The "Progression" Update
I'm happy to announce the "Progression" update, which significantly overhauls the player experience as they make their way through the game. The two biggest changes include: AG Suit "Modules", which enhance your suit's capabilities; and the reworking and integration of the game's story into all current levels. My hope is that these changes make the game feel more cohesive, give players something fun and cool to look forward to, and keep them engaged as they make their way through the game.
AG Suit "Modules"
The big focus of this release are the new Upgrade Modules that you'll find as you progress through the game:
Now, Gravia isn't an Incremental/Upgrade game, or a Metroidvania. It's still a very linear action/puzzle experience, where you proceed through each level in a set order. But now, along the way, you'll discover Upgrades to your suit that enhance your survivability, making the game more forgiving and chill after you've proven yourself. This release includes three Modules that you'll find as you progress through the story:
Vaporization Resistance - No more instant death from these questionable surfaces.
Safe Fall - Lets you land more quickly before serious injury occurs.
Hard Armor - Gives you a shield that absorbs physical damage, protecting you for a short time until it wears out.
A 4th module will be added in a future upgrade, after the next "mini-boss" level. All of these modules get slotted in to your AG Suit automatically:
What's the point of these modules?
They remove frustration from the game. Once you've demonstrated you can handle many of the game's challenges, you don't need to keep proving yourself over and over.
It's fun to feel more powerful.
It gives new players something cool to look forward to.
You'll find these AG Suit upgrades in Module Installation rooms in the facility:
For returning players, don't worry about trying to track these down. Each level is pre-designed for the AG Suit to have specific modules. So, if you've already gotten to the end of the game, you'll see you have all the modules. But if you replay earlier levels (when hunting for secrets, for example), you'll only have the modules appropriate for that level. There's a new AG Suit Status UI shown on the Pause screen, which informs you about your Suit's current capabilities:
I hope players get excited about this new feature, and appreciate the power boost they get after picking up a new Module.
Story Redesign
The game's story has been almost completely reworked, compared to earlier versions of the game. This was due to a combination of factors, but mostly I felt the old story was fairly boring, verbose, and broke up the flow of the game too much, without really adding anything.
So there's a completely new story. Most of the story is conveyed through Data Terminals found throughout the facility. Activating these will read you a journal entry from one of the major characters. Over the course of the game, you should be able to piece together the mystery of what's going on at the facility:
Now, video game stories are kind of polarizing. Some players don't care about the story, and skip every cutscene. Other players feel the game is incomplete without a story tying it together. My hope is that I've found a good compromise here with Gravia's story. Keeping most of the story in these Data Terminals means that they don't get in the way if you don't care about the story. And if you are interested in seeing how the story unfolds, it's not bombarding you while you're distracted trying to puzzle your way through a level. There are still quite a few "live" cutscenes, though. So, the game shouldn't feel lifeless. And don't worry: If you miss/skip/ignore any of the Data Terminals, the entries can still be found in your Journal, so you can always review any of the story at any time.
The one huge caveat to the story right now is that almost all of the spoken dialogue is temporarily using computer generated text-to-speech. This is because A) I'm sure I'll keep making changes to the story before I'm done, and re-recording vocals is brutal/slow, and B) I really wanted the vocals to be spoken, not just text on the screen. All of the dialogue will be re-recorded by proper human voice actors before the 1.0 release. So don't panic if the vocals sound a little off.
And keeping with the theme of adding more of a sense of progression, you'll now find Facility Maps as you make your way through the facility:
I thought this was a fun way to show progress, and give a preview of what's coming up.
Roadmap to v1.0
v0.15 was a ton of work, and the only real regrets/disappointments I have with it are that it took so long to finish, and that doesn't add any new levels. But, there are currently about 70 levels in the game so far, and reworking so much content wasn't trivial. Most levels got at least minor rework to accommodate the new AG Suit Modules, and other levels were effectively completely redesigned. But with v0.15 "done", I wanted to mention what's coming up in the near future as I work towards the official v1.0 release.
The most obvious thing is to finish the remaining levels. I'm excited to get to that work, as it's what I enjoy most about making Gravia. There are some really cool/satisfying features just around the corner as you reach the "end-game", and I can't wait to see people go through that content. I expect about 10 more levels will be added before the final encounter, but we'll see.
The game's story will also be added with each new level moving forward. That will all wrap up together.
Other than that, there's a bunch of "placeholder" media to finalize. Vocals, Art, and Music, for example. Except for probably/maybe the music, that's stuff I'll be getting professional help with, so shouldn't be a big undertaking, but it's just some stuff that needs to be cleaned up before release.
And of course, I'm sure there's still an absolute ton of work gathering and responding to feedback and user testing.
And after v1.0? Almost certainly adding the NewGame+ feature, which is already partially implemented in the game now, though that's such a niche thing for only the most intense gamers...
Sunsetting the Demo...
As of v0.15, I'm disabling the Demo for Gravia. At least for now. Probably forever. I struggled with this decision, since the demo is the reason I was lucky enough to find so many of the early playtesters. But the Demo is awkward. The original demo was super short, just a couple of minutes long, which left a lot of players disappointed. (Wanting "more" is good. But saying "That's it?" when finishing the demo isn't great.) But if the demo's too long, it kind of messes with the whole pacing of the game. Instead of focusing on making the game's pacing ideal, I had to balance the full game with the pacing of the demo, and how those two things connected. In the end, I also found that games like Gravia often don't have demos. Maybe for the same reasons I've already listed.
So with a heavy heart, the Demo is going away, for now, maybe forever. The reality of Steam these days is that people can just return games for a refund anyway, so the value of a demo is somewhat diminished compared to many years ago.
For Returning Players
The best way to experience the new update is to start over from the very beginning. You don't need to start a new Profile and lose all your progress. But I'd recommend opening the Level Select screen, and playing the very first level. You'll experience the new story elements, and find the AG Suit Modules along the way. Be sure to submit your feedback on your experience, and let me know what you like or don't like.
Final Thoughts
This update took forever to complete, because the scope was huge, and a lot of the work was in areas I'm honestly not as good at. There's still a bunch of testing to go for this release, so don't hesitate to submit your feedback. And thanks to everyone for being patient.