Regular Update - 0.12.0 - Unit Sprites / Remove "Stop to Shoot" / etc.
Changed in 0.12.0:
NEW FEATURE: Custom Unit Sprites for each unit type
One of the long-running requests has been to make each unit type visually distinct compared to the other unit types.
And now finally it's done.
Visually distinct look for all the 15 units
Each unit also has a small bouncy animation while walking to make them a bit livelier.
There is now a visible "mist" emitting from the units when they breathe.
The death animation got also tweaked a bit
FEATURE CHANGE: Remove the "stop to shoot" feature
One of the more prominent features of the game has been that you've needed to stop and stand still for the units to attack the enemies.
I think it's a nice feature, but I've been wondering what the game would be without imposing this rule.
My hope is that removing this rule will make the start of the runs more fluid and fun.
This change probably doesn't have too much positive or negative effect in the longer runs, since with the longer runs you still have to be careful where you move, which is nice.
Some units like the "telephone pole" unit still work as previously, where you need to stand still.
The emphasis is that it's beneficial to stand near the enemies and it's better to be "aggressive" towards the enemies, than running away.
NEW FEATURE: Limit the number of unique unit types the player can have
There is now a limit of having 6 unique unit types at once.
Hopefully, this change adds a tiny bit more strategy in what to hire and what to transform.
This change also makes the "Unit Transformer" more useful, since you can use it to gain more free unit-type slots by transforming your two existing units into a single one.
There is now a small "unit-type list" on the right side of the main unit list, which makes it a bit easier to see which units you have and how many "unit-type slots" you have available.
FEATURE CHANGE: Unit Transformer changes
The Unit Transformer has been tweaked to give better choices.
There is now more emphasis on transformations where you convert two existing unit types into a single unit type. This gives you also a free unit-type slot to use.
FEATURE CHANGE: Unlock the items and units in any order and make them always visible
The unlocks dialog got another round of changes, based on feedback.
Note: Unlocking items and units might now be a bit overwhelming, since you can unlock things in any order, but let's see how things go.
Make all item and unit unlocks visible, even when they are not yet unlocked
Make it possible to unlock the items and units in any order
Change the order of unlocks, so that the Units and Items are not "interleaved"
Visual tweaks for how the unlocks appear on the Unlocks dialog
DIFFICULTY CHANGES:
Starting from the second loop, the ratio of big enemies compared to the smaller enemies is now higher. This should increase the difficulty a little bit at the start of the each loop starting from the second loop.
The difficulty is now selected when starting a new run (not a separate button in the main menu anymore)
Make it so that Hard difficulty doesn't need to be unlocked anymore, it's unlocked by default.
FEATURE CHANGE: Esson Baari / Item Slots changes
Esson Baari animations were speedied up already once before, but it still felt a bit sluggish, so the animations were speedied up a bit more.
The chances of winning were lowered a bit, so the Esson Baari is not constantly too bling bling.
Update Esson Baari / Item Slots to more likely win items that you have less
Changed Esson Baari / Item Slots default roll count to 3 (from 5) and
Speedied up the Esson Baari animations to not to make playing it a chore
Decreased Esson Baari win chance from 40% to 33%
FEATURE CHANGE: 10 levels per loop, instead of 12
The levels per loop is now changed to 10 per level. This makes the loops a little bit faster.
10 is also just a more rounder number than 12.
The early version of the game had 10 levels per loop, then it was changed to 20, then to 12 and now back to 10, so it has come a "full circle"!
FEATURE CHANGE: Make it more visible where the units get killed
Now a skull displayed on the ground where the unit member got killed
A skull icon is displayed on the unit list for the unit whose member got killed
The "lucky" and "dead" texts are no longer displayed, since they added extra noise
OTHER CHANGES:
Fixed text formatting with the Incubator texts when meeting Juhani
Fixed the issue of the mouse cursor showing up during level changes when playing with a gamepad (by changing how the detection of the last used device is done, please report any possible issues)
When pausing the game, the "settings" dialog is now behind a Settings button to make the pause screen cleaner
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Thanks again all of you for your support!
Please remember always to give feedback. I hope this update addresses some of the feedback everyone's already sent.
Next to the Early Access update #4!
- jounitus
Regular Update - 0.11.0 - Visit Juhani, a local UFO enthusiast!
There have been requests for the game to show more of the lore. The previous update with the discoverable places was already part of the lore-building.
I have wanted to show the characters in the game for a long time in some way. I have previously internally experimented with different ways to show characters and dialogue, but the previous methods didn't feel good so I didn't release them. This way of showing characters is finally the one that I feel good about.
It is a bit more work to do the dialogue and lore this way, compared to for example just showing a static character portrait and text on top of the normal gameplay UI (which is also a good way to do it), but I feel this way adds more to the atmosphere of the game.
I hope that this feature makes the town feel like actual people are living in it. And I hope it's a nice feeling to know that you can visit someone in the town.
There is also a new "song" playing when visiting Juhani's house.
