THANK YOU The First Public Play test was a big success. Thousands downloaded the alpha and gave us vital feedback in discord. If you still have any input to share, please join and tell us what you liked and what needed work. Seeing player numbers rise, wish lists and follows reaching double figures were fantastic.
We most likely won't have any public demos again till full release. However, we will invite people from discord to participate in future tests of alphas and betas, so please join to have the best chance to play hostile mars before full release.
https://discord.gg/dhC3b4epYG
FEEDBACK Jake was constantly working to fix issues you raised and listen to your feedback, lots of data to crunch through to add improvements to hostile mars. A big thank you to the various creators who showcased the game. We hit over 200,000 views across YouTube and Twitch, with overwhelming reception being positive.
If you missed the live stream we did on the pax twitch channel, It is now on YouTube, thanks again to Wired Gaming For joining myself and Jake
WHAT NEXT? Jake will evaluate all the feedback and, of course, fix significant bugs. I am sure many of you are excited about a full early access release date, but no new announcements other than later this year.
SOCIALS I will be doing more to get our name across socials, so please check out our new pages and channels to keep up to date and see even more content.
YouTube https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCnVNcik5QO5c8yymT7ilgNQ Twitter https://twitter.com/Hostilemarsgame and ticktock https://www.tiktok.com/@hostilemars
Thank you once again! -Jade
FIRST PUBLIC ALPHA DEMO
Hostile Mars will be available to try as a limited-time public alpha demo with PAX Rising Online, celebrating our PAX Rising Showcase nomination! The demo will be available on Saturday 9th and Sunday 10th so look out for the download button on our steam store page to try Hostile Mars for yourself and don’t forget to join our Discord to report bugs and give us vital feedback: https://discord.gg/dhC3b4epYG
To play the demo, just go to the Hostile Mars Steam Page this Saturday or Sunday and there will be a download demo link on the page. No key is required!
PAX Rising Online Let's Play We will also be showcasing some gameplay on the PAX Twitch channel with a special let’s play QnA with Jake, the developer of Hostile Mars, joined by our new community manager Jade (me!) as well as YouTuber Wired Gaming; we will grill Jake as he showcases Hostile Mars and answers questions. This will be live over at https://www.twitch.tv/pax at 5:30 pm (PT) Saturday 9Th July. we will also have the vid available on youtube later this week
Social Media Incoming We are setting up accounts for Twitter, Youtube, and TikTok, plus more, so where ever you prefer to get news about Hostile Mars, we will have you covered; more details in next week’s dev post.
The playtest is very early gameplay, so be gentle and thank you for the support you have already shown in discord and enthusiasm.
That’s it for this week’s dev post, look forward to near-weekly posts from now on as we work on alphas and betas tests and a release into early access sometime later this year.
enjoy trying out our alpha playtest -Jade
Hostile Mars Selected As A PAX Rising Showcase Winner!
Getting A Booth At PAX East!
A few months ago I came across the PAX Rising Indie Showcase website for the upcoming PAX East, a gaming convention held each year in Boston (with the exception of last year, it was held online due to COVID). I happened to see the entry form on the day before a build was due to sign up. I figured it might be worth entering because I was working on demo builds at the time anyway so getting something together quickly for the submission wouldn't take more than a day.
This was the first major entry of any kind and considering it was last minute, my expectations weren't very high on getting selected.
A few weeks later I received an email saying that Hostile Mars was selected as one of the winners to attend PAX East and receive a free booth to showcase the game to thousands of people. I was extremely excited to get the news and felt validated that the concept of the game I have been working on for so long and iterating so many times through playtesting at least seemed interesting to a group of people, at least enough to be selected as one of 12 indie teams with a team less than 10 people (mind you my team was 1).
The email said that it could be up to 4 people so I reached out to a handful of people from the game development weekly call I am a part of and quickly had a few people willing to help, from Canada, Ireland, and California, one of which never was able to make it due to a never-ending chain of travel incidents (more on that below).
So a few weeks later I packed up the car with my development computers, monitors, and hardware and drove from Atlanta to Boston, which ended up being about a 22-hour road trip (I was driving up in an electric car so it added some time to stop and charge). When I arrived it was time to unload the equipment at the venue, after which I met up with the people that came to help and then went to bed.
The next day the show started at 9 am, so naturally, I was there at 5 am to make sure the build was solid. From then on it was kind of a blur.
The Show
People were playing the game pretty much the whole time, with a line most of the 4 days.
I modified the game into a version that could be played within 10-15 minutes, meaning I basically stripped out all of the complex systems that would require a tutorial for a player to understand. I did this because when researching how to make a demo for the event, I came across a video that said "Make it like an arcade game. Someone walks up, pops in a quarter, and plays. They shouldn't need a bunch of tutorials to get started."
