We’ve made some noticeable changes to the game this week. It’s been an effort that started before we launched early access and continues into Japan. When we launched early access in early February, we took a minute and had people play it, played it ourselves, and thought about the direction of Snailiens. For us, there was still something missing. Something we often find is missing in other tower defense games. That’s when we had some new ideas for how enemies, damage, mechanics, and story could work. In order to bring that to everyone in Japan, we had to gut and rebuild a few core tools so we could have the creative and graphical overhead to make them. Many of those tools got ‘done’ this week. We felt putting them in Georgia greatly improved gameplay and gave players a good indicator of where we're headed in the future. We hope you enjoy these early changes to the game, we sincerely want to hear back from everyone playing. Is it more fun? Do you like the changes? Did we miss something important? Let us know!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E2QdF1FbnHk

Snailiens v0.7.3.8.0 patch notes for tomorrow's update

• Added the Krabber to the game. Added animations, textures, and implemented them in levels: Krabbers can now be seen scuttling around in levels! Heads up, there’s one for every elemental type. This addition marks the first “small” class enemy in the game and greatly improves the meta of the game. Improved level performance. With the addition of the very efficient Krabber, we have freed up cpu and gpu power for other things!
• Slimeback animations and initial mechanics added to game. Not yet implemented in live levels: We’ve started internal testing the Slimeback and the new “large” class enemy mechanics. Things are looking real great.
• Added new system for player to take damage: You now have a proper body! Well, kind of. You now have collider volumes that reflect your hands, your head, and your body. They’re denoted by a large sphere for now, final art is on the way!
• Modified Snailien animation system to be more robust and allow for by bone animation blending: Introducing animation blending! We can now blend things like walking and shooting or walking and taking damage together into a compound animation. This’ll let us do the more complicated animations necessary for all the abilities and mechanics we have planned.
• Modified base Snailien to fire at player: The base Snailiens aren’t as dumb as you remember. They’re angry and they’re firing back. Base Snailiens now fire plasma shots that you’ll need to avoid if you’re going to survive.
• Modified Flamer Snailien with new ability. They will now throw bombs that cause initial damage and a fire dot in a defined area: The Flamer Snailien was boring. We’ve given him new, more dynamic mechanics. He’ll now throw big bombs that explode dealing damage, then apply a fire area of effect.
• Visual quality pass on all Georgia levels: Trees, bushes, and rocks were added to improve visual quality and bring Georgia more in line with Japan levels. We’re still working on making the game really sparkle. The Georgia levels felt kinda dead. We’ve added some trees, bushes, rocks, etc to the levels to give them a little more life. They look a lot better, we think you’ll like it.
• Added a soft death system: We’ve been playing with lots of different ways to “die” in the game. We wanted to make sure if you died, you understood what you did wrong, but didn’t feel too punished for it. When you die, you’ll lose some parts but get to immediately continue from where you were.
• Overhauled damage physics to better handle damage hitting the player: New collision channels will allow us to filter the different types of damage needed for the new mechanics we’re adding. This is one change that if we’ve done it right, you’ll never notice.
• Overhauled enemy damage hit boxes to allow for damage to be applied by bone: Snailiens are no longer driven by “pill” damage. Instead it’s on a per vertex damage system. This allows us to, in the future, make weak or more resistant spots on enemies. It also allows the damage hit boxes to be more literal and reflect the shape of the enemies better.
• New particle systems for weapon and tower hits: Our weapons still need some work and we’re learning new tools to make them more satisfying to play with. We’ve taken another shot at a few of those weapons and towers. A new “spark” particle has been added to many that, we think, makes it way more satisfying to shoot.
• New visual system for collected parts: You’ve always used parts you collect off Snailiens to build your defenses. To make it more clear to players where the parts come from and make shooting snailiens more satisfying, we’ve added a visual effect. Now, on death, Snailiens will lose some parts that will fly to the player and be collected.
• Various volume modifications to better bring abnormally loud sfx back into line: There’s some weirdly loud sounds in the game. We know, we hate it too. We’re systematically combing the game making sure some of the biggest offenders get pounded down. Hopefully now your ears will bleed a little less!
• New bullet trail systems on weapons and towers: We’ve added a new bullet trail effect on the default revolvers, mother in law, shredder, and southern comfort. They either were bland before or didn’t exist. This one looks much nicer.
• Modified all Georgia levels to reflect the new enemy system: This is the big one. We’ve changed all the levels to reflect the new enemies and abilities you’ll find in them. With the addition of small enemies we can have them effectively fill the role of the base Snailien. They’ll mostly get taken care of by the towers, assuming you built your defenses well. Now we can free up the larger Snailiens to have more engaging abilities. You’ll see far fewer medium enemies now, but they’ll be more interesting when you do. We think this removes a lot of the chaos and “just shoot the next one you see” mentality of the old system and increases player enjoyment.
• New Trackpad Mechanics: This week we made some big changes to the system to improve gameplay. Trackpad is an on touch locomotion system now with a dash mechanic on direction button press. This allows more fluid movement and a better “get out of fire” ability to bring it in line with teleport. It was too slow compared to teleport, so we’ve increased it’s speed to give the player more agility. It definitely causes some simulation sickness if you are not used to it and, while we love the way it plays, we firmly suggest you stick to teleport if you start to feel any nausea!

As always, if you have any feedback at all or just want to get in touch, send us a message at [email protected]

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