Hi there Space Cadets!
I hope you are all taking care of yourselves during the difficult time.
I haven't posted an update in a while but rest assured I've been busy rolling this ball forward. I've spent a large portion of the previous months locking down the gameplay and level structure. Testing things and generally moving towards making the game feature complete with the hopes of going full steam on bugs, polish, art, etc.
Part of that has been getting a grip on the gameplay progression loop. This can be quite daunting when a game allows you multiple paths, the game has become so large that I have a hard time keeping track of everything.
Charts and spreadsheets to the rescue!!!!! So exciting!!?!?
This has helped me have the confidence to start locking things down, I can always refer to a doc to remember where things are and what needs to be done. I guess it's the very unsexy part of gamedev but very necessary and helpful.
What's new?
Shield break mechanic
Don't abuse your shield, if you hit zero energy it'll break and won't be available until it refills. You can still dodge to get out of harms way in the meantime.
To mitigate this there areBadgesyou can equip and your shield can be upgraded. But your best bet it to tap tap tap the button!Tapping at the right time is of course how you get a PERFECT REFLECT, which causes more damage and doesn't get any ricochet effect.
New Lighting
The game was upgraded to Unity 2020 to take advantage of all the fancy 2D lighting effects. woo!
Projectiles can now light up the surroundings as well as the enemies.
The decision to port the game over to the new engine was a tough one, it did take a bunch of time to get everything working properly, the game was moving from Unity 2017! So there was a few years there... But now it's all working, shiny and glowy! I'm glad I took the chance there.
Sub weapons
You can see in the bottom left corner the temporary UI for the new sub weapons! You can pick them up hidden in the environment or dropped by enemies, there's also a new energy/ammo drop that works with these weapons.
They are pretty powerful so you might want to save them for when you really need them. Some of the weapons have special properties, for exampleextra damage against enemy shields and poison-type damage!
Tons more stuff
There's way too many little things to list. Suffice to see I'm pretty excited with how things are going and I'm looking forward to you getting to try it out.
As always you can follow more developments on TWITTER and be sure to join the DISCORD.Stop by and say hello!!
Here's a couple more screenshots to tide you over till next time.
Thanks for stopping by!
-Marcel