Whoo boy, it feels like forever since I posted an update on here. This one, I'm happy to say, is somewhat substantial! 

Brief overview of all that is new: 

• Gave Red (the, ah, red witch) a special attack -- it's a second fireball that causes damage to your shield if you touch it
• Created a third level -- introducing Snow, the white witch! 
  • Began implementing her special attack, a snowball that freezes you for a short time so that you can't move & might miss the fireball as a result
• Improved the enemy AI, specifically for Red & Snow's levels. They are both much better at playing Witchball now :) 

What's still to come: 

• Snow's complete special attack that, ya know. Actually works
• A fourth level with a new witch! 
• ✨Infinity Mode✨ -- want to play a longer, more relaxed game of Witchball without all the fanfare of special attacks and extra shields? This is the mode for you
• General refinements to code & visuals (and maybe audio, since it's currently pretty quiet in the witches' world)

And I think that's about it! Once I get the last level (and an accompanying animation to give it more of a "final boss" feel) and make those general refinements, Witchball will move from "in-development" to "fully released!" I'm pretty excited about that, since this is my first game :) 

I struggled a lot with it so far, but it's been really fun & fulfilling too. I've definitely learned a lot that I can put to good use further down the line, with bigger and better games. 

For example, one of the things that had me stuck for a while was the enemy's automated movement. For a while, I had a really bad (in the sense of it didn't follow the fireball very well) function for it. Which was fine at first -- and for the first level, where it's still implemented, so that you really ease into the game -- but if the levels were going to be more than reskins, I needed a function that could actually improve the enemy's ability to follow the ball. 

It ended up still being super simple, but it stumped me for a long time, since the improved tracking really messed up the animation transitions as I had them at the time. But I think I've got all that sorted out now! 

As always, I'd love to hear any feedback y'all have, especially with respect to the level of difficulty of the game. Personally, I think it's pretty easy, and that was my intent, but if it's Too easy, that's not a very fun game. So let me know! 

Thanks for reading, and I hope you have fun playing Witchball! If you like the game or want to see what comes next for me, feel free to follow me here, or at any of my socials (@duckduckgrem on twitter, tumblr, and instagram)!