There are quite a few changes in this latest update so we will do our best to enumerate them and explain our thinking behind them! If you have feedback feel free to let us know in the OliveHillStudios Discord server.
New Camera
Camera view has been zoomed out a bit and will now follow player rather than being tied down to discrete room locations.
One of the consistent areas we got feedback on was that players were feeling a bit cramped and couldn't see where they wanted to. By zooming out a bit and letting the camera follow the player, players can now see vampires from much further away and can plan out their defenses better. The exception to this is boss fights which will still feature a locked down camera, as the fights were largely designed around this and when testing boss fights with a player-follow style camera, the result proved to be quite unsatisfactory.
New Onboarding
Context sensitive hints will appear throughout the game to help onboard new players.
One problem with trying to onboard players in a tutorial is you risk dumping a bunch of information on them at a time where the information isn't relevant. We still have a small tutorial, but we moved much more information into our context sensitive hint system. As players play, certain events will trigger hints relative to that event so that players are getting the information they need when it is relevant to what they are doing in-game.
New Dawn Phase
Players will now be able to control when they start the new wave of vampires.
A very common area of feedback, especially from newer players, is that there is not enough time during the dawn phase to figure out what to do. We decided to solve this by putting the power in the players hands. You get to decide when to start the next wave. Seasoned vets can kick off the next wave right away if they don't want to wait around. Players that are brand new to the game, can take as much time as they need interacting with vendors and recovering from the frenetic action. This did however introduce a problem. With unlimited time to rest in the dawn phase, the temptation is to repair every single broken window or door. And this leads us to our next big change.
New Item - Instant Repair All Entrances
The ghost vendor will now sell you an item that instantly repairs all doors and all windows.
This is to facilitate repairing all broken entrances quickly during the dawn phase. We found that going around and repairing every door and window was just a chore and not fun.
New Music
Music now reacts dynamically to dawn vs dusk.
The new variability in time spent during dawn phases meant that our music system had to be able to adapt to players who spent a long time in dawn phase preparing versus players who started right away. So we worked closely together composer with engineers to create a music system that seamlessly layers in intense action music during dusk phases and ramps down to calmer ambient music during dawn phases.
Turrets
Turrets can now be bought, and eventually upgraded, during dusk phase as well as dawn phase.
We decided that it just didn't make much sense to not allow players to purchase turrets during the battle phase. This way players can react to a particularly dangerous buildup of vampires by purchasing a turret. They can also spend doubloons during the combat phase to increase their survivability.
New Run Statistics
At the end of each run, on the retry screen, you will have access to a run statistics summary screen.
This screen will keep track off all sorts of fun things from multikills, accuracy, and even clutch reloads (defined as killing an instant reload vampire variant on the final round of whatever weapon you are using). Not only are your current run statistics kept track of, but your personal best records of each stat are also tracked so you can see how you are improving.
Thanks for playing Dracs After Dusk! If you want to be a part of shaping the game please feel free to join our Discord and share your thoughts with us over there!
Thanks!
Eric, Andrew, and Brian from OliveHillStudios