I’ve made another major overhaul to the early part of the demo. I’ll need to monitor the dropout rate over the next week. There’s a particular spot where players were dropping off in large numbers, but after watching my daughter and her friend—both of whom have no gaming experience—get through it without any trouble, I figured the problem might not be that specific point after all. So I broadly revised the surrounding dialogue, quests, flow, and rewards. Players tend to continue much further once they pass that area. Hmm.
Players can now warp to new levels. It took some effort to keep things compatible with existing save data, but it’s working. With this, I can finally begin building the Threshold stage. I’m still thinking about how to make the enemies there feel fresh. Still, the core remains exploration and discovering new areas through acrobatic movement. While setting up level transitions, I found quite a few places I want to remake. For now, I’ve just left them as-is since they’re functional, but I’d love to revisit and refine them all if time allows.