These new changes apply to the demo as well as the early access version. The early access version will have "save games" activated, and that's mostly the only difference it has with the demo. The early access version will release this week, august 2.
New:
1. Micro enemies: a new type of enemy that comes in groups, its a bit slower and smaller in size than the normal enemies.
Improved:
1. Sprites in fog: now the sprites of the enemies and terrain appear below the fog border, they don't just appear out of nowhere when entering the field of view. 2. More starting weapons: when you start a new game, you have more weapons to choose from. 3. Tutorials: some text where changed to make it easier to understand. 4. Exploration start enemies: no enemies will surround you at the start of the sector exploration. 5. Sector walls: In smaller sectors, there are lower chances that walls that are too big will appear. 6. Recovering employee: an employee that recovers from unconsciousness will automatically recover his old role, no need to assign it again.
Fixed:
1. Explosions: some explosion didn't disappear, just kept looping in an animation. 2. Too many Shooting enemies: in lower danger level sectors, there where too many shooting enemies, now they don't appear on lower level sectors. 3. Ladder problem: when the explorer used the ladder to enter and get out of the robot, the second time doing this made the explorer freeze in place, unable to move. 4. Freeze: some weapons that had the freeze effect did not freeze enemies at all. 5. Un-freeze animation: enemies that got freezed did not recover their normal animation after un-freezing. 6. Dodge: sometimes you could make the explorer go abnormally faster by holding the dodge button.
Early Access release: 2 of August.
The release date of the Early Access version will be: Wednesday 2 of August.
The main difference with the demo version will be that the game will have auto saves, activated when entering/leaving the base and the planet map, so you can save your progress and grow your company through many days/sessions of play.
Tell your friends, add to wishlist and prepare that wallet to buy it on release date!.
New demo, better tutorials, and bug fixes.
New DEMO version 66 includes these updates, as always feedback on the demo is very welcome:
1 IMPROVED:
1. Danger: the danger level of sectors of the starting area was reduced to make playing easier to learn. 2. Contextual actions: now Actions will appear only when they can be activated. They won't appear when there is no valid target for an action. 3. Top bar: replaced some texts with icons. 4. Stop button: removed the stop button from the exploration screen in an effort to simplify things. 5. Tutorials: improvements, new tutorials and previous texts where reduced to simplify things. Also I hid/locked parts of the game to make learning easier and not overwhelm the player. 6. Robot ladder: added a small animation to give better feedback of the explorer entering the robot using the ladder. 7. Terrain effects: now they get activated in sectors with higher levels. This makes the beginning of the game less overwhelming, easier to get into.
2. FIXED:
1. Un-pausable enemies: the enemies at the beginning of the game didn't pause when they should. 2. Job tooltips: sometimes the job tooltips of a planet map sector didn't show. 3. Fullscreen: the game scales up to fill the screen when choosing fullscreen. 4. Weapon box: sometimes the weapon box could be opened from far away without touching it. 5. Terrain effects: speed terrain effects did not trigger correctly sometimes.
New version (v65) WASD controlls activated!
These are the changes in this version 65:
NEW:
1. WASD: you can now use the "wasd" and arrow keys to move the explorer in the exploration screen. 2. Weapons: shooting weapons is now automatic, no need to press a button to shoot or attack. 3. Exploration panels: now you can unlock panels in the exploration screen by building items in the base workshop and transfering them to the robot. This way the UI is not so overwhelming at the begining of the game. 4. Base icons: new icons for the service buttons.
IMPROVED:
1. End day: the "end day" button is deactivated when you open a window. That way you can only end the day when the news section is visible, when no window is obstructing it. 2. Roles UI: improved the buttons of "role" assignment and "person file" to make interactions more clear and user friendly. 3. Enemy waves: balanced enemy waves so that surviving a low danger sector is not so hard. 4. Day bar UI: the duration of the day is more visible by changing the bar background color. 5. Tutorials: tweaked tutorials, added new tutorials and changed the text to better help the player understand the game.
FIXED:
1. Un-pausable enemies: sometimes the enemies continued to move and attack when the game paused and you couldn't move, so they killed you easely. 2. New game crash: the game doesn't crash anymore when starting a new game through the menu or the game over window. 3. Employee role: when clicking the face button of a role in the role managment window, it will select thar role card. 4. Exploration tutorial: fixed the "go to the planet map" tutorial, it could be activated without entering the robot, making it impossible to continue playing since "planet map" button didn't appear. 5. Workshop buildables: fixed a bug that created items with a default quantity of 0, which could't be used anywhere. 6. Buildable item button: Previously the "buildable item" button did not register a click when you clicked the sybol image, this happened in the workshop and lab.
New version (v64): changed the starting location when exploring + more.
V64: NEW:
1. New sound fx in different parts of the game. 2. Robot start: when exploring, now the robot will start in a random position. This add more variety of how each sector is explored.