So that left the combat (most people understand 3rd person shooter controls and mechanics) and waves.
I spawned the player with a pre-built base and triggered waves. I gave them items after each round so they wouldn't need to craft a bunch of things, but left it open in case they wanted to create more turrets or ammo.
Almost everyone said they really enjoyed it.
Multiple publishers came up asking what my plans were and said they would be happy to talk if interested, to which I replied I am not looking for a publisher. A few things the publishers said were "This is the best solo-dev game I have ever seen." "This beats games that have 20 people working on them for 3-4 years." and "This is a publisher's dream". All very promising considering they are looking for games that they think will be profitable and do well.
A lot of players were genuinely interested in the direction of the game, which was great. I got to talk to a lot of factory/base-builder fans to see what they thought about the game and how it played.
The most common feedback was that they love Satisfactory but wished there were something that the base was used for after making it, and thought that Hostile Mars was promising. A few people said it was the best game they saw at PAX East (all games not just indies), which blew my mind. This was the first time really showing the game in a large format outside of a Reddit post or on Discord, so I am extremely happy with how it went. For anyone that came and checked out the game at PAX East, thank you so much. I really enjoyed talking with all of the fans of the genre.
Media Coverage From PAX
There were a handful of articles and videos created reviewing the games at PAX East and a few with very favorable mentions about Hostile Mars. I did 4 or 5 interviews like this one:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zD2h5k4bn7E
Rock Paper Shotgun did a video blog about the event and while talking about the PAX Rising Showcase games, they only spoke of 2, one of which was Hostile Mars. The RPS writer was at the booth for probably 45 minutes or so waiting to be able to play and talking about the game with me. This was probably the biggest out of all the content released. The unfortunate part is that the video is behind their paid subscription so it didn't really have an impact on traffic to the game like a normal article from them would.
Since the event, a bunch of people joined the Discord to say they played at PAX and enjoyed it or someone told them about it, which is also a great benefit of the show. You can join the Discord here: https://discord.gg/Xd88eF8Teg
A Travel Nightmare
Out of the three helpers coming to join me at the booth, one did not make it. Based out of Ireland the trip was going to be a long one even if everything went right, but to start it off he couldn't make the first flight due to some VISA complications. Luckily he was able to get on the same flight the next day, with a connection in Amsterdam. The following day his flight from Ireland was late and they arrived in Amsterdam after his connecting flight took off, so he missed it. There were no other immediate flights available to Boston, and the quickest one was for him to go BACK to Ireland as a connecting flight, and then to Boston from there.
If you didn't guess yet, his flight was late into Ireland and he missed that flight as well. Being up for more than 36 hours straight in airports waiting in lines, he decided that it just wasn't meant to be. Luckily he was in Ireland so he could just go home (although it wasn't at the airport that was by his house so it was a 4-hour train ride)
I know I am not doing this story justice as there were tons of things that happened in between like extremely long lines and corridors that looked like he would soon be murdered. I'm glad he was able to make it home and rest.
A Successful Event
I'm not exactly sure when the pic was taken, but it doesn't matter because I was both excited and exhausted the whole time and you can see it in my eyes.
Thank you to everyone that came by the booth. It meant a whole lot more to me than it probably seemed. My wife calls me a robot and I'm still trying to compute why that isn't a good thing, but I know it is sometimes hard to read my emotions. I thoroughly enjoyed speaking to everyone about automation games, Hostile Mars, their impressions, and their enthusiasm for my game. I'm excited for what Hostile Mars could come to be.
-Jake
Devlog #17
Hostile Mars Devlog 17!
Game Playtesting
Thank you to everyone that helped playtest Hostile Mars!
This past weekend the alpha build was undergoing playtesting by the Discord community and I feel it went pretty well. Aside from all the small bugs and cleanup tasks, the build is relatively stable.
The playtesting build only included the first Stage of the game, which includes all of the scrap and junk items that serve as an intro to craft items, explore the environment, collect materials, and the item progression.
I plan to release the public demo here in the next week. If you are interested in the demo, come join us on Discord. It is the easiest place to provide feedback and/or bugs.
https://discord.gg/Xd88eF8Teg
For the Demo, the second stage of the game (the core gameplay loop) will be added to the build. This includes Machines and Automation.
Playtesting Results
This last round of playtesting marks the 4th playtesting of the game. I am a big believer that playtesting is the key to a successful game. It is a good idea to have a goal or target of the playtest, and this time it was the first stage item progression and enemy waves.
Feedback comes in different forms, bugs, requests, annoyances, and enjoyability. The most valuable feedback is negative feedback and what seems cumbersome to the player.
Positive feedback is great but not extremely valuable outside of knowing which key features the players really enjoy, which can help shape design decisions.
The most valuable feedback is what players hate, what annoys or confuses them, and what they think is a bug that is actually intentional.
