Maybe just an option to turn it on/off?
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Thanks for buying the game, @astrochili 
There is an option to turn off particle effects, in the visual portion of the settings menu. Perhaps that could help?
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Thanks, I turned particle effects off and game become smooth again. I hope I don’t miss much.
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I am launching Hero Mode in September as a free update. Hero Mode is a challenge for players that have already completed the game. It adds serious consequences for deaths, and skips the tutorial/introduction section.
At the same time, I will set a weeklong discount and trigger one of Steam’s visibility rounds. I am curious to find out how much of an impact a visibility round has (I have a fair amount of wishlists to convert), so this will be an interesting experiment.
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You could consider rendering the ground layer to a texture buffer one time only to avoid having to pre-render the ground layer into an Atlas. Then the map data will remain more modifiable.
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We’re on day 3 of the week long sale associated with the event. I’m getting some additional traffic from Steam’s visibility round system. Not loads, but I would guess it’s quite high quality given that the audience is people that have already wishlisted the game. Of course I’d love exposure to people that don’t know about the game too, but hey!
It’s early days yet but the sales are pretty decent so I’m encouraged to make more free updates like this one.
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Fates of Ort is coming to Nintendo Switch!
Thank you very much to the Defold team, @dapetcu21 and @roccosaienz for helping make this happen.
Releasing a Nintendo game is a childhood dream come true.
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Congrats! So stoked!
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Fates of Ort is now out on the Switch!
NA: Fates of Ort for Nintendo Switch - Nintendo Game Details
EU/AU: Fates of Ort | Nintendo Switch download software | Games | Nintendo
Thanks to some less than diligent administration work by yours truly, the discount rate for EU/AU is wrong: 10% when it should have been 30%. NA is correct. Unfortunately since the game is live I can’t change it anymore. I hope it doesn’t hurt sales too much, and that people don’t get angry. There’s nothing I can do about it now and I’ve spent a few hours beating myself up about it, now just trying to move on!
ANYWAY - game released on Nintendo platform, childhood dream achieved! 
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Just bought the game on the switch, and I think it is worth every penny - so do not worry about the smaller discount 
. Good luck!
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Thank you for the support, and thank you for saying that. It really warms my heart! 
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Commissioned new capsule art for Fates of Ort. Should have invested in this before launch, but I have read that improved capsules can have an impact even on released games. It went live (on Steam) today so I am looking forward to getting some stats soon.
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Looks good!
Please keep us updated on this!
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Looks awesome … who’s the artist you commissioned this new version to (if you don’t mind sharing)?
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Thanks
Alright, I have some data now. I was hoping for a knockout punch and the ability to say “yes this has changed everything!” but reality is unfortunately a bit more nuanced.
I wanted to wait until I had data for a weeklong sale as well, since that is when the bulk of copies get sold.
CTR and visits
My methodology for this was to export the last year’s worth of impressions and click throughs to use as a baseline. It’s a lot of data so should smooth out any outliers, and I am also intentionally excluding launch data plus the period shortly after launch. It does however include the game’s launch on Switch which had a very positive effect on Steam sales.
I then exported data since the new capsule art was implemented. I took the impressions numbers from the old data and multiplied them by the CTR from the new data to create a number which represents “store page visits if the capsule art had been implemented a year ago”.
The result for this would have been a 15.2% increase 
in store page visits.
Sales result
Tricky one here. I’ve run multiple sales at 30% already, so it is likely I have already exhausted most people that are interested in buying at that level. On the other hand, doing a sale at a higher discount would be an unfair comparison as well. In the end, I decided to go tough on the art and had another sale at 30%.
I used two figures for comparison: The sales numbers for the most recent sale, and the trend of all sales at 30% (using Excel’s TREND() function). The trend includes the sale coinciding with the Switch launch, which is definitely an outlier.
The results for this were less encouraging, but not surprising. Like I mentioned, having had multiple sales at 30% already means I’ve “harvested” a lot of my wishlist base that wants to buy at that level.
The results were 16% decrease 
vs trend and 4% decrease vs the last sale. I’m not particularly discouraged by this, however.
Wishlist deletions
I was worried that using capsule art that doesn’t match game graphics might put people off. Here is a chart of daily wishlist deletions for the last 3 months. The red mark is where the new art was launched.
The two spikes are the frst days of weeklong sales. Users with the game on the wishlist get pinged about it, and some decide “you know what - I’m never buying this so I’ll just take it off my wishlist”. This is normal. To me, it looks like there is no change 
in wishlist deletions, which is a good thing.
Conclusion
Not sure if the cost of the art will be recouped by the effects on the sales at this point. However, it seems to me that it would have been well worth it to have had the art in place before launch. This is valuable information for future projects.
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I was lucky enough to receive another bit of coverage from SplatterCat:
This video has brought in a large influx of sales and new wishlists. I am also taking a break from my space game while I wait for feedback, so I thought now would be a good time to work on an update for Fates of Ort.
I will be fixing some bugs, but also adding a bit of new content. Here’s a teaser of the new feature - an endless “dungeon”, hopping between Ort’s moons cleansing enemies.
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I noticed the SplatterCat video, that’s awesome that it translated to actual sales!
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