BrightSeeker
BRIGHTSEEKER IS OUT NOW!
Buy it while it's on launch sale:
https://store.steampowered.com/app/1491950/BrightSeeker/
It took me over 2 years to make this game, which is definitely the biggest project I ever worked on. I would like to thank everyone who supported me during the development, all of you who played the game and shared your feedback, helped me with the music and voice over and all of you who wishlisted the game. Thank you, I literally couldn't do it without you.
Of course this is not the end, I'll keep updating and fixing the game in the following months. If you encounter any issues, let me know!
RELEASE DATE ANNOUNCEMENT
Mark your calendars and don't forget to wishlist the game to get notified about the launch discount!
https://store.steampowered.com/app/1491950/BrightSeeker/
BrightSeeker Beta Test + Demo Update
The development of BrightSeeker is slowly coming to an end and with that I would like to announce a final Beta test, which you can join by filling out this form:
You will get access to the full game in exchange for sending me feedback and your thoughts on the game. Thank you so much, if you decide to participate! I'll be sending out all the beta keys at once, so don't worry if you don't get an e-mail from me right away, it may take a few days.
THE BETA IS CLOSED NOW, THANKS EVERYONE WHO PARTICIPATED!
DEMO UPDATE
v0.1.0.2.
New difficulty settings:
- Teleport Limiter
Extensive use of the Teleport/Dash ability will cause SPARK to decrease - Mines
Enemies may spawn mines where they died - Scalable Enemies
Enemy health increases as the player gets stronger
Other changes:
- Fixed bug where melee attack wouldn't reset if player had 0 SPARK
- Added diagonal teleport for keyboard
- New Player Health icon
- Added option to delete save slots
- Important breakable objects are targetable with controller (like enemies)
- Split Voice and SFX volume
- Added Gamma Settings
- Hints show correct keys when they are rebinded
Demo v0.0.1.6 Patch
- Increased player movement speed, acceleration and deceleration for more responsive gameplay
- Slightly increased teleport cooldown
- Increased shield deflect time to 0.5s (from 0.25s)
- Changed colour of the particles indicating that ranged enemy will attack to make it more readable
- Health pickups won't fly towards the player if they have full health
- Added new difficulty setting "Retreat Protocol" that allows ranged enemies to teleport away from player if they get too close to them
- (hopefully) Fixed the bug where Gameplay settings wouldn't save across levels
- "Use Isometric north" setting should work for keyboard as well
Thanks to everyone who submitted feedback on the game! I really appreciate it :)
Also, HUGE thanks to everyone who wishlisted the game during the Next Fest, BrightSeeker gained over 2500 wishlists during the festival, which is so much more than what I was hoping for!
Demo v0.0.1.5 Patch
- Fixed bug where the second character is blocking player movement in the intro level
- Added option to choose between "true north" and "isometric north" when playing with gamepad
- Added light for better navigation in intro level
- Fixed loading of gameplay settings
Thanks everyone who submitted these issues and left feedback on the demo, it's much appreciated!
BrightSeeker Demo available on Steam!
Play the Free Demo now: https://store.steampowered.com/app/1915640/BrightSeeker_Demo?snr=1_7_15__13
Feature Breakdown #05 - The Difficulty
In BrightSeeker there is no easy/hard difficulty, instead there are several Difficulty Settings which you can toggle to make the game easier or harder. For example, you may choose to disable advanced AI behavior to make enemies easier to defeat or if you find the game too easy, you can (among other things) lower your base health or enable special abilities for bosses.
Right now there are seven unique settings, which you can choose from. There may be more added in the future. You may play with just one of them or all of them at once, it's up to you!
Now, let's take a look at what each of them does!
SECRET ENEMY
Hides enemy health icons, so you can't precisely know how much health has the enemy left.
DODGY ENEMIES
Enemies can dodge incoming projectiles (sometimes).
DASHING THREAT
Melee enemies can dash towards player character.
HELPFUL SCRAP
When enemies die, they can drop healing pickups for the player.
DANGEROUS BOSSES
Enables special attacks for the three main bosses.
Where would be the fun in showing you what this does? You will have to play the game and find out for yourself :)
HEALING TOTEM
Some enemies may spawn a hostile healing totem when they die. This totem will heal all enemies in radius after a short countdown. If it is destroyed by player before it counts down to zero, it heals the player instead.
