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Sliceball 4.1: smoother slicing, level skips, and a new name
Sliceball's first update is out on both stores. It's mostly feel, plus one thing for people who get stuck, plus a rename. Here's what's in it and why.
Release timing is now exact
The old build checked your finger on the physics timer, fifty times a second. That's fine for physics and wrong for input: a quick lift could fall between two checks and get noticed late, or on a bad frame not at all, and the blade would take one more layer than you asked for. On a game that's entirely about when you let go, that's the game. 4.1 reads the touch on every rendered frame, so the drop lands on the frame your finger lifts. The game was also capped at 60 frames a second and now runs at whatever the display does, which on a ProMotion iPhone or iPad means 120. If 4.0 felt slightly mushy to you, this is the fix.
You can skip a level
Fail the same level three times and the fail screen gives you two ways past it: watch a rewarded ad, or spend $50 of the cash the game pays out on every clear. I went back and forth on this. The levels are meant to be beaten, and I don't want a button that turns the game into a menu. But a stack that won't give is the point where people close the app, and closing the app is worse than skipping a level. The offer only shows after three real failures, never on the first try, and it goes away as soon as you clear something.
Progress saves the moment you earn it
4.0 saved your level and cash when the app went to the background, which is how Unity does it by default. Force-quit from the app switcher before that happened and you could lose a session. Now every clear and every purchase writes to disk right away. Boring, important.
Shop prices went up
Balls now run 30 to 350 and stacks 50 to 200. At the old prices the shop emptied out early and the cash stopped meaning anything, which also made the Double Cash ad pointless. Now there's something to save for. There's still nothing to buy with real money and there won't be.
The name
The game launched as "Sliceball: Ball Drop Game". It's now "Sliceball: Slice the Stack" on both stores. Same game, same icon. The honest reason: "ball drop game" is a phrase owned by games with a million ratings, and a new game with a handful never shows up for it. "Slice the stack" is what you actually do, and it's a phrase this game can be found for. If you search "sliceball" you'll still find it.
Smaller, on Android
The Android download is about a quarter smaller. The build now ships 64-bit only, and a few packages and scenes left over from development are gone. Nothing you can see was removed.
If something in 4.1 broke for you, the support page says how to tell me, and I read every message. If it didn't, a rating on the store is the single most useful thing you can do for a game with none yet.