Let's Talk Upgrades
Here's a recap of what's been going on with Gunlocked 2 development:
Synergies and Utilities
A commonly requested feature from Gunlocked 1 is highlighting valid synergies when equipping new items and checking your inventory. The way the upgrade database was handled in Gunlocked 1 meant this was never a real possibility, so I had to settle for showing a random sampling of other upgrades that worked with the selected item.
In Gunlocked 2, a new synergy side-bar is present in both the inventory and upgrade selection menus. Select any synergy from the sidebar and any upgrades available or equipped that share that synergy will be highlighted, while all others will be greyed out. Additionally, the counters will tell you precisely how many of each type you currently have equipped. In the example below, you can see the upgrade is a laser-type upgrade, and when the laser synergy is selected, another laser upgrade, the returning "Crystal Drone", is also highlighted.
When highlighting the upgrades themselves, the synergy bar will instead be affected, showing which synergies that upgrade has. It should now be easier than ever to see exactly how your current build is shaping up. And because the synergy side bar is always available to explain the different upgrade types, it also allows me to keep the upgrade descriptions more streamlined and less wordy than before.
Another streamlined element comes from the upgrades themselves. In Gunlocked 1, every upgrade had multiple levels, each with unique stat and/or ability changes. Each level could offer wildly different improvements. The upside of this was that you could get a lot more value out of your very limited 4 utilities. The downside was there was no way to know what an upgrade's full power was until you reached max level with it.
Now that you can have 24 unique utilities in Gunlocked 2, with infinite (theoretically) levels of each, it means each upgrade can be streamlined. You'll know exactly what the upgrade does, and what more copies of it will offer upon first inspection. It also means individual utilities have more focused abilities, but more flexibility in how you combine them, and in what quantity. Even if you select all of the same weapons and utilities from one run to another, you're likely to still end up with a unique experience. How many of each upgrade you have will have vast implications on your strengths and weaknesses.
Speaking of Weapons
Weapons are getting overhauled too, and that's largely the reason for the new utility systems. Unlike utilities, in Gunlocked 2 weapons won't* level at all! It's a big change but there's good reason for it:
- A big criticism in Gunlocked 1 was how slow the early game was, and how long it took to make weapons feel impactful. This resulted in a number of players refunding the game before they found out how wildly overpowered things could become. It's a common criticism of these types of roguelites, where by default you feel weak and slowly plod around until you finally get to play the game you wanted to play the whole time. It might seem like the change to not leveling weapons would exacerbate this, but it actually lets me give weapons a higher base power without fear that they'll spiral out of balance later. The weapon mastery system that gives pilots a unique boost to their starting weapon also plays a small role in this change.
- Another criticism and balance issue with the original Gunlocked was that you didn't know if/when you'd get weapons. Some games you could go 12 levels without seeing a weapon you wanted, or a weapon at all. This meant balancing each act of the game was technically impossible because there could be a huge amount of variance in power levels when you reached the first or second boss depending on how many weapon upgrades you found, if any. In Gunlocked 2, weapons drop at specific exp levels, and aren't mixed in with utilities. In addition to the fact that weapons start out stronger, you'll always know around when you're going to get one (if you don't miss a bunch of gems).
- Weapons had the same problem as utilities in Gunlocked 1. You didn't know what they'd do until you leveled them, and their upgrades could be even more extreme. Letting players design how their weapons get stronger w/ 24 stacking utilities bypasses this entirely. Your weapons do exactly what you decide they do. No more guess work.
- *The secret Symbionic upgrades for weapons still exist, so weapons technically can still level up once.
Banishing and Locking Upgrades
You may have noticed some new buttons in the screenshots above that weren't present in Gunlocked 1: Banish and Lock Choice.
A big request with basically all of my roguelites has been a "Banish" system to allow players to thin out upgrade pools, especially as I add more upgrades. In Gunlocked 2 you can earn banish tokens as you play through a run, and even select an augment to start with a bunch. I also added a confirmation prompt for banishing, given that you can't undo it. Today should see me finishing said multi-choice prompt systems, hopefully. These same systems are used for special NPC interactions. Yet another way to give players more control over their builds, but I'll discuss more of that in the future.
On the matter of player choice and control: The new upgrade locking system that also wasn't in the original allows you to lock 1 upgrade that will persist through level ups and rerolls. Because weapons and utilities are offered separately now, I also allow you to lock 1 of each. So if you lock a utility and it's still locked when you earn a weapon upgrade, you can lock a weapon without overwriting the locked utility (the locked utility won't show up during the weapon upgrade).
There are so many unique ways in Gunlocked 2 to help you shape your build that just weren't possible in Gunlocked 1 (without a major rewrite of the underlying systems). There's still random chance, and you'll need to learn to use all of the systems to your advantage to create the perfect builds, but creating something cohesive without much experience will be a lot more possible and a lot less frustrating.
And finally, on the matter of learning to use these systems, a brand new feature is in the works that I'll discuss more of in the next devlog at the end of the month. But until then, it's back to work!