Usually, the player will provide what they think the problem is along with their pain points of the playtest, but the solution most of the time is something much different. It could be something as simple as an added sound effect, a different screen shake, or a different color.
I always try to provide a survey for players after they play to ask questions about what is being tested specifically, which I plan to do with the Alpha Demo initial playtesting.
New Enemy Types
Ball Bot
A new ground enemy was introduced in the alpha build, the Ball Bot (for lack of a clever name). They are the first Paragon ground enemies that are encountered in the game with a simple laser attack.
It is important to recognize that the different types each have their own strengths and weaknesses against player defenses. For example, ground-type enemies take much more damage from the spike trap, which hover enemies take more damage from the scrap launcher.
New Legacy/Wildlife Bots
A few legacy bots made their way into the build so that we can begin testing the interactions with random encounters while the player is exploring.
The Alpha Demo
As mentioned earlier, the alpha demo will be released and will focus more on the core gameplay elements that make up Hostile Mars. I would love for you to try it out for yourself, so if you are interested come over to the Discord.
https://discord.gg/Xd88eF8Teg
I have a survey for anyone that decides to play the demo, so please fill the survey out if you can about your experience with the game and your experience with other builders like it.
Take Care, -Jake
Devlog #16
Hostile Mars Devlog 16!
I've been continuing work grooming the new systems into the game to cooperate with the existing systems. I'm going to push a new build-up in a week, so let me know if you need a key to playtest.
Here are a few things done in the last couple weeks:
Sand Hider
Sand Hiders are a new enemy type that hides in the sand and pop-up when they detect any threats to alert nearby scrap bots. Take them out quickly before they attract more scrap bots to attack!
ScrapTown
Scrap Town is the first of many areas on the map for the player to explore outside of their own base. It will contain lots of items, puzzles, enemies, and a few surprises too.
Scrap Town was created by the legacy robots that were abandoned from prior terraforming attempts gone wrong. Little robots looking for shelter from the more aggressive ones will be hiding in their makeshift shelters.
There is also an Arena in Scrap Town. This will trigger a small mini-game where waves of robots come out for the player to destroy and collect more scrap metal.
Careful, a few traps and sand hiders are waiting there as well.
Cell Storage Drives
A major revision has taken place with how the core mechanics of the game work. Cell drives are now the main component of item progression for the game and you will find them from fallen enemy scraps. Decrypting cell drives will uncover new technologies and items for you to build to continue expanding and upgrading the structures in your base, player weapons, vehicles, armor, and more.
Wave Progression
I've thought a lot about how to improve the wave progression in Hostile Mars. Throughout playtesting I have received feedback that the prior system was a bit arbitrary or confusing. It was based on collecting the required materials to be able to upgrade to the next stage in which an enemy wave would spawn.
I've split the game up into 6 stages. Each stage will have a set number of Paragon (the main attacking threat in the game) waves. throughout each stage, there will be sub-boss waves and at the end, a boss wave.
I feel that this plays much better while shifting focus more on combat and base building vs just gathering resources required by the next stage. Item management and progression is still a core-mechanic of the game, but it won't be the focus of the enemy wave system.
This also allows the player to progress the specific items they want. So a player more interested in automating their base defenses can unlock items that will allow for better delivery automation, turrets, and traps. Another player more interested in exploration could focus on vehicles and companion robots to help them travel and carry items from around the environment. And a combat-focused player can unlock better weapons, ammo, and gear first.
A few other minor things that have been completed in the last week:
Capacitor Charge ECS System
A capacitor system has been added for certain items in the game like the Scrap Launcher, allowing for supercapacitors to charge up and release a high amount of energy at once. This ties into the power management system and is being used by the new Scrap Launcher Turret.
Scrap Detail Lines to Turrets and Traps
A minor change showing the player the current stats of a turret or trap:
If you would like to know more about the project, get a key for playtesting, or follow future progress, join the Hostile Mars Discord:
https://discord.gg/Xd88eF8Teg
Take Care, -Jake
Devlog #15
Lots of Updates!
It has been a while since the last update but progress has not slowed down a bit! A few of the systems received revamps while the power management system was fully implemented.
A bunch of new items have been created and there have been big changes to the item progression in general. Enough overview, let's jump into it:
Power System Management
This is a major component of how everything works in Hostile Mars. Most things that use power can receive power through Power Distributors, which supply wireless power to nearby devices.
Power Distributors get the energy they distribute from Power Generators, Renewable Power Sources, and batteries.
Generators can transfer energy from fuels and batteries found in the world into usable power for the Distributors or Batteries.
Batteries can be built to store surplus energy to help out when power generation can not meet demand.
(Ignore design, this will be updated to look like not-programmer art)
Progression
A big rework of how the game progression works was a large focus of the last few months.