LIVIN' ON THE EDGE
Lowers the default player max health. In other words, player has lower maximum health.
You will be able to adjust all the Difficulty Settings when you start a new game or at any time during the game in settings menu.
If you have suggestions for other Difficulty Settings, feel free to leave them in the comments. I'll do my best to include them in the game!
Next month there probably won't be a Feature Breakdown, instead you can look forward to a new updated Demo, which will be available on Steam during (and possibly after) the upcoming Steam Next Fest. Stay tuned for more info about that! Stay safe, bye!
Feature Breakdown #04 - The Enemies of BrightSeeker
Combat Areas:
As you travel through the world, you will often enter the Combat Area (CA). This is a place where enemies spawn (usually you won't find any enemies outside of these areas). While you are inside of the CA, enemies will spawn in waves. Sometimes only one wave of enemies will spawn, sometimes there may be more waves in one area. While you are inside of the CA, and at least one enemy is still alive, you can not leave the CA. When you clear all enemies inside the CA a force field surrounding the area will deactivate and you will be able to resume your journey.
(Entering Combat Area)
Enemy types:
There are 7 unique enemy types in BrightSeeker. Plus 3 different Bosses and 1 Mini-Boss.
I won't talk about the bosses here, because if I described how they work, it would ruin the experience of discovering how to defeat them. Suffice to say, that they are much more difficult and not as straight forward to defeat as the other enemies.
Speaking of which...
The first two enemies you will encounter are quite easy to defeat. Those are the Basic Ranged and Melee Mechs.
Basic Ranged Mech
When this enemy is visible to the player (when it's on the screen) it will fire a single projectile at the player each few seconds. Nothing too dangerous in 1v1 combat, however if there are more of theme, it can be quite challenging to dodge or block all of their attacks. (More about player abilities here)
(Dodging ranged attacks)
Basic Melee Mech
When these mechs spawn, they will imidiatelly start rushing towards the player character. When they are close enough, they will perform a quick melee attack. Again these enemies are much more dangerous in groups. Their attacks can be quite easilly dodged, but they can not be blocked by the shield.
(Melee Mech attacks the player)
Melee Demon
Those are vile and unpredictable creatures that teleport each time they are damaged. They are very mobile and quite difficult to hit.
(Fighting the Melee Demons)
Heavy Melee Mech
This is more complex enemy in comparison to the previous three. It has much more health and must be damaged several times to be defeated. It can dash to player from great distance and damage them using its powerful melee attack. This attack must be charged which gives the player time to destroy the mech before it can attack. There is also a slight delay before the attack lands, so if the player can time it well, the attack can be dodged.
(Dodging attacks of the Heavy Mech)
Shielded Ranged Mech
Unsimilar to the basic ranged mech, this enemy can (and will) attack the player only when on screen by firing a single projectile. These enemies, however, carry with them a shield which prevents them from being harmed by projectiles from one side. But, when they are shooting, they deactivate the shield for a few seconds and can be damaged by ranged attacks from all sides. Basically this means that when they are not attacking they have an active shield that blocks all projectiles. If those projectiles don't hit the shied (e.g. they come from side or behind) they will still deal damage. Also, the shield doesn't protect them from melee attacks. So the player can either wait for them to deactivate the shield and destroy them form distance or rush them with melee attacks.
(Fight with the Shielded Ranged Mech)
Shielder
This enemy is covered by a protective shield on all sided and attacks the player by slamming into the ground when they enter the shield. The shield never deactivates, so the player will have to enter it and destroy the enemy before it can finish its attack. It also shields all the enemies within a large radius all around itself. This way the player will have to destroy the Shielder first or fight all the enemies only with melee attacks.
(Shielder protecting the other enemy and attacking the player)
When I said that you will mostly not have to fight enemies outside of the Combat Areas... The last enemy on the list is an exception to that rule.
The Crawler
You can find the cocoons of these creatures in some specific locations of BrightSeeker (more about the world of BrightSeeker and its different locations here). They will not attack unless the player breaks their cocoon. As a single entity they are quite easy to kill, but there will always be more. Their attacks are chaotic. They rapidly fire projectiles around them. Those will most likely break more of the cocoons and aggravate even more crawlers... Yeah, those are nasty creatures... Try to not anger them if you can...
