Hey Everyone,

We are very excited to announce a huge new update to Alchemist Defender VR. New levels, new weapons, new enemies and new gameplay. We are very exited about this new update and would love to get your guys feedback.

We want to give a special shoutout to some of the Early Access members that have really helped us out during the earlier stages of the game. These users being Bald Bull, code2quest and B.O.R.G. We are very grateful to have you guys supporting us from the early stages of Alchemist Defender VR.

We are currently in the final development stage of Alchemist Defender VR. We are pushing to launch the game in October. There is still a lot of work to do and we would love to work closely with the Early Access community and ask you guys to join us in the final testing stage. We are opening a Discord server to have direct communication with the Dev Team to discuss game balance, design decisions and other day to day game development discussions. We are also available on Twitter with daily updates on the progress of Alchemist Defender VR.

Thanks again to the whole Early Access community for making Alchemist Defender VR possible. Here is a briefing on this major new update.

New VR UI design

After several design iterations we have been slowly but constantly improving the User Interface. UI/UX in VR has really proven to be a big challenge. What we as VR developers think is obvious we have found that players with no VR experience are completely lost. Showing lots of information for us developers is better but for a new user can be overwhelming. Knowing where to pay attention for us is obvious but for Non VR user not so much.

Here is the new UI we put together after several design iterations. We would love to get your feedback on the new design.

New UI Design

As a reference, here is the original UI that was available in the launch of Early Access.

Previous UI Design

Testing with users who have little VR experienced has given us extremely helpful insights. Watching people play VR for the first time is always amusing. Witnessing the awe dropping experience of entering a new virtual world for the first time is priceless. These testing instances give us key insights on many of the design decisions we had done. Iteration after iteration we have been polishing and improving the UI.

One of the biggest decisions we had to take was cutting out a key feature to offer a better VR experience. We had developed a tower hight changing system that allowed the user to select the tower height before placing a tower. This is a great feature since it adds variability in the strategic decisions where the user has to budget his coins by placing small towers and tall towers in key locations around the map. After developing the feature we noticed in the testing stage that users didn’t understand what the feature did or added a frustration of being overwhelmed with additional options and information. After long discussions we decided to remove this feature. We decided that a cleaner and better VR experience was more important an additional feature.

New Levels

From the last Update we have added 2 new full featured levels into Alchemist Defender VR. The Mushroom and Lava worlds. We are very happy with these new levels and have put lots of work into making the experience of being inside these worlds magical.

There is still some lighting details we have to work on, especially in the Mushroom world but a final version should be available very soon.

New Weapons

We added new sets of weapons for each new level. The weapon system is still classified as melee, ranged and proximity mine. We really think the community is going to love these new weapons. We have always tried to innovate with new mechanics and not use the cliche weapons like bow and arrow. We think you will love them.

Here are a few previews:

New Tower Defense system

Since the core mechanic of the game is a Tower Defense we have put lots of work into creating some amazing looking towers. Here are showcase image of the new Fast Cannon.

Spectator Mode

We have implemented a new Spectator Mode system for anyone who wants to take really cool in-game takes of Alchemist Defender VR. The spectator camera can be configured using the numbers on the Keyboard. The current layout is the following.

1. Automatic tracking. In god mode there is a 3rd person camera and in first person combat there is a first person camera.
2. Always top view camera.
3. Always first person camera
4. Low res camera for best performance.

Remaining Issues and ToDo List

- Game Balance. Really needs a lot of work and help from real players
- Improve Enemy animations especially the Lava level golems.
- Overall polishing and bug fixes
- Level transitioning
- More interaction in the main menu.
- Easter Eggs.

Contact

We have opened a Discord channel to discuss day to day issues with the community. Just shoot us a private message to join. There is a lot of testing we are doing and would love to discuss your ideas and suggestions directly.

Again we deeply thankful to everyone who has accompanied us through the Early Access journey. We are very exited to be coming close to a finished project and can’t wait to release the official version on HTC Vive and Oculus Rift.

Long live VR.

- The Alchemist Defender VR Team