Howdy everyone!
Welcome to this new Roboquest devblog.
Today we’re going to talk about some of the things we’re working on, but that are not going to be included in the Rogue’n’Roll update. Please note that those are not the only things we’re working on, only those we’re ready to give details about.
We’re also going to touch a word about when the Rogue'n'Roll update is going to land and publish the long overdue updated roadmap for Roboquest.
We have no ETA for the features detailed below, but we know these are important things for you so we thought we’d give you a heads up about them. These features are all subject to change and while we’ll try to stick to the details we’re currently certain about, there might be changes nonetheless.
That being said, let’s (double, heck even triple) jump right in.
Elite Enemies & Elite System
Elite enemies are powerful enemies with several dangerous attack patterns who can randomly spawn in the levels.
At the beginning of the game there will be very few elite enemies (or even none at all). The more progress you’ll make in the game, the more elite enemies you’ll encounter.
At first sight it might be counter-intuitive, why would I want the difficulty of my run to be increased if I'm making progress? The idea behind this is to progressively infuse more ‘mutators’ in the enemy encounters but not only. Elite enemies will also grant you a specific type of currency to use during your runs to further upgrade your character.
This means encountering more elites does mean increasing the difficulty, but also having more differences between runs and getting more upgrades for your character. We expect this balance to be enough to justify (and make compelling the fact of) encountering more elites as you progress into the game.
The elite system will also be tied up with the end of the game in a certain way which we won’t cover here.
Please note that the ‘Goliath’ enemies encountered in ‘Haven City’ aren’t considered ‘Elite Enemies’ (despite them being quite challenging and... well yeah big).
New Levels
New levels? What? When? Please, now!
Unfortunately you’ll have to be a little more patient. Like we’ve said in a previous update, we’re not releasing new levels for now because our plan requires us to release a complete batch of them at once.
The new levels will be tied up with several other systems, noticeably the elite systems, the end of the game and with the ‘different viable paths’ approach we’re trying to take.
We’re planning to make the new levels an ‘alternate path’ harder than other levels. You might have some kind of objective to accomplish in those levels in order to ‘clear’ them.
Then this will have an impact on the elite enemy system, effectively increasing the difficulty of the overall game but decreasing the difficulty of the end of the game. It will also increase the amount of rewards you get each run.
The main goals of these new levels are to provide objectives within a run (aside from ‘going the furthest possible’), to progressively push more enemy mutators (elite enemies) in your runs (without overwhelming new players) and to form a link with the end of the game.
That’s pretty much what we can say about it right now if we don’t want to spoil or talk about things that are still being iterated upon, but we hope it peaked your interest.
Basecamp
The Basecamp is something we've been working on for quite a long time.
We’re not happy with how it works now, mainly because of its usability: it’s not convenient to navigate, unlocking new things doesn’t provide much reward feeling, the visual progression is not on par with the level of polish we’re aiming for and many other smaller issues.
All-in-all it works, but it isn’t great. And this is something we will be changing.
This goes through making sure unlocking upgrades doesn’t require you to click a million different buttons back and forth between interfaces, improving the visual representation of the ‘leveling up’ as you unlock upgrades, reworking most of the Basecamp visuals (the workshops, benches etc. but not only), staging Max as the hardworking engineer she is, highlighting the interactive elements and carefully choosing the position of each of them to avoid having to walk to so many different locations before starting a run.
We want the basecamp to be a compelling experience for the player, and not a chore to go through.
Here’s one of the concept arts we’ve been working on. Please note that the exact location of each element is to be determined, this is just research for the visual side of things.
Cinematics
Cinematics is a huge work for a small studio like us, and we’re working on it for a very long time as well. It’s been through several different iterations and you can see above a sneak peek at the final style we’re going for.
The cinematics you can watch in the game right now are more oriented towards a comic-styled architecture. While we’re still going for that comic-feel, we went a bit aside from the comic architecture to create something more vibrant and dynamic.
This means we’re reworking all of the cinematics you can currently experience in the game (those were a past iteration and were still a work-in-progress anyway).
So... you’ll get to watch brand new cinematics of Roboquest at some point!
