Greetings!

We are happy to bring you this update with features you have been asking for. Pushing "build" button feels like wrapping a Christmas present.

First one of happy things is that Aquarium will now be available from the start, without having to beat the second boss. It was designed to be a milestone in progressing in the game. Since introducing Aquarium we have added an additional breed and 4 zooids. That acts as progression counter and gives enough goals. Additionally one of Aquarium purposes is training to play with different zooids and learning game mechanics in safe environment. Having that locked behind killing moderately hard boss has cut-off many new players and required the to learn Sipho the hard way.

The second thing should be exciting for experienced players - bosses will now drop two zooid pickups one of which you will be able to choose by consuming. We feel like the zooid pool is large enough to provide a strategic choice without sacrificing replayability. This should allow guiding your zooid inventory towards more synergetic composition.

The third thing is a little festive surprise. Let us know how your wear it!

Controller and keyboard-only support is now considered to be fully functional, without need of using mouse. Happy couch gaming!

And here is the glorious change list:

Version 0.5.6

• Festive things
• Push away zooids when zooid unlock is being spawned so it's harder to pick it up by accident
• Fix Layout Browser layout being broken in builds
• Fix ambient bubbles not respecting emit interval
• Add ambient bubble spawning based on obstacles
• Tweak down bubbles a bit
• Only reset adapted Zooids when starting Campaign game
• Do not show dialog upon killing Queen boss and unlocking Aquarium
• Improve Muck effects
• Buff muck slowing by 50% and decrease skill cost by 50%
• Add ability to spawn effect on when buffs
• Add default zooid sprite importer preset
• Soul Eater part sprites
• Fix Layout browser being not browsable
• Use RectMask2D and separate canvas to optimize layout browser layout and rendering with many entries
• Move save/import layout buttons to the left side of the Layout browser.
• Tweak layout browser image sizes
• Show nothing selected when no layout is selected in layout browser
• Fix aquarium game save leaking into campaign mode
• Make Layout Browser scale Layout entries to fit UI space
• Added a killpoint component and taught siphonophores to use it. SoulEaters now use it to collect points individually
• Fix zooid growth element not being selected from first entry when using zooid type hotkeys
• Improve Layout Browser layout to be more compatible with button-based UI navigation
• Only select zooid growth button when directional input was used instead of forcing it to be always selected
• Fix selecting zooids to grow through category hotkey when there is only a single zooid to grow in a category
• Integrate bubbles into a couple of in-game effects to get a better feeling of how it all looks
• Place zooid ghost at mouse position when mouse has recently been used
• Enter GrowZooid module whenever zooid growth UI element is used
• Update muck debuff asset
• Add a super basic SoulEater zooid prototype that scales range depending on regeneration points
• Muck applies debuff where possible
• Make bubbles a lot more subtle
• Improve game over ui controller friendliness
• Don't insta-beat the game lol whoops
• Improve game win dialog controller friendliness
• Game end/over UI buttons selected for controller
• Fix an issue where the growth hotkey would be shown as a keyboard shortcut instead of a gamepad one
• I guess more gameplay UI scene updates since I forgot to save last time
• Added a GameKeyImage that can make the text into the current gamekey binding
• Together with movement type report gamepad usage as well
• Add analytics of which zooid has been chosen and skipped in boss fight
• Do not require Queen boss achievement to play Aquarium
• Do a little dead-zooid-sweep when spawning zooid unlock consumable
• Spawn effect for zooid unlock consumable which was despawned
• Improve zooid unlock consumable spawn effect
• Make food eaten particles less affected by external forces
• Add zooid unlock spawn effect
• Controllers can now be rebound and their bindings are saved/loaded. The core of controller support is finally done #party #timeToFixAllDaBugs
• You can now see the primary and secondary bindings in the options menu
• Boss battles now give you a choice between two random zooids
• Fix ui events happening during rebind operations
• Simplify ui selection logic in MenuUI
• Fix rebinding not working correctly for non-first controllers
• Use controller-specific keys when reading their input and support multiple controllers for skills
• Controller input is now handled in a separate class
• Nutrition UI uses beautified button text instead of displaying the default ToString
• Make sure every game menu has a button selected, otherwise the controller will lose control
• RebindUI now constantly reset UI input while active and also has a single frame delay before reading any input for rebinding. This should prevent any instant rebinds to the "A" button
• Reset input axes after rebinding as well
• Add stricter deadzoning for RebindUI
• InputManager now uses the new APCButton for stuff
• Started work on APCButton which will handle all the deadzone and other fancy logic for us