At this point, the game is in great shape: the scope and gameplay loop are locked down and I'm playtesting daily to get it where it needs to be for release. The main things that I'll be focusing on moving forward are presentation and content: 3D assets, audio (including the soundtrack), animations, lighting, FX, levels and generally making the game feel polished (finally I'll be replacing these clunky movement animations!). As you'll see in this update, a lot of the changes come from frequent testing: I want any gameplay and balance issues to be solved BEFORE the game launches where possible and plan on using the early access period to add new content rather than to be reworking game mechanics. With that said, let's get into the new stuff added this month!
New Survival Challenge Island Modifiers
Many of the previous challenge island modifiers didn't feel all that challenging (like Low Gravity or Invisible Enemies) so they have been replaced with much more engaging challenge types.
- Mirrored Projectiles: Enemies fire projectiles back at you when hit
- Elemental Explosions: Enemies explode into a random elemental damage area when eliminated
- Dividing Enemies: Enemies divide into multiple weaker versions of themselves when eliminated
- Energy Rings: Enemies spawn energy rings when hit
- OTT: All explosions have a 5x larger radius!
- Careful Aim: Missing shots damages you!
- One Shot: Enemies can be eliminated in one hit but so can you!
- Shrapnel: Enemies explode into a burst of projectiles when eliminated
New Movement Feature: Dashing
Previously, the main way of gaining speed was by sliding which often led to a spam strategy of constantly sliding in circles around enemies, easily dodging most projectiles. I wanted to tune the movement system to be more skill based and require timing, so a dash mechanic has been added as well as removing the ability to infinitely slide (you now lose speed if you slide for too long). Combining these mechanics, you can gain speed but also dodge enemy projectiles if dashing at the right moment. I'm currently finding the sweet spot between dashing and sliding to ensure that you can still have fast and fluid movement without it making the game too easy.
This also opens up a new category of cosmetics: dash trails! More on these in a future update.
Dashing of course nicely integrates with Racing mode, allowing for the optimal strategy between jumping, sliding and dashing to be developed across each course. I'm really excited to see what the speedrunning community will do with it. There have also been new perks added that reduce dash cooldowns and increase the number of dashes, allowing for some overpowered movement options in a Survival mode run!
Simplifying And Refining
After a bunch of great playtests, I noticed that when explaining the whole weapon mod / weapon leveling system to new players, it was more confusing than it needed to be. Especially when playing on controller, it felt a bit clunky and slow paced to have to manage your inventory and swap mod slots by hand (It's hard to even realize that you could put weapon mods on grenades for example) so I've settled on a few improvements that make the much game easier to understand and also stop you having to slow down in an otherwise fast paced game.
1: Grenade Mods
Since weapon mods used to be interchangeable with grenades, I was a bit limited with the mod design and many weapon specific mods (like having a larger clip size) didn't make sense on grenades. On the flip side, many powerful mods more suited for infrequent grenades like black holes didn't make sense on fast firing weapons like the minigun. To solve this, I took the best weapon mods that make sense on grenades and added a bunch of grenade specific mods to form a new inventory category: Grenade Mods.
This means that there are 3 distinct "upgrade" pickup types in the game:
- Weapon Mods: Mods that influence each shot your weapon fires
- Grenade Mods: Mods that influence each grenade you throw
- Perks: Bonuses that don't directly affect each shot you fire but have an overall passive effect (like more movement speed) or are event based (like gaining more damage after finishing each island)
To further clear up any confusion between the different pickup types, a chest for a specific type of pickup will drop after each island rather than a chest containing a random mix of pickup types. For example Island 1 may drop a weapon mod chest, Island 2 a perk chest and so on.
Some examples of Grenade Mods:
- Ice Explosion: Chance for grenades to explode into an ice damage area, freezing all nearby enemies
- Glue Grenade: Grenades stick to enemies and have a delayed explosion
- Cluster Grenade: Throw a cluster of weaker grenades instead of a single grenade
- Energy Ring: Chance for grenades to explode into a damaging energy ring
- Chaotic Grenade: Grenades deal much higher damage but fly in random patterns
- Clone Grenade: Grenades that hit enemies spawn more grenades from the impact point
- Deja Vu: Grenades explode multiple times (this scales per level of the mod)
- Black Hole: Chance for grenades to spawn a black hole when exploding
- Spinning Blade: Chance for grenades to spawn a spinning blade when exploding
These mods essentially turn your grenade into a powerful tool to set up synergies with your primary weapon, which brings me to my next improvement!
2: No More Secondary Weapons
In 100% of my playtests, the secondary weapon was ignored as players tend to want to stack all of their mods on one weapon for maximum effectiveness. This means that there's no real reason to have a secondary weapon at all! Since you can throw your grenade and also melee while shooting, you can make use of all of your inventory at once: this feels efficient and fun!