IMPROVED:
1. Shooting enemies: No shooting enemies appear in the first sector you visit, now its not impossible to survive. 2. Enemy waves: more enemies at the lower danger sectors to make the game more exciting. 3. Enemy wave UI bar: the enemy wave bar changes color when a wave is active and inactive. 4. Starting weapon: the explorer will take a random weapon from the robot storage the first time he explores a sector after leaving a base. 5. Invented weapon dropdown: added more tooltips and better text to make it all easier to understand. 6. Tutorials: tweaks to the tutorials to make them easier to understand. 7. Story event: no story event will appear in the first sector you visit, to make the game simpler and easier to learn. 8. UI: tweaked design, window sizes, positions, colors, to make it better. Now I use a grid to position elements. 9. FPS: better frames per second when a lot of enemies appear on screen.
FIXED:
1. Story event effect: The face of the selected employee did not display correctly. 2. Weapon box: when you clicked the weapons box and then away from it, the game un-paused when it shouldn't. Also it didn't open the weapons selection window when you clicked the box again. 3. Death: The explorer could not die when running out of health. 4. Planet sector info: now only discovered sectors will show their info when selected. 5. Market: when changing the target of a transaction, the selected items did not reset. 6. Explorer Depth: if the explorer is far away, it shows the sprite behind the enemy, and if its closer to the camera, it shows it above the enemy. 7. Explorer unconscious error: fixed an error when the explorer was unconscious and you returned to the planet map. 8. Depth effect: sometimes objects didn't show behind other objects when they where farther away. 9. Opening weapons box: sometimes the box did not open when clicking it. 10. Invented weapon: when the weapon was set to explode on hit, it didn't work correctly.
Updated tutorials, an easier way to get into the game.
One of the most common feedback I got was that the tutorials where too long or the game too complex to learn, so I changed some things to correct that.
I changed the start of the game to make it faster to get into the action, so you don't have to wait much to start playing. You start in the exploration screen now, not inside a base.
Also changed the tutorials to make them shorter, making them appear only when needed.
Let me know if these changes fixes that.
New demo available now!. LOTS of changes!.
After many months of work, a new demo is ready for you to play. I release it now so I can get as much feedback as possible, in order to get the early access version ready. The only difference between those 2 version is that in the demo, saving is not available.
So please give positive and negative feedback so I can change or fix what you don't like.
There are so many changes compared to the last demo, I won't write all of them, but let me show you the most important ones:
NEW:
1. Weapon inventor: now you can create your own weapons by building and mixing different weapon properties. 2. Exploration job: this new exploration job gives you a reward after exploring a number of specific sectors. 3. Sound FX: added new sound effects. 4. Story Events: when you explore, you can encounter story events. In them you can do actions which have positive or negative effects. 5. Needs research: added a small sprite to the resources that need research, to make them popup and give them more importance. 6. Day progress: added a visual bar that shows the progress of the day when you move your robot on the planet map screen. 7. Log: added the log to the exploration screen, it shows you some of the things that happen while you explore in case you miss something. 8. New jobs system: it allows for many different types of jobs and activities in different sector. When a job is complete, it gives a reward. 9. Dead explorer tutorial: when the explorer dies, there is a new tutorial explaining that you need a new employee to fill that role in order to keep exploring. 10. Unconscious: when a person's health goes to 0, he gets unconscious, which is a new property. He won't be able to do any activities until he recovers after a few days. 11. Vitality: a new property that tells you how many times a person can recover from near death experiences. 12. Lab icon: an icon for the research lab, it matches with another small icon that refer to items that must be researched in the lab. 13. Pilot role: the person assigned in the pilot role will use the property "pilot" to determine the speed of travel on the planet map. 14. Tiles discovered bar: a new visual bar that indicates how many tiles are left to discover in a sector. 15. News Day indicator: added a new entry in the news section to show what day it is. That way the news will be separated by day and will be easier to navigate. 16. Enemy item drops: now some enemies drop items like health, oxygen, energy and repair to the terrain protective tool. 17. Menu buttons: added a new game and credits button to the menu. 18. Danger levels: now there are higher danger levels, when a sector is higher than 8, the danger bar turns red to convey an extreme difficulty. 19. Market: new items in the market. 20. Enemy HP: next to the danger level you can see the health points of all enemies in the present enemy wave. 21. Weapon upgrades: now the upgrades box will show options that are between 0,5 and 1 in value, so there will be a lot more variation and the decision about which option to choose will be a bit more interesting. 22. Map Events: events now also appear in the planet map when you travel, here you can also choose which person's properties to use, where in the sector events, only the explorer's are used. 23. Faces: new employee faces.
