Devlog #142: game design talk: more rescuable characters
Hi! I have recently started working on adding the "more rescuable characters" thing to the game, and I would like to share some of my game design thoughts on this topic.
(before I continue, I wanted to mention that the next game update will include improved gamepad support, localization fixes, and hopefully, Polish language support. It should be released in a few days!)
Anyways, back to the game design talk: one of the things I wanted to change, based on your feedback was making sure that you can encounter more rescuable characters along your way.
Currently, if your party is not at full strength (meaning less than four characters plus an automaton), there is a chance of finding a survivor. If you manage to reach and revive them, they will join your party. However, once your party is at full strength, you will no longer encounter any more survivors.
To make the runs even more enjoyable and diverse, I wanted to modify this system. The change seemed simple: survivors would appear during combat even if your squad is at full strength, and players would be able to choose who stays in the squad. However, this raised several design questions:
When should the players be allowed to change the squad composition?
Should it be right after reviving the fifth member? At the end of a mission? After the shelter phase?
The game's UI was not able to display six character portraits in the top-left. While it seemed like it could handle it:
the game also needs to work with 16:10 aspect ratios:
and it needs to look good in gamepad mode:
Requiring the player to reorganize their party immediately after reviving an additional member would solve the UI issue (as there'd never be more than five characters in total), but it didn't feel right. The player might be in the heat of battle after rushing to revive the survivor. Introducing a "reorganize your party NOW" dialog window in such a moment would be off-putting.
So, I ended up cleaning up the UI:
And the player will be able to reorganize the squad at the end of the mission, just before the shelter phase.
I could allow the dispatched character to still be present during the shelter phase, but the player wouldn't care about that character as they would be dispatching them anyway.
Should the difficulty change when you have five characters plus an automaton?
After you revive the extra survivor, you might be slightly overpowered - after all, you're running around with one extra character. Should the game try to be tougher during that time? I think that it shouldn't - after all, if you've decided to take a chance and dash to revive that survivor, here's your short OP moment for the remainder of this encounter.
What should happen to the upgrades?
Ah, yes. After finishing a mission with one extra squad member, you need to dispatch someone. The thing is, characters can have their weapons upgraded. A player wouldn't want to let go of a squad member if it meant losing all of their weapon upgrades, especially since it's possible to remove upgrades during the shelter phase.
I've decided that a character being let go will have their weapon upgrades automatically removed. It may seem unfair for that character, but I couldn't see any other way to handle it. The player really doesn't want to lose their weapon upgrade points.
What should happen to the dispatched character?
So the player has reorganized their squad, and let one of the characters go. Should that character somehow reappear again? If that's the case, should they have the same skills the player picked previously? If that's the case (and I think it is the correct approach), the save system needs to be expanded to take care of this.
As you can see, even a relatively minor change in gameplay rules can trigger a multitude of smaller decisions that need to be made. And I suppose that's one of the reasons why I love game design so much!
Thanks for reading and for playing my game! You all rock, take care!
Hotfix 1.0.29.7 is now live!
1.0.29.7 PATCH NOTES
Bugfixes:
Fixed an issue that could cause a Fusion Core not to appear in the player's inventory after a pickup.
Hotfix 1.0.29.6 is now live!
Hi! This week I'm releasing a smaller hotfix, addressing some modding-related issues and few in-game bugs.
1.0.29.6 PATCH NOTES
Bugfixes:
“All in” skill from Silas now correctly counts enemy kills (it was counting attacks before).
Rose’s “weak spot” skill does not deal 3 extra damage if it’s at level zero.
Modding:
Game now supports Japanese glyphs that can be used by the modders.
Made sure that character names get correctly refreshed after game's language is changed.
Added missing translation keys and support for some existing translation keys. Details:
- "characterDetails_teamSkillRemainingPoints" key is now used in Team Skills button tooltip - added "combat_retaliation" key for the "Retaliation!" text - added "general_shelterAPCost" key for the AP cost text in the shelter phase - added "achievement_progress" key for the achievement progress box header
Higher difficulty, Language Mods and Award Nominations!
Hello Shardpunk fans!
We’ve just released a brand new update adding Very Hard difficulty (we’ve noticed some of you felt like the game was not hard enough), the support for the language mods as well as some balance and QoL changes.
That’s not all! This weekend Shardpunk: Verminfall is participating in the retro gaming event with 3 award nominations!
New Difficulty Settings: Very Hard
everyone starts the game with 1 grenade and 1 stimpack (same as on Hard difficulty)
enemy pods are bigger
enemy HP is increased by 1 compared to Hard
increased stress gain for characters
Language Mods Support
We are currently working hard on other improvements for the game so new localisations must wait for a while. Still, as we are noticing a lot of questions about more language versions, we decided to share special tools and give you the opportunity to start preparing your own translations.
