"This is my rig, IUSTITA. In English, that translates to ''justice.'' For the longest time, that's what I thought we were doing at GalGov: protecting the star system from those seeking to hurt it. But justice is in short supply. What I was fighting for has been lost."
Welcome back to another development update, Scavengers! It's been a while since the last one and I'm currently undergoing a LOT of crunch. Why? Well, let's recap some things that have been added, and what's coming down the pipeline.
Working Towards A Demo
I've registered SCAVENGER ZERO for Steam NextFest. This means there should be a playable demo in June, assuming I can make one by the end of the month. More details about the demo will be released when it's ready.
Something worth noting about SCAVENGER ZERO's development: I'm the only one currently working on the game. Does that make the game a "solo dev" project? Technically not, because I did hire some people in the past to help with assets such as the key art and voice acting. However, this doesn't change the fact that I'm the only person working on the game RIGHT NOW, and the demo is going to require a lot of crunch to actually finish.
The worst case recently was a 28-hour straight work day, followed by 4 hours of sleep before waking up and doing another 20 hours. I do want to try and pace myself a bit better for the sake of my health. I'm hoping this crunch will be short-term. For now, let's get into what I've done over the last couple of months.
Playtesting
March was a very important month for SCAVENGER ZERO, as it marked the first time I had a larger-scale playtest for the game. Previously, only one of my close friends had ever played the game. On March 6th, I had about 13 people playing it. The results of the playtest were interesting. The main things are:
Generally, people thought the game was fun. People played it from 2 hours up to 20 hours for some. The game is not perfect, but I've made some balancing changes since to improve the game's feel and build variety.
A lot of bugs were found and fixed. At the time of writing, I've fixed over 70 known bugs and also improved the optimization of the game somewhat.
Multiple updates and patches have gone out to playtesters since it began. Having people playing it has helped to keep me more motivated. I've been treating the playtesting process more like an "early-early access."
Internal Update 0.3.0 released on March 6th, with the last 0.3.x patch released on March 20th. 0.3 saw multiple major bug fixes, four new mech sets, balancing, new items, and a new enemy.
Internal Update 0.4.0 released on April 3rd, with the last 0.4.x patch released on April 20th. It added a new questline, a respawning system, multiple new items, weapons, and new mech sets.
Internal Update 0.5.0 released on May 9th, finally adding in some of the faction missions as well as additional voice acting, a new mission type, and new mech parts.
I am currently working on 0.5.2, which is shaping up to be the single biggest update I have ever pushed out. It features extensive game-wide polish, balancing, bug fixing, QoL, and more. This is all in an effort to get a solid demo ready.
Despite the extreme crunch, this style of development has been a very good experience so far. Having constant feedback from players has made developing the game much easier, to the point that I am thinking an early access release for the game could be a good idea. Early Access comes with it's own set of risks which I'll have to think about a bit further. I'm going to wait to see what the reception to the demo is, and go from there.
Cover Art
The game received new cover art / branding in April, created by Emily Barraclough. I realized the game's cover art hadn't been updated in almost 2 years, despite the game changing significantly in that time. This new art reflects the current game a bit better, featuring two enemy factions and one of the main characters in the center.
Some elements of the new cover art have been removed due to spoilers, but will be re-added to the cover art closer to launch. There are some things I want to keep a mystery, and probably won't talk about publicly until after the game has reached a 1.0 state.
Travelling Merchant
In April, the Travelling Merchant was added to the game. This is a shady individual who sells a variety of "Illegal" tier items. These are items that have both positive and negative effects. Whether or not they are useful is VERY situational and depends on if they can make synergies with the other items/weapons you are currently using.
For example: here's the "Illegal CPU" item. When you overheat in SCAVENGER ZERO, you are penalized by having reduced speed and being unable to attack or dodge for a few seconds. The Illegal CPU allows you to continue operating normally, at the cost of taking damage over time.
This item is usually a bit more trouble than it's worth. However, if you can combine it with items that boost your health regeneration and cooling speed, it can negate the CPU temperature mechanic almost entirely. This can be a huge boon for anyone running builds that use temperature-heavy weapons.
Continued Hub World Updates
Pictured above is the player's new room. It's much more open now, and features a variety of "trophies." These trophies are physical props that are tied to the player's save file. Depending on what you've done in the game, new trophies will appear. Some are obtained for completing specific missions, finishing quests, or even finding secrets in the hub world.
The hub world is a bit more lived-in now as well! I've added NPC crowds that walk around in the foreground. At the moment, the NPC pools are a bit limited. For example; you can see a variety of identical twins in this image! At some point in the future I'm going to make a few more different variations of these walking NPCs to help reduce repetition.
0.5.x Polishing
The biggest recent change is the ability to choose a custom name for your builds. You can also save and load them now. This significantly helps to expand the customization of the game.
It's worth noting that there's not a one-size-fits-all mech build. Some missions may require you to switch things up a bit in order to succeed, whether because of enemy resistances or because of terrain that's difficult to navigate. So, the addition of saving and loading for builds should help to encourage the player to use more varied builds throughout a run.
A bit more polish, this time on the main menu! It's received a complete overhaul. For the demo, there's now a "wishlist + socials" section on the right side. On the left, you can see the revamped save file selection, now featuring an in-game screenshot from the last time you played as well as completion percentage, total playtime, and a counter for what campaign you're currently on. The background also cycles through a few of the in-game planets.
Respawning & Economy Management
In many roguelikes, death is usually the end. However, playing through SCAVENGER ZERO, I decided I wanted to do something a bit different. A full campaign/run in SCAVENGER ZERO can be fairly long: anywhere from 30 minutes to 2 hours. I've decided to make death a part of the campaign itself, combining the mechanic with the game's economy systems.
When you die in SCAVENGER ZERO, you'll be ejected from the mission and receive a medical bill. Each time you die, your injuries become more and more severe, so the cost goes up. The only way to truly end your run is through severe debt/bankruptcy. Lose enough money, and your mech will be taken by collection agencies.
There are a lot of things the player can do to avoid this:
Sometimes, you might have to do work for factions you might not agree with. Mankind Interactive (a corporate faction) provides high-paying, but fairly immoral contracts that usually involve... a bit of union-busting.
Taking weaker weapons can help cut down on your deployment costs... if you're confident enough.
Pawning off items. Item values are independent of their rarity. Even if some of the more common items are worthless to the build you're running, they can fetch a high price...
Gambling. Yep, there's a casino and you can gamble your way out of medical debt. This is probably the least effective way of getting out of debt.
So far I really enjoy the direction the economy/debt systems are headed. It adds a layer of complexity to mission selection and building. Sometimes you're put between a rock and a hard place. Maybe you have to sell an important item that has been carrying you through missions in order to make a bit of money. Maybe you're falling behind in terms of power, so you spend a bit extra to bring some heavier firepower to a boss fight...
One of the most insane strategies I've witnessed was when a playtester became so money-hungry that they opened every single run by instantly scrapping important unique items. They would use that scrap, as well as most of their starting money, to hit the casinos before even deploying on their first mission in the hopes that they could get ahead.
Conclusion
Anyway, sorry if this is a bit shorter than the other devlogs I've posted so far. The demo is still in heavy development, so I haven't really been spending as much time doing social media stuff for the game recently.
I want to try to get back into the swing of it, posting a short every other day. However, this will probably not happen until after the demo crunch period is finished... which hopefully will be sooner rather than later.
Until next time!