3/30/2025 - PyNori v1.5.0 is OUT!

Hey all, it's finally that time! PyNori version 1.5.0 is out!

As usual, a good bunch of bugs were fixed, but let's keep our eyes on the prize first. Minigames!!!

Just walking around can get pretty boring, especially if you're going on a murder spree (I hope not!). Once everyone's gone, you either encounter a shop or you don't. It gets lonely, right? Well, fear not! Minigames are now here to keep you company!

Now when you take a step forward, instead of it being either nothing, an enemy (if any), or a shop, it's... well, that, but with a chance of minigames! To prevent them from being too common though, if there's potential for a minigame to happen, more RNG decides if it does or not, just like shops (so there's not an equal chance for each outcome upon stepping forward).

In another update I do plan on adding a setting to toggle minigames on and off in case the player doesn't like them. For now, though, they're required. Sorry!

I want to keep the rewards a surprise, but here are the included minigames as of now:
"Generic RPG" - A generic self-parody of PyNori that's more D&D-like. There's only 1 area, and it's 20 steps long.
"Hangman" - The classic guessing game where you guess a word letter by letter to avoid witnessing a stick figure getting hung.
"Rhythm" - Press the correct key on the fourth beat a certain amount of times to win. (Hint: it only chooses from the home row, excluding G. Just pretend you're playing an 8-key rhythm game.)
"Rock Paper Scissors" - Who doesn't know what rock paper scissors is? Everyone knows what rock paper scissors is.
"Tic Tac Toe" aka "Noughts and Crosses" - Another game that's impossible to not recognise.
"Unscramble" - A guessing game like hangman, but you have all the letters available to you. The only problem? They're in the wrong order.

I plan on adding more in the future, but for now that's all I've got. If you want to contribute to the amount of "default" or "pre-loaded" minigames, you can either suggest them to me or submit your own here! (Satire and malicious entries will be ignored. Code WILL be inspected. If malicious, it will be deleted.)

The minigames are also playable for fun and can be accessed from the title screen. Obviously, you won't be rewarded for winning if you're not also playing the main game, but for those who only feel like playing simpler games in the moment, there you go.

Anyway, aside from minigames, here's what's new in v1.5.0:

1: Healing Zones are now "slightly" more common. Slightly in quotes because sometimes RNG can be a little too generous.
2: Added a feature called "SISAS". It's an acronym, but the final boss' name is in it, so I'd rather you play the game and find out what it means.
3: Runs are now sorted by difficulty in Runs.ini. Don't worry, the game will help you convert your old Runs.ini into the new format. This is REQUIRED if you want to keep old runs.
4: Each character's max Vocal Points is now unlocked.
5: Remember the code that checks for at least 1 megabyte of free space on your computer? Yeah, I found out shutil exists, so there's no longer an entire megabyte of "TESTTESTTESTTEST" in the code, which would lag the living hell out of text editors and IDEs. Sorry for my stupidity.
6: Winning a battle now plays a unique jingle depending on the area and route you're in. (That means 2 jingles per area, and 14 jingles total.)
7: Most (if not all) of the sound effects have been normalised. If you haven't already turned down Python's volume in your volume mixer (assuming you have one), please do so, else you might scare yourself. Depends on if your device's volume is high as well.
8: You can now exit the game from the alternate title screen.
9: I'd love to tell you, but this one's just too cool to spoil. Just try dying (IN-GAME) on purpose over and over and maybe you'll see.
10: "= OPEN ME IN NOTEPAD =.txt" has finally been updated. There was some outdated information in there that's been removed now. In exchange, there's a bit of new stuff.
11: More folders. Who doesn't love folders?
12: "[character] has woken up." no longer appears twice.
13: Crashes related to location codes should no longer occur on startup.

As usual, if I royally messed something up, post a bug report in the discussion board. I feel like I must've messed a teeny tiny thing up somewhere (as I always do), so please do tell me if I did! But, I hope you enjoy!

QUICK EDIT: Ooooh, I should PROBABLY mention this is another update where save data incompatibility will happen. If you can't get your save data to load (which you probably can't), temporarily move it to another location, start the game again, inspect the new Pinori.ini, and manually add any missing values to your old file, then overwrite the new Pinori.ini with the "old" one. Good as new!