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

The Toastercide closed beta playtest is now open! There will be a relatively limited number of spots, so sign up early for the best chance at accessing new content.

There will be three new levels in the playtest, with more to come. These levels all include the new mechanics added in the newest update, including but not limited to:
Hostile Enemies
Style Points System
New Toast abilities and animations
3 new unique levels
New music for all levels
Aim Assist
New toaster model

Many of these features are in the early stages of testing, hence the playtest.

The discord is also open now to all players. Whether or not you have access to the playtest. I encourage everyone to join to provide feedback and report any bugs you find (and you will find bugs). I am excited to form a community around this game and chat with you all!

A new mechanic has been added! Players can how collect toast (up to 2), and eject them to use a special ability. Only one special ability can be equipped at a time via the Workshop. Abilities are unlocked by using points. Points are earned by beating missions, with the harder missions offering more opportunities to earn points.

There are currently four abilities to unlock:
Dash - Dash in mid-air, allowing for a change in momentum without an electrical object
Grapple Boost - Grapple speed is increased by 25% for 5 seconds.
Invincibility - The player is invulnerable to damage for 5 seconds (Not super useful right now, but will be)
Teleport - The player will instantly teleport to the grapple location for 5 seconds

There are a lot more abilities planned, but these should give players more creative ways to beat the missions as fast as possible. The idea with the abilities is to allow players to play around within the levels and find interesting paths/mechanics that come out of it. For example, when invincible, players can take advantage of the fact that water launches you high in the air when you touch it. Normally, this would deal 50 hp to the toaster, but with the powerup, this is completely mitigated. I'm excited to see what people do with just these 4!

Again, abilities are unlocked by collecting points. Whenever you beat a level, you are awarded a certain number of points based on the following criteria:

Star Bonuses - If you beat a mission and accomplish a star milestone for the first time, you earn 200, 300 and then 500 points for each star respectively.
Time Bonus - If you beat the mission under the 3 star milestone, then you get points for every second under the milestone
Health Bonus - You get points equal to your remaining HP
Style Bonus - You get points if you do cool things. Currently, you earn points if you are moving fast while not grappling. There will be more ways to earn style points added soon,
Completion - You get a flat amount of points when you beat a level
Level Modifier - Every level has a multiplier on the number of points you earned in that run. This means that harder missions earn you more points.

The points system is designed to encourage fast, stylish gameplay. This playstyle is rewarded with special abilities that allow for more ways to earn points. I am trying not to make this a grindy experience, especially for the demo. Currently, you can unlock all four abilities within around 30 minutes of gameplay.

I have plans to add more ways to spend points, like skins, toaster upgrades, and of course, more abilities.

Ok, now about the camera. The camera has been the most jankey and annoying part of this game. Many player complain about it for good reason. The most prominent problem is that when looking up from the ground, the toaster is in the way of the camera. A similar problem occurs when on the ceiling. I have added some mechanics to the camera that should make it easier for players to see where they are aiming. If there is an object very close below or above the toaster, the camera will move accordingly to give the player a better view. A few smaller changes were made on top of this. Hopefully this means players will be able to see better. The camera still gets buggy in enclosed spaces and tight corners, so this isn't the end of the camera changes.

Last update I forgot to talk about the toaster's health. You many have noticed that there is a "100 hp" in the top left corner. For a while, it never changed from 100 (unless you jumped into water). Now it does. Whenever you hit the ground too hard, you will take some damage. This is typically very small, from 1-3 damage per impact. In the demo, this does not present a serious challenge. However, in the larger levels, this impact damage will add up, and the player will need to play more skillfully. In addition, there will be enemies added soon. These enemies do not deal damage directly, but their attacks can throw the player pretty hard, and will be able to cause damage that way. Look out for that.

Well, that was a lot of updates. Thanks for all of your support so far, and sorry it took so long to get this one out! Let me know if you like the changes (and if you don't, also tell me that)!