I don't want to make the game text-heavy, but I think occasionally showing characters and giving bits of information or building the lore is nice.
There is also a button to skip all the dialogue if you want to skip it.
The main goal for this update was to add places that might have something to do with the lore or just "special" places of the town where the game takes place in.
Originally the idea was that each level on a run would feature one unique place (that's why previously the Mansion and the Observatory were always on levels one and two), but in hindsight, the places would quickly become stale if all of them are shown immediately during the first run.
The new idea is to unlock these places gradually and show them more sparingly, so that there would be something fresh to see until everything is unlocked.
When you start a new run, there is a chance to discover a new place during the run. It will take a while to unlock all these and if you don't discover a new place during a new run, a previously unlocked place will be shown.
These places will be placed randomly in one of the levels on a run.
These places don't affect the normal gameplay (unlike the Buildings in the game).
It was fun to model these places and implement them into the game. Although the "screen time" of these are relatively small compared to everything else in the game, I hope the effort put into these was worth it and hopefully at least some of these places will spark a little bit of everyone's imagination when discovered!
Each of these places also gives you a Steam achievement!
The places include:
Mansion (previously on level 1)
Observatory (previously on level 2)
Radio Telescope (slightly tweaked, previously together in the Mansion on level 1)
Airfield
Church
Incubator
Crash Landing
FEATURE CHANGE: Unlock System Changes
The old unlock system supported only unlocks that can be unlocked with points. Refactoring the unlock system to support other kinds of unlock took some time, but now adding more unlock types should be a little easier.
The goal is that much of the content could be experienced/revealed gradually, so that not all of the content would be seen directly during your first run after the update.
Currently for example you can see all the enemies as long as you get to the boss fight, which is not the optimal way.
Changes:
Re-hauling the unlock system to better support different unlock types
The unlocks dialog also got a small face-lift, so hopefully it isn't as much of an eye sore as previously!
The unlocks dialog now also shows the "unlock type" on top of the unlocks.
NEW FEATURE: Destructible Fences
The game also now has two types of destructible fences around some of the buildings!
FEATURE CHANGE: Stacking Effects for Active Items
One of the most requested features for over a year has been to add stacking effects for some of the active items that were missing it. Now they are finally here!
Stacking these active items now have the following effects:
Dome: (cooldown time and size)
Boost Ring: (cooldown time and size)
Air Strike: (cooldown time)
Turret: (cooldown time)
Disco Drone: (cooldown time)
FEATURE CHANGE: Enemy Health Increase on Loops 3-5
There has been feedback about enemies becoming too easy to kill after a while. So now on loops 3 and 5 the enemy health is increased.
After loop 5, the enemies still have more health than previously, but the health doesn't go as much after that.
This change doesn't affect enemies between loops 1 and 2.
Please give feedback about how the enemies now feel on loops between 3 and 5, this can be tweaked up and down. The enemy health scaling can also be potentially done in some other way, if some players feel it's too hard and others feel it's too easy.
FEATURE CHANGE: Boss Fight change
There has been a lot of feedback about the boss fight. The feedback is generally about the boss feeling bullet spongy and the boss fight might feel "unfair" because there are a lot of enemies and bombs.
The boss health got a tiny decrease on this update, but now there are fewer simultaneous enemies and bombs. This will give more time to focus on the boss enemy.
The changes:
Change the boss fight enemy composition, so that there are less bomb-throwing enemies
Change the boss fight, so that there is only one active enemy wave at any time in addition to the boss enemy
Reduce boss enemy health by 25%
One of the remaining challenges is that the boss fight is a bit easier if you have fire-damage units, but it's not obvious to the players. So the players who don't have any fire-damage units may experience the boss fight as more challenging than those who have fire-damage units.
FEATURE CHANGE: Visibility Changes
One of the areas of the feedback was that it's hard to see what is happening, when things get very chaotic.
The changes:
Show light blue overlay on enemies' damage area to show better the damage areas
Limit the amount of the flash effect when an enemy is hit, so that you can see the enemy better on later levels/loops.
FEATURE CHANGE: Audio SFX Spam
The other big area of the feedback was that audio gets annoying and frustrating when there are for example a lot of explosions happening on the screen.
The changes:
Add a 5-second cooldown for passive Air Strike item, to prevent air strike spam when a lot of units level up.
Lower the "bomb on ground warning" SFX volume, so the beeping is not too overwhelming when there is a lot of bombs on the ground
Limit simultaneous explosion and other sound effects, so things like Air Strikes don't sound all glitched out on later levels/loops.
OTHER CHANGES:
Tweak "Jumper Enemy" animation, to fix cases where it looks like the enemy gets stuck in the air for a brief moment
Show "low health/coffin warning" when there is only 1 empty coffin left (instead of 2). To make it more pleasant for new players who probably have more coffins filled on average.
