# December Treats # ! (Bloodstained December Updates)

i think the shadow bug is kinda cool, it likely means miriams equipped weapon is always loaded, just transparent until its activated, that would help cut down on load and speed up attack cycles since youre only toggling opacity/shadow map value rather than loading the weapon from memory each time or preloading it offscreen and moving it into miriams hand (primarily a sprite based technique) upon activation

allooutrick
If the game ends up having 8 sets, considering Shards & Gear, the strategic possibilities, if the game give us enemies hard and interesting enough for said strategies, can be endless.
You can have something like this:
Set #1: Default set, with decent weapon and gear and "good-for-all" shards.
Set #2: High damage, close range set (Axe or Hammer, with close range powerful shards)
Set #3: Long range set (Gun, projectile-focused Shards)
Set #4: Mobility set (fast attack weapon, mobility-based Shards)
Set #5: Boss set (good weapon and ultra-powerful, high MP consuming Shards)
Set #6: Situational set #1(focused on something specific, like protection against status effects or elements)
Set #7: Situational set #2
Set #8: Situational set #3

As i said, in order to really do something like this, enemies and the whole game must give us opportunities and the "need" to prepare ourselves like that.

Just a brainstorm lol

Angel-Corlux

They could patch stuff like that post launch. Right?

We do want to know if patches are coming after or ON launch. So everyone could expect more cosmetics / costumes, bugfixes and balance.

I would suggest also each patch had a name instead of numbers (well internally it would be numbers) but name it after the cosmetic or costume. Like this one would be the Hair Patch.

Angel-Corlux cool, i figured hair physics was on a wishlist somewhere for like polish phases, and im willing to bet theyve run some preliminary tests just to see if its even feasible down the line, but with all the focus on getting the meat of the game set in stone and working im really curious to see what other neat little nibbles are coming

I hope movable hair makes it in!

Pure Miriam I completely agree, and I understand. As I said above, this was a personal wish, but it would truly be miserably ungrateful of me to take a game this beautiful, which is chock-full of features and gorgeous animation, done on a very modest budget by gaming standards, and whine incessantly about something like hair moving.

I've just always been a huge animation guy, so I love the little touches (of which this game already has many) that bring life and personality to the world. Even in its unfinished state, I already credit this team with creating, for my money, the best-looking 2-D side-scroller out there. Yes, there have been others like "Dust," "Sundered," "Hollow Knight," "Ori and the Blind Forest," and "Rayman Legends" that look spectacular, but almost all of them came with limitations. Although the main character in "Dust" was nothing short of a marvel, the designs and animations of pretty much every other character in that game was mediocre. "Sundered" is the best-looking 2-D game I've seen as far as the character animations and effects (particularly the bosses), but the world was unfortunately quite bland overall, with the corridors being one of the more unimpressive copy/paste procedural renders I've seen. Almost none of the rooms beyond a couple of the save/boss rooms were memorable. "Hollow Knight" is very charming but the characters/enemies are very simplistic. This is by no means a bad thing, but you can't fairly compare those to Bloodstained's. "Ori" is probably the most fair comparison to Bloodstained, as the world is rich, detailed, and atmospheric, and the animations are top-notch. The problem is that the enemies are all kind of samish variants of slugs. "Rayman" is perhaps the most comprehensively awesome side-scroller I've ever played. It's HD, the art direction is peerless, the gameplay is excellent, the music is on point. There are a multitude of modes, extras, challenges, etc. What's the problem, then? Nothing. It's just that it was a very high-profile, high-budget Ubisoft game. I have zero doubt that if Iga had the kind of resources that game had, we'd probably see every manner of little "polish" additions like moving hair.

The thing is, I can't think of much else they could add to this game that they aren't already, besides just making the already impressive graphics marginally better. It already has a wealth of features, and I'm just thankful we're seeing a SoTN successor at all. I had no hopes that I ever would, and when this game came along, I knew it would be the first project I'd ever crowd-fund. I have nothing but respect and admiration for the hardworking folks throwing together this amazing project. Keep up the outstanding work!

December Treat #2!

"The winter holidays are upon us...a celebration is in order! Check out Miriam wearing an adorable Santa hat and cracking a gorgeous new whip in anticipation of some merry demon slaying! What a ho-ho-horrible night to be a demon!"

So... wait. Is Bloodstained going to be released anytime around Christmas next year? If not it's a little odd having that hat available in like March or August or something. Kinda confusing.