Hello everyone,
Good news! It took a while, but we are now ready to finally update Early Access with our current status. We’ve been working the last 3 months to finish all content of Airheart and make it better than ever before. We really hope you’ll like what you’ll see.
Here is a list of all the major changes
Two brand new airplanes and 6 new weapons
The Pinty Woodpecker Fisher plane and the Dunne Daredevil high-end plane are now in the game, giving two new options in the low- and high-end of the cost spectrum. Also we now have 6 new weapons in the game, bringing the total to 25.
Elite drones and third boss:
As with pirates, the game now has silver and gold elite drones, which can spawn great rewards, but are way tougher to defeat. Also, on level 12 you can finally battle the third boss, that has been teased in the last update.
More interesting ecosystem
Fish now don’t just disappear when you catch them, but they also get replaced by secondary species, like jellyfish, salp, kryll or sea urchins (depending on the sky layer). Most of these are not valuable, but a danger to your quest.
More advanced plane AI
The battles you fight should be a lot more interesting now, that the AI will actually calculate flight path to attack you from desired angles. Also, the fractions of the game will now more often fight out their fights among them, making of for tense battlefields, especially in Autumn Forest.
Brand new crafting system
The old crafting system felt really grindy, having you to shoot dozens of enemies to finally get the required amount of parts to craft a new weapon. We instead made a new crafting system, based on inventions and ideas. You’ll have to use the trash you find to craft useful items like boxes, magazines, scopes or batteries to find out the combinations that make for fully usable airplane parts in the end.
Multiple weapons and harpoon secondary
Wings now don't have their secondary weapon anymore, but instead have a slot property, so you can take up to two weapons with you, allowing for interesting combos that make the mine launcher or the nuke much more useful. Since the wings don’t have a secondary weapon anymore, the secondary fire button will now fire the harpoon, allowing for new combos with the rope and the weapons at the same time.
Tutorial & story screens:
The game now features a flight test tutorial, that should help new players to accommodate with the ins and outs of the game. Also, the first version of the story screens is now in the game. We are currently making them prettier and are looking to hire a voice actress for Amelia. But it should already help to tie world together.
Massive performance improvements
The game runs now massively better across all platforms. We’ve rewritten the cloud system and the layer culling system. We also optimised how much performance the AI needs for its calculation. This should assure that the frame-rate is now stable all the way to the end.
And lots, lots more.
But, this isn't our final release! Most importantly - the game doesn't have the ending yet - after the last layer (12th), there is just an empty space, where you can fly freely. ;)
The current status is that this is the version we are submitting into QA for consoles for the full release in the summer. So, since getting this console focused version done as soon as possible, there are a few things to keep in mind here:
- Gamepad focus build:
This is our PS4 master submission, so the focus of the game is purely on gamepad controls. It should be playable with keyboard and mouse, but especially the interface isn't fully tested on it. Of course, we will optimise all of that for the final full PC release, but we wanted you to be able to take a look earlier.
- UI aspect ratios untested:
Similarly, the UI is maybe not responding too well to screen aspect ratios aside from 16:9 or 16:10. If you have a really wide monitor (or a 4:3), some screens might produce some ugly overlays of menu items. You can help us tremendously to identify all these quirks, if you send us screenshots in the steam forums.
- Translations are placeholders:
The current translations are all automated google translate version. Hence they are absolutely horrible. Getting these into the game helps us to identify, if there are any missing spots. For the full release, the game will of course have professionally translated texts, as well as an UI that reacts according to the different text lengths.
- Steam achievements, trading cards, big picture mode etc - untested:
While the game will now track achievements, most of them haven’t been properly configured in Steam yet. So all Steam specific features are to be taken with a bit of caution.
Again, thank you all for being among the first to support the game, during its early phase. We hope you like what it turned out to be and that this update can get you excited for the final release
Blindflug Studios