[Community Feedback] Explain the "game over" situation better in the crematoriums
[Community Feedback] Show health bars for "Jumper Enemy" and "Sword Enemy"
[Community Feedback] Added possibility to move the units with arrow keys
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That's it for this update, I hope you all like the new places -feature and I hope this update addresses some of the feedback everyone has sent! Thanks again for the feedback!
It's nice to get this first normal update released, since the early access started.
Excited to start working on the next update!
- jounitus
Early Access post-release thoughts
Hello All!
Now that the game is finally released to early access, I thought I'll write something here.
The last month went mostly on preparing for the release and doing marketing. In terms of development, the time was spent mostly just making a few patch releases.
The past month was a bit "hazy" preparing for the early access release, it was a bit stressful, since it was a big step for the game and there was a lot of doubt and uncertainty about how things would go.
Luckily the game release went pretty good!
Not knowing what to expect when going to look at the Steam reviews, my heart was filled with extreme warmth with the great reviews everyone had written, thank you!
Big thanks again to everyone who has sent great feedback via the form and with Steam forums, I read every feedback.
Yesterday I released a small patch for the game, but it's now finally nice to get back to working on normal updates for the game!
Talk to you more in the next update!
- jounitus
Small Patch - 0.9.10 - Boss fight tweaks and small fixes
Changed in 0.9.10:
CHANGES:
Return back to the main menu after the game over, instead of starting a new run automatically
Don't show the "wishlist" button in the main menu in the full version of the game
Change the boss fight, so that after the 4 initial waves of enemies have appeared, the concurrent count for the "extra" enemy waves are capped at 2 (instead of 3), except if the timer runs out
[Community Feedback] Make it likely that there is The Podium / Unit Upgrader on the boss fight level
[Community Feedback] Remove old text about rotating the camera from the first level tutorial texts
ARRIVAL: ZERO EARTH now released as Early Access!
Hello All!
After two years of development ARRIVAL: ZERO EARTH is now finally released as Early Access!
Please keep giving feedback, it's the best way for me to know how everyone experiences the game.
Thanks for all the support so far.
Hopefully you will all enjoy the game!
All the reviews for the game are much appreciated here on Steam, the reviews do matter a lot!
- jounitus
Thanks to all of you!
Hello!
I want to thank everyone who has participated in the playtest and given feedback, it has been extremely valuable!
Past month I've been preparing for the early access release with trying to promote the game and doing small fixes so that hopefully the experience would be nice on release.
The plan is to deactivate the playtest around the release of the game.
Thanks again, I hope to see you all "on the other side"!
- jounitus
Hotfix - 0.9.8 - Fixes based on community feedback
Changed in 0.9.8:
CHANGES:
[Community Feedback] Turned down the volume on the "ground explosion" sound fx, to not to be too harsh on the ears
[Community Feedback] Fix the issue of runs not starting when Windows locale is set to Turkish
[Community Feedback] Units transformed using the Unit Transformer now also keep their tiers
[Community Feedback] Tweaked rod unit description
Hotfix - 0.9.6 - Optimizations and small tweaks
Changed in 0.9.6:
OPTIMIZATIONS:
The FPS will still lag if there are a lot of things happening on screen, but hopefully the experience feels a bit smoother now in general.
Optimized game object pools to work with the objects a little faster
Optimized how health bars are updated
Optimized so that each explosion doesn't have an individual sound object, but the explosions are played "globally"
Optimized fire arrow audio cpu usage
Optimized fire arrows by limiting the number of visible arrows and fire particle effects on the screen
Start removing visible idle Telephone Poles after a threshold is reached to save the amount of work GPU needs to do
Optimized the trees exploding to be less heavy on the CPU
Optimized bullets by more aggressively disabling them when not needed
Optimize various effects like explosions to use fixed-size game object pools, instead of using dynamic size pools. This helps to keep stuff like particle effects at somewhat sane levels.
OTHER CHANGES:
Small refactoring on how enemies are spawned
Visually deactivate the boss ring once the boss fight is successfully completed
Hide the congratulations text after a short interval, once the boss fight is finished
[Community Feedback] Always show the "continue run" button on the main menu, so it's clearer that there is the feature, but make it deactivated if it cannot be used
[Community Feedback] Show the "continue run" button on the main menu, even if the run was exited on level 1, so it's more clear that there is the "save & continue" feature.
[Community Feedback] As a quick fix, soft-cap the unit speed to 250 (starting value is 30) to prevent uncontrollable units and units escaping the play area.
There has been a lot of feedback about the mountains still being hard to notice. In this update the bottom of the mountains now has a dotted outline, to hopefully make them easier to spot.
Please give feedback if the mountains are still too hard to see.
FEATURE CHANGE: Enemies' targeting lasers are now dotted lines
The goal was to make the targeting lasers "less threatening", since they don't do actually any damage.
New players might confuse that the targeting lasers make damage and feel the need to run away from them, which is not ideal.
This change also might help in possible future updates, let's see.
OTHER CHANGES:
Show a tip about "standing still to attack" on the bottom of the screen in the first level
