STRATA post-jam patch

Hey all! Thank you so much for the feedback you gave for the game! GMTK '25 was my first jam, and we had a great learning experience from both this project and playing other creations. I reviewed a lot of the feedback from you players, and made a small list of changes to both streamline flow and fix vital bugs. Here are the patch notes:

Bugfixes

• Fixed enemy alert exclamation points to no longer face upside-down.
• Enemies should no longer be alerted in quick succession if you are moving at the edge of their radius.
• Increased the size of explosion visuals to better reflect their actual damage range.

Streamlining

• Increased the grab aura’s opacity for better visibility in the darker Stratas (including the tutorial).
• Replaced the look of the acceleration gates with a new looping animation to better imply that you need to fly through the bottom to reach the next strata.
• Changed volume of SFX and music to be at better defaults. For more tweaking, edit the application’s volume in Windows volume mixer.
• Explosive boxes are now able to weigh down buttons. This is not required to complete any puzzles, but playtesters were often disappointed when trying this and their expectations not being met.
• Explosive boxes have a new sprite to differentiate themselves more from health pickups.
• File directories no longer contain title “GMTK2025” and instead are replaced with “STRATA” where appropriate. The broken file shortcut has also been removed from the download.

Level Design

• Removed the non-functioning buttons puzzle from 1-4, as this was a common point of confusion combined with the jank of the current button implementation.
• Tweaked the AI for the Hunter (cyan ship) to be slightly more of a challenge.
• Added a tutorial for cracked/illusory walls in place of one of the button switches (1-5). This should better telegraph the existence of secrets that were commonly missed by players. Also swapped the cracked wall overlay texture to be thicker and more visible.
• Replaced the puzzle in 1-8 for another telegraphed illusory wall, reinforcing their importance in the level design.
• Altered the final boss room by reducing cover and moving the 1-way collision to the left, making the encounter less easy to break.
• Entirely overhauled the final boss to incorporate movement and cycled weapon attacks that threaten the player more than before.
• Added an intro cutscene with short dialogue explaining lore on the main itch page.
• Added various decal sprites to tilemaps to improve the visual variety of some screens.

Again, thank you for all of your feedback. See y'all next time,

- AleaIactaEst