Hey folks! It's been a while but I've been working with my porting partner, Polycrunch, to get Power of Ten on all consoles! They're coming out on March 20th 2024! Check out the links below for the consoles you own:
Second thing is the game is getting an update! It's not a huge update but it's a bit of a cleanup of a lot of little things to bring it inline with what's releasing on the consoles.
Quality of Life
Changed how virus messaging works (Pauses game now but also doesn't break upgrades that apply the virus)
Swapping languages no longer needs a full game restart
All languages have basically complete string translations
The game has been heavily optimized for lower end systems
Leaderboard updates
Changes to Leaderboard scoring. Leaderboard scoring no longer goes to a negative number. There's a set pool of points that you "lose" as time passes but you cannot get negative scores. I think the negative scores are pretty unfun so I wanted to flip this around.
Leaderboards can go back to view several older boards now
Bug Fixes
Fix for Starformer achievement not triggering
Fixes for several crashes
Fixes for rebinding keys leading to weird unplayable scenarios
New Project: Neon Auto Party
https://store.steampowered.com/app/2679840/Neon_Auto_Party/ I've been working on a project while the porting to consoles was happening. It's getting very close to a presentable state and I'm excited to show it to you. I'll be opening up the game for beta testing soon so if your interested the best way to stay informed is to join Discord. Check out the page and please wishlist the game if it seems interesting!
I wasn't sure this feature was going to get in but it's here! I've been wanting to do Daily runs for a long time and I've finally got them in the game (With help from Nev who's porting the games to consoles).
Each day, if you've completed the tutorial, you'll be able to embark on a run with a specific ship and a unique spin on the game (ie unlimited ammo or up to 4 weapons can be equipped). Compete with others from Steam for the top spot on the leaderboard!
Additionally any run you do at Surge 1+ will be ranked on the Weekly leaderboards. You get a pretty heavy bonus for doing higher Surge levels so try to climb those Surge levels!
Quality of Life
Text scaling has been adjusted slightly so that more can fit on the screen (Mostly doing this for Console port purposes)
Adjusted end game score displays so that text doesn't bleed off the edge of the screen
Bug fixes
Fixed a crash when drawing achievements on the post game screen
Fixed a crash when dying with stun effect
Soundtrack is ready for purchase!
Many have asked and we've finally got the soundtrack ready for purchase. Chris Inston went back and crafted stand alone tracks for you to enjoy the music of the game.
Help test Leaderboards (Windows only)! Daily and Weekly are coming soon!
We've got a fun new feature coming soon with Leaderboards. The next update will introduce Daily and Weekly leaderboards and you can try them now on the 'leaderboards' beta branch on Steam (Windows only). Here's how they work:
Daily Leaderboards
Every day a new preset challenge will be presented to you. You'll have a specific ship selected and a specific set of rules for that run that can either make it more challenging or a bit crazy!
Weekly Leaderboards
Any run above Surge 0 will be automatically added to the Weekly Leaderboards. The higher the surge level you try the more points you get at the end!
I've created a specific scoring system to prioritize speed and cleanness of a run. Check out the scoring in the image below.
Would love to get some people trying this out before it goes out to everyone! Come get your practice in now.
Bug fixes 1.3.2
Fixed a bug with Slicmorph cooldown not resetting when switching weapons
Fixed an exploit with Armor salvage stations and disabled ships (You can still do this but just not an unlimited number of times)
Fixed a bug with Dark Web Upgrade where you could trigger it infinite amount of times.
Attempting to fix some bugs with progression saving crashing the game.
1.3.1 Small updates
Fixed a bug where the cursor would disappear after sitting on a menu screen for a while
Fixed a crash with old saved games and the latest version
Added a message that pops up when you get a virus so it's very obvious
Added some new localized strings
Fixed an issue with Steam api now working
Update 1.3: Meta progression with in-game achivement system + more
We've really blown out the achievements this update! That and much more in this update. I'm really excited to hear what you think!
