This is a fix for a very serious and very insidious bug which left some people unable to start the game.

This bug would only show up when the end user's desktop is set to a region where numbers are written using comma as a decimal point. This would cause C Sharp's locale setting to kick in and try to interpret numbers other than the way they were written in my level file data, causing the characters to appear off screen at 0,0 instead of their proper spawn points in the burrows down below.

Thanks to Steam user MrSplinter, this fix was found rather quickly, he came across a forum thread discussing this exact same issue and told me his locale setting was set to Dutch. Finally I was able to replicate the bug and provide a fix! This update is it :)

Also thanks to AlucardsGirl, Incoming Troops, and Motoko777 (from the Discord server) for chiming in with this issue and providing more evidence to help me determine the problem.

Try it out and let me know on the Steam forum or my Discord server[discord.gg] if you have any questions or feedback!

Happy HopSquashing!

Some players have encountered a very strange bug when trying to join, the characters spawn in on the far right of the screen, outside the level. This update detects that situation and automatically tries to correct it by spawning the character at the top center of the screen and giving them a random colour. If you're one of the players experiencing this, please let me know. Comment here or join my Discord[discord.gg].

Also some players commented that they prefer the control feel of the "Legacy" version, so this update includes a super secret "Physics tweaking mode" that will let you change these values and share the results with me for inclusion in the next update! Comment here or join my Discord[discord.gg] if you want to help out!

Your Steam purchase of HopSquash! has been updated with the following features:

• Two new themes: Farm, and Desert, with their own artwork and music
  
• All themes now have 6 levels, doubling the number of levels from 18 to 36!
  
• Old levels have been re-worked completely, improving playability, and those darn skeleton hands no longer kill you!
  
• Improved player entry screen - each joining player gets their own "burrow" where they can select their character and colour, before confirming by jumping out. No more stealing colours!
  
• Split controller screen - here you can "split" controllers to share them with 2 players each, doubling the amount of possible players you can have!
  
• 3 Squash modes - Candy, Colours, and Blood!
  
• Improved score screen - Now it's clear who won!
  
• Computer Players have a wobbly antenna so you know who's a computer player and who's not
  
• Various bugs fixes and improvements

HopSquash is now on the Nintendo Switch eStore, with all of the features listed above! You can now play HopSquash on the go - pop off the controllers and sit the console on a table for some 2 player action anywhere, any time! Take that, Steam Deck!

And split controller mode even works on a single Joy-Con - yes it is possible to share a single Joy-Con between two people if you want to, which means a basic Nintendo Switch can play 4 player HopSquash using nothing but the 2 Joy-Cons that came with the system!

Naturally you can connect more controllers of any type to have up to 8 players, as with the desktop version.

The new "Colours" squash mode was created specifically for the Nintendo Switch, and is the only squash mode available in the Switch port, to keep the family friendly rating. However, players have found that this actually makes it much clearer who got squashed and who won when things are getting chaotic, since the character explodes into the colour that they chose. (Honestly, it's just the same blood effect with the colour shifted to match the player's chosen colour! Shh, don't tell Nintendo!)


I know, right? Well I've had to take on contract work to make ends meet, but I've realised I love making games way more than playing them, so in the evenings I'm doing game dev. And once the ball is rolling and game dev is bringing in enough money, the dream job can become the reality job.

If you'd like to make sure you don't miss updates, you can join my mailing list[mailchi.mp], and also my Discord server[discord.gg]. See you there!

Join Mailing List[mailchi.mp] Join Discord Server[discord.gg]

HopSquash! has been updated with several new features!

• Widescreen levels! Now the full screen is used which makes for a much more playable area especially for 8 players!
  
• Standard definition 4:3 still supported! If you run the game on a 4:3 monitor, the game and levels will adjust to fit, so you can still play HopSquash! on a CRT, just like the original Jump 'n Bump!
  
