Hello burrowers! Pre-alpha v0.5 is now available, containing a myriad of changes and improvements. Feast your eyes on this changelog:

Features/Improvements

• A brief intro cutscene has been added. If no save data is present, the cutscene will play when entering the game from the title screen. It's also selectable as the very first level in World 1.
• A Glossary has been added to the pause menu in levels.
• A Totals screen has been added to the pause menu on the overworld.
• It's now possible to move Paired Blocks in any circumstance previously not possible, including pulling one when sandwiched between the pair.
• Overworld warps now act like they do in levels and teleport the player to the destination.
• The player's movement speed in levels and on the overworld has been increased even further to reduce puzzle execution and navigation times.
• Removed the forced wait after pushing a block onto ice. This was legacy code from when player movement was not restricted to tiles.
• Blocks moving on ice now move at the same speed as the player's base movement speed.
• Made undoing a move reduce the current move count in a level.

Levels

• Three more levels have been added in World 1 along with a new boss level, and World 1's previous boss level has been moved to level 2-7 of World 2.
• Moved Take Two from 1-5 to 1-9.
• Moved Direction Maze from 2-3 to 2-11. 2-3 is now a new level, Mix-up.
• Removed the redundant inset for the large block in 2-8 Navigation.
• Redesigned 3-1 Warps to be less tedious and a better introduction to warps.
• Shifted the "A" block in World 3's boss level to the left so it's less intrusive.
• Redesigned 4-3 Coupled to be more focused.
• Redesigned 4-4 Factory to be clearer and more open.
• Removed several inconvenient mud patches in 4-6 Muddy Ordeal to make the level less tedious.
• Redesigned 4-8 Ice Mud Clash to be more focused.
• Adjusted 4-9 Partner to be more forgiving.
• Renamed all boss levels to "Mole Hideout #", with the actual number replacing the "#".

Visuals

• Upon completing a level for the first time, the newly available paths will gradually light up.
• Warps that lead to different worlds are now visually distinguishable from warps that act as shortcuts in the same world.
• Portals have been redesigned to be circles instead of hexagons.
• New visual effects have been added to portals, warps, mole rocks, and moving blocks.
  •  For blocks, the color of the effect changes depending on the surface the block is on.
• While a mole rock is inside a Pipe Block, a flashing red arrow will indicate the direction the rock will exit the block.
• If idle for a long enough time, the Echidna will fall asleep.
• Level names have been simplified by omitting "Level" in them.
• Further darkened mole rocks that cause a level restart to make them more easily distinguishable.
• Decreased the margin on the overworld level panel to improve text scaling on longer level names.
• Swapped the positions of the displayed moves and time on the in-game HUD to be consistent with how they're displayed everywhere else.

Bug Fixes

• Fixed a bug that allowed you to enter the same tile as a block taking a warp if timed correctly.
• Fixed a bug in which a block on a spot can play the incorrect animation if it changed spots via undo.
• Added missing border tiles to 2-10 Warehouse and 4-8 Ice Mud Clash.

NOTE: With all the new features, major changes have been made to the save data format. v0.4 save data brought over to v0.5 will preserve move and time records for each level, but the levels themselves will not be complete. It's recommended to start from a fresh save by deleting your existing save file.

With this release, Maze Burrow is officially in alpha! If you haven't already, check out the plans going forward on the previous devlog. v.05 will unfortunately be the last version available for macOS for some time; however, the v0.5 download link will remain up for future versions.

I worked very hard on this update, and I hope you enjoy it! I encourage you to share your thoughts in the discussion boards or via my Twitter. As always, thanks for playing, and keep burrowing!

- Kimimaru