Blop Variaty and Expressions #Version 13

Heyo! 🎉

After a little demotivation, Christmas, school exams (and some Factorio 😅), here comes the next update! This time, I focused on making Blop even better. There’s now much more variety with randomly generated ears and a few new tail options. I’ve even been experimenting with the limited colors available on Playdate to add more personality.

I also worked on game, to look better. Displaying him bigger, refreshed some visuals in activities and the idle screen. But most of my time went into improving the game under the hood—fixing tons of bugs, tweaking game mechanics, cleaning up code, and boosting performance significantly.

It took some time, but I hope you’ll like it! Let me know what you think and share your feedback. Enjoy the update! 🚀

🫠 Blop Evolution

• New body parts: Ears and tail
• More rare colors (because black and white screen, it is just grey and black)
• Dirtiness rework: Now shown as smudges instead of color change.
• Eyes now express emotions (happy, sad, angry)
• Blop looks down while eating
• All body parts are growing with aging
• Vegetarian Blops no longer ask for meat (and instead show vegetable needs)
• Needs and thoughts are now displayed even while sleeping (in thought bubbles)
• New traits affecting how quickly Blops need to poop.
• Blop runs again when going to poop
• Sleeping bubble after falling asleep
• Better mood after curing
• 4 new wishes

✨ Improvements

• Added a delivery icon in the Inbox for order mails
• In basketball, pressing B now exits the activity (previously reversed?!)
• Renamed “Lock Device” preference to “Stay On”
• Moved “Trash Poop” to the top of the inventory
• Packages are now displayed in three columns
• Night sky is now visible through the window at night
• Smooth scrolling in inventory
• On catching up screen, display new journal entry to see what is happening at the moment

🎨 Design changes

• Rearranged the Idle screen for better visibility of the Blop 
  • Blop now dynamically changes its displayed size
• Increased the size of the Blop and other items in the room
• Improved UI for activities

📖 Catalog changes

• Added a Pills category
• New Fat Loss pills - fastest way to get loose weight
• New Poopinator - if you need Blop to poop now
• Updated the image for Sleeping Pills.
  
• Implemented tags (e.g., Express Delivery, New)
• Cake is now displayed larger
• Items in the catalog can now be shown without descriptions

⚖️ Balance Changes

• Hygiene decreases more slowly while walking
• Intelligence no longer decreases over time
• Fat gain is slower
• Adopted Blops start with lower skill levels (but still respect age)

🐞 Bug Fixes

• Fixed possibility to new adopted Blops starved to death imidiately 
• Some death Blops could be alive for 1 second after the game started
• Fixed randomly disappearing window issue
• Improved text alignment in bubbles
• Fixed missing backgrounds for passive effects in dark
• Better spacing for catalog headlines
• Stay On preference is no longer reset after a walk
• “Trash Poop” item is now better align in the inventory
• Poop timer now resets correctly on revive
• Fixed a crash when a package arrived while adopting a new Blop
• Slowpoke Blops now properly bite food
• Petting is no longer possible while side menu is open
  
• Dead Blops no longer react to petting
• (DEV) Adopting from generation preview also resets Blop stats

⚒️  Performance and Code Improvements

• Blop body drawing is now smoother and prettier
  • for example prettier white border of the Blop body
• New scaling option for Blop size, affecting both visuals and mechanics (e.g., speed)
• Optimized repeated image loading
• Significant performance improvements for Blop rendering and HUD (reducing micro-lags)
• Optimalized same image loading
• (DEV) Better scrolling in the mirror menu.