Hi!
This is the first weekly update announcement from Octoshield.
I actually spread the patches for this update during the week, because a few tweakings were important so I didn't want people to wait for them.
Here's a recap of the changes of this week (so that's all updates since the first version, in fact):
Bugfixes:
- The shield can no longer clip through walls
Controls:
- Shield physics greatly improved
- You can hold the shield in two ways, switch by pressing the Trackpad button
- You can pause/unpause the game with the menu button (only once every 30 seconds, to avoid using the pause as a cheat)
- You can either use the grip or the trigger to control the shield (only the first one of these you use can be used, to avoid accidently pressing the other during play)
Gameplay:
- Enemies now move at various pace depending on the wave
- The waves have been rebalanced
- Enemies can't spawn too close to you anymore, as lots of people complained it was scary
- Your combos are reset if you fail a reflect. This is because reflecting had no risk compared to throwing which could stop your combo, so just reflecting lasers was a bit OP for scoring.
- You can now get styling points: When the shield bounces before hitting an enemy, you get a bonus. If you kill an enemy with a reflected laser, you get a bonus too.
Interface
- You can now select your starting wave (every 5 wave)
- There are now labels on the controller when you start the game, to show the controls.
- There is an ingame changelog with the last few modifications so you can know what's new at a glance
Art/Sound
- There is now a constant humming sound on the enemies so you can hear where they are
- The arena's design has been updated a lot
- You know have custom Vive controllers as hands
- The shield has a new design, and has cool animated holograms inside it that also help to aim when reflecting
- The game is a lot crisper visually, and texts are more readable
What's planned for next week:
- A menu - Considering the growing number of options and tweak that people would like, I've had to compromise on some options because the Vive controller doesn't have much buttons. My main task next week will be adding a menu to tweak various gameplay, graphics and sound parameters
- Proper 3D sound
- A Second enemy (already have the design ready)
- Rebalancing of the waves with procedural difficulty
- Reworking of the scoring system and creation of Arcade Mode. The arcade mode will be a mode where you always start from wave 1, while the main mode will stay as is, but with changes in scoring. The main mode will eventually become the Story Mode. Arcade mode will have an infinite number of waves growing in difficulty.
- A free demo of the game on Steam, with which players will be able to play three demo waves.
Note that not all of these might be there next week, depending on problems I encounter, but I'll try to have as much of it as possible.
I will also make the first price increase of the game next week, with the release of the demo. So if you want to buy the game I would advise you to buy it before.