F&TMT1.4.0 - Score Attack Mode & Massive Balance Overhauls

Hey there everyone! Surprised to see an update so soon, huh?
This is primarily thanks to Kiyasu and Rebekah whom both played the game and provided feedback.

I've made major changes so let's dive into what that entails, starting with new content!

Score Attack & New Difficulty Mode!

Sport Difficulty: A challenging difficulty mode. In this mode Fidel cannot level up. She will start at level 4 (though she has stats equivalent to level 3). Fidel cannot run from battles either. In this mode, the goal is to complete the game with the highest score. Combat is far more challenging and requires knowledge and understanding of the enemies you face and the skills you have. In this mode you are always forced into score attack mode.

Score Attack Mode: See how high of a score you can get in a single play through. You are scored based on your time to completion, the battles you complete, the chests you open & puzzles you solve, and the number of times you heal & use items. A multiplier is applied to your score based on the difficulty you select! Score attack mode can be enabled on any difficulty (but cannot be disabled on Sport Difficulty.)
Can you beat my score? I achieved it on a Sport Difficulty, Permadeath run.

PermaDeath Mode: In the 1.2 patch I introduced "PermaDeath Difficulty". This mode was the default difficulty, but with save points disabled. In this release, PermaDeath is now a mode that can be turned on independent of the difficulty selections. Therefore, players can do perma-death runs on the reduced difficulty, default difficulty, or sport difficulty!

Practice Mode: Practice mode will prevent Fidel from dying, and allow players to practice the game before going for a high score. Practice mode will still show you your final score, but it will not record that information to game's score board. This mode can be enabled by:

1.  Enable Score Attack mode at the start of a new game (in any difficulty).
2.  Activate the rope next to Fidel at the very start of the game. Fidel will remark "this game is not a point-and-click game".
3.  Activate the pickaxe lying next to the table nearby. The game will now ask if you wish to enable practice mode.

Improvements!

A number of improvements have been brought to the table with this update:

• The game now has game-wide (meta) variables to track information across play-throughs. This enables me to:
  • Track high scores
  • Reduce redundant information or events (such as tutorials) on subsequent play-throughs!
• New camera panning was added to some events to provide better hints to the player.
• The "End it All" skill was removed, replaced with "The Sauce" - which is an item - hopefully reducing the chances of accidentally killing yourself.
• Some animations and event processing were sped up.
• The "reset puzzle" purple crystals were changed to big red buttons to prevent confusing them with save points.
• The invisible path puzzle now has a newly added hint in addition to the existing hints. This new hint is only visible in the reduced difficulty mode.
• The hidden pathway to the hidden puzzle has had it's landmarking completely changed in order to sign post the hidden path somewhat more clearly.
• The first 3 fights in the game no longer have a high chance for Fidel's attacks to miss.
• Overall game performance was greatly improved (My goodness there was some horrific event logic used!)
• Text boxes now have a margin on the side of the screen and text properly word-wraps now (introduced YEP_MessageCore)
• Dark mode has been brought to the UI. The red UI color has been reduced in brightness.
• The game's start up volume should be more reasonable.

Balancing!

In addition to all the improvements and new content added, tons of balancing has taken place:

• Guarding has been improved:
  • Guarding has a greater reduction in damage.
  • Additionally, guarding now restores 1 point of MP.
• The Maker fight has had his HP reduced even more!
• The Maker's "Bad Thoughts" would also use a healing skill that would effectively full-restore him. This has been removed.
• The Maker's MP has been reduced, and his magic skills now cost more MP to use.
• Enemy damage will stop scaling once Fidel reaches level 4.
• The Mighty Chicken is slightly less mighty.
• Default Difficulty HP & MP scaling on the player has been reduced slightly.

I do believe that covers most, if not everything.
There were a few more things I wanted to do that I didn't get around to. I need to get back to working on my current on-going project, so these things may come in a later update (this is mostly a note to myself):
New save point in the first level just after opening the gate. Allow "Blast" to deal more damage to Jellies. Allow player to look for missed puzzles if they missed any in the second level (and still get the reward for doing so).

Sorry there is no online leader board for the scores! But I hope you will share screen shots of the scores you get! Try to beat my score!