IMPROVED:
1. Current effects: improved the display of the current active effects when you explore, so its clearer what is the source of each effect. 2. Enemy's speed: increased the small enemy's speed to make the combat more exciting. 3. Market pistol: added the pistol to the market, so when you run out of weapons, you can still buy the most basic one. 4. Effects with timer: changed the label for some terrain effects so its easier to understand that they get activated each x number of seconds. 5. Robot movement: the robot movement on the planet map is now smoother. 6. Explorer UI: the exploration screen will show the face of the assigned explorer, and some icons to explain the different colored bars at the top. The explorer face will also indicate the state of the explorer if he gets unconscious, if he dies, and if there is no employee with the explorer role assigned. 7. Shooting enemies: balanced the amount of shooting enemies depending on the danger of the sector. 8. Terrain damage: Now the terrain damages a protective tool instead of the health of the player. When the tool reaches a value of 0, the terrain damages the health directly. 9. Market protective tools: the tools that protect your from various effects (like poison) are cheaper to buy in the base's market. 10. Terrain damage and oxygen consumption: is now more balanced, it does not kill you so quickly, instead, if you are not careful, in the long term it can become a problem. 11. Explorer inventory list: can be scrolled up and down in the exploration screen. 12. Short term goals: now there are goals active at the same time in the planet map, so you have a bit more options to choose where is best to move your robot. 13. Weapons reset: now, instead of loosing all your equipped weapons when going back to a base, you just un-equip them and return them to your robot storage, ready to be used again when you explore. 14. Explorer sprite collisions: the explorer collision box was reduced to better match its sprite. 15. Terrain detection: the place in the sprite of the explorer that detects the terrain he is walking on is now placed at the bottom of the sprite and not its center. 16. Saving: now the game saves on the map screen too (not in demo). 17. Lab and workshop: now they show the amount of unlockables, but do not reveal what they actually are, that's a surprise. 18. Terrain types: now, lower danger sectors have only 1 type of terrain, this makes things simpler for the player to survive there. 19. FPS: when exploring a sector, now there are more fps when there are lots of aliens on screen. 20. Weapons: weapons tweaks and balancing. 21. Enemies: now there are enemies as soon as the explorer goes down the ladder to explore a sector, this makes the exploration more exciting from the start. 22. Tutorials: now they are shorter, more optional (just click the ? sign if you want to see one) and include animated arrows to point to important things.
FIXED:
1. Enemy's paths: small enemies did not want to go trough narrows spaces, now they will follow the explorer wherever he goes. 2. Knowledge: the "knowledge" property appeared as if it needed research in the lab, but it should not need that. 3. Terrain effects: the effects activated when an explored touched a terrain where not working correctly. 4. Explorer Tutorial: when the explorer made an evasion movement and a tutorial appeared at the same time, the explorer kept moving when he should have stopped, sometimes making him go outside of the screen and turning the game unplayable. 5. Weapons reset: when returning to base, some powerups did not reset. 6. Market weapons: buying weapons and transferring them directly to people is now forbidden. 7. Market selling: fixed a glitch that appeared when trying to see the robot storage when in selling mode. 8. Market buying: you could buy a bigger amount than the maximum allowed of certain items, now the excess is sent to the storage of the robot. 9. Sector walk speed: in the exploration screen, each time you entered a tile the speed of walk changed a different amount when it should have been constant. 10. Planet map movement: sometimes the path-finding of the robot did not work correctly, making the robot leave the map, or take weird paths towards the desired destiny. 11. Floor resource UI: when taking a floor resource, it showed +0 when it should show the real quantity of taken resources. 12. Glitched projectiles: fixed the melee punch and flamethrower remaining on screen after firing. 13. Evasion movement: fixed an issue that made the evasion movement jump too far ahead. Also small attackers cannot harm you anymore when doing this move. 14. Invisible rewards: the resource that dropped an attacker after being killed was invisible.
Dev logs and new versions frequency.
In case you where wondering about of the lack of updates, since I realized that making many small updates didn't attract that much attention, I decide to instead work on bigger updates so each new update on the game has more changes and new things, maybe that way I can gather more attention.
That means I have not stopped working on this game, there are many new things coming on the next update, but I'll upload a new version after a few weeks more.
Thanks for your attention.
Demo coming very soon!
There will be a playable demo you can try very soon, probably available when the Next Fest starts, so stay tuned. The only difference with the full version is that the demo has no save game capabilities, all the rest of the features should be the same.
Here are the things I worked on recently (some of these will not be available in the demo):
NEW:
Starting Weapon: when the explorer leaves the robot, he will start with a pistol (if there is one available in the robot storage), that way he will not be defenceless from the start of the exploration.
Research needed: when you take a new resource, its tooltip will show that it needs lab research in order to discover what it is and what it unlocks. When you research the item, the tooltip will reveal its true description.
IMPROVED:
Resources extracted: all resources extracted by the explorer will be automatically transfered to the robot once he goes back into it.
Introduction text: I divided the introduction text into 2 separate windows to make it easier to read.
FIXED:
Floor resources: the resources that appear in the floor of the explored sector where invisible, now the are visible.
Dead explorer weapons: when an explorer died, the new assigned explorer kept all the weapons of the dead explorer, not anymore.
Resources quantities: the lab did not detect resources quantities, showing always 0 when you actually had more numbers.
Destructable objects: you no longer cancel the extraction of a resource when you also want to attack at the same time.
Beta Test Ended.
Now that the beta test is over, you can tell me what you thought while you played it, what things you want changed, what new things you wish to see added, what bugs you found, anything is welcome.
