Snkrx
Rewrite Update Cancelled
Unfortunately, I have decided to cancel SNKRX's rewrite update that was promised about a year ago. From now on the game will remain in the state it is now and I'll move on to other projects. I understand that many people have been patiently waiting for the update, and I'm very sorry about this, but it is what it is.
Since before SNKRX I had a problem as a developer, which is that I tended to overscope my projects.
I would make them bigger than I had the experience to handle, work on them for a few months to a few years, and would eventually give up because they were going nowhere.
So since the start of 2020 I had been trying to make and finish games that had an appropriate scope for my skills. These were projects that would take me between 2-3 months to make from start to finish and that I actually ended up releasing on Steam.
For the entirety of 2020 I failed to do that, as this video shows, but in 2021 I finally managed to scope a project properly and finish it, and that project was SNKRX. However, SNKRX's success made me way too confident, which made me fall back to my old ways and I ended up overscoping the rewrite by quite a lot.
Because I've made this mistake many times before I know when it's time to quit. The failures have mounted, the successes are sparse, and my motivation is at all time lows. I'm not going to spend another year or more on it only to quit then and have wasted multiple years of my life with nothing to show for it. So this is where it ends.
I am, once again, very sorry for this. I shouldn't have promised something that I didn't know 100% was going to happen and given you guys false expectations, and for that I am truly sorry.
For now I'm just going to go back to what I was doing before SNKRX, which is trying to make games with a small scope and to release them consistently so I can get more XP as a dev. But that's it, there will be no more updates to this game from me.
For those who are interested the game's code is available on github and if you've done or want to do anything with the codebase I'd be happy to merge good quality contributions to the game on Steam. So hit me up if that's the case.
And if you really liked SNKRX and you wanna play more games like it the best I can do is recommend some. Ever since last year many games that are around SNKRX's design area have been released, most famously Vampire Survivors and its clones.
However the game that I liked the most and that feels closest is a game called Brotato. It has many of the same ideas and systems, and incidentally it also solves quite a few design problems I was having with the rewrite. It's just a really good and fun game. Currently there's only a demo available but the full version should come out in a few months. If you liked SNKRX you'll probably like this, so give it a try!
And other than that, if you want to know about when I release a new game then follow me on Steam, and if you have any questions about SNKRX or anything else just ask me in this thread and I'll answer, or join the game's discord and @ me there (@a327ex). I'm pretty much always online so if you ping me there I'll answer.
So yea, again, sorry for the disappointment. And bye!
Maintenance Update #3
Changes
- Increased cryomancer's area of effect by 50%
- Increased bane's void rift's size by 50%
- Beastmaster now has 10% crit chance by default
- Magician's Lv.3 effect is now "+50% attack speed every 12 seconds for 6 seconds"
- The fairy will no longer buff non-attacking units
- Awakening and enchanted items will no longer buff non-attacking units
- Changed freezing field's color to blue for better visual clarity
- Improved text descriptions for engineer and sentry for clarity
- Fixed engineer's and artificer's cooldowns not being displayed properly
- Fixed a bug that would cause incorrect party size after loading a looped run (thanks ArnaudOechslin)
- Fixed a rare crash due to enemy critters being spawned during a level transition
- Added the following keyboard shortcuts:
- R rerolls units both in the shop and item selection screen
- 1, 2, 3, 4 buys units from the shop or selects items
- Enter/return starts the round
- R rerolls units both in the shop and item selection screen
Stat/rewrite update
If you're a newer player, please read the last sections on the orb update to get up to speed on what I already mentioned in regards to future updates to this game.
And for everyone else: the stat/rewrite update will take longer than I expected to be completed. I initially estimated it at 1 month (which would be coming up on early August), but that's not going to be the case. I don't know yet how much longer it will take so I won't really try to estimate.
The main reason for this is that now that I've had some weeks without the pressure of having to do bigger weekly updates I've been able to think about the game from a longer term and more calm perspective, and I've developed a very solid and definite vision of what I want it to be in the future.
So I've decided that I will keep updating this game for another year or so unconditionally (regardless of how well the updates are received) to execute on this vision. But for me to be able to do that I really need the new codebase to be good and for the rewrite to be done correctly, as the decisions I make now will affect my ability to deliver these updates over this longer period.
As such, the stat/rewrite update will take longer so that I can put some real thought into it and do it safely. This is also the last maintenance update the game will get until the stat/rewrite update, as pretty much all bugs and suggestions people have now are things that will be addressed in that update or in ones that come after.
I really don't like sort of leaving the game without updates for a while but I hope everyone understands. And if you'd like to ask me anything send an e-mail to a327ex@gmail.com. I respond to that faster than to anything else.
Thanks for playing and I hope you have fun!
Maintenance Update #2
- Fixed a bug where NG+5 difficulty would go down to NG+4 after looping
- Shop level can now be reduced by 1 for 10 gold with right-click
- Capped enemy movement speed after level 150
- Added a run timer option, note that the timer will be off for saved runs that started before this patch
- Warden's bubble is now affected by magnify
- Changed all text instances of "active set" to "active class" to avoid confusion
Maintenance Update #1
Bug fixes
- Fixed several blue screen crashes due to broken looping state
- Fixed a bug where double clicking the loop button would lead to broken looping state
- Fixed several blue screen crashes due to broken physics state
- Fixed a bug where sometimes restarting the game from a looped run would let you have more units than normal in the next run
- Fixed sold items not being restored to the passive pool
- Fixed gambler's volume being too loud with high amounts of gold
- Fixed soundtrack button not working on the win screen
- Fixed volume text bug when decreasing it from 1 to 0
- Fixed volume buttons not looping
- Fixed a bug where the first run would not have certain items in the item pool
- Fixed kinetic strike not being in the item pool at all
- Fixed psyker orbs item saying "+1/2/3" in the shop when it should be "+1/2/4"
- Limited critters on the arena to 100 due to performance issues
- Limited health orbs on the arena to 30 due to performance issues
- Limited gold coins on the arena to 30 due to performance issues
These last 3 items mean that only 30 or 100 objects of that type can be in the arena at the same time. They will simply not be spawned if it goes over that number, and they will go back to being spawned when it's below that number.
This is a crude solution and one I don't like, but because people have been affected by performance issues due to these objects it needs a fix. But also because this codebase is going to be thrown away soon, I'm not going to spend too much time trying to optimize it properly. Sorry!
Update schedule
From now on I will also start doing these smaller patches on random days rather than only on Fridays as that will work better for me. There will still be one update a week, but it may come on a Wednesday, or Monday, or whenever.
Thanks for playing and I hope you keep having fun!