Here we go again! It was a busy couple of weeks focusing on improving the core of Afterschool Adventurers Club. Here's everything we accomplished since our last update:

1 - Performance Improvements

Raph did an amazing job optimizing many elements and speeding everything up. Including all of the tweaks and re-works he did, the game now runs almost 50% faster than it use to! It is so much more fluid now playing on Master System, it felt like a different game the first time I tried it, and we had to adjust some timings, like the dash, to keep up.

2 - Small Enemies

We added a total of 6 new small enemies to the Introduction Campaign. These enemies have 8x8 sprites and come in two varieties: Melee and Ranged with breakable projectile. The overall idea behind them is that they are small, fast and consistantly trying to attack the player so you have to quickly dispose of them.

3- Updated Club Layout

We redid the Club layout and updated its tileset as well. This was done in preparation for our next big milestone so we can display in the Club what Table Items the player is using, the rulebooks that they bought, the trophies that are unlocked, and a variety of other features that can be unlocked through the game.

4 - Scavenger NPC

We added a new NPC that can be found on the 2nd floor of the Inn in the Initiation and Main Campaigns. For a fee, he will go and fetch a random item or gold amount from the previous unsucessful campaign run. This gives the player a chance to get a great item or a boost in gold right from the start of a run.

5 - Traveling Merchant

A Traveling Merchant now has a chance to appear in each dungeon. When encountered, he offers to sell a potion, a bomb and a randomly selected item from the available pool. You can also sell unwanted items to this NPC.

6 - Trap Rooms

These rooms have no enemies in them, but they have plenty of spikes and holes to try and prevent the player from reaching their destination.

7 - World Map Animations

We added more animation to the World Map tileset and updated the Initiation Campaign's map general layout to make it a bit more interesting visually. We also now have random birds flying around in the sky.

8 - Updated Enemy Behaviours

Some enemies, like the Troll and the Firelin, were updated to pose a bigger threat to the player.

9 - New Restaurant Menu

The Restaurant menu was updated to reflect the same style as our other shops. Animation for the Shop Owners were also added. Buying and Selling items is now also possible at the restaurant.

10 - Loot icons

We fixed a remnant from our previous tileset format and now loot appears with the proper icon.