Hello my fellow pilots,
First, a couple of links!
http://nightstarvr.com/ - official website, so fancy!
http://store.steampowered.com/app/511570/ - NIGHTSTAR on Steam, get the demo here!
Since the release of Nightstar last week, I've been overwhelmed by the amount of people playing the game, leaving reviews and sending me feedback (and also putting up awesome high scores on the leaderboard, damn, you guys are getting good at this). It also helped me to notice that there's a huge amount of people out there that are interested in the game, but because there's not a lot of games similar to this one available for the Vive, these potential players are not sure if this is the game for them. For that reason, I decided to make the free demo available for everyone starting today. The demo is basically identical to the full version of the game, except that it ends when you reach a score of 1000 points. This free demo should give new players about 5 minutes of gameplay, and it can be replayed as many times as needed.
Ok, now, with that out of the way, let's talk about the updates that come with version 0.3a. As we get closer to the end of the Early Access phase, I'm adding some new stuff and polishing existing features, and I'm super excited about all of this, so let's go straight to the point.
Here's the changelog with commentary:
- NEW UNIQUE WEAPONS. Some enemies will drop a unique weapon upgrade. These weapons have limited ammo and are extremely powerful if you know how to use them. When the ammo is over, the ship will re-equip the standard weapons automatically. Unique Weapons are not affected by the player's power level.
- NEW AND BETTER ENEMIES. There are some new enemies. I won't spoil this, so go ahead and play the game :) Existing enemies have also received some additional work, and are more balanced than ever. There are some variations on the behavior of the old and new baddies.
- ENEMY FORMATION. Like on the classic side-scrollers, Nightstar now has enemies that come in formations that follow different flight patterns.
- STAGES (or "Levels"). Each Stage now feels unique and have different sequences of enemies. I also changed what triggers the hyperdrive that takes the player to the next stage. This will eliminate the possibility of "farming" for points on low levels.
- STEAM NAMES ON GLOBAL LEADERBOARD. Previously, the game was using the player's OS user name, and many of us have usernames like "admin" or "owner" or other words that not necessarily represents us. So, starting now, the new high scores submitted to the leaderboard will use the player's Steam name! Also, because of all the balance updates, I'll be resetting the global leaderboard. This might happen again at some point on the next updates. but I'll try to keep the leaderboard intact for as long as possible.
- GLOBAL LEADERBOARD REDESIGN. Now it's easier to see who the top 3 players in the world are. I also updated some other things on the design to make the leaderboard look better, and you can scroll down and check who's on the list.
- PERFORMANCE OVERHAUL. I made some minor changes to the graphics settings, and the game should run more fluidly for most players.
Well, that's it for today! Hope you enjoy the free demo, updates and new content! More cool stuff to come soon :)
Fly safely
tl;dr: Bunch of new stuff. Also, check the first few lines of this post for the links.
