There are now options to change the player character voice from the Player Setup or Audio menu:
- Cute & Wild (MeowMeow's chatty default.)
- Shy Kitten (MeowMeow's quiet version, no midlevel voicelines or combat taunts.)
- Rough & Tough (MeowMeow does a tough fps guy impression, also no midlevel voicelines or combat taunts.)
- The player character has varying jump sounds now as well, in case it got too repetitive.
The Lighter is replaced by throwable Flares!
- You can throw up to 4 flares at the same time.
- One flare lasts 10 seconds.
- You can even distract or lure enemies a bit with them! Neat!
The secret Nekobots have more features to them as well:
- Nekobots are now summoned by throwing around delicious taiyaki pastries instead of bloody gibs. (Why were they gibs in the first place???)
- How to summon them? Call out to them in their own language. A lot.
- Player can now pet the Nekobots with the Meow button, it gives 1-2 health! Cat therapy. A critical feature.
- Not only do the Nekobots provide moral support, they also now go after enemies! They don't do much damage, but can serve as support in a pinch.
There are now 3 types of door keys with themes that match better to the levels they're in:
- Keycards
- Demon Keys (new!)
- Pyramid Keys
Level balancing & fixes:
- Episode 1's level 2 got more difficulty balancing as it was a pretty mean step up from the first level. Should be more manageable now!
- Episode 1's level 3 has better pacing with the monster spawns and progression. All three keys are used now.
- Episode 2's level 1 got a new secret, the magnum pillar with magnum power is no longer a secret and can be accessed more easily.
- More intermission camera spots added to episode 4's level 4.
The extra lives system:
- The game now defaults to using lives in single player games - We felt that just respawning from autosaves or manual saves broke the game's pacing a lot, so we're giving this a try.
- It's easier to quickly jump back into action now.
- By default, if the player character dies, they respawn to an earlier point with most of their equipment, but the level status remains the same. Lose all lives in a level and the level starts from the beginning.
- The system allows adjusting it to use various amounts of lives, lives earned with score, a 9-lives challenge mode, or to just use autosaves with the rules from earlier versions.
- It also allows the music tracks to not restart every time upon deaths and eliminates possible slowdowns caused by autosaves.
