This update focuses on revamping the celestial modifiers to allow for interesting combinations and depth to the change in gameplay feel they provide.
The way enemy spawn timers are determined has also been revised and adjusted to hopefully feel more fair, prevent getting completely overrun as much, and reduce down-time after killing a large amount of enemies in a short burst.
Also, minor balance adjustments, changes, and bug fixes included.
Celestial Modifiers Revamp
The celestial modifier effects have been adjusted and redesigned to offer a trade-off and encourage mix-and-max customisation in game difficulty.
The overall functionality remains the same:
- Achieve a victory to unlock the first celestial modifier
- Visit the celestial modifier screen in the hangar section of the main menu to equip/unequip modifiers.
- Achieve a victory with all previous modifiers equipped to unlock the next.
- Experiment with and discover different combinations of modifiers to change the game in unique ways!
The Celestial modifier icons are based on zodiac constellations and their names have been added to their descriptions.
Gameplay
To help provide a consistent gameplay pattern across different builds and damage outputs, the way the timer between enemy spawns is determined has been adjusted. The goal is to make the game feel more fair by reducing the likeliness of negative events such as being flooded with enemies once a boss spawns or having a low damage output and amassing massive groups of enemies that are impossible to take down. Alternatively, situations where you are massively powerful and are waiting for action should be reduced.
Hopefully this will encourage more build diversity and experimentation as the difficulty adjusts accordingly.
Minor Gameplay Changes:
- Added module type icons for upgrades to indicate if they are offensive of defensive - spot these icon badges next to module upgrades when levelling up!
- Made it so that the charge bar for modules that do not fire automatically turn yellow when they reach max charge to indicate that it is ready to fire
Balance, Changes & Bugfixes
- Added shadows to spider enemies for clarity against light backgrounds
- Fixed the enemy damage celestial modifier increasing damage more than it should
- Fixed error in Virgo constellation sprite
- Fixed laser twin boss laser beam not doing double damage when the celestial modifier is active
- Changed laser twin boss spin attack to turn on their lasers for a short time before spinning to allow time to react and move away
- Fixed laser twin boss bug where its position would be incorrect sometimes
- Fixed bug where laser twin bosses could be separated if ionised at a certain time
- Altered description for astral upgrade heal every 500 kills to indicate that it spawns hp instead of healing directly
- Fixed celestial modifier equip issue when achieving a victory with all modifiers equipped
- Raised celestial modifier description to reduce info flickering
- Changed remote sentry icons to show blue lasers instead of green
- Changed description of Armour Repair Drones to indicate that it heals immediately
- Fixed audio sometimes clipping when launching
- Changed missile mass explosion to increase explosion damage not just impact damage
- Changed fireworks projectile sprite to match the upgrade icons
- Slightly decreased mortar strike explosion radius
- Made explosive enemies that get reeled in by space hook die immediately instead of triggering the explosion timer
- Added zodiac names to celestial modifiers
- Revamped celestial modifiers
- Revamped enemy spawn timer calculations
- Added upgrade type icons for modules to indicate what is offensive or defensive
- Made module charge bars turn yellow when ready to fire