Here is the full changelog for Demo 0.54:
Toastercide 0.54: 3/31/24
Basic Controller Support
Added Toast Mechanic
Added Dash, Faster Grapple, Teleport and Invincibility
Added Collision Damage
Added Sound Effects to collisions, toast uses, cable clicks, and bathtub explosions
Fixed Interpolation
Added Points System for customizations
Scaled Down All Systems, should result in better performance
Parameters for swinging rope changed
Camera will now move up if looking upwards and touching object below toaster
Camera will move down touching object above toaster
Changed Damage Values to reflect tangent velocity
Style Bonus Added: Added Speed Bonus points when not grappled

A lot of people have mentioned that the swinging rope feels too long. This is likely because the rope is created to be *exactly* the correct length between the toaster and the target. However, this makes the swinging rope feel a bit clunky, and players often hit the ground. In otherwards, while the rope originally functioned as it would in reality, it did not function as players expected.

Taking this into consideration, the rope is now formed to be slightly shorter than it actually should be, around 98% actual length. This creates a rope that feels significantly tighter, however, in some cases you are pulled slightly towards your target. In addition, when the distance between the toaster and the target is less than the length of the rope, the rope reels in. This means that slack is automatically taken out of the rope. In many cases, this results in a smoother swing. In cases where the length of the rope is significantly longer than the distance, the toaster will still fall to the ground, so there is still a skill involved. Hopefully, this will smooth out the learning curve for the swinging rope, while still not eliminating the challenge of using the rope to swing around.

There are some smaller quality of life changes, including that the UI should now scale for most resolutions. Several people have asked for wide screen support, and I hope I have delivered.

Oh also, there are now water hazards scattered around the levels, mostly in sinks and toilets. These will deal 50 damage to you, meaning that touching water twice kills you. That also means that health is actually a thing that affects gameplay. There will be more things that damage you soon, so health will play a larger part.

Oh also, I added some color correction in post-processing, so colors should contrast more and look brighter.

Camera changes and a toast mechanic are coming next!

Heres the actual changelog:
Toastercide 0.527: 3/6/24
Added movement trail
Added Camera bounding boxes
UI should scale better with Screen Sizes
Post-Processing on all maps
Added Water Hazards
You can die if you fall into water twice
Added Swinging Rope Reeling, Rope should feel tighter now

I've been getting a lot of comments about how the swinging rope feels loose, so I decided to tighten the rope a little bit by making it slightly shorter than it currently spawns. Hopefully this will make the rope act closer to player intention. However, this may also result in slightly bouncier behavior, so this change is not set in stone.

Toastercide 0.526: 2/22/24
FPS Limiter Added
Added Bathtub explosion effect
Tightened rope from 1 to 0.98 distance
Bedroom door to bathtub widened by 5 degrees

Fixed some minor bugs and added some tutorial hints to the third level for those who are having trouble getting up the stairs. I also added some electricity/spark effects for when you grapple to an electrical item.

Toastercide 0.525: 2/20/24
Added Electricity and steam effect when landing in bathtub
Added electricity effect when grappling toward electric object
UI Mouse bugs fixed, mouse should no longer disappear while in UI
Best times save bug fixed
Show time setting activates without reset
Level End UI Fades in after 0.5s
Added Hints to level 3 to teach slingshot up stairs
Fixed bug where hints do not appear at correct time

Hi Everyone!

A lot of you are coming from my instagram post so thank you for visiting! I really did not expect that post to blow up!

There's a demo for you guys to play and see if you like the game. One of the big reasons I released the demo was to get feedback and improve the game, so please let me know what you think! Feedback and criticisms are really important for me because I really want to make the game as good as it can possibly be! I have a google form[forms.gle] for feedback for now, but I'm going to look for a solution that's less jank.

I will be continuously updating the demo while working on the full game. It should be releasing within the first half of this year, but I haven't decided on a date yet so watch out for that!

If you want to keep updated on development, you should follow the game on Steam. I'll be posting devlogs and explaining what's going on behind the scenes. Some stuff will trickle into my socials, but those are mostly for reaching new people, so if you really want to stay updated on Toastercide, then follow this page.

Thank you for all the attention and support you guys have been showing Toastercide! This really started as a dumb idea and is shaping up to be a pretty fun (in my opinion at least) game! Be sure to Wishlist and share with friends too!



Thanks everybody!
The Chairman