In Game Achievements & Unlock System
For a while now people have noted a lack of "meta progression" in the game and while there is some it's rather opaque and very light. I wanted to solve a couple of issues with this update:
Give players mid range goals while playing each run (besides just completing it)
Make the progression leveling system more transparent
So I built the achievement system directly into the game and gave it an interface where players can clearly see what they can unlock and how far along they are in the progression leveling. I'm also hoping dying in the game feels a little less bad because you have a much better chance of unlocking a new upgrade or item for your next run!
New Mechanic: Virus
I've added a sneaky new mechanic to incentivize high risk/high reward gameplay. The basic idea is if you contract this virus you'll die in any one hit but you can remove it by powering up 3 shield structures. There's a handful of ways to get this right now but I don't want to spoil them for you and some ways to flip it into a positive!
Core Content
Added a few dozen upgrades and weapons in this update, one for nearly every single achievement in the game. There's quite a few other updates:
About a dozen more ship theme unlockables (exp points needed to level up has been squished a bit to compensate)
Doubled the number of ship trails unlockables
Rescue mission has been reworked entirely
New type of rescue mission will be more regularly found in star systems.
Gear containers now have a new tier but I'm not gonna say how you get them...
Asteroids have a very small chance of breaking off a very valuable (and fast) chunk
Completely reworked a few "Starter" (Yellow) upgrades. I felt these were a little bland for my initial idea of them being the key upgrade you "build around". Most of the boring ones have been reworked into something that feels a bit more active or has impact on your decisions throughout the game.
Note about new upgrades: I really tried to focus upgrades around building synergies between things that are typically not all that good. Frost effects are pretty ineffective alone but nice to have attached to other things so introduced upgrades that play off of this aspect.
Quality of Life Updates
If upgrades have an effect after a certain number of actions they will show the current count on the icon.
Balance
Swtcbade's starting weapon was strong all the way until the end game. I don't think that's very fun design so I've replaced it with something considerably weaker though still arguably more powerful than a lot of other ship's starting weapons.
Tac T Ion's ability is really easy to snowball and at full power you could get an insane amount of drones out with the cooldown reduction. Picking up salvage will reduce the cooldown by half as much and the base cooldown of the ability has been increased 1 second.
Bug fixes
Fixed an issue where the UI would disappear in the tutorial
Fixed some issues with save files saving items that shouldn't be
Fixed some issues with sprite display in text
Fixed a crash with circular ruin puzzle
What's next?
I'm winding down what I'll call "active development" on the game. With this update I feel pretty good about the amount of content and replayability the game has. I have a new project that I'm spinning up and you may hear about that soon. I'll also be listening and always trying to fix any bugs that come up. I can't say for certain if I'll do any more sizable updates but I may return every once in a while to introduce some new elements to shake things up or maybe I'll decide to do some DLC content down the road.
I'm also happy to announce I've signed an agreement to port the games to Switch, Playstation and Xbox! I'm really excited I'll get to see the game on consoles, it's like a dream come true for me!
Test Version 1.3 up on beta branch (Windows only)
I've pushed a new version to the beta branch (beta-1.3). This a large update and I'd love to get some feedback and testing in before I push it out to everyone so if you have a chance to please try it out.
Here's some of the highlights (detailed patch notes to come with the release):
In game achievement system & Meta progression
You can now view achievements in game AND almost all achievements have an unlock you can target by completing them. This adds a large amount of upgrades and weapons into the game that you can progressively unlock.
Rework of rescue events
Those derelict ships you find in the system and deliver to dropships have been significantly reworked to add a bit more decision making to the game. Would love to hear what people think of this!
Lots of other small changes as well.
Hope to hear what you think of this update!
Minor bug fixes
Fixed a bug where a player who played the game a while ago would have trouble starting the game now.
Fixed a bug where the game could save without the player object existing and create a bad save file.
Fixed a bug with upgrades that trigger at the start of a system triggering when a game is loaded.
Also increased the Mac OS target to 10.14. Hoping this will fix things for the players who had crashes on older versions of Mac OS but I'm not 100% confident with this as I think this might be a Steamworks issue at it's root and Steam itself doesn't support versions that old.
