Operation Outsmart
Thank you for being an alpha tester!
We have now taken the demo off, but we may re-activate the demo for the London Games Festival as we have been fortunate enough to been picked for the Official Selection.
We will be doing another round of testing in 2-3 months time so please keep an eye out :)
If you wanted to play the demo but couldn't, please DM Seyed on Operation Outsmart Discord server and he will send you a direct download link.
Operation Outsmart Alpha is here!
We're so excited to announce that Operation Outsmart alpha is finally here!
We'll be doing community alpha testing for 10 days starting this Friday. We really need your feedback, so please sign up for the playtest if you want to help us make a great game with you!
You will soon receive instructions on how to download the game and provide feedback 😊
Sign up for alpha testing now: https://forms.gle/Ey8jxDEeSqCtkRfZ6
Operation Outsmart Alpha is Coming Soon!
We were silent for quite a while, but it was all for a good reason. We took your feedback on the pre-alpha demo and poured our best into making Operation Outsmart the game that you'd enjoy every second of playing it.
The alpha is significantly improved compared to pre-alpha demo with so many added features. The Steam page has been completely made over with new screenshots and GIFs. There is now a compelling story in the game, plenty of VFX, gorgeous UI, beautiful koala models, top-notch sound effetcs, and most importantly an incredibly engaging physics-based gameplay with the building mechanics and the combat.
The list of new features is too long, but I will summarise the key ones here:
🎮 Gameplay
- The alpha campaign mode now has 2 main quests (Ram the Minions, Farm Miniboss) and 2 side quests (Bowling, Hammer).
- Koala interactions support a complex system based on who you've interacted with, what dialogues you've had and what quests you've done.
- Koalas and minions passively mumble things in speech bubble format.
- Minions drop XP orbs. Collect them to level up and gain skill points to unlock abilities from the skills tree.
- Your builds receives damage upon impact and parts eventually come off.
- Minions drop metal resources. You can collect them and mix at the Foundry to create new alloys with new properties, and then use them to reinforce your builds.
- New weapons added: Hammer and Cannon
- Physics has been significantly improved.
- There is now a miniboss at the end of 2nd main quest.
- Koala now have unique passive abilities when placed on your build
- Campaign mode now supports a save/load system.
🎨 Art
- There are two 2D animated cut-scenes in the alpha now.
- The world has been entirely remade with plenty of new Props and 3D models for the world assets including Tungala vilalge and the Farm.
- There is a new player character model
- All koala models have been remade
- New UI for QuestLog, Skills tree, Journal, Foundry, and Weapons
- New 3D models for weapons
- New animations for the player character
- New animations for the minions
- New animations for koalas
- New buildstation props
- Additional koala headshots
- New texture for the basic block
- New art assets for the loading screen
🔥 VFX
- Individual part attachment effects
- Particle effects on wheels when driving
- Real-time snow deformation
- Day/night cycle
- Camera shake and camera lag during driving
- Combat VFX for minions on receiving damage, dying, and shooting
- Combat VFX for all weapons
- Explosions and snowball hit VFX
- Bomb target carpets, haystack and windmill explosions for the farm boss
- Personalised VFX for each koala when mounting on weapons
- Footstep dusts for player and koalas
- Smoke and spark for damaged parts
- Explonential fog
- Volumetric clouds
- New water shader
- New torch fire
- Improved snow
📔 Narrative
- New interaction dialogues with all koalas after every major event
- Speech bubbles for the koalas at Tungala
- Speech bubbles for the minions during combat
- An implicit koala relationship system where your relationship status for each koala changes based on your gameplay choices
- A nickname system where koalas call you differently on your relationship status with them
- You choose between Changu or Twigg for recruitment
- You choose between Jinla and Iggy for recruitment at the Hammer side quest
🔊 Sound Effects
- New ambience sounds for day, night and various weathers
- New sounds for parts attachments
- Sounds for weapon firing
- XP Orb collection
- Weapon toggling on and off
- New player and koala footsteps on dirt, snow and wood
- New sounds for various minion animations and actions
- Sounds for the farm miniboss
- Getting on and off the build
- Various collisions and impact sounds
- Various explosions sound effects
- Level up, quest start and quest complete
We'll be at Pocket Gamer Connects in London on 14th and 15th Feb. We'll be participating at the Big Indie Pitch and are having a stand at the Big Indie Zone. Please feel free to come and say hi.
Lastly, we'll be doing alpha testing in March so please signup here and help us make Operation Outsmart a great game!
Sign up for alpha testing: http://eepurl.com/hD7BtP
Demo Update Patch 4
Nonetheless, please stay tuned for an entirely new demo coming out soon...👀
Patch notes:
🛡️ Training Level:
- Dialogues changed to better fit the training mode.
- Landscape improved to better guide through the training as well as reduce the brightness intensity.
- Lowpoly clouds removed.
- Fixes to the foliage.
- Water shader improved.
🛠️ Build:
- Steering joint entirely refactored for easier handling.
- Arrow on Steering Joint and Motor indicates the direction of movement.
- Auto-select operable parts on placement.
