The things you think are going to be hard can sometimes be really easy. I thought adding rings to the game would take at least a few hours, but bing bang boom they're in. Item system just makes a list of all upgrades between all items and their prefixes and suffixes, and assigns them whenever you equip a new item. As for the visual, it just references a visual, and instantiates it on a specific transform.

So yeah, here's my "smooth criminal" of a ranged fish, fully decked out with his spiffy "armor" hat, and gold plated rare 6 shooters and new ring slot item!

Now I just need to keep adding unique prefix and suffix modifiers and mechanics like damage absorption shields, fast swap, among lots of things. THEN I need to create a couple little zones with ramping up difficulty while separating mods by power level and get certain mods scaling with enemy difficulty (damage and health). THEN I need to add some simple quest mechanics for moving between these zones. And THEN my little vertical slice will be ready for feedback. No use putting out demos when you know 100% the core things you have to work on.

I'm projecting all of this will take a few days, but I thought the same thing a month ago. So who knows. Making good progress though, so feeling pretty satisfied with things as of late. Trying not to overindulge in too many upgrades, I think having just a handful of well thought out upgrades that interact in interesting ways and not just translate into raw damage is a lot more interesting than heaps of various ways to nickle and dime your damage #'s higher (though i'll surely be doing this in the future for depth)