Hey everyone! Sorry about the lack of updates and general radio-silence from me. It's been a hectic couple months for me since I started my first real job and moved to a new city for it. These big life changes were the reason the original release date was in Q2 of 2024. While I could have released the game by the original release date (fun fact: June 20th), it would have been pretty buggy and I don’t think I would have been proud to release it. As a result, I delayed the release all the way to November of 2024 (An exact date will be announced later). Development will be much slower considering my new 9-5, but I believe 5 months will be enough to create a fully realized and polished game.

I’m really sorry for not updating you guys about this earlier, I haven’t gotten used to having a community following my projects. That being said, I would really love to get this community involved in development and meet you all! I’m going to make weekly Toastercide updates from now on and I would love to host a meet and greet/playtest session this week. I have a bunch of minor updates, a major mechanic change, and an unreleased level that I would love to get feedback on. For those of you who are waiting on the playtest, this is your chance to get a key directly from me (there’s 650 people waiting for the playtest, and steam assigns keys randomly)!

If you are interested in meeting the developer of this silly game, join the discord via the link below, and meet me in the Playtest voice channel Thursday 9/5 at 8pm EST. I hope to see you there and I’m excited to meet you all! If you can’t make it, don’t worry, I’m planning on having these sessions regularly (maybe bi-weekly?). Let me know what else you would like from me (Q/A, Development Streams, etc)!

-Ryan

TLDR: I’ve been very busy with new life changes, but I finally have some updates that I am going to show off in a playtest session Thursday 9/5 at 8pm EST.

Discord Event Link: https://discord.gg/28kBHkhN?event=1279588601235116113

It has been far too long, but I have a really big update for you all! The discord is now open and the playtest is open for signups and includes three new levels incorporating many new mechanics. These include:

• Hostile Enemies
  
• Style Points System
  
• New Toast abilities and animations
  
• 3 new unique levels
  
• New music for all levels
  
• Aim Assist
  
• New toaster model

I'm going to go over all of these in detail.

Hostile enemies:
Hostile enemies have been placed around the three new levels. If the toaster gets within line of sight and is close enough, the enemies will start shooting. When bullets impact the toaster damage is delt, cables are released, and there is a significant knockback effect. This is designed to be very jarring and disrupt the player's movement. However, astute players can use the knockback effect to their advantage by using the extra velocity to fling themselves to greater heights.

Style Points System:
Style points are given when the player does something relatively impressive with their toaster. This is to designed to reward skillful gameplay. New style points are awarded for a number of reasons including: having significant airtime without taking damage, using the swinging rope for a significant amount of time without taking damage, using a toast ability, surviving a water collision, and avoiding bullets. Points are only awarded if the level is completed. The addition of style points is meant to provide players with a way to earn extra points during their runs. This allows players to purchase more toast abilities, which help players complete levels faster, and earn more points.

New Toast abilities and animations:
New animations have been added for collecting and ejecting toast. New toast abilities have also been added. These include, a heal (25 hp), burnt toast that kills enemies, and a toast swap.

Healing: The healing ability is designed to be comparable with the invincibility ability. While the invincibility ability can save up to 50 hp (from water damage), its mostly ineffective against chip damage from collisions and bullets. The healing ability, being repeatable, can significantly mitigate chip damage, and even water damage with proper planning. This makes the invincibility ability a bit of a gamble.

Burnt Toast; Toast is shot at where the player is aiming, and disables any enemy that it hits (death animation is a work in progress). This ability can help players navigate areas that are particularly densely populated with enemies. This is especially helpful when there are enemies that block the toaster's path, like in level 4.

Toast Swap: This is my favorite ability so far. Similarly to the burnt toast, a toast is ejected towards where the player is aiming. After 5 seconds, the toaster swaps positions with the ejected toast. With proper aim and planning, the player can skip significant sections of the level, or gain a significant height advantage. I find this ability really fun to play with and I look forward to players finding creative ways to use it.

New levels:
There are now three new levels in Toastercide. I'm not going to comment much about them for now to avoid spoiling people, but they are mostly very open and exploration is encouraged.

New Music
My music guys have been doing a great job with the music, and they have been added to the new levels. They are very catchy and they get stuck in my head very easily so watch out.

Aim Assist
When players aim for a far away electrical object, the often miss, which is very unrewarding, A slight aim assist has been added that gets stronger the farther away the target is. This means that the game should follow player intention more than before. This also helps make a console port easier and allows for a indicator when the player hovers over an electrical object.

Toaster model
There is a new toaster model.

Here is the full changelog:
Toastercide 0.6: 5/30/24
Continuous Speculative Collision Detection - Phasing should occur less
Decreased chance of swinging rope not connecting to road
Added aggressive AI
Changed Toaster Mesh
Added Bezos Level
Added Easter Bunny
Added Victory Condition for Easter Bunny
Added new character meshes
Added Soundtrack
Added Adaptive Soundtrack
Added Gravity Controller
Delayed Water Explosion
Electricity Sparks Glow, are effected by gravity and are more numerous
Camera FOV increased, Slight damping on collision with gameobjects
Added Swinging Bonus, Airtime Bonus, Near Miss Bonus, Toast Bonus
Added Bonus Text
Added Animations for damage and toast use
Added Damage Screen Shake
Added Additional Text for abilities on end screen and workshop
Increased prices for points
Added Toast Swap, Healing Toast and Toast Projectile
Added Aim assist
Added Feedback and Discord UI
Added Toast Collection and Ejection Animation
Objects too close to the camera no longer get targeted by cables
Fixed Water Damage Bug
Potential frame drop fix