Hello Burrowers!

There's been a slower stream of updates, but while I've been hard at work on Maze Burrow, I thought now was a good time to share the progress I've made since the last devlog. Things are getting more and more exciting as Maze Burrow nears completion, and the list of polish tasks doesn't end!

New Tileset + HUD

Maze Burrow now has a new unique tileset! Each world has a color variation to distinguish it from the others, and in the background you'll find stalagmites of various sizes as well as fungi and plants. Maze Burrow has lacked a world aesthetic for the entirety of its development until now, and I'm very happy to finally be able to share this!

In addition, the text on the HUD has been replaced with icons corresponding to moves and time, respectively. These icons free up space on-screen and require less effort to read; overall, it's a lot cleaner. This change has been made across the board, including the level details on the overworld and the pause screen.

Menu Transitions

Each menu now has a brief transition to ease into what it's pulling up next. This is a small thing I've been meaning to get to for a while, and here it is!

More Visual Changes

Some players experienced issues identifying levels that are available yet incomplete; as a solution, level portals on the overworld will indicate this state by pulsing. No more second guessing if you can move to a level!

I've also aggressively tackled text legibility and eliminated scaling artifacts on most, if not all text in the game up to this point.  In short, everything should be clearer and easier to read. Furthermore, lettered/numbered indicators for blocks and other objects now have an outline so they can stand out without blending into the background (as seen in the first GIF).

New Graphics Settings

Previous builds were capped at 60 FPS with Vsync forced on. Since Maze Burrow is not an intensive game, this works well for the majority of computers today. However, considering monitors with higher refresh rates are becoming increasingly more commonplace, I want to make sure each player can tweak the game for a smooth experience that caters to their setup. Two more settings have been added to the options menu:

• Vsync: Choose between "Enabled" or "Disabled". Set to Disabled if you want the game to not be constrained by the monitor's refresh rate.
• Framerate: Choose between "Fixed" or "Variable". Fixed caps the game at 60 FPS, and Variable tells Maze Burrow to run as fast as the refresh rate of the monitor allows. If Vsync is Disabled while the framerate is Variable, the game will run as fast as your computer will allow it.

Maze Burrow has been developed without a reliance on framerate, so whether the game is running at 30 FPS or 1000 FPS, you'll have a similar experience!

Closing

There are many other improvements, such as World 1 difficulty balancing, but this post would be quite long if I covered them all. Moving forward, there are some new features I'm designing that I can't wait to share with you all once they've been finalized and implemented. There's a possibility of opening up future demo builds, which will contain a small subset of levels in order to provide a more condensed experience to help me identify the most important areas of improvement.

As usual, you can keep tabs on the game's progress through my Twitter. I accept messages, so if you've got any suggestions or feedback, don't hesitate to let me know and I'll consider it! Until next time; keep burrowing!

- Kimimaru