Greetings Pilots!
Early Access Update 0.9.0 brings numerous improvements to combat systems and pacing, as well as some visual improvements and updated artwork. Many game aspects have been reworked and rebalanced for better playability and maneuvering.
Every stage in Story Mode has been reworked with improved enemy spawns and attack behaviors.
Survival Mode has been updated to be a bit longer and now contains more enemy patterns. You'll encounter more and tougher enemies at higher difficulties, with a more relaxed game play for lower difficulties.
Read on for are all the highlights from this massive update.
Enemy Combat Reworked
The biggest overhaul has been to the combat system to make the game more playable and engaging. Here's the breakdown of additions:
Enemies now have varying chances to fire on spawn, giving the player more time to react and maneuver.
Enemies of different types now have weaknesses to different modes of attack (lasers, bombs, nukes) and environmental hazards (asteroids, mines).
Enemies last longer. When they appear on screen, they have maximum resistance to lasers, which is worn down as the player engages them. This means it will take a bit longer to kill most enemies with lasers alone.
Enemies now have more variety in their formations and movement patterns. And more patterns and formations are currently in development during Early Access.
Enemy spawns now employ more randomization to give individual ships in a spawn formation distinct movement speed and firing behavior.
Higher difficulties spawn additional enemies from tougher classes. This was used sparingly in the past, but is now more prevalent across all stages to add that extra challenge for Squadron Leader, Veteran, and Galactic Guardian difficulties. Skirmisher and Cadet difficulties should feel easier and less busy in many ways.
Projectile speed has been decreased to give the player more time to react. As before, projectile speed scales with difficulty, but should feel more workable across all difficulty levels.
Enemy aggressiveness scales with difficulty. The higher the difficulty, the more often they shoot.
Although 99.9% of players insist that getting shot in the back is their absolute favorite thing, most up-shooters and up-movers have been removed. If you get shot from behind now, it's probably one of the few enemies with that ability who slipped past you and doubled back for another attack.
Alliance support has been greatly reduced. You still have the occasional alliance buddy pew-pewing up the screen from time to time. Their presence is mostly for cinematic effect, as they're not particularly adept or maxxed out like the player. Minimizing their presence generally reduces screen clutter for the better.
Visual Updates
I've employed the skills of a professional pixel artist to rework some of the graphics, and the first batch of new assets has been worked into this update. There have also been several tweaks to shaders and effects.
Updated graphics for light fighters, player/alliance ships, and several power ups. More of this is in the works.
Updated display of player weapons loadout so things are easier to see. Player lasers are a bit tighter and are scaled and dimmed in a radius around the ship so players can more easily see incoming projectiles.
Enemy projectiles have been updated to help them stand out more in the bullet hell fray.
Enemy hit flashes have more dynamics to make them stand out across varying enemy color palettes.
Drops and Upgrades
Improved logic around item drops and scarcity so the battlefield feels less spammy with power ups.
There is now a hidden mechanic for bomb and shield economy which takes time to recover. Unhinged leadership and growing galactic resistance to Alliance imperialism have created a hostile trade environment. Tariffs on imported shields and bombs are cutting supply and driving up costs.
Power ups no longer drift out of reach to the left/right sides of the screen on spawn. You can still lose recoverable weapon upgrades at the top when the player ship is destroyed though!
Game Play
The scoring system has been adjusted. Your score should be higher across all difficulties when completing Story Mode or Survival Mode. Time to defend that leaderboard ranking!
Player "shell" invincibility special now lasts a little longer.
Reworked how 1UPs are dropped.
Audio Updates
Boss chattiness has been reduced somewhat, some of my least favorite vox audio has been removed. Reminder: you can control the volume of the enemy vox and all other audio in Audio Settings.
QoL Updates
Disabled "freeze screen when losing focus" setting by default on new installs since it appears to jam up streamers a bit. Existing installs are unaffected, enable/disable this in Misc. Settings as needed.
Removed "ship drift" setting that was enabled by default. This was an early idea I employed to keep the player moving when no control inputs were detected for a period of time. Most people just thought it was a bug lol. Even I always had this disabled. What was I thinking?
Bugfixes and Technical Stuff
Fixed a bug with game menus that would allow spamming selections and could get the game in a weird state.
Improved shaders for explosions, laser glimmer, enemy hurtboxes.
Updated layer orders for some enemies and bosses that would overlap incorrectly.
Extensive rework of StageScript backend for level design.
Boss 4 now has laser beam sounds like other enemies.
Boss 4 chatter now acts as hint for the player to learn its firing patterns.
Debug overlays now disabled. These tools may return via config setting in the future.
Development Updates
I have a bunch of new enemy patterns and behaviors I'm playing with in development. When they are ready, I'll sprinkle them into Survival and Story modes as appropriate. I currently have an artist working on the improved graphics you see trickling into the game a piece at a time. I'll continue to integrate new artwork as I receive it.
Feedback
I want to know what you think of the game play, whether this is your first time playing, or if you are a returning Galactic Guardian who has slogged through the story 20 times!
There has been a ton of great feedback so far, but if there are any changes or improvements you'd like to see, I'd love to know about them! Please head over to the Community tab and weigh in with your thoughts and ideas.
Happy Piloting!
-- John