In case you missed it, Plangman is now available on Steam!
https://store.steampowered.com/app/740690/Plangman/

In preparation for the Steam release, and in response to watching people play the game online, I've made numerous updates and improvements over the past few months. You can read more about them here, but in general, the changes have been fairly "boring": aspect ratios, Xbox controller support, a pause menu...the kinds of things that improve the experience of playing the game, but which probably go unnoticed by most players.

However, after watching various people play the game on youtube, one thing really bothered me: the game wasn't playing like I'd intended. Unlike my primary playtesters (my kids), multiple players were often able to immediately guess the words based on the clues alone, or do so after a few strategic guesses, and between this and the abundant health stars (which sometimes provided +3 health points in one shot), it seemed like they were able to spend 99% of their time at maximum health.

When testing the game myself, I would usually try to gauge the "worst case scenario": how did the game play if I just guess random letters? Ideally I would eventually run out of health, and thus be prevented from brute-forcing my way through the levels.

Although this check was useful, I was unfortunately now learning that this approach did not cover all the possible ways people actually played the game. I realized that even if someone guessed random letters, they usually began making precise guesses as soon as they recognized the word. I also learned that if someone merely guessed strategically (rather than randomly), they could easily end up maxing out their health for a good portion of the game.

In my attempt to be generous to players and help them fall into the pit of success, I'd inadvertently made the game too generous (that is, too easy...or easier than I'd intended).

Don't get me wrong. People were enjoying Plangman. But being at max health almost all the time significantly reduces the fun of exploring and collecting extra health. There should be at least some ups and downs, some dramatic tension.

So, what to do? These were my options as I saw them:

1. Leave the game as-is.
   1. After all, people seemed to like it. This would obviously be the easiest option.
   2. On the other hand, since I was now getting new data about how the game actually played (vs. how I imagined it would play), why not adjust the game accordingly? (This is data I should have ostensibly gotten from playtesting with a wider range of players, but that's a topic for another post.)
2. Make the visual clues more ambiguous, so that guessing the word would require a combination of the clue plus a few guessed letters before a player would "get" it.
   1. This would help make a player's letter-guessing strategy more important, since they wouldn't be able to rely on the clues alone.
   2. On the other hand, not everyone could immediately guess the words based on the clues alone. Did they really need the clues to be more difficult? And the people who could immediately guess the words seemed to really enjoy doing so. Making the clues more challenging could potentially ruin the fun for both sets of players--not to mention that updating all 150+ clues would be a lot of work!
3. Eliminate the visual clues for players who were doing well. For example, if a player had 20+ health points, maybe the clue would be replaced with a note from Vince saying, "You're too healthy for this clue! -Vince"
   1. Some people might like the extra challenge.
   2. But not everyone would. People like those clues! Plus, if someone really feels like the clues are making the game too easy, they can simply avoid revealing them until they think they know what the word is.
4. Try to tamp down on the health "inflation" by providing fewer extra health points and increasing the situations where health can (or must) be spent.
   1. This seemed like the most reasonable option, given how people were actually playing the game. The goal would be to shift the bell curve of average player health downward, thus putting more players in the middle health range for more of the game.
   2. It could end up making the game too hard, but the only way to find out would be to make the changes and playtest them.

I decided to try option #4.

In v2.6.6.4 and v2.6.6.5, I made the following health tweaks:

• Stars now provide +1/2 health, instead of +1.
  
• The number of stars in a question block is no longer random. Instead, a star question block now always provides +1 health.
• Once you reach zero health, any action that subtracts health results in an immediate level reset. (Previously, you would immediately respawn when at zero health, but had three chances to avoid a reset.)

However, this only partially addressed the issue. Some of the players spending most of their time at max health had hardly picked up any health stars at all.

Some of this is unavoidable. If someone truly is a master at guessing the words based on the clues, they should be at max health most of the time. But not everyone in the "max health club" was doing so based on the clues alone. Some of them were just guessing strategically, starting with the most common English letters.

This is where v2.6.7 comes in. In this update, I've revamped a number of the levels to utilize more wrong letters and fewer blank blocks, both for required puzzles as well as optional ones. I've also added more enemies, which (I hope) makes some of the previously sparse levels more interesting.

Can you still max out your health for most of the game? Yes. But there are now more opportunities to use (or lose) that health, and based on playtesting, more players should spend at least some time in the lower/middle health range.

Anyway, I'd love to know what you think of these and the other changes listed below. Do they make the game better? Worse? Just right? Please let me know in the comments.

One final word for you completionists and speedrunners: a couple of the changes below should make it easier to 100% a level.

I hope you enjoy this update!

- Ehren

v2.6.7 (May 2025)

• Added an arrow to the Level 1 tip that points to the dashes of the mystery word. Hopefully this will help new players, who sometimes don't initially notice the letters at the top of the screen.
• Lowered the intensity of the glow effect that appears when the Quality is set to High.
• Increased the radius of the bomb pickups to make them easier to collect. They're now the same size as the stars and keys.
• Revised a number of levels to make the game more challenging/interesting. This primarily involved adding more wrong letters (and opportunities to use them) and more enemies, plus making some of the shortcuts feel more clever.
• Made Level 23 slightly more forgiving by extending the "runway" where the jettisoned block needs to end up.
• Added a fraction to the completion percentage shown when you beat a level, to make it clear how many additional pickups, enemies, etc. you missed. For example: "50% (7/14) in 4:32". (Note that the mystery word is always counted as one item, no matter how many letters it contains.)
• Updated the pause UI to show the completion percentage. You can use this to track your progress while still playing a level, instead of only being able to see it after the level is complete.
• Updated one visual clue to make it slightly clearer.
• Moved the platforms closer together in the first Lost Level.