Based on your feedback we have just released a version with some small balance changes. Many thanks to everyone who gave their opinion on the new version and helped us improve Roche Fusion even further.
As announced, the leaderboards have been reset to give a fair chance to everybody to play with the new balance, so jump in the game to secure your spot on the shiny new leaderboards.
Below is a list of the changes we made. We hope you'll like them and we're looking forward to seeing you in-game or on the forums.
Changelog
the Battering Ram duration has been reduced by 25%
the Fatboss has been nerfed to make its difficulty more in line with that of the other mini-bosses
the Dimension Drive can no longer be used while in an upgrade station to grab multiple upgrades
the Remote Bomb is no longer deleted while only barely out of the screen
First free content update - Now out!
Today we have a whole lot of exciting news to share with you: we have released a brand new content patch for you including new ships, new bosses, new upgrades, new achievements, and many small fixes all throughout the game. And to sweeten the deal, you can also get Roche Fusion for a reduced price for a limited time, so this is the perfect moment to get started blowing those colourful enemies to bits!
Read on for more information about what's new, and how you can win a chance to design your own in-game upgrade!
Content Patch - 1.1
It is hardly a secret that we have been working on the first free content patch for Roche Fusion over the past couple of months. A few of the highlights are:
two new ships;
two new bosses;
six new upgrades - of which two are completely player-designed - plus four unique upgrades for the new ships;
sixteen new achievements;
new variety in enemy patterns;
and infinitely many more explosions!
Check out the latest trailer to see the new ships in action, or jump in the game right now to give the new content a try.
We would love to hear what you think of all the new things. Make sure to drop us a few lines in our steam community page!
Balance contest & Leaderboards reset
With all the new content, there are many new strategies to pursue in Roche Fusion. We have been play testing a lot the last few weeks and balanced all of the new content as best we can.
However, since we can never try out all the possibilities, we are asking you to help us find problems in the new balance of the game.
To do this, we are having a contest: we are allowing the two people who are on top of the leaderboards (single player; easy difficulty) for the two new ships - Lily and the Crab - and have also shared at least some feedback on either our forums or the Steam Community to design one upgrade that will make it into the game.
You are also free to put your feedback in a Youtube video or blog, and post a link on our forums or Steam Community. Bonus points of you post a screenshot of your game-over screen, or even record the entire game!
The contest will run until Sunday May 24 10:00 UTC. We will then announce the winners. In the meanwhile we will work on improving the balance of the game based on your feedback, and we will release an update soon afterwards. When the balance update is released, we will also reset all the leaderboards, so you can start anew with the battle for the top of the list.
Starting from today you will be able to start collecting trading cards automatically by playing Roche Fusion. Collect all eight cards to combine them into a badge and collect emoticons and backgrounds to spice up your Steam profile.
To celebrate the release of Roche Fusion's first content patch and the trading cards, Roche Fusion will be available for a reduced price all week. All in all there has never been a better time to get started with Roche Fusion and/or introduce all your friends to the game.
Changelog - Update 1.1
ships
[+] new ship: Lily, a ship with a strong close range attack, but has non-recharging armour instead of a shield
[+] new ship: Crab, a ship with a charging medium range attack and damage absorbtion when not firing
upgrades
[+] new upgrade: Reactive Shield
[+] new upgrade: Hornet
[+] new upgrade: Aft Torpedoes
[+] new upgrade: Dimension Drive (courtesy of our friends at 2Awesome Studio)
[+] new upgrade: Battering Ram (designed by Saphire)
[+] new upgrade: Remote Bomb (designed by Meroka)
enemies
[+] new mini-boss: the Fatboss
[+] new epic boss: the Epic Drone (or: Project Paul)
[+] many new movement behaviours for the blue circular drones have been added
the Epic Spiky boss now also has healthbar for its three separate parts, to make its health mechanics more clear
all support enemies spawned by bosses now also scale and become more difficult to kill as the game progresses
the laser drones have been completely rebalanced: the smallest ones are smaller, have more health, provide less points, stay in ghost longer, and spawn in larger amounts; the medium ones are smaller, have more health, and provide less points
the hit circles of laser drones are now more accurate
the epic dragon has less health overall, but the remaining health is now more evenly split over the stages
reduced the amount of enemies Captain Claw spawns in his meatshield
events no longer spawn inside the remainder of circular drone swarms
the snake boss no longer causes a game crash if all damage was done by player drones
the snake boss now is equally likely to spawn as the rest of the mini-bosses
metagame
[+] 16 new achievements: Patient; Cool guys don't look at explosions; They're swarming; Quartet; But our princess is in another castle; Instakill; When life gives you limes; It's dangerous to go alone! Take this.; Health++; I am fully charged!; Endgame; Superstar; Secret weapon; Not so secret weapon; Hive Five; Division by zero
[+] in-game leaderboard have been added and can be found in the extras menu
[+] the total amount of times the player ship is upgraded is now tracked
misc
[+] an in-game console has been added (open using tilde; open and focus using alt+tilde)
[+] new end-game statistics: amount healed and amount of fully charged shots
the boss music had its volume increased
enemy homing missiles no longer suck up performance when no target is present
a rare audio crash when using Bullet Time has been resolved
end game statistics are now truncated if they no longer fit on the screen
a warning that was caused by one of the mod files has been resolved
several bugs in the weapon cycle code have been fixed, resolving some unwarranted behaviour
sound effects have been prevented to be played every frame, resolving some rare crashes at high framerates
further changes have been made to enable Roche Fusion to run on multiple platforms
Update 1.1 - Announcing release date
Our hard work on our first big free update has come to a close, and we are happy to today announce the update's release date!
