Greetings Citizens!
It's been a while, and quite a lot has changed since the last update. This first (real) development update will go into a bit more detail on the new features that have been added since the demo was released.
If you are coming from my other game, Haunted: Attack of the Dead Men, you might have been expecting more frequent updates on the development of this one, which is totally fair. The main reason for the silence is, well, life just gets busy sometimes, and I'm still only one person, so progress has been a lot slower this time round. I've also been trying other things at the same time, so this hasn't been the only project I've worked on this year (and I'm also excited to get to a demo-ready stage with my next game too!). But with that out of the way, what has changed?
Enemies
Rebels, rebels everywhere. They all need to be crushed!
This is where most of the time has been spent. There are now 10 different enemy types in total, each with their own weapon loadout. They have been split up into two groups, with one group appearing over the first 10 waves, and the second over the next 10 waves. After wave 20, it will just be these 10 enemies. If you're thinking "well that doesn't sound like much", well, it will probably take you a while to get past wave 20! You'll definitely need a few upgrades to do it.
Here are some of the new enemies that have been added.
That's not all though. You may have encountered this boss in the demo:
This one has been joined by a second boss. The two will alternate every 10 waves, and they'll get tougher each time.
Weapons
How do you crush the rebels? By shooting them of course!
This has been another major addition. There are now 5 new weapons, with 3 more left to implement. That leaves a total of 5 options for primary weapons, and 5 for secondary weapons. They can be mixed and matched however you like, and all of them can have their stats upgraded.
This is the plasma cannon. Whenever the plasma bolts hit something, they bounce off of it, allowing them to deal damage to multiple targets. However, they won't home-in on things like missiles do.
This is the fusion torpedo. It works like a combination of the missile and the plasma cannon - it can pierce right through several targets before detonating, doing damage to everything it hits. But they can still home-in on things, making them pretty strong.
This is the particle lance. It produces a powerful beam that continuously does damage to anything it comes into contact with - and it also has no reload time, so it can shred rebel ships in seconds. This weapon was actually added before the demo released (as can be seen in the trailer), and is used by both bosses.
This is the arc emitter. Like the particle lance, it continuously damages anything it touches. But whenever it does hit something, it causes a chain reaction - which will keep going until everything is destroyed, or the target manages to get away.
And finally, the laser scattergun. This is a fairly straightforward upgrade to the laser machinegun, and fires a spread of lasers at once.
Superweapons
If you read the store page, you might have been intrigued by this feature. The aim was to have an extra set of weapons that, if used, had some kind of risk of instant death associated with them, which would create interesting risk vs. reward situations. You might be close to death and surrounded by enemies, so using one of these weapons might be a "make or break" kind of deal.
This might have sounded good in theory. However, in practice, it just didn't feel right. I couldn't get these weapons to feel as "super" as they were supposed to be, especially compared to some of the more overpowered weapons that are available.
So instead, these "superweapons" have been completely repurposed, with two of them becoming new pickups that can be activated for a temporary bonus.
Here we have the "bullet time" pickup, which (as it sounds) slows down time for a bit, while also allowing you to move and shoot faster than the rebels can.
This was originally the "time freeze" superweapon, where you could slow down time as much as you like... until you stop it altogether and break physics.
And here we have "call Imperial squadron" pickup, which brings a squadron of friendly Imperial ships to help you clear out a bunch of rebel scum.
This was originally the "cloning" superweapon, where you could spawn a bunch of clones of yourself that move and shoot alongside you. Except, it would have also been possible to blow yourself up by creating too many and crashing into them.
The final superweapon was a "black hole generator", which is kind of exactly what it sounds like. You press a button and... out pops a black hole that consumes everything that crosses the event horizon, including you. So far I've had a couple of ideas of how to repurpose this one into more of an environmental hazard, but this hasn't been done yet. If there is time once everything else has been finished, I will definitely give it a go because I even made this really cool effect for it.
What's Next
In short, there's actually not much left to do in terms of features. This is what's left:
Add the last 3 weapons (which was mentioned already)
Add Steam achievements
Add the global leaderboards
Fix bugs, performance problems etc.
In terms of content, I've deliberately kept this game quite small. Don't expect something as big as Haunted with this one - but don't worry either, the game will be priced accordingly.
The truth is, this game actually started as more of a prototype that I made to learn C# scripting, which I hadn't tried before. I've decided I actually quite like it, and prefer it to Godot's own GDScript language, so this and all of my future games will use it from now on. That's very much a technical detail for the programmers in the audience.
Anyway, that's all for this development update. There may be another development update before the full release, or there may not, I haven't decided yet. But until then, thanks for reading!