Happy belated

It's here! DEAD PETALS 1.3!

There are many balance changes, fixes, QoL improvements and overall polish, but the big changes include a scoring system, Medals and Custom Games.

Custom Games

Custom Games allow you tweak a bunch of parameters, such as number of enemies, overall difficulty, even change parameters of the player shot. There's lots to do and it lets you create a customized challenge you can share with friends! Conversely, you can make a "chill mode" if you or your co-op partner feel the game is a little too hard. Once you select some custom game settings, you can save those settings into a link and share it with some friends like this:

Here's a custom game link which gives you a powerful but short range spread weapon: https://www.newgrounds.com/portal/view/867366?NewgroundsAPI_CustomParams=(%27pSpread!%278%27~pDelay!%275%27~pLifetime!%2750%27)_

If you come up with an interesting or challenging game code, share here or send it to me; I would love to try it!

Scoring System

This has gone through a number of iterations, but the gist is this:

• Quick kills net you extra points, as well as a bonus "big gem" which counts as 2 little gems. There is a sound queue for a successful quick kill. The quicker the kill, the higher the points.
• Finishing a wave nets you points as well, and you get bonus points for finishing the wave quickly. If you "no-miss" (meaning you don't take damage) on a wave, the wave bonus will get a 3x multiplier. 2x if you happen to take 1 hit, and no multiplier bonus for anything after that.
• Boss waves finish when you grab the boss item! So chase it down and make a decision quick if you want that quick wave bonus.
• Using a hyper starts a chain multiplier. Keep your hyper going between rounds to keep building your chain. You can do this by strategically leaving some gems on the screen, or extending it by grabbing a hyper boss item if it happens to drop. Losing your hyper or getting hit will reset your chain.

There are 2 scoreboards, one for single-player and another for co-op. Doing a custom game will not save your score to the leaderboard, but it will save it on the title screen until you reset your game.

Medals

DEAD PETALS now comes with bonus dopamine hits with cheevos — the little things that get you through the day. Who's gonna be the first in the two comma club? (Not me, I gotta go to bed.)

What's Next

I dunno.

I'm sure I'll continue to patch this game if/when things come up, and I also want to create a standalone desktop version. But I'm eager to shift focus towards the next thing — I don't know if it will be a sequel or a "spiritual successor" or something else entirely, or even if I'm doing it alone, but I'm filled with ideas! A lot of those ideas are great ideas from other people too. As of the time of writing, the NG version is the most up-to-date and featureful version of Dead Petals since it integrates with the Newgrounds API, but I'll bring the itch.io version and future downloadable version up to speed. Speaking of that, if you are really enjoying the game and you have one or two bucks to spare, the best way to support me right now is through the Support This Game button on the itch.io page. Don't be fooled, the game is still free!

Kevin

This is Kevin. I have absolutely no idea how he got so lost, since he lives on Satryn. It's a twin-stick shooter by Maybell which you can play for free here, and the Steam version has a leaderboard and a ridiculous amount of achievements.

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Roses are blue

Violets are dead

Why won't these petals

Get out of my head

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