Did you expect this post? I don’t think so. That was the idea.

It’s me, pedroff_1 again, and, although we’ve been mostly silent for a quite long time, don’t dare to think our activity has stopped, or slowed down! In fact, we’re setting things up, and we’ve achieved a lot of progress, so far!

Well, do you want to see it? For now, I’ll show you a couple of things, some of the most noticeable feature we’re adding:

(Sorry if the GIFs are a bit wonky today, they don’t seem to want to embed themselves, so you may have to visit the links to see what’s going on.)

Booster packs:

Yes, my friend, the booster packs have been introduced, and some cards already have their golden version. I should also code that trinket we’ve shown to you, but I still haven’t.

Playing Dough:

I was unsure whether I should spoil this one or let you find its effects out for yourself. This trinket appears much more frequent than any other, and its effects aren’t very clear. Also, it has 3 sprites; maybe it has limited uses, like monkey‘s paw?

Conjoined Maw:

This poor guy has been artificially brought to existence in the most tortuous ways possible. This agglomerate of sentient floating heads knows nothing but pain; and pain it has come to bring you.

Although it can still aim reasonably well at you, the fact that so many of its faces are facing the wrong directions means it’ll probably shoot pretty much where it can, if that counts for something. for all its quick stay in this world all it dreams is to be finally fred of this horrendous form.

Poliomyelitis:

It started as an idea I randomly had in our public discord channel, and with some of your help, has had the concept fleshed out: Based on a real life disease, which causes permanent limb paralysis, it is not only an annoying speed down, but also, a speed multiplier down. Pretty awful, isn’t it?

https://streamable.com/s/xgnzu/lsyrcx

Well, to compensate, whenever you hug an enemy (because we, on the IPECAC Team value caring and solidarity, and want to reward you for showing your foes a bit of compassion), it has a chance of catching polio from you(I’m pretty sure that’s not how it works in real life, but, oh well …)! Enemies with polio are permanently slowed down, in the most irreversible fashion, they even have a chance of getting a more serious case of the disease and be permanently paralysed, right where they were.

(Link to GIF)

Now comes the interesting part: if you don’t kill your slowed friend immediately (again, showing love and compassion), and it gets to hug its friends as well, it can also spread polio among them! Some enemies, though, migh be immune to the effect, possibly to prevent them from becoming unkillable (a permanently frozen ghost wouldn’t be fun, would it?), but, usually, for no reason at all, they just have a strong immune system.

Faint Bulb and Broken Bulb:

These two trinkets were inspired on the vibrant and dim bulb, and , so, how can I describe it? Well, with all 4 bulbs, you are guaranteed to have a stat up from one of them (and only one) on every possible combination of charges, and items.

(On a sidenote, these two were much tougher to code than they should had been! You have no idea, every time I dropped one of them and picked it up again, the stats up would stack, but I finally fixed the problem, apparently by magic or something. If it happens again, try using some Dagaz rune or something, an ancient ghost might have cursed you).

Tiny Moon

Okay, The Trust Melon decided to spoil the fun and end the mystery, so I guess I’ll explain this item in detail:

You now have your own little satellite to play with! Tiny moon is an orbital familiar which not only deals damage and block shots, but whose gravitational pull attracts enemy shots and, as he has shown in the GIF, it attracts your tears as well.

While it’s true that this reduces your accuracy, any tear that orbits this planetoid mass will get a boos in their damage, and become spectral. Some might even change appearence, if they orbit too closely. Also, this extends the range of any tear floating it, to a point where you can make a single tear last for almost eternity, if it orbits the right way. This can be very good in combination with A Lump of Coal, for example, but also with piercing shots, since they can keep hitting multiple enemies, working sort of like mini sub-orbitals (if that even makes sense). Well, the moon is yours and I can’t really tell you what to do with it, so, have fun!

An interesting story about this item is that it was inspired on an idea by thiagovscoelho (Another Brazilian, what a coincidence!). He, on Reddit, I believe, suggested a new familiar, record baby, which would “spin right round, baby, right round, like a record baby, right round round round“. This joke suggestion became an orbital that shot orbiting discs, and, eventually, a satellite that deformed the trajectory of your shots.

While this is not my favourite among the items I’ve coded, it is certainly among my top 5, for being so fun and interesting. I hope you like it as much as I do. It currently doesn’t have a pickup sprite yet, but has an animation wth oer 20 frames, which took me longer than expected.

I guess that is it for now! Now, I’ll leave you with a link to yet another recording of the bivalve: