(Showcase of the current state of the game)
Hi and welcome to the 24th development blog post for Unleash!
Unleash is coming out in Early Access tomorrow, on the 8th of May 2018. After almost two years of development, we are ready! A few smaller tasks still remain, but we have spent this weekend and today (Monday) on wrapping up as much as we can. This includes fixing a few things with the new global chat, testing the new Tower Defense end screen with ‘play next’ functionality, refining the ‘no armor’ balancing model, simplifying the ‘play now’ flow by removing the ‘create’ step, and animating the main menu buttons - additionally a horde of bugs were slain and smaller improvements were introduced. Furthermore, this dev blog reflects upon the ‘Marathon Day’ held on the 4th of May.
Unleash the Release
Tomorrow, on the 8th of May at 19.00 CEST / 10.00 AM PDT, Unleash will be released on Steam Early Access. It has been a super exciting journey, and we are very pleased with what Unleash has become, especially considering that it is our first game production together as a team.
We have had other release dates, both public and private, but something has always come in the way. We were missing the right trailer. We had desynchronization issues with the game. We changed our Art Director, which prompted a major overhaul of almost all graphics. This time we are finally confident that the game will be released as planned!
Immediately following the early access release, we are planning to have at least one or two Unleash devs available as often as possible (during our CEST timezone daytime mostly) for gaming, chatting and providing help to any new players who may arrive with questions or have feedback.
Global Chat
A ‘global’ chat has been added to the main menu start page. The global chat is accessed by anyone starting Unleash (unless in offline mode), and thus facilitates communicating with other players currently running Unleash, but not in a room or match currently. Additionally, the global chat can show the current count of players and rooms.
(The global chat facilitates communicating with other players in Unleash)
We are planning a range of improvements for the global chat, soon after the release. We want the global chat to be accessible from elsewhere than just the intro page, and it should offer more functionality. Stay tuned for more! And do not hesitate to bring on the ideas and suggestions to how we can improve.
Keep Playing Tower Defense
The Tower Defense game mode in Unleash has been improved with new overview and end-game screens. The new overview screen was done mainly to stay consistent with the end game screen. The end game screen has seen an overhaul making it possible to play the next TD scenario directly, as opposed to having to go back to the menu first - as previously. The next TD scenario to play can be chosen freely from the end-game screen directly.
(The new TD end screen enables players to continue on to the next TD scenario directly, without having to go back to the menus first)
No More Armor… For real
As mentioned previously in Dev Blog 22 (6th of April), we have been experimenting and testing with a ‘no armor’ balancing model. Previously, monsters would have an armor value of 0 / 2 / 4 / 8 for levels 1, 2, 3 and 4, respectively. This ensured that level 1 towers could not damage level 4 monsters, except for a few cases (e.g. Mortar and Flak 88). This new balancing model ends that tradition, in order to simplify what happens in-game when monsters receive damage.
Previously, players would sometimes see their towers not being able to damage the monsters, due to armor. With this reworked balancing model, towers will always deal some damage (barring high resistances), but monsters gain a lot more health points as they increase in level.
As the ‘no armor’ balancing model has matured over the past weeks, we feel that it is ready for the Early Access release. It will be simpler and easier to understand for players, hopefully making it more straightforward for new players to get started with Unleash.
Play Now Faster
As anyone who have opened up Unleash will have seen, we have a ‘Play Now’ button in the main menu that is meant to simplify the process of matching with someone and playing. Previously, it would send players either to a game room (if one was available) or to the ‘Create’ menu. This resulted in confusion for some, especially new players, as the Create menu has settings and options open for tweaking the match. Now, ‘Play Now’ will immediately send players to a game room, regardless of whether they create one themselves or join an existing, open one.
(Play now will send players directly into a game room now, making it faster and simpler)
Prettier Buttons
The buttons in the intro page of the main menu are now animated. Although the effect is quite subtle, the animation makes the buttons feel more alive and vibrant. Currently, only the intro page of the main menu has animated buttons, but the plan is to roll them out everywhere in Unleash if both the players and we are happy with how it looks and feels.
(The intro page of the main menu now has subtly animated buttons)
Reflections on Marathon Day
On Friday the 4th of May, as one of the last acts in the beta phase of Unleash, we held a so-called ‘Marathon day’. During this day, almost all Unleash developers were available at some point during the day for matches and chatting. We had countless games played during the day and a heap of feedback being reported back to us. It was fun and enriching to meet our community in online battle and we want to thank all participants wholeheartedly for playing, chatting, watching our streams and reporting feedback!
Closing Remarks
Unleash is being released on the 8th of May, 2018 in Steam Early Access! Thus, the past two weeks have been all about wrapping up, including the implementation of a global chat, improving the Tower Defense game flow, polishing the ‘no armor’ balancing model, making it easier to ‘Play Now’ and animating main menu buttons - among a slew of bug fixes and other smaller improvements. Also, we want to thank all participants of our ‘Marathon Day’ for helping to test Unleash and provide feedback!
Get in contact with us through Discord, or any of our other social media channels. You can find all of them through our website. Also, you can watch our internal gameplay sessions over at Twitch.
And remember… Monsters never come alone.