QoL, Better Hints, Balance Changes

Structural changes:

• Changed hints to always give a hint about enemies
• Added a button which can exchange time for health (starts at a 10 minute cost and goes up by 10 every time you use it). This is an experimental feature and might be removed in the future, or expanded.

Quality of Life:

• Visual / audio feedback on the clock for how close you are to midnight
• Visual feedback when you try to buy a perk but don't have space
• Visual feedback when you try to buy a perk but don't have money

Perk Changes:

• 360 feedback is now rare
• Close Call no longer flips up enemies
• Buffed sales pitch to add 15 value to perks instead of 10
• Changed Brevity to gain multiplier at the start of a round for each perk with 5 or less letters in its name

A Note About Hints, Extra Health and Future Changes:

Hi! Ezra here. I wanted to share a bit about my design philosophy and goals for the game so you can picture how the game may change in the future. At it's heart, I see this as a "push-your-luck" game. I love that moment when you check in with yourself and wonder "Am I being greedy? Do I really need this? Is it better to risk losing now, or risk losing later if I don't have enough money by then?" This game is about that feeling, that moment, that dynamic, more than anything else. 

One of the other fun things about the game is using limited information to deduce what's on the board and where. This is in direct conflict with the push-your-luck aspect because if you're too good at deducing where the enemies are you're not pushing your luck anymore. Balancing this conflict in the design is the current big question I'm trying to tackle with these recent updates. This update specifically changes the way that hints work so that they always tell you something about where the enemies are, but they are created in a way that is meant to minimize finding out exactly where they are. If the hints can inform your push your luck decision (this section has less enemies so I want to spend a bit longer here exploiting that) that would be a perfect balance. 

The extra health button is also meant to accentuate and increase the frequency of the push-your-luck decisions. I've noticed that often times I'll end up with 1 health. This makes it feel like I cannot push my luck unless the situation is dire because the consequences are so high. I'm hoping that the extra health button, by costing time (the resource that converts into bonuses when on a win streak!) will let people come back from the brink of being at 1 health while being an interesting push-your-luck decision by itself (do I want to risk dying but have more time?).

The reason I'm laying all this out is that because this game is in active development, these features may shift and change or be removed entirely. I know that as a player, it might be hard to roll with these changes especially if they make the game harder or easier than you're used to. I hope you'll give the game grace as we work through these issues. In the meantime, feel free to join the discord if you want your voice to be heard while we're making these decisions! (Or post in the comments). Many of our changes so far have been inspired by discussions we've had in the discord. 

https://discord.gg/vpsjP9TY