3: Weapon Selection
While many games have lots of different weapons that can drop with fixed behaviors, the focus here is on letting you choose a base weapon and then use the countless combos of weapon mods to turn it into something new. By choosing and sticking with a specific weapon at the start of a Survival run, this functions like a class or loadout, allowing you to spend the run making a build around that weapon rather than constantly finding completely different weapons and pivoting.
Finding weapons mid run would make sense if there were many weapons in the game but since mods give weapons most of their interest, I thought that it was better to focus on a limited selection of core archetype weapons, each with their own set of mastery challenges and skins to unlock! The aim is for players to start coming up with builds for specific weapons as their knowledge deepens playing the game.
4: Progression
With each weapon now offering mastery challenges, the progression system has been updated to help give players more reasons to play Survival runs.
When you first start the game, only 2 weapons will be unlocked: the Bamboo Rifle and the Claw Shotgun. Other weapons as well as mods and perks will be available to unlock with keys: the persistent currency that persists between runs. Keys are earned by completing weapon mastery challenges, as well as by defeating bosses. There'll be more info on the improvements to the progression system soon!
Debuffs
As part of my original plan to support more than just the four elemental damage types previously mentioned (ice, fire, lightning and poison), a new debuff system has been implemented. The full list of debuffs and their effects can be found below.
- Charm (Pink): If enemies are charmed, they heal you with their attacks (but if you are charmed, you also heal enemies!)
- Confusion (Multicolor): Movement directions are randomized and spread is heavily increased!
- Weak (Red): If weakened, outgoing damage is reduced
- Slow (Yellow): Movement speed is slowed
- Stun (White): Interrupts and prevents future attacks
- Ice (Blue): Prevents movement and attacks until thawed
- Fire (Orange): Damage over time is dealt when on fire. Can be extinguished with water
- Lightning (Purple): A percentage of damage taken is dealt to nearby enemies
- Poison (Green): Increases incoming damage and prevents all healing. Can be washed off with water
Survival Mode Updates
- New Destructible Rocks
As part of my effort to add more variety to each island, there are a few more potential destructible rocks that can appear including challenge crystals (breaking them drops a good amount of crystals but summons high level enemies), black hole rocks, healing rocks, enemy spawners and more (in addition to the standard ice, fire, lightning and poison rocks that could show up before).
- Price Tags, Discounts and New Perks
A random pickup in shops will be 30% off in each shop, with new UI added to show any discounts. In addition to this, a new discount based perk has been added called "Bargain Hunter" which gives a small chance for goods in the shop to be heavily (-90%) discounted.
- Faster Loading Times
A lot of work has gone in behind the scenes this month to make sure that restarting (important to be zippy in a game where you die a lot) and moving from island to island is as fast and seamless as possible. I've been able to hugely cut down on loading times and completely remove loading screens during a Survival mode run. The clip above shows the expected loading time for almost any island, even when playing multiplayer!
- New Island Type: Rush
This is a fast paced island type where the only goal is to eliminate as many enemies as possible before a timer runs out! It features a dynamic reward system that gives you the opportunity to score legendary loot if you are quick enough!
- New Island Type: Treasure If you choose the Random portal which occasionally appears between islands, there is a small chance that you'll be taken to a Treasure island which contains 2 free chests of a random rarity. If choosing a Random portal there is of course still a chance that you'll be thrown into a fight with an elite enemy, so come prepared!
- New Enemy Attack Types
Enemies now have more attack patterns in their arsenal, from huge circular formations of projectiles to chaotic clusters!
- Flawless No Hit Bonus: Completing an island without taking any damage now grants a crystal bonus! This bonus increases with each island and is a nice reward for those skilled enough to pull it off.
- Temple Island Rework Temple islands show up near the end of each biome and are a true test of skill before the boss. They feature several areas separated by locked doors and contain enemy spawners that must be destroyed before moving to the next chamber. As mentioned in previous updates, temples are a great source of high quality loot so are well worth the added challenge!
- Hidden Loot!
There is now a chance for bonus loot to spawn on each island, though it's usually somewhere hidden, requiring some platforming to find. Some bonus loot won't even be accessible without having several mobility perks (such as on top of cliffs).
- Soundtrack Update I've been chipping away at the soundtrack as usual, 3 more songs have been mastered and completed since the last update: very excited to share them with you!
- New Portal FX
- Bug Fixes + Balance Tweaks As always, countless bug fixes and balance tweaks have been made after playtesting to improve underperforming gameplay elements. Bouncing Shots for example has gotten a nice buff: as well as giving shots the ability to bounce, damage is now also doubled after each bounce!
Thanks for reading and for being patient with the development of the game.
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