Today I'm releasing the first major content expansion for Cube Defender. This update brings in a new game mode, several new enemies and heaps of quality of life improvements.
I'd love to hear from you guys about how it all plays now, along with any feedback :)
The new version will be rolling out to Windows users today with the Mac version early next week
New Game Mode - Endless Mode
Introducing a brand-new mode called Endless Mode.
In this mode you play a continually expanding game map back-to-back until you run out of health.
Unlike the standard mode where you play multiple smaller games, this mode lets you play until you're overwhelmed by cubes. The goal is to see how long you can survive. Along with the regular points you get from destroying enemies, in endless you get points every second with bonus points earned when completing additional levels.
How It All works
Endless Mode shares the fundamentals with Standard Mode, wherein you play a level and destroy cube enemies that spawn from one edge of the map and move towards the other end.
Where this mode differs is that the game map will indefinitely expand with no end sight. Unlike in Standard Mode where games have a set number of level expansions before clearing, this mode continues forever.
You'll still build turrets and destroy cubes, but the game will get progressively harder the longer you play.
- Turrets become increasingly more expensive each round
- The map becomes harder to manager as it expands, you'll need to move back and forth across previous levels to ensure your turrets are still working
- The turret limit doesn't change. At the beginning this will be fine as you will have plenty to spare, but as you progress to 10, 20, 30 and beyond you will have to determine where is the best place to put your turrets and how many you will need on each level to survive
- Every time you complete 8 Levels you will receive a bonus of additional health, currency and score. This is the only way to regain health in this mode so getting to these intervals is key.
- Turret energy system as explained below
Turret Energy System
Turrets will now rely on energy to operate. This new resource is spent every time the turret shoots and will eventually deplete with enough time (dealing less damage from 1x damage at full power to 0.5x when exhausted)You'll have to upgrade, destroy and recharge your turrets to ensure they're operating at peak effeciency (with upgrades improving their maximum energy capacity)
Turret Dead Zones
As the levels expand you will start to see more frequent dark blue tiles appearing. These are Dead Zones and they prevent any turrets from being built on them. These zones are infrequent at the start but become a significant consideration later on when each new level creates more of them.
You'll need to determine when's the best time to build your turret as you'll never know when that tile might become a dead zone.
Endless Mode Achievements & Leaderboards
New Steam Achievements have been added for Endless Mode. You'll unlock these as you play endless mode (these are mostly based on how many levels you've been able to unlock while playing in a single session).
A new leaderboard has been added just for Endless Mode. Compete with others to see who can get the highest score in Endless.
Performance
With Endless Mode, it's possible you'll have hundreds or thousands of cubes, effects and turrets at once. While this has been performance tested, you may notice FPS drops when playing for a long time (there's not much that can be done, there's a physical limit to how many things can be calculated and drawn)
New Enemy - Magnetic Cube
This high level blue colored enemy periodically sends out a magnetic wave. Any turrets hit by this wave instantly drop their current target and focus on this cube. Where this cube becomes dangerous is with it's high health and slow movement. While your turrets are distracted focusing on this cube, others can slip past and race towards the edge of the map.
You'll need high damage / multiple turrets to destroy these cubes quickly so you can focus on faster and more damaging enemies.
New Enemy - Spawner Cube
The orange colored spawner enemy itself isn't overly dangerous (with a modest attack, defense and health), but where it makes up for its own average stats is the fact that when destroyed it will randomly spawn additional cubes at the point of impact. What cubes are spawned are based on the current level (with harder and more numerous cubes being spawned in the late game).
You'll want turrets both in front and behind the path of this cube (so you can catch any spawns that pop out once you destroy it).
Additional Features and Improvements
Along with this update are a whole heap of features, optimization and bug-fixes that help really polish up Cube Defender to make it more enjoyable. Here's a few of the highlights.
Tutorial System
I've added a brand-new tutorial system as an option when you start the game. If enabled, key parts of the game will cause tutorial messages to be shown.
These messages freeze time, zoom you into the action and then provide a useful message. Here are a few places where you might see these:
- Once when a new enemy cube type is spawned
- When letting the first cube escape
- When a turret runs out of energy (in endless mode)
These helpful messages should help highlight what's important without being overly intrusive.
Turret Upgrade Models
Previously when turrets were upgraded, they became more powerful, but visually they looked the same. This made it hard to keep track of which turrets were upgraded and which ones weren't.
In this update, all turrets will visually change when upgraded. For example, here is what the Simple Turret looks like when it's upgraded.
Level 1, Level 2 and Level 3 Simple Turret
Redesigned Start Screen
I've re-designed the start screen so that as soon as you load up the game, a sample level is automatically played in the background. This level spawns enemies, spawns turrets and effectively plays itself. I've added several camera angles too so while you're interacting with the menus (or just sitting in the game screen) you'll have something fun to look at :)
Redesigned Help Screen
The help screen has also undergone a few changes, with the most noticeable addition being the new Endless Mode information.
Redesigned Game Select Screen
The game selection screen has been re-designed to accommodate several new features
- Ability to select between a Standard and Endless game
- Selection of difficulty on Standard Mode
- Selection of both Tutorials and Disabling Sound as options
Other Changes
- Better randomization for the levels and game rounds based on difficulty. Instead of being a definite 3 game rounds per session, the number of rounds and the number of levels inside the round will be randomized based on difficulty (with higher difficulties having longer game maps)
- When playing the game you can now press the escape key / back key to dismiss any currently opened menu . This will make it easier / more natural to close the menus now. You can also press any area outside of the menus in order to close them.
- Better scaling of difficulty for wave spawners. Beforehand each spawn point could spawn a wide variety of cubes. This means that if you're unlucky you could have some really strong enemies back-to-back. Now, each spawner moves through levels, with each level it's pool of applicable enemies it can spawn is updated. This means that at lower levels the spawners will spawn more basic enemies and as the game progresses, the spawner will increase in difficulty with new enemies being spawned.
- Boss spawns no longer spawn for easy mode
- Adjusted the speed of several animations (explosion, message display, movement). All of these have been sped up to better match the pace of the game
- Some level adjustments for balance
- Additional performance optimisations for animations, calculations and overall improved on some legacy AI code