Check out the guides below to be sure how to prepare your mods:
Creating Shardpunk language mods: https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2977728078
Loading Shardpunk language mods: https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2977742925
3 nominations at Pixel Heaven 2023
This weekend Shardpunk: Verminfall is participating in the Pixel Heaven 2023 - the largest retro gaming event in Europe!
It is also a part of Intel Pixel Awards Europe 2023 ceremony at the event with 3 nominations:
Best Gameplay
Retro Roots
Indie Grand Prix
Keep your fingers crossed!
Join our Discord or visit Shardpunk’s Steam forums to tell how do you like the latest update!
This is my very first approach to introducing language mods to the game (well, this is my first game in general), so if you find inconveniences/issues or you have questions, do let me know - I'm eager to help.
(also I'm busy working on the Polish language version, more info soon).
Content:
Added a Very Hard difficulty (more enemies, healthier enemies, more stress gain). This is but a prelude to real difficulty customization which I will add in the future.
Balancing:
Rat shotgunner attacks now do not shred armor.
QoL
Free reload actions that come from skills/upgrades are now separate actions - meaning that the player can choose when to use them.
Added an alternate font type support.
Have a great day everyone!
Version 1.0.26 is now live!
Hi - Tacticon announcement/reveal for Shardpunk is just around the corner, and here's the latest game patch.
1.0.26 PATCH NOTES
Bugfixes:
Probably fixed issues with the game not loading/not progressing to the shelter phase correctly. I'm not 100% sure about that as I did not manage to reproduce it, and I haven't received feedback on an experimental debug version that I sent to some of the players who reported the issue in the first place. Note to every player experiencing this: reach out to me on Twitter or Discord, I am eager to help.
Codex entries are now not cropped in 16:10 aspect ratios.
"The last one left" trait (applied when there is only one human character left) now does not prevent a character from losing stress.
Gunther's pistol overwatch action does not consume main weapon's heat.
Content:
Added new achievement: Katana Carnage: Kill five enemies with a katana in a single turn (not bound to a Steam/GOG achievement). I am aware that the total number of unlock points is bigger than the amount of stuff that is unlockable at the moment.
Balance changes:
Gunter's "loner" trait is even more effective (increased damage and defence bonus).
Hair trigger upgrade now refunds a single AP.
Julius: removed the weapon heat cost from his melee attack.
Silas: stress cost of Push the Limit now stays at 4 on its max level.
Silas: "Gallows Humour" skill now can be used multiple times in the shelter.
Silas: Pat your gun increases damage in general, not just the max damage. Reduced the allies’ stress gain from that skill.
Reduced the number of free shots for Mycroft's heavy weapon boost action (2/4/6 => 2/3/4).
Enemies should now spawn slightly less often in the 1st mission if you are not playing the tutorial level.
Thanks for the great feedback everyone! Take care!
Shardpunk Verminfall is coming to TactiCon 2023!
Hello Community!
We’re happy to announce that Shardpunk: Verminfall is coming to Tacticon 2023 here on Steam from May 11-15 and will be a part of the live showcase! The Showcase starts on May 11th, 7:30PM CET / 10:30AM PST, set a reminder!
About Tacticon 2023:
The second edition of TactiCon gathers over 106 recent and unique strategy games by long-established studios to solo indie game developers. This hand-picked selection tries to embody the broad plurality of the genre, from revisited Grand Strategy to unique Deckbuilding, innovative Turn-Based Tactical and inventive Base Builder and Management games.
Devlog #141: Tacticon, and a look into the (closest) future
Hi - first of all, many thanks to every one of you who posted a review (we're over 300 already! Great stuff!) or left feedback on the forums/Discord! I am doing my best to read through all of your stuff (though I did have to implement some more strict time management rules to still make sure I am productive as a developer) - so rest assured that even if I haven't posted an answer to your post, I have read it and processed it to an actionable work item on my end.
Let's talk about future plans for Shardpunk. Here's a list of things I want to focus on:
Note that the items in the list come in no particular order, except for the 1st element which has the highest priority.
1. Stability
There are at least two game-breaking issues that some you are experiencing: one related to the game becoming unresponsive after the combat part (especially after finishing a cave mission), which forces a reload and may prevent the player from removing a vermin activity, and one with the inability to load a game if it has been saved during combat. I am working with some of the players who are able to reproduce these issues, and hopefully I will have a fix for both of these issues soon.