For this we have created a small trailer:
https://youtu.be/lsLdwZK06hI
The update will be released May 18, that's next Monday!
It contains:
- two new playable ships
- two new awesome boss fights
- ten new upgrades
- more variation in enemy behaviour
and a bunch of smaller changes to make the game more awesome!
Over the next few days we will be busy putting on the final touches.
I hope you are as excited as us about this update and the new content!
If you would like to take a sneak-peak at the cool new features, make sure to drop by our play-testing streams!
The next one is scheduled in just a few hours:
http://steamcommunity.com/games/334140/events/178234970451542796
Hope to see you there!
We cannot wait to see what you all think of all the new stuff!
But we got a lot of positive feedback and decided to continue to offer copies of Roche Fusion to backers of Dimension Drive (right here on Kickstarter!) for just 8 euros extra!
Make sure to head on over to the Kickstarter and support Dimension Drive during the last week of its campaign!
You can also help them out by voting for Dimension Drive on Steam Greenlight here:
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=422860011
Steam needs more amazing shoot 'em ups,
so let's make this happen!
Dimension Drive - Roche Fusion crossover - less than 24 hours remaining!
If you have not seen our news the other day:
We have jumped into bed with 2AwesomeStudios, makers of Dimension Drive, and are offering a super sweet deal where you can get both games for cheap!
Dimension Drive is currently on Kickstarter, and if you support them, you can get a copy of Roche Fusion (for yourself, or a friend) for just 4 bucks extra!
Check out the details here: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/2awesomestudio/dimension-drive/posts/1215430
The best part is: You will get your copy of Roche Fusion right when the Kickstarter succeeds!
The deal will only be available for today, so make sure to get it while you can!
We have created a super shoot-em-up indie deal with our friends from 2AwesomeStudios.
For a limited time of only 72 hours, if you back their Kickstarter for the awesome Dimension Drive, you can get a copy of Roche Fusion for just €4 extra!
Head on over and take a look, and make sure to tell all your friends!
This is the perfect opportunity to pick up Roche Fusion if you haven't yet, or to pick it up for a friend.
It has been about three months now since Roche Fusion's release on Steam, and we are humbled by the positive reception; the great reviews, feedback, and all other comments.
But that is not where it stops!
We have been busy at work, and in just a few weeks, we will release our first FREE content update, with even more ships, upgrades, enemies, and definitely more explosions!
Further, we will create a series of small spoiler videos to show off some of the cool new upgrades we are adding. You can watch the first one right here!
Make sure to also check our YouTube channel and subscribe, to make sure you don't miss future videos.
If you want to get the absolutely most up-to-date information, including inside info not posted anywhere else, make sure to follow our developers on Twitter:
@amulware @tomrijnbeek
We also have weekly live-streams, where we play-test the game, maybe write a bit of code, answer questions, and just in general have a lot of fun!
In fact, our first live stream will be TODAY!
So make sure to head over to twitch.tv/amulware at 14:00 GMT and take a look!
We will be posting a lot more info, including images, videos, and some very special announcements over the coming days and weeks, so watch out for that!
For now, enjoy the pixels!
Dev log - Modelling enemy behaviour
From a full textual description of the behaviour of an enemy, there are still many steps before the game knows how to execute it. In this series of dev logs, I discuss the model we use for enemy behaviours, and give some small peeks into the high-level implementation of this model.
Part 1 - on the general model
http://rochefusion.com/devlog/348/player-directed-development-live-stream
Part 2 - how the newest mini-boss was modelled
http://rochefusion.com/devlog/350/graph-violence
Dev Log - Stingy Action - on adding new weapons to Roche Fusion
On today's weekly devlog I go into depth on how we add new weapons to Roche Fusion.
I do so using as example one of the new upgrades coming soon as part of our first free content update.
For the full article, including pretty images, click here:
