Message to all members of the ---Red---Tether--> protocol
---Red---Tether--> is featured during the ongoing Steam Next Fest and it just had it’s Demo released! I’d love to hear your feedback if you give the game a try. It got a new teaser too:
The game is quickly approaching completion, but I still feel like it needs more content to be a full experience. So I’ll give it one more month, focusing on late game challenges and unlockable content. Here is what happened in the last weeks:
Player dockyard and tutorial finalized
I put some finishing touches on the title screen and reworked the tutorial/training area into a concourse that is less separated from your ship selection space. So even after you got the basics down, the training area is easily accessible to try out new ships or mechanics. Some ships underwent minor rebalances but I’ll need more feedback to really get that down.
I also implemented an inworld text box system that will later serve to give you more context on game world. Right now it mainly serves to display pilot dossiers in the dockyard.
Parallax scenery
The game now has more depth due to parallaxing clouds and dust in the foreground and background. Potentially there will be an option to turn this off, but so far I’m happy with how it turned out. Enemy destruction spawn additional parallax debris that lingers and creates a deep debris field as battles progress.
New enemy attachments
I felt like missile spam was way to prevalent and gave enemies a whole bunch of new thing to point at you in the early game. This was pretty straight forward to implement, since I already had planned to give all enemy chassis multiple variants. In the early game you now face gunboats that deal little damage with their kinetic disruptors, but delay your shield regeneration for a long time, setting you up for follow up attacks. Melee projector attachments give enemies a short range stun strike, potentially making ---Red---Tether--> the first game where asteroids can punch spaceships. Later in the game you face heavy damage railguns that try to take you out from extreme range, but will hold fire if you position yourself behind other ships.
Bosses incoming
Currently I’m working on boss enemies that will be featured in both wave and endless mode. Most enemy ships will have an extensively modified boss variant, at the same time there are a lot of custom boss structures and ships in the works. Making these has been quite interesting so far. In -R-T> player offense capabilities largely depend on having things to tether or rip at hand. Creating varied ways for the player to fight bosses got just as important as designing the bosses mods of attack.
I’ll try to wrap up boss work in the next week and after that there are still endless mode and a ton of new player items left to integrate. Not sure I can make it by November but that is what I’m currently aiming for. Stay tuned and whishlist pls!
And in case you are new here and haven’t played my previous games: Hyperspace Dogfights is 30% off for the occasion, starting Saturday 2nd.
Cheers and stay tethered!
Stefan – Sleeper Games