- Improved physics.
- Visual effects on parts attachment.
⚔️ Combat:
- Trails added to the ballista arrows.
- Arrows now stick on objects and penetrate snow.
💚 Misc:
- You can now open the Quest Log by pressing Q.
Operation Outsmart is going down the chaotic and funny route!
About two months ago, we released a very basic demo to gather some preliminary feedback on the theme and feel of the game. Your feedback has been the best thing that happened to us. We realised what's working and what isn't.
The most common feedback was that the game didn't have enough clarity. There was a lot of confusion of what Operation Outsmart was about. After many extensive team meetings, I think we have nailed what Operation Outsmart is going to be: An open-world physics sandbox RPG where you build wacky machines and recruit wacko koalas.
We’re now going with a funny and chaotic theme instead of cute and wholesome. Also the game is now more RPG than adventure. Some of the key features will be:
1. You can now take down minions with three different weapon types: range, melee, explosives.
2. Minions will be ragdoll simulated on impact.
3. Minions drop metals, where you can collect them to reinforce your build.
4. Minions drop XP orbs which will be used to upgrade the koala stats and unlock abilities from skills tree.
5. Recruited koalas will have 3 stats: dexterity, agility, and strength.
6. There will be a health/damage system to your build, so your build takes damage and falls apart.
I will be announcing more features in the coming weeks!
We have also created new capsule arts to reflect the new direction the game is taking. However as always, we want to hear your thoughts. So please join our Discord and chat directly with the developers, sharing your awesome ideas and suggestions. We want to build the game with you!
Demo Update Patches 1, 2 and 3
Update Patch 2: 31 Aug 2021
Update Patch 3: 10 Sep 2021
Hello! I hope you're having a wonderful time. Here are the notes for the first, second and third update patches of Operation Outsmart's demo, all compiled in one update.
Thanks to your wonderful feedback (thank you dearly for taking your time to write them), we were able to fix existing bugs and add extra features to significantly improve the experience.
However it goes without saying that there are additional features coming in for future patches, and we can always use your feedback to improve the playing experience, so please, do notify us of whatever you have in mind to make the game better.
New patch includes:
Build Station
- Added a collision between the camera and the ground to avoid 'going in the ground'.
- Removed collision between camera and build parts.
- Extended the camera zoom to be able to zoom out even further.
- The quest build used for the first mission now spawns when first accessing the build station.
- The quest build is now included as the first item in your saved machines (only for players who have not saved anything previously).
- Added Kuma - another Koala with much higher stats.
- Removed block bearing from the build parts - was previously included with no description.
- Reduced the time it takes for the information pop-up to appear when hovering over different parts and buttons in the build station.
- New Erase Mode for rapid part deletion
- Control panel drops down on placing Operables
- A Grabbed Part UI to indicate what part is being grabbed
- New Control icon for the ballista
- New icon for the Engineering category button
- Improved tutorial text
- The bend and ballista alignment fixed
Driving
- Added a UI for weapons (only if activate-able - i.e mounted by a Koala) appearing in the bottom left corner that shows:
a) The weapon in use
b) The Koala mounted on the weapon
c) The stats of the mounted Koala (strength increases projectile speed, agility decreases cooldown time, dexterity decreases randomness of the projectile
around the crosshair). - Dexterity effects not included in the current patch of the Demo
d) The cooldown of the weapon when used.
e) The activation key of the weapon.
- Removed collision between camera and machine parts (can now aim better when zooming in).
- The physics is significantly improved. Explosions and jitters are much less likely to happen
- You can now press ` to re-assign keys on the go without going back to Build Station
Koalas and Player Character
- Added the arrow keys for movement, can now use both WASD and up, down, left, right arrow keys.
- Koalas now have permanent dialogues - can talk to them indefinitely even after exhausting their chat.
- Kuma's headshot tweaked.
- Improved Koala interaction UI
- Choose dialogue options with W/S
- Only important dialogues show marker
- Marker is now easier to see
Options
- Fixed the bug where the resolution setting was not working.
- Graphics settings now alters extra graphic features for performance issues.
- Custom graphics options have now been added
Tutorials
- Added a small tutorial to help players learn functionalities of the build station step by step. This can be toggled by checking the 'on' or 'off' checkbox in the small tutorial panel on the bottom left corner of the build station.
- Improved the Station Tutorial to include less text and be more informative.
- Added more insight to the Character Tutorial.
- When on foot and a machine exists, added a panel informing players they can press R to recall their machine closer to them.
- The first mission tutorial panels remain even after initiating battle.
World
- Checkpoint lights added to the obstacle track
- Minor decorations to the world
- A polaroid with storyboard images is added
Misc
- Lowered the 2 upper minions on the towers.
- Fixed a spelling mistake in one of the panels
- Added an 'invisible roof' to the campaign map to prevent players from falling out.
- Added an 'invisible box' to the sandbox map to prevent players from falling out.
- Cursor fixed to be a hardware cursor rather than software. This makes the cursor movement independent of in-game frame-rate.
- The resolution 1280x720 now stays fullscreen.