Yet Another Development Update — July 2024

16 Jul 2024Developer post

Source: Steam Community (opens in a new tab)

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Welcome, Survivors!

You asked for a status update, and we're here to serve. Please enjoy the read!

Version 0.7 Progress Report

The last month has been pretty hectic so far, as we're in the process of moving our office to another building (more space, ho!), but we're still hard focused on developing our beloved Bullet Heaven ːheart_meː.

Work is progressing steadily. The amount of changes and improvements in this release is staggering, and as such it takes time, but we hope it will be worth it in the end and make YAZS a much more interesting game than before!

Most of what we're doing right now is code and numbers, but there are a few things we can show you to give you an idea of where we're headed. Keep in mind that everything we discuss here is not final and subject to change. So your feedback is more than welcome!

Per-Survivor stats and removal of stat caps

All capped stats are now scaled with diminishing returns in mind. This allows them to scale indefinitely, so you no longer have to worry about crossing the line and picking a less-than-optimal upgrade. All stats will have a breakthrough threshold, after which further investment in them will result in lower bonuses, but bonuses nonetheless.

Weapon and ability stats are now tied to each survivor. Our goal with this change is to both allow for a much larger stat boost for the squad member of your choice, as well as introduce an additional tactical element to the game where players are incentivized to mix and match stats across their teams depending on other factors within the current run.

With this change, the Military Training panel will now focus on selecting a bonus to a specific Survivor's stats, while other upgrade sources will focus on boosting team-wide stats and buffing all survivors at once. However, we're still discussing what to do with infinite upgrades after you're done with the leveling options.

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New damage types and type tag stacking

To further increase the variety, we're adding new damage types to the game, which are

Kinetic
Slashing
Explosive

Kinetic damage type will be dealt by all bullet and piercing attacks, such as from: Pistol, Bow, Shotgun, etc. This damage type will be the most common, so we're still thinking about a fun effect to tie into it. For now, we're just scaling its numbers higher than others.

Slashing damage type comes from all the cutting tools in the Survivor's arsenal, such as the Katana, Axe, and Saw Drones. Our current plan is to have these attacks place an Injured debuff on enemies, increasing the damage they take from all sources.

Explosive damage is self-explanatory, as it includes all the regular explosions currently in the game. The common effect of all #Explosive damage is that it is dealt in a circular area of effect, and as such, adding this type to the game will allow us to add modifiers to the range and damage of explosions separately. This will certainly make the game... a blast to play ; )

Damage types will now sometimes overlap. For example, Pyro's Fireaxe will be both #Slashing and #Fire, while Hunter's Exploding Arrows will be both #Kinetic and #Explosive. The whole "tag" damage type system will allow us to introduce more mechanics that benefit from accumulating multiple damage options of the same type, as well as specializing in "rainbow" teams armed with many different damage tags.

Item reworks and item slots

While we've previously teased item upgrades/evolutions, we're currently putting those on hold for the 0.8+ update and focusing instead on the basic rework of the items themselves.

As mentioned in the previous development update, we're reworking virtually every item in the game, making them (hopefully) much more powerful and game-changing. Gone will be the days of boring "just +1% to stat" boosts, because even if an item does provide a stat boost, it should now be much more impactful and tied to additional scaling or game mechanics.

Having said that, we'll still want some items, especially the basic ones, to be easy to understand and universal. The more advanced ones will offer more in terms of synergy or specific play styles, many of which will work well in tandem with others. The first iteration of items will not be the final, as we hope to tweak them further and introduce many more interesting and advanced options in the future.

Since items are a big gameplay modifier, each item will have only one stack (you can't take the same item multiple times), and their maximum number will be limited by a certain number of slots. However, we're trying to balance things so that the number of items will scale nicely with each game mode, and the limit should only be a real factor in the endless modes, where you'll have to strategize about which powerups to pick up and hold on to.

Ability reworks and evolution

Abilities will be stronger and more powerful with the introduction of brand new evolutions for each of them, as well as synergies between different Survivors (added to their respective skill trees). We're also reworking some abilities that were boring and didn't fit well with the new & improved game systems.

To make set Survivors more interesting, all simple passive stat bonus abilities - such as "Eagle Eye" and "Protocol: Critical" - will be reworked into brand new ones. The passive stat boosting effects will still be tied to the Survivor's kits, as we'll be adding them as skill tree nodes, synergies, and starting perks (v0.8+).

We've already teased two of these new abilities on our social media profiles (be sure to follow us there!). Medic, for example, will be getting a Medical Drone ability, which is a defensive and offensive tool in her kit. When stationary, it'll heal survivors, but when in motion, it'll switch to attacking nearby targets, giving Medic a new support ability that doubles as a damage-dealing ability.

Every single ability in the game will now receive two evolutions, which (once unlocked) will allow you to choose between two ultimate modifiers for each of them as a rank 5 level-up upgrade. Some of these modifiers will make the damage-dealing ability deal even more damage or change its type entirely. In contrast, others will modify the ability to work differently, some even completely reversing its effects or triggers.

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Adressing other common points of criticism

The game will continue to evolve and improve in all areas, so you can be confident in its overall quality. With update 0.7, we're working to add more QoL improvements, which include, to name a few

New leveling system that brings meta progression rewards to Extermination mode.
Improved lockdown system, making the option both more useful and infinitely usable.
Controller vibrations, background pause/mute audio options, survival guide, and a music player!

Game difficulty will be further optimized to allow more room for simple, casual fun. The first implementation of difficulty levels will be added, which will also introduce greater challenges to the game, as we plan to make it much harder (and more rewarding) for players who consciously seek out difficulty spikes.

More maps and Survivors coming in upcoming updates. Once we're done with all the big changes we're currently working on, we'll resume our work to add at least two new maps and two more Survivors to the base game before its full release. While we would love to add more, we want to keep our scope realistic (we're a tiny indie studio, remember?), so the above will be our goal for version 1.0.

Game performance and readability will be further improved with additional code magic, as well as new options to customize the amount of ground clutter (e.g. grass) and the graphics quality setting. The latter will both make the game look better than ever before and allow it to run at the lowest settings available, lowering the game's minimum requirements. We're also working on smoothing out the crashes that some players have reported (thank you for your patience!).

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See you in the open beta!

As mentioned before, please understand that all of the above is a work in progress, and things are subject to change from today, through the upcoming open beta tests, and even until the end of the Early Access period. If something works worse than intended, don't worry, it will be improved and polished over time.

Depending on how long it takes us to implement the rest of the planned features, we're still aiming for the end of July or the first half of August to launch the Open Beta and hopefully get all the feedback we can. Remember, our goal is to make the game as fun as possible, and we won't rest until that goal is achieved.