Like I anticipated in the last progress report, I have been recently working on miscellaneous smaller changes and improvements. One of them is this new custom splash screen:

The menu has received many small improvements, including simple slide animation and back navigation using "back" button on gamepads or ESC on keyboard.

A lot of tweaking has been done on particle effects too. The fragments from destroyed enemies and objects have now been split into two separate types: metallic fragments and gibs. The latter leave a particle trail while flying through air. Both now play sounds on collision. Splatter sound effects have also been improved to make them less repetitive.

Next I will need to solve some packaging related problems. For example, I would really like to build the Godot from source but that would leave the Windows executable unsigned (code signing certificates are expensive) and cause nasty warnings at least with Microsoft Defender.

I far as I know, this is only a problem with the direct downloads, not when installing through Itch.io app, but I have a feeling that not that many people use the app. I'm afraid those warnings will scare away the very few potential players I have. I will have to find some kind of solution to this before the next alpha update.