Category Archives: Epic Battle Fantasy 5

Inflation and Prices

Hey guys, I’ve been thinking of increasing the prices of my games in line with inflation…

Since Epic Battle Fantasy 4 and Bullet Heaven 2 came out on Steam in 2014 and 2015, the US Dollar and British Pound have dropped in value by around 25% due to inflation. Epic Battle Fantasy 5 came out in 2018, and there the difference is around 20%.

Since the games are still getting customer support and occasional updates, I think it’s fair to raise the prices from $12 to $15, and from $20 to $25. Most of you already own the games, so this won’t really effect very many of you who are reading this. And if you don’t own the games yet, the games are on sale 4 times a year, if you’re looking for a bargain.

Epic Battle Fantasy 4 got a “version 2” update not too long ago, and I still regularly clean the Bullet Heaven 2 leaderboards, so both games are still getting some attention from me.

I’m also aiming to put a $15 price tag on Hidden Cats. It’s still very early in development, but I hope to have 10 to 20 hours of content in that game.

Epic Battle Fantasy Collection will stay at the current $8, unless I add more content to it, like the Bullet Heaven 3 Prototype. (Btw, please leave a review for EBFC on Steam if you haven’t already – it doesn’t have very many and they help a lot!)

I’ve also noticed that some regions aren’t happy with Steam’s new regional pricing, so I’ll make sure that Turkey and Argentina, for example, are not effected too drastically by this price update. Steam’s new pricing tool makes it easier to compare the new and old prices, so I’d like to avoid any unreasonably big changes.

Anyway, I’m aiming to update the prices in January, after the Christmas sale on Steam. So the Christmas sale will be the lowest price you’ll see for a while!

Let me know how you feel about all of this.

EBF5: Version 1.35 on Google Play

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Version 1.35 of EBF5 is live on Google Play. If there’s no serious issues, I’ll disable the debug features soon and do the full release.

Here’s a list of changes in 1.35:
Fixed missing animation which caused some weird errors in the shop.
Fixed cat enemies occasionally having no skin selected.
Fixed the color of Lance’s space helmet and Scottish cap.
Fixed how phone resolution is checked – made sure it doesn’t interpret it as portrait mode.
Fixed the Squid, Dragon, Hydra, Devourer and Gigalith summons so they touch the edge on wider resolutions.
Fixed Google sign-in prompt not appearing if silent sign-in failed.
Fixed the position of the links at the end of the game, and from dungeon guard NPCs.
Added a possible fix for the battle softlock, waiting to see if it helps.
Added a Cloud Saving menu on the main menu – it’s no longer a hidden feature.
Added the green color back to Anna’s Magical Skirt – I don’t like it but it’s in the item description.
Added translations for the menus and other small changes. (for most languages)
Optimized the slime minigame – two overlapping backgrounds were loaded during seasonal events.
Updated Google billing API – hopefully this changes nothing for users, but keeps Google happy.

Version 1.34 came out earlier as a very small update, here’s what was fixed in that one:
Snow Bat attack animation softlocks the game.
New hat colors on Lance softlock the game.
Screen orientation may be wrong when starting the app.
Foes summoned by bosses are not in the correct positions.

EBF5: Nearly Final Android Update

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Version 1.33 of EBF5 is up on the Google Play Store, here’s a list of changes:

• Added support for resolutions up to 20:9. The game should look much better on longer phones. (many battle animations have been extended, let me know if any are incorrect) (I’m also curious if screen cutouts/notches cause any issues)
• Added an option to lock the game in the original 16:9 ratio, in the experimental options menu.

• Added cloud saving. In the experimental options menu, you can upload and download saved data. (tap the star in the options menu) (this will eventually be automatic on start up and shut down of the app, but for now it’s done manually) (downloaded data will only be used if the cloud files are newer than the local files)
• Added an option to disable cloud saving in the experimental options menu. (if you don’t want to share data across devices)

• Added back the hidden equipment color variants. (removing them was a mistake)
• Added 10 new weapon color variants – 2 for each character.
• Added a prompt to rate the app, which triggers after boss fights. (frequency of prompts is limited)
• Added a preview of the Cheats and Challenges menu which shows their details before you purchase them.
• Made the DLC shop look a bit shinier.
• Cleaned up the Glitched icons, to make them easier to select, since you have no cursor on mobile.

The list of changes is quite short this time, but cloud saving and wider aspect ratios took a LOT of work and are a big deal!
EBF5 is now feature complete – all that’s left is fixing a few bugs and translating a couple of new lines of text.

EBF5 on Tablets

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I bought my first tablet – a used Samsung Tab S4 for £170 – and it can run EBF5 smoothly at a massive 2560×1600 resolution. It’s really too bad that Flash on Windows never got the optimizations that Android and iOS got. Most gaming PCs can’t run Flash games at that resolution…

So the lesson is… buy a used Android tablet if you want to play EBF5 as cheaply as possible.

I gotta say though, that playing it on a smaller device with your thumbs is a bit more comfortable than playing it with a stylus. Tablets seem to be better for games that require less interaction, or only have buttons near the edges where it’s easy to reach them. Or uh… office presentations.

EBF5: Mobile Aspect Ratios

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Hey guys, stupidly long phones are popular lately, and EBF5 has been a strictly 16:9 aspect ratio game until now, so a lot of people have been seeing black bars on mobile. This isn’t so bad on phones with an aspect ratio of 18:9, but when it gets to 20:9, you’re losing 25% of usable screen space!

Getting rid of the black bars has been the most requested feature on mobile (except maybe for cloud saving, which is also coming soon), so after some reluctance at first, I’ve finally decided to work on it. I’ve decided to support resolutions from 16:9 to 20:9, because that covers most high-end phones, and isn’t a crazy amount of work (at the moment it’s looking like about 5 or 6 days of work). I’m not doing taller tablet resolutions because that would require twice as much work, and tablets are much less popular (most of the GUI has been designed for widescreen, so I’m in no mood to redesign all of that). I also considered supporting 22:9, but that turned out to be awkward and looked worse than just having the black bars (the maps can’t be scaled to such a width without horrible distortion).

So what’s changing? Player, foe and spell animations that reach the edges of the screen have been extended to reach further, and battle backgrounds are being extended too. The world map has been zoomed in a bit, and the menu now requires a button press to open. This has the advantage of making the map easier to navigate, as the tiles are noticeably bigger and easier to tap.

There’s also an option to lock the game to 16:9, if you prefer that for whatever reason. But I think the extra width looks pretty cool.

Is it worth a week of work? Probably not. But it’s a novel challenge and has been more fun to do than some of the other mobile features.