Update - Surge difficulties, pacing + balance changes and more!
Introducing new difficulty levels: Surge Levels
New game plus is here! I'm very excited to introduce this feature and I hope it extends the enjoyment folks get out of the game tremendously. This is another major feature on the roadmap so we are getting very close to having all those features ready for a full release. Here's how the roadmap looks now:
When you finish a run for the first time you'll unlock an new "Surge Difficulty Level". During your next run you can increase the difficulty on the ship select screen. If you complete a run on that surge level you'll unlock a new one (up to five levels right now). Each level will have an augment that will make the game a bit harder and contain all augments from the previous levels. For example, level three will add an augment that gives a shield to small enemy ships when they spawn and additionally civilian deaths will also accumulate over regions and you will get no progression upgrades at the start of regions (augments from previous levels). Here's the list of levels and their augments:
Timetravelers will no longer join you on sequential runs and give progress upgrades.
Civilian deaths will accumulate across every region. Maximum casualties allowed is increased by 50.
Small enemies will start with a weak shield.
Gear containers always start at the lowest tier.
An additional planet attacking ship will spawn with each wave of Deadeye ships.
Along with these difficulties new Steam achievements have been added to the game for completing them. Pick your favorite ship get your achievements!
Game Pacing
I'd like to reduce the reliance on "asteroid farming" for majority of the game. I do believe it can serve as a filler activity if there's zero other options but I'd like to make those down times happen less often. Additionally I'd like to make the act of farming asteroids a little more interactive so I've created a small mini game with asteroids where there's a chance more valuable asteroids will break off and speed away creating a little more excitement when you have to resort to this activity.
Asteroids will occasionally spawn a fast moving "gold" and "silver" asteroids that will drop a lot more resources when destroyed.
The other approach I'm taking is increasing the visibility and value of enemy ship debris. This should make it so players only need to farm asteroids as a brief filler after they gather resources from ships they destroy. I've also added a obvious glow to the destructible debris so it's clear to new players they can be destroyed.
Enemy debris will give more resources when destroyed.
Enemy debris have an outline to show they can be destroyed.
Balance and Tuning
Final boss numbers have been slightly tuned down. With higher difficulties in the game I want the initial difficulty to be a bit more accessible.
Enemies with auras will turn off when they start drifting.
Enemies with auras will follow their lead ship more closely.
Resource needed to power up shield generators has been increased slightly to compensate for increased resources given from other sources.
Amount of large resources that spawn has been decreased to compensate for increased resources given from other sources.
Reduced the cost and increased fire rate of multiple under powered weapons.
Fixes
Fine tuned some scaling issues with smaller UI scaling.
Update 0.5.1 Bug fixes
Couple of small bug fixes: * Fixed a crash at the end of the game when the score screen would appear * Fixed an issue where exiting the game in certain ways would keep it running until you close it with task manager.
Update: Run history, stats, music and more! v0.5.0
MAC USERS NOTE: I've ran into some challenges with deploying the Mac version. My regular development machine stopped launching the game engine entirely so I'm having to transfer everything over to another machine. Working as hard as I can to get it out for Mac users but it'll be a little late.
Run History + Stats, stats and more stats
A new run history feature has been added to the game! Every run from here on out will be recorded in the history so you can look back at your best or worst runs and help understand how to make future runs successful.
Along with this I've entirely reworked the type of stats that are collected and tracked from each run. I hope these give a lot more clarity how well or poorly a run went and what players can tweak to improve. I'd love to know if there's other stats you'd like to see so let me know in Discord!
This particular feature was a lot of refactoring of how the game handled data so it took a lot longer than I had intended to develop. Good news here is this investment will make developing harder difficulties much easier and give me more visibility into data that will help me balance the game with data alongside the feedback I receive.
This feature checks another major feature off the roadmap. Check it out:
Balance
I want to to scale down the difficulty in the later game (mostly in preparation of harder difficulties). I'm pretty happy with the difficulty in the first two regions but I think the difficulty jump in the third and final region are a bit much so there's a few tweaks to help balance that out.
Reduced the scaling for resources vs civilian costs of later regions. It'll be cheaper to power up shields in the later regions.
Reduced the health, fire rate and increased repair time of the final encounter. Should result in an easier first phase but still an intense final phase.
Content
Two new weapons
Fresh new music in the Dread Region from Chris Inston
Added a sound effect for ship's engines.
New background creature
Fixes
Progression upgrades should be present in the next run even if you fully complete the current run.
Fixed a couple of crashes
All friendly transports should have an engine trail again
Update 0.4.0 - New playable ship and new chunky enemies!
New playable ship "Tac T Ion"
While similar to Durrone this one adds a lot more strategy to its playstyle. Its drones are not as easy to get value out of but can be even more powerful than Durrone's in specific scenarios.
I debated on if I should rework the Durrone into this but I decided on leaving the Durrone as a bit of an early "accessible" option for players. It's easy and fun and doesn't require a lot of thought and I like that for players just learning the game. The Tac T Ion is a lot harder but more rewarding when you get it right. Its upside for tactful play is probably the highest of any ship in the game.
As I add new ships the other ships will likely get pushed to be unlockable earlier and earlier. So this new ship will be unlocked in the third region while one ship that was unlocked in the third will move to the second and one that was unlocked in the second will move to the first. I don't foresee adding more "easier" ships into the game but if I do I'll slip those in earlier.
There are two new Steam achievements to grab with this ship as well. Good luck!
Core Content
Four new modular Deadeye ships (Large ships that drop upgrades)
Four new items
One new upgrade
Several new background ships
Fixes
Fixed some spelling and grammatical issues.
Made references to Item Containers to Gear Containers to be consistent.
Fixed a crash when dying to energy ball projectiles
Fixed an issue with clipping through walls in the tutorial (I think... let me know if you can still do this and how. It's hard to reproduce)
Fixed an issue where enemies would spawn onscreen. If they still doing this let me know.