If you were unlucky enough to play the previous demo versions, you will know that the progression system was a multiple tech unlock wave-based system. I have shifted this to a technology skill branch system with separate Stages to separate the type of material that is most prevalent. For example, "Scrap" is the first that the player can unlock.
Technologies are unlocked by collecting data drives from the Paragon and the Legacy bots. The hard drives aren't in great shape, so multiple drives will be needed to decrypt complete files that provide new technologies to the player.
New Piece of Junk Weapons!
Environment Progress
A lot of work has been focused on the environment and creating interesting scenarios for the player when they feel the urge to explore the surface. Larger format hideouts are placed around the world and have interesting ways to provide additional materials to the player through puzzles, combat, and other trickery. Careful though, these junker-bots like to place traps.
Junkerbot Areas
The junkerbots have been multiplying and making new buildings and hideouts!
Tunneler
A lot of focus was put on creating out livable spaces prior to any human arrival, so it only makes sense that there are giant tunneling machines that are now only interested in hunting you down in large open areas of the map.
Pick Machine Leave it at a rock to harvest while you are away or standing nearby in T-pose.
Some more new items/models
Recycler - Turns junk into usable materials!
New Harvesting Tools!
Mounted Scrap Turret!
Assembler!
Scrap Battery Banks!
Explosives!
Ore Fields!
That's all for this week. If you want to support the game, join our Discord channel! https://discord.gg/Xd88eF8Teg
Take Care, -Jake
Devlog #14
REVAMPED AUTOMATION SYSTEM!
The past few weeks have brought many changes and upgrades to the existing automation system design.
The ability to directly interact with each delivery agent is no longer necessary and has been replaced with a delivery agent job system.
To create a new delivery route the player just defines a route in the new Delivery Route Planner and defines how many delivery agents will be assigned to that job. The automation system automatically assigns any unassigned agents to that job.
(If you are an avid fan of automation games, this replaces the conveyor belt system that is common in other games.)
This makes changing delivery routes extremely easy. Instead of removing a long conveyor belt and fitting it inside of a complex base, just reselect the pickup or dropoff location and the delivery bots automatically handle the pathfinding to an optimal route. This also means no more splitters or combiner blocks.
New Flying Delivery Bot
The starting delivery agent is the delivery bot you've seen frequently in past updates. These bots, though effective, can be limited in their pathing due to being a ground unit.
Though there are plenty of upgrades to apply to make them faster, smarter, and carry more units, ultimately they are bound to the limitations of navigating around ground buildings.
But.. don't worry about clogging your base with hundreds of delivery ground units because now there is a delivery flying unit that doesn't need ground! It transports your goods in whatever open space is available.
Player Combat Bots Revealed
I'm excited to finally announce the first screenshots of the player combat bots. These guys will fight incoming bots and patrol around the base to alert you of the location of any threats. They can also be assigned to follow you out and about in the harsh Mars environment.
The extra firepower will be needed on longer ventures away from Home Base. Just remember to keep them fully charged as there aren't any charging stations on Mars (yet).
MODS
Another BIG feature in the game that I am excited to finally announce is the MODS system. Every single building, trap, turret, and even delivery bot has the ability to add Modules. Mods are extra boosts to existing production, firepower, efficiency, and many other details of how each item works.
Each mod can be printed and then programmed in the mod programmer to your specific needs. Finding new Mod blueprints will enhance your selection on how to upgrade each building.
Some examples:
Turrets: Increased Range, Damage
Buildings: Decrease Production Cost, Decrease Time To Produce
Traps: Decrease Energy Consumption, Increase Damage
Another exciting reveal this week is the addition to Wave Leaders. After the first few initial waves, each wave of enemies will have a Wave Leader.
These guys are sort of a sub-boss and are the strongest unit in a non-boss wave.
Defeating them will give much more loot than a standard unit, but as you can imagine they are much tougher to bring down.
They also have the ability to boost the stats of enemies around them but usually are the last to reach your base. It's up to you if you want to take shots with a long-range rifle or venture out past the standard enemies to try and take them out before getting too close to the base.
PLAYTESTING NEXT WEEK!
As everything gets polished up for playtesting, I will be looking for more automation fans to play some of the game. We have a survey if you think you would add value to our playtesting. Fill out the survey here.
As we did last time, we will be monitoring the playtest live in some cases, as that is the most valuable way to learn how to make the game better. It was extremely successful last time around and we found a lot of things that needed to be modified to make the player experience better.
Thank you to everyone that playtested last time. If you playtested (and anyone that playtests moving forward) you will automatically get the build each playtesting cycle and be added to the Playtesters Channel on Discord. Your feedback is still extremely valuable. The live playtesting sessions will be reserved for fresh players each time that haven't experienced the game yet.
That's all for this week. If you want to support the game, join our Discord channel! https://discord.gg/aK8aVtY
