Heya everyone. I finally did another update for ICEwall, now that Skogdal demo has finally released ;) If you are interested in checking out my new game, you can see it here: Skogdal
For this update I have added something that's has been asked about a lot:
When you skip a draft, you Heal 1. Making it so you can alway Heal at least 1 between levels in a clutch.
Added player invulnerability when you have defeated all enemies in a level (so remaining shots can't hurt you), I'm surprised I haven't thought about this before, but as I saw it mentioned in a review, if felt like an obvious thing to add.
Re-enabled Holiday decorations, cheers!
Edit: Fixed a bug where sometimes changing FPS settings didn't save properly.
Happy Holidays everyone!
Celebrating Steam SHMUP FEST and 1 Year Anniversary with Trading Cards and more
Steam SHMUP FEST is upon us, celebrating this very cool genre of games, ICEwall has to be part of that!
The game is also nearing its 1 year anniversary, and to celebrate these occasions I have now added community items to the game:
Trading Cards to collect, based on in-game upgrade disks you will recognize
Badges to unlock
Backgrounds to unlock
Emoticons to unlock (one for each of the player ship of the game)
As my game is very niche, these items will also be fairly rare I suspect ;)
And finally, during the SHMUP FEST event, I have set the deepest discount on the game yet, -75% off! I don't plan to run discounts this low very often yet, so this is the best opportunity to grab the game if you haven't already!
See you around!
ICEwall won awards at Spillprisen 2022!
Spillprisen 2022 is a Norwegian game awards ceremony that ran last weekend. A ceremony celebrating the Norwegian games industry and games released in the year of 2022, a year we mostly had a large group of smaller and very varied types of indie games released.
ICEwall won big and went home with two awards: Game of the year Best game design
When I knew about the nominees I did dare to hope I was a contender for the award for Best game design, but also winning the Game of the year award was absolutely surprising and beyond expectations! Thank you everyone who has played my game and who has liked it!
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I am currently deep into my next game project. That project will be my main priority this year, and I even got funding to do it, which is awesome!
With that said, it has been some time now since I released and updated ICEwall. I still do occasionally make notes, doodles and work on a concept for a potentially new future ICEwall game, and I have an idea for what a continuation of the "ICEwall saga" can be. And as I now have some time off from having worked on it, I also feel it's easier to see the strengths and weaknesses of that game, and what I would like to improve on and do differently for a new game. The awards I now won has definitely stoked the flames and motivated me to want to do more, it's a lot of fun making these kinds of games!
I am making no promises, but maybe maybe maybe... stay tuned for my future games!
Version 1.3.5: Quitting Endless Mode uploads highscore
A small quality of life fix, requested by several players
Quitting Endless Mode now uploads a highscore (if it's better than previous), making it so players going infinite don't have to wait for enemies to kill them.
Version 1.3.4: Bug fixes
Bug fixes:
Fixed a bug where sometimes keyboard/gamepad menu navigation would not work in game mode/player selection screen (and for other menus too).
Fixed a very rare case bug where game could potentially crash if you finished arcade mode and had lost Steamworks connection.
(Maybe) Fixed lag spike happening for some players when the first enemy in a run has been destroyed, let me know if this is still an issue.
Version 1.3.3: Holidays are over
Very minor patch:
Took down Holiday decorations, gifts remain though!
Minor tweaks to music volumes, more consistent
Version 1.3.2: Hackware fire rate fixed for endless
Fixed a bug for endless mode post draft levels, where Hackware wouldn't update fire rate unless you opened the menu.
Fixed bug where multiple gift power ups could spawn on the screen at the same time, this might make it slightly more difficult to go infinite in endless mode.
Fixed a bug where you could lose a gift if you paused the game while waiting for the gift to fall down (after final enemy had been defeated).
Version 1.3.1: Fixed soft-lock bug with gifts
Fixed the bug with soft-lock happening on rare special cases with gifts. This was a hard to replicate bug. Please let me know if it happens again after this patch!
Sorry to everyone who had their runs ruined because of this bug!!!
Version 1.3.0: Holiday Gifts update
Hello everyone, tomorrow Steam Winter Sale begins, and to celebrate that along with the upcoming holidays, I have a new update: "Holiday Gifts"! Containing some new content and fixes:
New upgrade family: Gifts, with 3 upgrades in total, each of these gives enemies a % chance to spawn a gift pickup when they are destroyed, which boosts your stats if you manage to collect them. Similar powerups in classic shoot'em ups.
Added a (very short, 0.1s) cooldown to blue reflecting enemies, so that if you hit them with rapid multishots, they don't spawn a wall of projectiles back.
Updated health bar, and added health text in menu, to easier see what your numbers are when you have crazy amounts of health.
Updated sound effect when Chaji Bimu is at max bonus charges.
Decorated the main menu, just in time for the Holidays, phew!
This will be my last update for a while (besides bug fixes or similar). I am really glad to see so many players have played my game, and a lot of youtube videos have been made. A huge thank you to all content creators who have played my game! Currently I am well beyond 1000 copies sold, more than 600 players have completed Normal draft mode, and more than 400 have played Endless mode. Not bad!
Happy Holidays everyone!
Version 1.2.3: Misc bug fixes and slight endless boss health adjustments
This is a smaller update with minor bug fixes and some adjustments to Endless Mode boss health. The bugs have mostly been smaller issues, but things that have bothered me nonetheless.
Tiger, Death and ROTN bosses have less health in Endless Mode, especially noticeable on level 10.
Fixed UI bug where one UI button or spinning upgrade disk would remaing selected even if you hovered over others with mouse. This was very visible on youtube videos and streams, and has not really been an issue, but has bothered me for a long time. Finally fixed!
Fixed sound bug where sometimes game over sound would trigger many times at the same time, sounding very bad and loud.
Fixed sound bug where lazer enemies would spam sound effects.
I have a small content update planned before the Holidays, and that is the last content update planned for now, I might do more in the future. I have now started work on my next game and will focus on that going forward.
