It's about time to start making regular development update posts! I'll be posting previews until the early access launch and will continue after to show upcoming content and changes.

The Burning Question

Before I start, let's address the most frequently asked question by far:

"WHEN IS THE GAME COMING OUT?"

If you didn't know, the game was originally planned to release on August 20th but nearing that date I quickly realized that the game wasn't ready and needed more time to get it to be as polished and fun as possible, with enough content to ensure a good amount of replayability while future updates are being developed.

"Why not just release it now and add more stuff later?"

While this sounds like a good solution, there are a lot of core features that are heavily in development which would lead to both an unpolished experience in game and users losing their save progress when the cleaned up version of the game arrives later. I want everyone to have a great time playing the game and have a positive first impression- in my opinion, early access should be a stable and polished product that just lacks content, not a buggy mess. To summarize: I am steadily working as hard as I can and ignoring the urge to rush the game out because I know spending the time to get it right will be infinitely better for the end result.

"Cool.... but when will the game be out?"

The second I am satisfied with how the game is looking, playing and performing I will upload it to Steam and release it alongside the launch trailer, it's as simple as that. I feel promising another date is not the right call as it's impossible to predict the various curveballs that development throws at me but rest assured, I want the game out ASAP!

Ok with that out of the way, lets get into the good stuff.... some eye candy! I have worked on too many new features to count in the last few months but here are a few fun ones.

New Weapons

I am starting to add more interesting weapons than the standard rifles you'd expect, here's a look at the Blade Launcher, Orb Launcher and Crossbow! I'll continue to add as many unique weapons as possible before the early access launch, I expect there to be at least 20 different weapons at that point, each with different rarities and special variants.

Elemental Damage + Destruction

I've added the concept of elemental damage which falls into 4 categories:

• Ice: Freezes players and enemies in place, they are unable to move or shoot until it thaws but will slide in the direction of the nearest slope. Water or fire instantly melts ice.
• Fire: Ignites players and enemies, dealing damage over time. Can be extinguished with water or ice.
• Lightning: Slows movement and creates chain lightning from affected players and enemies to nearby friendlies, dealing damage.
• Acid: Weakens affected players and enemies, causing them to take more damage from incoming attacks.

Some legendary variants of weapons have one of these elemental damage types applied on each shot.

Also, in order to make each biome more distinct and add more ways to eliminate enemies, I have added destructible elemental damage obstacles to each map which can propagate their effects across the map and block off pathways... or create new ones!

Ocean Improvements

Making nice looking water that reacts to the gameplay happening around it is a challenge but I'm working to make each level feel alive and seamless with underwater sections of maps being a possibility.

Experiments

Since delaying the game, I have had the chance to try out a lot of experimental ideas that could greatly alter how the game plays and see if they add to or remove from the core gameplay experience. I believe this is an essential part of making a satisfying game loop- here's a brief rundown of some that worked... and some that didn't.

Consolidating Survival Loot
Previously I had multiple colored chests for different loot types (Defensive, Offensive, Movement, Weapon, Ability, Legendary), but this meant that the "fun" rng of maybe getting a legendary upgrade or maybe getting an offensive upgrade was lost and players would gravitate towards one type of upgrade, leading to the same kinds of runs every time. I have now consolidated loot into two different types of chests- Weapon and Perk chests. Weapons now have a rarity associated with them (before all weapons were the same color- boring!) and have much more variety in value. Likewise, I removed any lackluster upgrades in favor of a more lean set of perks that are really fun to go for. More on those in the next update!

Dual Wielding
This was always something I had wanted to try- having double pistols or shotguns felt great but in situations where you had a full auto weapon in one claw and a semi auto in the other, it felt really clunky. It also clashed with the shield mechanic which I've been designing many of the enemies around, so I decided to leave it for now- maybe it'll come back in another form in the future!

Stamina
On paper this seemed like it would help balance out jump spam and add some tactics on when to use your movement abilities, but in reality it just felt bad to not be able to jump or slide when out of stamina. It was worth exploring but this game is all about speed and action and this slowed things down considerably.

That's all for this one, thanks for reading!

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