(Swarm of Crawlers attacking the player)
All the enemies mentioned above (including the bosses) can be further enhanced and made more difficult/easy (with new abilities) using the Difficulty Setting which I will cover next month! So, stay tuned for that and in the meantime check out the newly updated FREE DEMO! Anyway, that's all for this month. Stay safe, bye!
The world of BrightSeeker
In the game you will explore three major locations. The Below. The Dark Pit. And The Bright City.
Each of these locations is divided into several smaller levels and sub-locations (around 20 locations all together). I would like to stress out that the game is NOT open world and the progression is very much linear. That being said there are many secrets and hidden locations, so there will still be plenty to explore :)
The Below - The birthplace of civilizations.
This is the starting location of the game. A place where the Seeker (player character) has fled after all of his kind (including his loved one) were slaughtered by the war-machines. It is an ancient place, now devoid of almost all life. The only things left by the civilized life are ruins, broken statues, and dozens of gigantic mechanical towers...
Why is it called "The Below"? As the civilizations evolved, they kept building on top of the old structures ("To get closer to their gods"), so this place is now underneath all of the other structures, mainly under the Bright City (I'll get to that in a moment). The world is basically a large vertical structure (rather than a planet). Sort of inspired by Asgard, in the sense that it is a place/city "floating" in the cosmos. Also, the gods and mythology are more prominent here than in the later locations.
The Below is the largest area you (as the player) will explore and, since it is the most ancient location, it also contains the most secrets of all the environments in the game.
The Last Bastion
A once prosperous city in The Below, which used to be a part of a mighty kingdom. Now, it is the only place in The Below where some people still live, but it has been corrupted and is reminiscent of some dystopian/cyberpunk city. In the game this location will serve as one of the main HUBs, where the player will be able to upgrade their abilities, refill lost health and take a break from the fight.
The Dark Pit
Without going into spoilers, this is a part of the world which has been corrupted by "chaotic entities" (demons). It is a dark and dangerous place...
The Bright City
...is a very much different place from the other locations, it is more like the insides of a computer. It's filled with technology and holograms and of course machines that are trying to kill you...
It's a mega-structure build on top of the world. It has been constructed to house all the inhabitants of the world by the "Mecha Ascendancy" (can't say more about them right now). It was supposed to be the pinnacle of technological progress... Without going into spoiler territory, I can say only that things didn't work out as planed...
I hope you found this interesting in some way and I'm sorry that I can't go into more detail, but I can't spoil the game for you :D However, if you would like to learn more about this world you can play a FREE DEMO right NOW! Just join our Discord server or sign up here and I'll send you a download link!
Anyway, stay safe everyone and let's hope this whole mess will be resolved as soon as possible :/
Take care, talk to you soon. - Zak (the developer)
Feature Breakdown #03 - The Forge / Upgrading Abilities
What is The Forge?
It's a special interactable object which can be found in various locations, usually before a boss fight or when you enter a new location for the first time.
interacting with The Forge
The forge can be used to upgrade your basic abilities, however to do so you will need MOD Slots. You will be able to obtain 5 MOD Slots throughout the game. One can be bought in a shop (which is usually located in the same area as The Forge), the other 4 are dropped by bosses (2) and mini-bosses (also 2).
MOD Slot pickup
After obtaining these MOD Slots you will be able to activate MODs in The Forge.
If you activate a MOD it will use one or more MOD Slots (depends on how powerful the MOD is). You can always return to The Forge and deactivate the MOD which will free up the used MOD Slot(s). This means that you can change your MODs any time you visit the forge. For example, you may use your MODs to upgrade your ranged attack but then you decide that you prefer melee, so you return to The Forge, deactivate your ranged MODs and use them instead to upgrade the melee attack. Some MODs are locked until you reach a certain point in the game.
selecting and deselecting MODs in The Forge changes used MOD Slots
One other thing is that the MODs (in most cases) influence all the abilities of a certain type (melee/ranged/shield). This means that if you activate the "Split Projectiles" MOD, all of your projectiles will split on impact, even those fired by Special Abilities.
firing projectiles with "Split Projectiles" MOD
That will be all for this Feature Breakdown! If you have any questions be sure to leave them in the comments or join the community on our Discord server :) Stay safe! Bye!