2. Game balance
Don't worry, It's not about nerfing Tilly ;). What I want to address is the overall difficulty curve. For starters, I want to reduce the snowball effect that might happen in the late game, especially in Chapter 3. There should be more enemies appearing in the later missions.
What is more, I want to look at certain character skills (example: free shots from Mycroft, combined with a hair trigger) which feel way too OP. I will also look into buffing some of the skills that are reported as too weak for the moment (there are a few nice threads in the forums about the balance stuff). The balance changes will come in small batches and I will be listening to your feedback along the way.
3. Localisation support
I want to add community-driven localisation support to the game, probably using Steam Workshop. I have to do some more research on how to do this, but I'm 100% positive it's doable. And I'm working on a Polish translation as well.
4. Customizable difficulty
This will be an interesting one. I want you to be able to customize your runs in a way that makes the most sense to you. Maybe you want the enemies to have more base HPs? Or you want to have the ability to reload your latest mission instead of starting a new run? Maybe the enemies should not be dropping any stimpaks/grenades, or maybe your base Stress gain should be higher?
Of course the standard difficulty levels will remain, but I do want to add a custom one as well.
5. New content/QoL stuff
Based on your feedback, there's lots of stuff I would like to implement. Few examples:
a) allowing the player to encounter rescuable characters even when they're at max squad size. The player would then have to choose which character they should let go,
b) adding a "blueprints" system that will narrow down the available weapon upgrade types in a run - meaning that you can only upgrade, say, the weapon's auto-cooling system if you happened to find a blueprint that allows that. It will make the runs less predictable, which some of you might like (still, this should be present as a customizable difficulty option),
c) more shelter actions, more ways to spend these Shards!
d) numerous QoL changes: more game speed options, alternate fonts, removing camera movement restrictions, movement waypoints system, colorblind mode, more key binding options, enemy tooltips,
e) more tangible content - new enemies, a new playable character, perhaps...?
6. Improved controller/Steam Deck support
The game can be played with a controller, but there are moments where the UI focus is lost and you need to have a mouse to help you out - I want to address that as well. Also, I might reconsider the current "d-pad is used to navigate through some of the menus" approach and put all of the top buttons/categories (team skills, unlocks, codex) under L1/R1 navigation.
Note that the above list is not set in stone and it might change based on your feedback.
Also, last but not least, some good news: Shardpunk will be featured on Tacticon that starts May 11th! I hope that it will allow even more players to find out about the game!
Thanks for reading! And again, thanks for all the feedback! And if you haven't posted a review on Steam, consider doing so!
You all rock, take care!
1.0.24 hotfix is now live!
Hi - I've managed to identify and fix a potentially game-breaking bug. It should not happen often, but still.
1.0.24 PATCH NOTES
Fixed an issue with the game behaving broken if somehow a character has entered the shelter while still being affected by the support bot's support aura. Prevented such a situation from happening from now on. The faulty game state will still have characters in combat showing the “affected by bot’s support mode” trait, but it will disappear after the next combat or after the next time they leave the bot’s aura.
Version 1.0.23 is now live!
Hi! First of all, thanks again for the great reception. Shardpunk has now more than 200 reviews, and it happened in less than a week from its release! This is awesome.
I am doing my best to keep up with all the feedback I am receiving. Be assured that I have plans to keep fixing, tweaking and expanding the game. I will be handling it, one update at a time.
Shardpunk 1.0.23 PATCH NOTES
Bugfix/QOL: Added a separate toggle to hide the mouse cursor in the game's options. This should allow the players who prefer using the controller to work around some of the game-is-losing-ui-elements-focus issues, until I get to the root of the problem.
Fixed broken Steam achievements. Made sure that the game auto-updates the ones that have already been reached by the player (it should happen automatically during combat/shelter phase).
Probably fixed an issue with rescuable characters not always appearing. Not an easy one to track/reproduce, so just let me know if it's still an issue.
Rose now has the Close and Personal trait (+50% crit for adjacent tiles), and Tilly has the Fragile trait (-1 to max HP). This does not affect the current run in progress.
Tilly: reduced the number of times the AP gets refunded when using the Katana Combo skill. Also, she gets a movement range penalty after the first combo kill.
Tilly's sharpen the katana skill has its damage gain reduced, but it adds critical chance to melee attacks.
More melee enemies now appear after the bunker breaching process starts.
It is now possible to use the "open bunker door" action that consumes a Fusion Core even when the bunker is already in the breaching mode, to speed up the breaching process.
Increased cooldown on support's bot intimidate action.
Also, I will be taking family time off for a few days on the last days of April / first days of May. Expect huge productivity boost from my side after that :)
