Disclaimer (copied from v1.0-rc4): If you are reading this, either you already know that I submitted Mystery Tower to the Mystery Tournament (hello tester(s) reading the devlog :D) or it's not an issue anymore to say that I submitted this game to MT15... Otherwise, pretend you aren't reading this!

More changes specifically to make this better suited for MT! Pretty much every change since the fourth release candidate has been like that, though.

This time, the testers run into the issue that the game could end up being too long for the allotted time, depending on the racers. Funnily enough, I was worried that the game could end up being too short, or that someone with previous Catherine experience could have too much advantage.

The easiest way to shorten the game was to remove a few stages, but then we had to be careful about which ones we wanted to remove. The testers were worried about simply cutting the goal shorter and making the game feel like it's only the tutorial levels, a feeling that I share and I'm grateful that they reached out to me.

I tried to look objectively at the game and picked the longest, most repetitive and least useful (from a teaching perspective) levels. It was brought to my attention that although I could find some of those levels repetitive, they could be interesting in a blind racing scenario, since players would be trying to figure out how the game works and how to progress, and I only find them repetitive because I know exactly what I'm doing and how to solve the levels.

In the end, we removed 5 stages spread through the game. After the tournament is over, and before officially releasing the game I'll add them back, though.

Changelog

• Remove some stages to make the game shorter

For the record, the removed stages were:

• Stage 8 - Falling Apart
• Stage 12 - Making Bridges
• Stage 13 - Bridging Islands
• Stage 17 - Connecting Stairs
• Stage 18 - Expanding Stairs