Update (1.2.0) Ship ability rework + alternative font
Ability Charges + Ship Ability Rework
Really excited about this change. Ship abilities have been a bit inconsistent in their designs. Divider felt like it struck a good balance between utility/damage and skillful usage with it's cooldown reduction but a lot of abilities felt very very basic (Burrl). Felt a bit too impactful either early on or later but didn't have a good scaling mechanic. So I've spent some time to implement the 'Ability Charge' mechanic. Each ship has a different way of gaining these charges which often involve offensive usage of the ship's ability.
Here's an example of Foxxl's
All ships have progressive power gains as you gain charges and most of them have an "ultimate" unlock once you hit a very high amount of charges. My hope is this encourages more interesting usage of abilities and a much higher risk/reward factor to each use.
Content Additions
2 new weapons
Balance changes
Player ships
All ships turn speed has been increased. This is just a general game feel thing I want to try. I think it's a bit more fun if you have slightly more control over your ship and increasing the turn speed overall gives you a lot more control.
Starformer's ability encourages sitting still so to help with this it's also getting an additional max armor and faster turn speed. To offset this it's max speed has been reduced significantly.
Items
Starter weapons overshadowing other options a bit. I want to make them a little less powerful so that other weapons are more appealing.
Single laser does not have any variance in it's angle but has about 20% less range and shoots slightly slower.
Ion Splitter does not have any variance in it's angle but has about 20% less range and shoots slightly slower.
Changed how weapons randomly generate: Basically very strong weapons will have a bit less of a chance to appear early. Random weapons will also try to give you a weapon that's different than the types you currently have equipped, that way it's easier to take advantage of excess ammo by switching weapons.
Enemies
Some enemy projectiles are a bit slower but most of them fire a bit more frequently as well. Trying to make the game a bit more transparent so slowing projectiles down a bit helps with the second to second legibility of the game.
It was a bit to easy to get multiple healers + shielding ships in a wave that caused them to become incredibly hard to kill. It's now only possible to spawn one healer or shield ship per wave.
Armor pods on final encounter can drop more armor boxes to help you sustain during that fight.
Quality of Life Improvements
Big one here is you can now switch to a non-pixel font! This was a LOT of work, I basically had to rewrite most of the UI to accommodate this but I do understand that the pixel font is not super readable for everyone and I want the game to be as accessible as possible. Along with this I've added Ukrainian to the list of languages the game is translated into!
You can hover over your ability/item/weapons in game to get a tool tip description
While focusing on weapon drop it will also show a the tool tip of the currently equipped weapon to help you compare
When a weapon does 0 damage (fire/acid/frost weapons) it will not show a "hit" effect when it comes in contact with something
Lots of cleanup/improvements to menu buttons
Post game score screen redesigned to overlap less often
Ship selection screen redesigned to include details about the ship's ability
Lots of enemy projectiles have a more prominent "flash" frame which should help with visibility of these projectiles.
Bug Fixes
Fixed an issue with movement that prevented full speed movement in certain situations (Twin stick controls on K/M going sideways)
Fixed a bug where players would go underneath buff stations
Fixed a bug that caused creature inside final boss to "sweep" the area with it's beam, which was nearly impossible to avoid.
fixed a bunch of hard coded strings for translations
What's next?
I think I've got one more large update in me for this game. I really want to add some mid range "goals" to the game. So I want to add an in-game achievement system. In the next update I'm going to really focus on unlockables. I want to implement a bunch of new "build around" upgrades plus some advanced weapons that can be added to the pool to give as rewards for completing these achievements. Hopefully this gives players some mid range targets to work towards while they are trying to complete various difficulties in the game.
Steam Deck Compatibility
While I'm still waiting on official badge from Valve I'm making this an official post because they seem to like it when you do that! Anyways, Power of Ten runs great on the Steam Deck and it'll run even better after this next update (coming very very soon) because you'll be able to pick an non-pixel font for better accessibility! I've been enjoying the game on Steam Deck for quite some time now and it's a fantastic way to play the game.
