Lyca news & patch notes

Hey everyone! Thank you for your patience, I'm excited to say that a major update for the game is live now! This update includes: 1. A substantial optimization patch: I was pretty much at my wits end trying to make fixes for weeks with no results, when I turned to Felix Borchert AKA BinaryCounter (the programmer of Backpack Hero) for help. With his wizard-like skills, he has reworked the grass shader in the game from scratch to look and run much better than before! He has also made a bunch of other changes and fixes that improve the performance. All of your feedback has been invaluable in making the game better! 2. Low-FPS mode has been removed: This is due to the new grass shader, as it no longer works the same way. The button still exists in the settings menu but won't do anything if enabled. 3. 5 new skins have been added to the game! These are all special doggos that I've wanted to put in the game since I came up with the game concept. I know there are a lot of skin requests, and I'll try to add more over time :) (A lot of people have asked for the DVD logo, but that's trademarked so I don't think I'll be able to put that in, sorry!) 4. A few smaller fixes and tweaks {STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/45417884/9904b752ac630c5c2d01ab77821f0eccb4398be3.gif To celebrate the release of the new update, the game is currently on sale for 20% off! We are also bundling with two wonderful games: - Spirit City: Lofi Sessions, which is one of my favorite idle games to chill with while working! If you want even more incremental dopamine along with more chill lofi music, you can pick the game up through the bundle for an extra 10% off! https://store.steampowered.com/bundle/53041/Lyca__Spirit_City_Lofi_Sessions/ - Backpack Hero, which is especially awesome considering what I mentioned above! If you’re in the mood for some roguelike fun, you’re in for a treat! This one comes with an extra 10% off, too. https://store.steampowered.com/bundle/52318/Run_on_Repeat/ Please try out the game with the new update and continue to provide feedback so we can keep making the game better! :) Also, please keep giving suggestions for any future skins you would want in the game! Talk to you all soon, - Shaun (dev)

Hey everyone, It's been 1 month since Lyca released on Steam! In this last month, the game has surpassed all my expectations and I'm really humbled by the response. Thank you everyone for playing the game and for giving me really valuable feedback. I'm really grateful that something I made is being played and enjoyed by so many people! I'm still hard at work on the next update, which will improve the performance further as well as include the locked skins in the game! Please stay tuned for the update :) Thanks again and talk to you all soon, - Shaun (dev)

Hey everyone! Thanks again for your patience with the patches. I've just pushed the second performance patch, which should improve the performance further. This update contains: 1. Performance improvements: - Grass shader has been optimized further - Grass shader has been modified to draw fewer blades of grass to improve FPS - Low-FPS mode is improved: draws even fewer blades of grass, and some other effects are disabled 2. Bug fixes: - Controller fix: If last saved control scheme was Controller, and player starts game with no controller connected, it will default to WASD+Mouse controls - y-position of camera follower is clamped on upgrade screen while using WASD controls 3. Balance changes: - snow damage has been nerfed - unlocking the first snow upgrade costs more resources to unlock (so players will unlock snow at a later stage in the game when they already have better upgrades to survive the run) - 'reduce damage done by snow' upgrade has more tiers - a couple of upgrades cost fewer resources to unlock 4. Steam Cloud Saves! - a lot of people have requested cloud saves, and they are now enabled. In order to sync with Steam cloud, please make sure that your account has cloud enabled, the app has cloud enabled and that your Steam account is online! Please take a minute to update the game on Steam! I'm going to keep working on the performance as well as improving the game, so please keep the feedback coming! :) Thanks for playing! See you all soon, - Shaun

Hi everyone, Thanks for your patience with the patches, and for all the feedback so far. I'm still working hard to figure out the performance issues and will be improving them over the coming days. For now, I've just pushed an update that does the following: - The player (and birds) movement is now framerate independent, so Lyca won't slow down too much even if the FPS drops. - Low FPS mode is updated a bit: the flowers and seed bomb plants are now static, particles and screenshake are disabled. This should hopefully improve performance a little bit. - Small balancing changes with 2 upgrades - Tiny bug fix related to screenshake with a couple of buttons - Added a button to main menu for performance feedback form, if you're encountering issues with performance, please use the form to provide more information so that I can try and improve the performance quickly! https://forms.gle/4jGcL5cV8E1HGZXv7 Please take a minute to update the game on Steam! Thanks again for playing! There will be another performance related update tomorrow as well. See you all soon, - Shaun

Hey everyone! Thanks a lot for trying out Lyca, I hope you're having a relaxing time with the game! I'm aware that a number of people are encountering performance-related issues while playing the game, and I'm working hard to trying to fix them ASAP. To that end, it would be really helpful if you could fill out this form with details about the performance of the game: https://forms.gle/4jGcL5cV8E1HGZXv7 The info from the form will make it much easier and quicker for me to hone down on the problem and fix it! If there's something specific you want to bring to my attention, please feel free to write it in the comments of this post. In the meantime, there's a couple of things you can try to make it a little better: - Enable Low-FPS mode in the settings, this will disable the grass shader (which is the most performance-heavy aspect of the game). - If you're starting to get performance issues after longer play sessions, exit and re-launch the game. This should fix the performance for a while. Anyways, thanks again for the feedback and the support! See you all soon, - Shaun

Hi everyone, I'm really thrilled (and nervous) to share that I have just released Lyca, and it's now available to buy and play! It’s a solo project that I’ve poured all my passion into, and what I believe is my best game so far! I've also bundled with games like Nodebuster, Digseum, Ropuka’s Idle Island, and more, which are some of my favorite games in the genre! Grab them along with Lyca if you haven’t tried them, they’re totally worth playing. Quick update: We have added Thai translation as well to the final build of the game! Thanks for all your support and feedback in the past few months, I couldn’t have finished the game without it! I’ll be here working to fix any issues that come up over the next few days. See you all soon! - Shaun

