Changed in 0.10.0:
NEW FEATURE: Discoverable Places
The main goal for this update was to add places that might have something to do with the lore or just "special" places of the town where the game takes place in.
Originally the idea was that each level on a run would feature one unique place (that's why previously the Mansion and the Observatory were always on levels one and two), but in hindsight, the places would quickly become stale if all of them are shown immediately during the first run.
The new idea is to unlock these places gradually and show them more sparingly, so that there would be something fresh to see until everything is unlocked.
When you start a new run, there is a chance to discover a new place during the run. It will take a while
to unlock all these and if you don't discover a new place during a new run, a previously unlocked place will be shown.
These places will be placed randomly in one of the levels on a run.
These places don't affect the normal gameplay (unlike the Buildings in the game).
It was fun to model these places and implement them into the game. Although the "screen time" of these are relatively small compared to everything else in the game, I hope the effort put into these was worth it and hopefully at least some of these places will spark a little bit of everyone's imagination when discovered!
Each of these places also gives you a Steam achievement!
The places include:
- Mansion (previously on level 1)
- Observatory (previously on level 2)
- Radio Telescope (slightly tweaked, previously together in the Mansion on level 1)
- Airfield
- Church
- Incubator
- Crash Landing
FEATURE CHANGE: Unlock System Changes
The old unlock system supported only unlocks that can be unlocked with points. Refactoring the unlock system to support other kinds of unlock took some time, but now adding more unlock types should be a little easier.
The goal is that much of the content could be experienced/revealed gradually, so that not all of the content would be seen directly during your first run after the update.
Currently for example you can see all the enemies as long as you get to the boss fight, which is not the optimal way.
Changes:
- Re-hauling the unlock system to better support different unlock types
- The unlocks dialog also got a small face-lift, so hopefully it isn't as much of an eye sore as previously!
- The unlocks dialog now also shows the "unlock type" on top of the unlocks.
NEW FEATURE: Destructible Fences
The game also now has two types of destructible fences around some of the buildings!
FEATURE CHANGE: Stacking Effects for Active Items
One of the most requested features for over a year has been to add stacking effects for some of the active items that were missing it. Now they are finally here!
Stacking these active items now have the following effects:
- Dome: (cooldown time and size)
- Boost Ring: (cooldown time and size)
- Air Strike: (cooldown time)
- Turret: (cooldown time)
- Disco Drone: (cooldown time)
FEATURE CHANGE: Enemy Health Increase on Loops 3-5
There has been feedback about enemies becoming too easy to kill after a while. So now on loops 3 and 5 the enemy health is increased.
After loop 5, the enemies still have more health than previously, but the health doesn't go as much after that.
This change doesn't affect enemies between loops 1 and 2.
Please give feedback about how the enemies now feel on loops between 3 and 5, this can be tweaked up and down. The enemy health scaling can also be potentially done in some other way, if some players feel it's too hard and others feel it's too easy.
FEATURE CHANGE: Boss Fight change
There has been a lot of feedback about the boss fight. The feedback is generally about the boss feeling bullet spongy and the boss fight might feel "unfair" because there are a lot of enemies and bombs.
The boss health got a tiny decrease on this update, but now there are fewer simultaneous enemies and bombs. This will give more time to focus on the boss enemy.
The changes:
- Change the boss fight enemy composition, so that there are less bomb-throwing enemies
- Change the boss fight, so that there is only one active enemy wave at any time in addition to the boss enemy
- Reduce boss enemy health by 25%
One of the remaining challenges is that the boss fight is a bit easier if you have fire-damage units, but it's not obvious to the players. So the players who don't have any fire-damage units may experience the boss fight as more challenging than those who have fire-damage units.
FEATURE CHANGE: Visibility Changes
One of the areas of the feedback was that it's hard to see what is happening, when things get very chaotic.
The changes:
- Show light blue overlay on enemies' damage area to show better the damage areas
- Limit the amount of the flash effect when an enemy is hit, so that you can see the enemy better on later levels/loops.
FEATURE CHANGE: Audio SFX Spam
The other big area of the feedback was that audio gets annoying and frustrating when there are for example a lot of explosions happening on the screen.
The changes:
- Add a 5-second cooldown for passive Air Strike item, to prevent air strike spam when a lot of units level up.
- Lower the "bomb on ground warning" SFX volume, so the beeping is not too overwhelming when there is a lot of bombs on the ground
- Limit simultaneous explosion and other sound effects, so things like Air Strikes don't sound all glitched out on later levels/loops.
OTHER CHANGES:
- Tweak "Jumper Enemy" animation, to fix cases where it looks like the enemy gets stuck in the air for a brief moment
- Show "low health/coffin warning" when there is only 1 empty coffin left (instead of 2). To make it more pleasant for new players who probably have more coffins filled on average.
- [Community Feedback] Explain the "game over" situation better in the crematoriums
- [Community Feedback] Show health bars for "Jumper Enemy" and "Sword Enemy"
- [Community Feedback] Added possibility to move the units with arrow keys
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That's it for this update, I hope you all like the new places -feature and I hope this update addresses some of the feedback everyone has sent! Thanks again for the feedback!
It's nice to get this first normal update released, since the early access started.
Excited to start working on the next update!
- jounitus