• Combos! Jump on several other players in a row without touching the ground to get a score multiplier
  
• Stack stomp! Very rare, but if a stack of players all squash each other, the one on the top gets all the points! Basically you squashed the whole stack of them.
  
• Sudden death! If the rounds finish with a tie, the game enters "sudden death" mode and the tied players have one life each to kill each other. The "last animal standing" is the winner of the entire game. No more ties!
  
• Live join - Enable this in the options menu to allow players to join the game after it's started, by pressing any buttons on available gamepads or keyboard controls. Great for parties!

And some cool, minor features;

• Crown - The currently winning player(s) now have a crown above their head, so you can always see who's leading.
  
• Better gamepad support - if any gamepads get disconnected, the game pauses. Also the pause screen shows the gamepad status (connected/disconnected).
  
• Hold jump when squashing someone to bounce higher off them than normal, try and get combos!
  
• Scores are now kept between rounds, it makes more sense that way.
  
• Windows Xbox controller wireless limit - Previously on Windows there was a limit to 4 Xbox wireless controllers. I aimed to fix this in this update but could only get 5 to work, which is an improvement of a kind. Still working on a proper solution to allow 8!

This update is the result of a total re-building of the game in the Unity game engine, to allow it to be ported to the consoles (Nintendo Switch, PS4, Xbox ONE). For the time being I've left out the level editor and the powerups, but please harass me on the HopSquash! Steam forum, and also my contact page on my website Domarius Games[www.domariusgames.com] and let me know how badly you want the level editor back and I'll work on it sooner! When powerups come back, they will be completely revised to actually have beneficial powerups, and "diseases" that impede you but you can pass onto other players!

For now, if you want to access any levels you've already made, just choose "HopSquash! Legacy" from the Steam startup options to run the previous version of HopSquash!, with all your levels intact.

Chalk this one up to a learning experience for a new developer... I mistakenly set the discount at 75%, I guess I was still in programmer mindset where I commonly multiply something by 0.75 to get 75% of that value, when in reality we are subtracting that amount to get the discount... It's a psychological phenomena called "machination" where you automatically do something, a useful ability, though sometimes it can be in error. You can actually trigger a deliberate misfire of this in people with jokes like "How do you say G O?" and they say "go". "How do you say A T?" and they say "at" and you say "How do you say them together?" and they say "go-at" instead of "goat", because you patterned them into the parts of the word instead of the whole. Anyway...

So the game spent a little while at the ridiculous all-time-low of 75%, way too early for that kind of all-time-low, considering the major update I have planned for this in the next couple months. Of course I would love to get the game in your hands sooner, but as you can probably understand, I want to actually live off game dev and set the right price at the right time.

I spoke to Steam Support, asked them for advice, and they actually set it to 25% for me. I would've been willing to take the hit and leave it till the end of the sale if that was the best thing to do by the community, but they said they will just correct it and advised me to make an announcement explaining the error. So here I am.

If you snapped it up when it was 75%, lucky you! I'm actually super glad you were playing that close attention to my game, heheh. Consider it a bonus. Well, stay tuned, who knows what other mistakes I might make that you can take advantage of. Maybe I'll accidentally post a bunch of Steam keys to Twitter (psst... that's very likely, it's a thing indie devs sometimes do to get a bit of exposure!).

Sorry guys, in the last update I made a slight mistake with my build uploads that caused the game not to start. I just fixed this!

The character artwork has been updated by the talented "hexcode", you can check out his gallery of work here: http://pixeljoint.com/p/117930.htm

People commented that kills that should have landed would sometimes "slip by", and so the "kill zone" area on characters has been increased to make this feel better!

And the rocket pack is less insane now, much easier to control.

Look out for a huge update coming in the next couple of months;

• New game modes: coin collect, capture the flag...
  
• Console ports: Switch, PS4, XBox
  
• New powerups
  
• New graphical themes and levels
  
• Steamworks support
  
• and more...