We want the cinematics to be the main tool we use to tell the story. They are the only thing we are certain you’ll come across as a player (regardless if you skip it or not). This means that they have to tell what we call ‘the main story’ answering those questions: ‘who am I playing as, what am I doing in the world, what’s the problem and why am I solving it’.
Aside from the cinematics, we’ll be delivering information on the world of Roboquest using other means.
Gif quality not representative of the final quality we’re aiming for
Story & Worldbuilding
But there is more to Roboquest than what you can watch in the cinematics.
Roboquest features a world where many things happened and led to where you start and finish as the Guardian. These things might only be details but they’re still things we can tell you about (may you be curious about them).
This is what we call the ‘side story’ or ‘worldbuilding details’. This encompasses details such as: ‘who are the badbots, what are they doing here, where does the guardian come from, who’s Max and is she doing in the desert, what happened to the world’ and other things at this level of details.
And we’re aiming to tell such details through the ‘Data-Logs’ you can find in the levels.
For now, nothing happens when you find them (except granting you a few Wrenches), in the future they will contain a small article, a piece of text, a report, or anything like this that you can ‘read’ to gather information on the world of Roboquest.
Achievements
While we don’t have that many details to give you about the achievements, we do know this is something many of you are looking forward to.
This is definitely something we will be adding in the game, we like the “collection” and “challenge” aspect of them. But we’re holding out for now.
This is due to two main reasons: we wish to wait for the game to be in a much more stable state to start implementing them and we need to synchronize the addition of achievements on all platforms Roboquest is going to be available on (and the process might differ from one platform to another).
We know this is not what you’d like to hear, but we’d rather be completely transparent about that. We started working on achievements in terms of “what challenges can be interesting to complete” but we’re not ready to deploy them yet.
Thanks a lot for your patience on that side.
Noisecream Tracks
The frantic, energy infused, BANGER soundtrack from Noisecream is not done with Roboquest yet.
We already have several new and unique tracks for the incoming levels.
There’s not much to say about it, you’ll discover the tracks as the new levels are being added to the game.
But here’s a sneak peek at one of the new tracks, just for the delight of our ears:
The Rogue’n’Roll Update and the Roadmap
Yeah well, that’s all good and all but… I want the next update now, or at least tell me when it lands!!!
And you shall be served Guardians.
We’re planning the release of the Rogue’n’Roll update around mid of May.
We know it’s a long delay to wait for the next update, we also know this makes for a huge gap between our previous update and the new one. But the amount of changes we’re cooking require us to take that kind of time to ensure everything is smooth.
Though, like we’ve said in the previous devblog, there will be a public playtest available on Steam that will make you able to try out the new changes before mid-May.
Speaking of the next update, we’ve finally updated the roadmap (which stood still and obsolete for quite a long time, apologize for that).
Here it is:
The roadmap will soon be available both on the store page of Roboquest and in our Discord.
Thanks a lot
On a final note to this ninth devblog, we wanted to thank you once more.
Roboquest has reached over 100.000 sales in Early Access. This is no small feat, at least for a studio like us. And we literally couldn’t have done it without you.
So thank you. Thanks for your involvement, for the kind words you’re sending us, for the constructive criticism we’re reading, the game design debates, the funky troll posts and your engagement in general.
This is the fuel that drives us forward.
It was a long and hard road up to this point and we’ll continue to work hard to hopefully provide you with the best version of Roboquest.
We’re not done yet, but we’re getting close.
See you in the next news Guardians.
And in the meantime, HAPPY ROBOT SMASHING!
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Roboquest Social Links
Roboquest Discord - https://discord.gg/roboquest
Roboquest Website - http://www.roboquest.com/
Twitter - https://twitter.com/RoboquestGame
Facebook - https://www.facebook.com/RoboquestGame/
YouTube - https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCiusIjcrkm3HrAESaKZALYQ
Get Roboquest on Steam - https://store.steampowered.com/app/692890/Roboquest/
If you have a question about the game, you can find the FAQ here on the Steam forums. And if your question is not answered there, make sure to ask us in the community forums or on our Discord server (where you can interact directly with us!).