CrossCode adds arena battles, new quests and pettable pets today
Hi! Hi! Hi! Hi! DOG!
Yes, you can now pet the dog in lovely action-RPG CrossCode. There are also now dogs to pet, as of today's massive Version 1.1 update for the game. Developers Radical Fish have made good on their post-launch plans, and gone above and beyond with this one. The showcase feature this update is the Rhombus Square Arena, the new end-game place to be for combat fiends. There's three cups to compete in, each with multiple scored battles plus a non-stop endurance mode, all scaling up to top level. Skilled players can earn fancy new gear there, decorative items and adorable pets.
While the pets are sadly just cosmetic - they follow you around and can be pet - there's more to this update. They've improved the already-compelling combat chaining system. Now if you keep up an A-Rank combo going for long enough, you can hit the new S-Rank Mode. Accompanied by a change in music and a sparkly light-show, enemy spawn rates are boosted, allowing you more chances to bounce from fight to fight, hoarding XP and rare gear. They also added a handful of new quests (some taking you to all-new locations), a new challenge mode for the Turret Defence mini-game and a bunch more NPCs to natter with.
This isn't the first big update to the game since launch. Not long after release, they added a few Celeste-inspired accessibility options. You can manually scale enemy aggression and power if combat was too much, and slow down puzzles to make timing more forgiving. They've also added in-game achievements, more talkative NPCs and new quests and anime speed lines as an April Fools thing, later used as a real feature, and there's still more coming. A New Game+ mode and some story-heavy DLC are planned for the future. Impressive, considering how huge the game was at launch.
CrossCode is currently 15% off on Humble, bumping it down to £12.74/€16.99/$16.99, and gets my enthusiastic recommendation. If you're still on the fence, Keen Hoon Chan's CrossCode review goes deeper, and there's a free demo on Steam too, along with today's patch notes.