Hey everyone, Gabriel here! Today, we’re proud to announce the 1.0 Release of “Unless”!
As you may or may not know, I had two main goals when designing the levels of Unless;
- Create levels that are fun; not frustrating. This meant including frequent checkpoints to reduce the amount of content that you would have to repeat if you died, but also implementing a huge amount of Accessibility Features such as the Co-op Assist mode.
- Create levels that are challenging to speedrun. I love watching skilled players speedrun Kaizo Mario levels, so while I ensured the game would be accessible to players of all ages and skill levels, I specifically designed every stage to push players to their limits when it came to playing them quickly. With the help of our talented play-testers, we’ve set “S-Rank” times for each level that will require a bit of puzzle-solving to figure out the optimal route, and a fair amount of mastery to actually execute. I’d say the game really “comes to life” when you pursue these goal times, so please give it your best try!

To highlight everyone’s accomplishments, we’ve got Leaderboards for every Individual Level, each of the 4 Worlds in the game, and “Full Game” categories so you can test your mastery against players from across the world. Plus, there are “All Berries” variants of each Leaderboard!
We’d like to encourage players to submit recordings of their runs to our official Speedrun.com site[www.speedrun.com], on r/speedrun or other appropriate subReddits, and on the Bellwood Studios Discord[discord.gg] where you can also chat with fellow players and look forward to some game-key give-aways and “speedrun bounties” in the coming weeks.

We’re also excited to announce a brand new feature; Shuffle Mode! This mode takes the carefully crafted levels of Unless and randomizes the links between every level gate in the game. It also shuffles the position of Golden Leaves and Crystal Berries within each level.

You’ll find yourself hopping between Worlds, unlocking Berry Gates, and playing levels backwards as you try to gather all the Golden Leaves. You can configure how many levels are included, as well as a few other settings, then share seeds so you can race a friend! We’re looking forward to seeing players attempt the daunting “fully randomized” mix of every level in the game.
This mode is unlocked when you complete the base game, and also has a Daily Challenge that you can attempt only once to try and place on the daily Leaderboard. You’ll need skill, but also a fair bit of luck to succeed in Shuffle Mode, so I hope everyone feels like they’ve got a shot at placing #1!

We’ll be doing our best to support the game post-launch with some extra polish and bug fixing. Please reach out to us on our Discord[discord.gg] if you’ve spotted something awry, and we’ll try to get a fix implemented ASAP. Please note that localization remains an ongoing community effort, which you can contribute to via our CrowdIn project page: https://crowdin.com/project/unless

The release of “Unless” is the culmination of many years of effort (the initial prototype is from way-back in 2018!) I hope you’ll appreciate all the effort and polish that has gone into the game from our many talented team members.

Thank you, and enjoy the game!

Hey there! Gabriel here, with another update to the Demo that brings a few more improvements.

• First of all, the layout of the background art has been tweaked so that individual levels in the Amethyst Ascent now look more distinct!
  
• We’ve added new UI themes and the ability to customize your own! Theme files must be edited externally, and as such, you can easily share them.
  
• We now have support for increased refresh rate monitors. We’ll continue testing this feature with the community to make necessary adjustments and try to support even more refresh rates.
  
• And of course, there is now support for even more languages thanks to the folks who have been helping out to translate the game on CrowdIn. If you’d like to contribute, you can do so here:

https://crowdin.com/project/unless

If you’re enjoying the Demo, please Wishlist the game and share the game with any friends who you think would enjoy it!
Thanks for playing, and see you on the leaderboards!