Devlog #28 | Reducing Complexity, Boss Design, And Enhancing Gameplay Mechanics

01 May 2024Developer post

Source: Steam Community (opens in a new tab)

Welcome back, explorers! Gear up for an exciting journey through the latest enhancements and unveilings in the world of Hostile Mars. Let’s dive into this month’s thrilling updates!

Define and Design - Scheduling for Early Access

Over the past month, a large amount of time was devoted to defining all of the key elements of the game and getting everyone on the same page about the gameplay loop and depth of the game. This should allow us to deep-dive into each core mechanic and analyze its purpose and value. After that, the next step is to identify exactly what needs to be done to get the game into early access, and then just do it.

We are really excited about a lot of the changes and feel like the formula is forming really well.

As you know, we are mixing a few genres so taking care to analyze which parts of those genres work well in our formula, which don’t work well, and which can be improved or reduced, are all important in figuring out a gameplay loop that lets the player be creative and expressive while having an engaging experience. Some of these adjustments are explained further down.

Development

Boss Design Prototyping

We've spent a lot of time considering boss design for Hostile Mars. Given the unique blend of combat and base defense genres, it's crucial that the boss isn't just a larger bot with more health. Reflecting one of the main pillars of the game—massive amounts of enemies—we decided to construct the boss out of thousands of individual bots.

This isn't just a visual trick; each component is its own bot that can be destroyed. Once enough bots are destroyed from a segment, it compromises the integrity of the rest of the leg, causing it to collapse. The bots are then dropped and enter the player's maze of defenses.

Improving Bot Movement

We've been experimenting with the behavior of the enemies, adding more dynamic reactions when the player is close by, improving the way they look when moving, and leveraging all the systems we've been working on.

In the clip below, the bots' movement speed has been increased to better demonstrate their drifting and leaning behaviors.

Ramming Attack

We're also in the process of adding an attack to the first enemy type. They used to ignore the player but it didn't feel right. Playing into the physics-based nature of Hostile Mars, these bots will now be ramming you when you get too close, being surrounded by hundreds of machines should always be a deadly situation, even when these are "cute" transport bots.

Companion Bench UI

Last time, we introduced companion bots, helpers that follow the player and simplify some common tasks. At that point, they were still being prototyped and were spawned using debug tools. However, these companion bots can now be crafted, upgraded, and equipped on various backpacks.

Each exopack can provide a different number of slots to equip bots in, and each slot can be restricted to specific types of companions.

Drastically Reduced Complexity

We’ve made quite a few changes regarding the item progression and the early game complexity.

Power System

The power system continues to be refined to allow focus on what’s most important for the title, base design, and combat. A power core is dropped each wave, allowing the player to expand their defenses.

Instead of multiple distributors and considering the range between distributors and buildings, all of the power distribution is done through the grid system. This means a centralized power generator making use of all of the power cores and distributing power through connected floor, wall, and ramp panels. Power capacity is now given as a standard unit, and all placed items consume a set amount of power.

Snap To Grid

Because of how the power is distributed, all defenses are now ‘snap-to-grid’. This relieves some ambiguity regarding how traps will function based on where they are placed, providing a more accurate experience for the player.

Often, traps placed just off target cause frustration when the wave fails, and the trap needs to be slightly adjusted. Now all traps are a full panel size and affect any unit that is located inside of the defense's attack zone.

We feel this makes placing and adjusting defenses super fast, getting you into the action and allowing iteration much quicker.

Item Manufacturing

The early game item progression focused a lot on micromanaging various resource types when recycling and converting enemy scraps into usable materials. New players spent much time managing this process, interacting with machine UIs to craft and check which items were necessary for progress or construction.

We have reduced this by removing a lot of the ‘parts’ like springs and cogs. Now defeated bots directly drop scrap metal which can be forged into scrap ingot. This allows us to provide a combat and base defense-focused experience in the first hours. Don’t worry, there will still be more complex items down the road, but the early game will contain much less to understand and keep everything organized.

Complexity Postponed

A lot of these changes are in an effort to reduce early-game complexity. This does not mean that the game will lack complexity; there will be plenty of time throughout the game to ramp up more complex mechanics and strategies. Everyone on the team feels better about reducing the complexity early and waiting to introduce complexities until the core mechanics of the game are understood by the player.