Whew! We made it the current build of Poetry Slammers! Version .07 did a lot. Besides adding a new campaign circuit (a monumental task in and of itself), scoring was rebuilt, an infinity mode was added to the game, and a whole slew of word packs were added to the shop. I hope you get to press Start to play soon! Being as we're in the middle of summer, it kind of felt appropriate to add a waterpark circuit to slamtown. Sure, I mean, who reads poetry at a waterpark? BUT THIS ISN'T ANY WATERPARK, it's Slamtown's waterpark, and your favorite squid lifeguard is also your poetry judge. Dunk not only loves waterparks and swimming, but he also likes sending his little poems down the lazy river in bottles. Could you imagine if you went to a waterpark and found a poem in a bottle while going down a lazy river? That would either be really creepy or really cool -- I guess depending on the poem. ;) "Yourt poem" sigh . . . mark that down as a polish fix I need to do . . . With this build I finally moved away from "the longer the poem, the better the poem" scoring of the previous version and instead made it more based on using all the tools that were given to you. It actually made it much easier to get a 5-star poem. In addition, I added a scoring breakdown that you can check if you really want to know why you got 5 stars . . . before that was hidden and players kept asking themselves, "Wait, how is my creativity being judged here?" Although the illusion of some AI logic in the background actually judging your poem in some magically secret way was kind of fun, it was also a point of frustration. Now the mechanics are right there and explained. Easy. The scoring breakdown of how I earned 5 stars and 1 happy tear. :) Because I had now created word banks that matched circuit types, it was pretty brainless to go ahead and create word pack buffs for each circuit and put them for sale in the shop. Getting these to show up in the shop is also a little "chef's kiss" for when you finish a circuit and really like that circuit's word style. Beat a circuit and its word pack now shows up in the shop. While I was at it, it really was time to relook at the word bank. There were some pretty non-PC words in there, so I had to rethink a few of them. Also, the "normal" word bank had a few "themed" words, and so I moved those out and replaced them with other words if they were already a part of a circuit word bank. But the real big win here for me was adding infinity mode. Up to this point, if you beat the game's content, it just stopped and you couldn't play any more until new content dropped. Knowing there's just no way I could keep up if I actually got an invested player, I decided to create an infinity mode so that you can just keep playing. Fini breaks down Infinity Mode Infinity mode is kind of cool, you reach it and it spins a wheel to select which pre-existing venue you're going to play. After you play those five games, you can actually replace your favorited wall of fame poem with a new poem if you want through a little "versus" UI. You can also just win free stuff if you're lucky . . . You might get extra stars, happy tears, or even just outright win a word pack. Spin the wheel to slam a destination! I kind of stalled here and stopped working for the past month on Poetry Slammers. I had a couple other projects come up, like, I don't know, Blaugust?! I think I just need to finish up version 8 and then really polish the game with Version 9 (this little exercise of reposting each build has made me realize how much polish work I still have to do). Below are the patch notes for Version 7: ~~ Poetry Slammers v0.7 -- Waterparks, Word Packs & Infinity Street! New Waterpark Circuit Dive into 15 new campaign levels spread across three watery Slamtown locations. Meet Dunk, a strange little squid lifeguard who loves weird words, big splashes, and sending poetry out into the world by bottle. The Waterparks circuit includes: A new campaign map and three new buildings New judge dialogue, reactions, and story moments More than 120 Waterparks-themed words A new unlockable Slammer A new Waterparks Word Pack Rebuilt Poetry Scoring System Poems are no longer judged primarily by how many magnets they contain. Each of the five stars now represents a clear creative goal: Use at least two words made with the Magnet Maker (yellow words from the top row) Use at least two Neutral words (regular words from the second row) Use at least two words from the current themed circuit (colored labels on the third row) Use at least two Common Words (Like "the" and "of") (white labels on the fourth row) Add a finishing touch with punctuation or a Star Word (found on the top tray above the poetry making board) Judge requests remain optional bonuses. Extra stars beyond the five displayed stars are converted into Happy Tears. The results sequence has also been redesigned to create a cleaner, more satisfying final-poem moment before the Share, Score Details, and Continue controls appear. Score Details breaks down exactly how your poem was rated. Word Packs Every completed circuit can now unlock its own timed Word Pack. Purchasing a Word Pack from the shop (or winning one in infinity mode) will add one themed premium magnet to every poem you create. Packs can be used in Campaign and Infinity Mode, and multiple packs may be active at the same time. Available packs include: Coffee Shop Record Shop Library Arcade (obtained through the Poetry Breaks side mode) Campground Oddity Shop Waterparks Welcome to Infinity Street Players who finish all currently available campaign content can now enter Infinity Street, where time and space collide in a mysterious pocket dimension of Slamtown. Spin the reel to do the following: Revisit any completed campaign building Replay its five original challenges as ∞-1 through ∞-5 Win Happy Tears, Pixel Coins, Star rewards, and temporary Word Packs Complete a five-poem Infinity run Replace an older Wall of Fame favorite with a new poem Buildings will not be selected twice in a row, even after closing and reopening the game. When future campaign content arrives, Infinity Street will temporarily close and return players to the regular campaign until the new material is completed. Meet Fini Infinity Street is overseen by Fini, a mysterious noir gentleman shaped like an infinity symbol. Fini replaces the normal judge visually during Infinity runs while preserving each building’s original prompts, reactions, scoring preferences, and voice. A new three-panel tutorial introduces Fini and explains Infinity Street the first time it is entered. Paid Re-Spins Don’t like where the Infinity reel landed? Players may now spend 1 Gem to spin again. Re-spins can be used repeatedly and may land on either another building or a special reward, but the abandoned building cannot immediately repeat. Word Bank Cleanup The game’s core word library received a substantial cleanup pass. This included: Replacing unusually long or awkward words Correcting misplaced word categories Removing outdated or inappropriate entries Improving circuit-word consistency Preserving legitimate words that belong in multiple categories Making more words practical to read and arrange on mobile screens The complete bank still contains more than 3,500 unique words. ~~ Wish me luck! I may need to call in a few favors to help get this on the app store with some dedicated testers. Let me know if you're interested. Happy Dueling!