Hey everyone! Excited to announce that Lyca will release in 1 week on April 7! The game will be priced at US $4.99 or equivalent, although it will vary slightly depending on your region and currency. There will also be a 20% launch discount, so make sure to grab it at launch! There will be a few really cool bundles at launch as well, with some of my favorite incremental games that inspired me to make Lyca! So if you haven't tried them, pick them up as part of the bundles! Another good news: There will be Polish translation in the game at launch! Will keep you all updated with news about the game, leading up to release. See you all soon, and can't wait to get the game in your hands! - Shaun (dev)

Hi everyone! This will be the last demo update. The next update will be related to the release date and price of the full game! In this update: - There's a performance overhaul, mainly related to flower and flower drops. The performance should now be significantly improved. - The progress bar should now be fixed for everyone and run smoothly no matter the FPS. - The threshold for Low-FPS mode has been lowered to 53 fps, since sometimes toggling full-screen can cause a momentary decrease of the game to 54 fps, triggering Low-FPS mode previously. - Other small tweaks, improvements and bug fixes. Please let me know how the performance is now (in the comments of this post) and if you're encountering any bugs/crashes/issues with the build! I'm super excited to get the full game in your hands ASAP, and for you to see the stuff that was not part of the demo. In the meantime, you always have the demo to chill out to! Thanks and see you all soon, - Shaun

Hi everyone, In the last update with save functionality, it wasn't possible to change the language without resetting the game. It was also defaulting to English whenever the game was launched. This has been fixed in this update: The game will start on the language select screen every time you launch the demo. This won't be the case for the full release, but this was a quick temporary fix I implemented for the demo! The next 2 updates (Progress bar fix, Performance patch #2) are coming soon! - Shaun

Hey everyone, The demo now has save functionality! The game will autosave at different points in the demo (with every upgrade, every run, every change in settings, etc.). In case you want to restart from the beginning with default settings, I've set a hotkey (INSERT) that you can press to reset the demo. There are also some small tweaks and fixes to the demo. Please let me know in the comments of this post whether the save functionality is working properly for you, or if there are any issues! Lyca was part of the Next Fest and did really well! Thanks to everyone who tried out the demo and wishlisted the game, please look forward to the full game coming really soon! Here are some numbers from Next Fest: 12,000 people have added the demo to their library, and 8,800 have played! The average playtime is still holding strong at 1 hour 20 mins! We've also now crossed 7,100 wishlists! There will be 2 more small updates for the demo: - A patch that addresses a few bug fixes and the progress bar. - Another large performance overhaul. After that, I plan on focusing on the full game which will release quite soon, so look forward to the imminent release date announcement! Thanks and see you all soon! - Shaun

Hey everyone! I've just pushed a small update that addresses the following: - Low-FPS mode now triggers at 55 fps instead of 40 - Quick bug fixes related to performance and Low-FPS There will be another update soon that addresses a bug related to the Progress Bar when there are FPS drops, and Save Functionality will be implemented! Another thing, Steam Next Fest is live now and Lyca is participating! Please take a bit of time to play the demo as it will give the game some algorithm juice!! :) Some little news about the demo: 7000 people have added to library and 5000 people have played the demo! The average time is now 1 hour 24 mins!! I'm so humbled and grateful that people have found the demo my little game fun enough to play for that much time :) Let's pump those numbers up! ːsteamthisː

Hi everyone, I've made a ton of performance-related tweaks to improve the FPS for the demo! Hopefully, this would solve slowdowns for most people, please reach out let me know how the performance is now. I've also detached the progress bar from the fps of the game, so even if there are slowdowns, the progress bar shouldn't stall. Another fail-safe solution I've implemented is that there is now a Low-FPS mode (in the settings menu). If your FPS drops too low, this will activate and make the grass entities static, which will instantly boost the FPS. It doesn't look quite as good, but the game will be blazing fast! However, if you prefer to turn this option off, you can always disable it in the settings. Coming up: - Save functionality for the demo will be implemented in another update next week! - The demo will be part of Steam Next Fest, so please look forward to that! See you all soon! - Shaun

Hey everyone, Shaun here, the dev of Lyca! If you've been following the game, you probably know that the demo is out now! Please try it out and provide any feedback for the full release! I've also pushed a quick patch that addresses the following: - The tutorial is updated to make it more clear about prestige unlocks - The default control option is changed to WASD (keyboard) + mouse instead of "Clicker mode" - Some small bug fixes Other points of improvement are: - Better performance optimization in later parts of the demo - Save functionality These 2 things will unfortunately take a bit of time to implement but I'll try my best to put those features in! Since the demo released 2 days ago, ~2500 people have added it to their library, ~1350 people have played it with an average playtime of 55 mins! I'm really humbled by the response, and I hope more people play it and enjoy it! A couple of things coming up: - Idle Fest starts tomorrow! Lyca will be a part of it, so that will hopefully mean more visibility and more feedback - Lyca will also be participating in the February Steam Next Fest! My goal is to have an updated version of the demo by then, so please stay tuned and try it out again when it's up! Lyca has also been featured by a couple of great content creators on YouTube like InterndotGif, Idle Cub and Wanderbots! If you want some chill videos to check out, they're a nice way to spend some time (find them at the bottom of this update)! Again, thanks a lot for checking out the Lyca demo, and please leave a wishlist to stay updated! Will update you all again soon! - Shaun