Greetings Citizens!
Welcome to the second development update for Crush The Rebellion! As mentioned in the demo patch notes from earlier today, the game is nearing completion and there will be a release announcement very soon. Without further ado, let's have a look at some of the new features that have been added, starting with the elephant in the room...
Planets
You've read that correctly - planets have been added to the background to accompany the starfield! This actually wasn't planned originally, however when I finished the last couple of planned features I realised I had plenty of time to try and get something working. These planets are procedurally generated so you can get a variety of different colours and sizes.
There were a couple of reasons for adding this to the background. The main one was simply to make it look a bit more interesting, but it was also an attempt to find a new place for the black hole effect that I showed off in the last development update. Unfortunately I couldn't get black holes to work quite right as an "environmental hazard", so I had to scrap the idea. But, as we'll see in a bit, some of the mechanics for them have been repurposed for one of the new weapons. Speaking of which...
Weapons
As mentioned in the last update, there were three weapons left to add - and now they are all in place!
First up - the Micro Missiles. This one is fairly straightforward. Shrink the missile a bit, jam a bunch of them into a cannon, and fire. They also come with the added benefit of being able to target enemy missiles, making them good on the defense.
Next, we have the Grapple Gun. This one doesn't do much damage on its own, but it can "grab" enemies and keep them in the firing line of your primary weapons. This is where the repurposed black hole logic comes in - the Grapple Gun actually just uses an invisible black hole to "suck" enemies in!
Finally, we have the Ion Field. This one is expensive for a reason - it is more than a little overpowered. Unlike the other secondary weapons, which can only destroy missiles and mines, the Ion Field will shred anything it comes into contact with, including enemy lasers! In addition to this, the Ion Field will mess with the enemies' engines, causing them to shutdown and leaving them adrift in space for a few seconds. A few seconds that make them easy pickings for your other weapons...
That's all for new weapons. But there is still one more new feature...
Steam Leaderboards
In addition to the in-game highscores and achievements, there is now a new way to measure how good you are at the game. Your highscores will now be tracked on a Steam Leaderboard! This will allow you to compete with other players to get the highest score. Hopefully you will have some fun with that.
What's Next
The answer to that is simple - the game is now finished and will be releasing soon! There will be a separate announcement for the final release date, but for now the focus will be on testing and bugfixing.
That's it for this update! See you again soon for the full release of the game. And as always, thanks for reading!