Hello everyone!
It has been a while since last devlog! I took some time off this summer, and it was great to rest and replenish both my motivation and energy levels. But I am now back, and today I am releasing a significant Playtest update for Comet Force! Let's dive into the details!
Build Turrets within the Arena
So far, players could only place buildings in the camp, around the arena. These only play a role in-between waves, and are not accessible during combat. I am happy to introduce a new game mechanic: turrets! These are built within the arena and assist the troop during fights by applying diverse effects when enemies or troop members are in their range area.
For instance, the Mine generator will throw a mine to all enemies entering the area. And the Accelerator will make all troop members standing in the area reload and shoot faster.
I implemented 6 different turrets for now, but I will add a lot more for the full game, including upgraded turrets.
The question is now: how to build turrets? There are two steps:
- To acquire new turret blueprints, players need to use the Research lab. It now has a prettier interface to allow different types of research: classes, turrets and buildings (which is locked for now since I need to implement more buildings). Similarly to researching a new class, you will get to choose between three turret blueprints
- To set up turret building sites in the arena, you need to build and use the Military Architect (unlocked by building the Research lab). This allows to buy a site, and you get to choose between three random positions. Once the site exists, you can go there and build the turret of your choice among your existing blueprints
I hope you will enjoy this new mechanic! I think it will make the fighting more interesting. In particular, it will incite to stop looping repetitively around the arena but instead leverage the range area of your turrets. Also, it adds more depth to refining your strategy and building your own play style.
Let me know in the comments what you think about this new mechanic, or any ideas you may have!
Meet the Samurai Class!
This update also adds a new class to recruit: the Samurai! It has a sort of melee attack and has a few upgrades that can make it very powerful. It is only available for troop members for now, but I plan to add a third leader that starts as a Samurai in the near future.
What is Next?
My primary goal is to come up with a complete demo version and I hope to do that in the upcoming months. The current Playtest is getting closer to what I want in terms of quantity of content, but I still have a few more things to add. Also, I need to take decisions on some mechanics that are still missing, such as the exact scope of a run (how many waves in total? difficulty modifiers?) and which meta-progression to implement. If you have any suggestions, feel free to share them!
As always, thanks for reading this post, and see you next time!
-Radiant Sloth
Full Changelog - Playtest v0.3
Added
- Possibility to build turrets within the arena through Turret building sites
- New building: Military architect
- 6 new turrets
- New troop class: Samurai
- 8 upgrade effects for the Samurai class
- New music track that plays after wave 11: Around The Breach
Changed
- Some enemies now spawn at edges of the arena instead of all in the middle