch every tile. However, as you may or may not have seen, we've gotten a few puzzle elements in the game that add a lot of variety. As the game progresses in development, the star system just felt like a relic of the past that wasn't necessary anymore.

Under the new system, it works like this:

• Once you beat the puzzle, that's it! You don't have to play it again.
• If you do play it again, then the speedrun timer will appear, and you can try to get a fast time (but this is optional.)
• For people who played the previous build, you'll have your speedrun time registered if you had all three stars on the stage. Otherwise, you'll have to do it again. If  you beat the stage with no mistakes, then it'll count as beaten. Otherwise, the stage wont count as beaten, and you'll have to beat it again (sorry, but this was the only way to make it fair.)
• Whenever you make a mistake, you now get stuck in your own trail and can't move. This means you can no longer brute force puzzles by just overlapping your slime trail a bunch.

That last point may sound dubious, but what we've found from playtesting the pre-release version of this build is that, without the timer, people sit still and study the puzzle. When the timer was there, it put pressure on the player to hurry up, causing them to try to rush through the puzzle and make a lot of mistakes. People were playing the puzzles in a way we didn't really like, but this new update seems to change it. Now, people are taking it nice and slow, and solving the puzzles a lot faster as a result (though that may be limited to the handful of people who tested it for us. Let us know if this is your experience!)

Discord Role Validation and Feedback Form

You can now get an Early Access role for having bought Blobun by visiting this site. You can get this if you bought it here, got a key from us through Kofi (or other means) or are a patron. This role will allow you to access a special Early Access channel in the Discord, if you want to give feedback or try out new features that aren't in public builds (yet.) In addition, the game now has a feedback form, which you'll find it on the title screen of the game itself. When you open this, the game will put what version it is into the form, so please don't take that out!

Small Note About Optimizations

We've made several optimizations to this build related to the gameplay. If you're having trouble running the game, try going to the options and setting the graphics quality to "Low." We're aware that some menus are still slow, and we'll fix that in time, but the puzzles themselves should perform much better now on low-end hardware.

Patch  Notes

As always, here are the patch notes:

===== IMPORTANT =====

• The star system has been removed entirely. Now you simply need to beat the puzzle to have it count as beaten, and speedrunning it is optional.
• To counterbalance this, you can no longer make mistakes on puzzles. If you overlap your own path, you'll get stuck, and either have to undo that or restart the puzzle.
• The new optional star will only appear on stages if you had the "Perfect Clear" star in the previous version of the game (meaning you beat the stage quickly with no mistakes.)
• The speedrun timer also won't show the first time you play the stage. You're still timed, but you don't have to worry about it.
• Just for clarity, clearing the puzzle quickly is now *optional* and you can do it if you want to, but you don't have to.

===== NEW =====

• You can now turn off the overlay showing your current time, tile count, and amount of mistakes during gameplay.
• When attempting the stage a second time to get the fast time, the game will now play countdown sounds, as well as a chime if you go over the allotted time.
• A new bar showing how much of the puzzle you've filled out is now in the top right corner. It changes color depending on what state you were in at the time.
• From within the game, you can now access a "Feedback Form" which will allow you to give feedback about the game without having to be in our Discord chat.

===== IMPROVED =====

• Bun's slime trail now has a diffused look to it, slightly blurring anything that's underneath it.
• This comes as a result of a performance optimization.
• Made further optimizations to bun's slime trail drawing in other areas.
• Backgrounds across the game have been changed, improved, or added.
• If you undo all the way back to the start of the puzzle, the timer will reset to 0.
• Bun will now turn a lot more slowly when she's stuck in her own slime trail.

===== CHANGED =====

• Much of the UI has been changed to accommodate the changes in the "Important" section.
• In particular, stages will not show how long you took to beat them unless you beat them in the target time.
• Worlds will also not show how much time you took to beat them, unless you've done all stages in that world. Similarly, the game won't show how much time you have in all stages unless you've done all the fast times in all stages.
• Fixed a couple stages that didn't have proper goal times set.
• One of the stages was easier than it should have been, so that was fixed.
• If you've never played the game before, the game will now bring you right to the first puzzle when you hit "Start Game."
• Stepping on cracked floors will now destroy all neighboring cracked floors when you step off them.
• Note: No puzzle was in the game that took advantage of this, as cracked floors were a very experimental puzzle element, and we weren't sure if we were just gonna cut it or not. It's still worth mentioning though.
• We have one new puzzle which takes full advantage of this new mechanic.
• The bar at the bottom of the Stage Select screen has been modified. Now, it'll show up below the "Next Destination" text, showing you how many stages you have to beat to unlock it. Once you get all of them, it'll just change to the name of the next world.
• In addition to other optimizations, we've also applied a slight resolution downscale to the "Low" graphics mode, which should help with performance without destroying the graphics. This downscale only applies to puzzles themselves, it doesn't affect UI stuff or non-puzzle screens.

===== BUG FIXES =====

• A bug we fixed with foreground puzzle elements trying to interact with background objects that are part of the new backgrounds in this build may have caused issues to crop up elsewhere. If the game crashes or a puzzle is unsolvable, sorry in advance! We tried to make sure everything still works, but you know games - they're complex.
• Fixed a bug where the game would show an undo prompt even when you were clear of any mistakes.
• Fixed a bug where you could sometimes move backwards through floor portals you had already slimed.
• Fixed a bug where the game would show the input prompt for selecting a stage on stages which weren't yet unlocked.
• Fixed some animation bugs with the pause menu when going to another puzzle/leaving the puzzle/etc.