Development Log: #02 - Have a Blaster!
Hello hello hello - I'm returning with another development log covering some of the mechanics of Engineered to Purpose.
This time around I'm doing a deep dive into the first weapon you get in the game:
The Blaster
The Blaster is a big 'ol cannon that shoots big 'ol bullets. It costs less than all of the other weapons - which corresponds to it dealing less damage overall. It makes up for that in being a fast tower that can fire many shots - particularly when upgraded.
It starts off with Power and Tempo modifiers, which allow you to make the tower faster and deal more damage.
At each tier you can get access to more modifier variants, starting with the pesky
The Heuristics Modifier
Heuristics adds damage for each time the tower kills an enemy. Towers with heuristics tend to start off weak, but when placed early they can scale up and become quite powerful with some upgrades (and difficult to balance q_q - hence the cap on the damage).
At the Advanced tier we have:
The Replication Modifier
Replication queues up multiple bullets to fire in a row before reloading. This adds a significant amount of damage - but also comes at a diminishing amount of damage per extra replication modifier. The more bullets you copy - the less damage the copy does. Originally it was just a straight up double of the damage, but we've been realizing that it's too strong and needed to come down a level or so in order to keep the pool of modifiers at a reasonable balance.
Next up at the Sophisticated tier there's:
The Bounce Modifier
This is a new modifier that we've been developing which makes it so that on impact the bullet will move to the next closest target in range, hit it and then move to the next closest target and so on, until it reaches a limit. Each bounce will do less and less damage - adding more modifiers
will improve the level of damage maintained between bounces. Originally we had a pierce modifier which caused bullets to move through enemies, but we typically found that it mostly passed through enemies without improving the overall damage. Bounce feels more in line with what we want to achieve.
Finally at the Transcendent tier:
The Stockpile Modifier
We have our flashiest Blaster modifier here - it stockpiles projectiles around the tower in an orbit and then fires them repeatedly at targets when enemies are in range. Adding more of this modifier increases the number of projectiles you can stockpile and how fast they recuperate. You can unleash an absolute barrage of attacks using this modifier.
Thanks for checking out our development log for Engineered to Purpose. Just as a reminder, if you're interested in trying out the game, please give it a wishlist! We're also looking to start up a closed beta playtest this month. If you want to be a part of that, shoot us an e-mail at [email protected].