- Updated the player sprite and reduced the player hit box to 1 pixel big - New background art - Revamped player drones ability (max of 2 drones, 1 drone costs a full energy bar) - Increased energy drop rate (1 per enemy) and redid player level progression - Implemented new bullets for all enemies (this update coming to bosses next) - Completely revamped 3 of the green enemies (Flayer, Bat, and Star Burst) - Added the first mid-boss, currently appears halfway through the first level (he's currently pretty simple, I'll probably make some changes to him in the near future) - New wave manager and level progression (should reduce some downtime between waves)
Fixes:
- Fixed an issue with player i-frames sometimes getting out of sync causing unfair deaths - Fixed some older enemy movement code so they don't fly off screen and become un-killable - Plus a bunch of other bug fixes and improvements under the hood
It's been over a year since I last updated the game so it feels super good to finally get some new content out there (even I'm just revamping some old work). Thanks to everyone for waiting patiently! I'm hoping to make these updates a more common occurrence.
I've already got the next set of tasks planned out for the next update including a new and improved Buddy boss fight. Buddy is by far my least favorite boss in the game due to his simplistic attacks. I have a pretty big transformation planned for him, but he'll still be the same (mostly) recognizable Buddy!
In the pipeline:
- New player shot pattern - Improved explosions - Improved Camera Shake - Update allowing Bosses to use the new bullets - Revamped Buddy boss fight
It’s been nearly a year since my last post about what’s going on with Super Crome’s development (this is entirely my bad), but I wanted to give you all a much needed update.
During the past 9 months of development, Super Crome’s story mode has taken on a life of its own and at this point it’s hardly comparable to its Steam predecessor. For this reason I’ve decided to release it separately as a different game. I don’t want to ruin the existing experience that is Super Crome. This means 2 things:
1. The new game (name TBD), will be free to everyone that has purchased Super Crome Bullet Purgatory and supported me on this journey. I have no idea when it’ll be done, but it’s been my primary focus for the past few months. The completed version of this game is ideally 5 - 6 levels of classic arcade shmup action. I currently have ~2 levels complete so take that as you will. You can get a peak of the new game on the Stumphead Games twitter page. I'm trying to post a new update at least once every 2 weeks, but life sometimes gets in the way!
2. I’m still going to finish Super Crome. I plan on combining Endless mode and Story mode into 1 seamless experience to make this happen. I’ve created a new public Trello board so people can track what’s in the pipeline here. I’m also going to start streaming this development time weekly on Twitch (probably Monday nights starting next week). If you want to stop by and check out the latest updates or just leave me some suggestions I’ll be live at https://www.twitch.tv/stump_head. I’m also looking for a pixel artist to help speed up development.
I’m going to do my best to split my time between the 2 projects, but I’d love to see Super Crome cross the finish line sooner rather than later!
It’s been a while since we’ve made any sort of official announcement here, but I just wanted to make a quick post to let everyone know what is going on.
First off, we are still working on Super Crome!
So what’s going on? To sum it up, we had to rebuild a lot of our codebase from the ground up when we started working on the story mode. The old project was far too difficult to work with, causing a lot of headaches when adding new content. This also spurred some design changes to the base gameplay, but it more or less plays the exact same as the current Steam build.
We also want to apologize for the silence on our end. Working on this game is a part-time endeavor and lately life + work have just gotten in the way of that (we would work full-time on this if we could)!
The exciting news is that we have a demo on the way to showcase one of the levels coming to Super Crome. This demo is decked out with all new art, music (composed by John Fio), and sound effects. We’ve spent a lot of time polishing it and are eagerly looking for player feedback! There isn't a release date for the demo just yet, but expect another update closer to the holidays.
What’s next? After the story mode demo drops we’ll be focusing on bringing the Endless Mode content over from the current build. To be clear, the demo will be standalone from the current version on Steam until we do this. We want to get this out of the way as soon as possible so our updates can be more frequent. We also have some big changes in mind for the Endless mode once this is all done, but it may be awhile before we see any of these updates on Steam.
Lastly, John launched the Super Crome OST on Steam which includes all the new tracks he’s been working so hard on! We’re also trying to get a bundle up that includes both the game and his OST, so stay tuned for that!
TL;DR
Super Crome story mode demo coming soon (end of the month)
Additions: - Added a new boss, Fel - Added a new enemy type with 4 new waves
Bug fixes and balance: - Slightly increased Player movement speed - Fixed a bug with Calamaro's final form - Updated Reserve Energy sprite - Boss waves now come every 4 waves instead of every 5 (the player can fight up to 6 bosses in any given run).
- Fixed a bug where player's bullets would become invisible at level 3 in v0.15.3.
Please post here or in the discussions group if you encounter any more bugs and I'll do my best to resolve them as quickly as possible! You can also join us on Discord: here
- Stumphead Games
Player Levels Overhaul - v0.15.3
Player Levels
This is a bit overdue, but I finally took another pass at the player's levels. I think it turned out pretty well considering there's a lot to balance here especially since energy drops are random. There's still a bunch more work that needs to be done before I'll be completely satisfied with it though.
Some things to note:
- Players can now level up their ship 8 times by gathering energy.
- The player's progress to the next level can be found underneath the energy bar (highlighted in the picture above).
- Each level requires a bit more energy than the last.
- Levels 9 and 10 are in the pipeline.
What else is new:
- Added a new lightspeed background (this will randomly swap between the previous background).
- Added some mote variation to player's bullet hit animations.
What didn't make this update:
- A new mid-tier boss.
This is going to happen soon, I just wanted to get some of these other features people have been requesting out of the way first.
- A harder endless mode for those who want a challenge (this includes a completely separate leaderboard).
This is pretty much done and I can share more details about it soon, the only reason it didn't make it into this build was due to some last minute Steam API error that loves to crash the game.
Edit: Looks like there’s a strange bug occurring here that I didn’t catch in testing that’s making player billets vanish. I’ve rolled this build back for now until I can figure out what’s going on. For anyone that’s still on 0.15.3, you should be able to reinstall to revert to 0.15.2 if Steam hasn’t made the changes for you already.
Edit: Hotfix v0.15.3.1 is up and running!
Energy Reserves and Price Increase - v0.15.2
v0.15.2 is a very small update, but needs some explanation.
Some players have addressed the question "What should happen when I pick up energy but I'm already full on that color?" The answer is Reserve Energy:
Reserve Energy is a tiny capsule that sits above the player's energy gauge and can be used to restore 25% of energy to whichever color the player currently has selected.
The idea behind this is to help promote player weapon preference. For instance, if you enjoy using the drones and dislike the chargeshot, you can divert half of that chargeshot energy back into your drone ability using your reserves. It requires 10 energy pickups to fill your reserve and you can currently only store 1 reserve capsule at a time.
This may require some balance in the future as more weapons and abilities are added, but currently I'm pretty happy with the way it works.
Keyboard Default: V key
Controller Default: PS4 (Triangle) / Xbox (Y)
(Reserve Energy is labeled as "Action" in keybindings)
Other Updates
Additions:
- Added a new track for when an asteroid random encounter occurs.
Fixes:
- Fixed a bug where some enemies were lacking screenshake.
- Made the in-game leaderboard a bit darker.
- Fixed an issue where some enemies would fade in with their colliders enabled (this resulted in some unfair deaths).
Price Increase to $3.99 and Why
Ever since Super Crome launched into Early Access in March, players have been telling me the game is too cheap for what it is. I believe this now, but I don't think I did back then. I've always valued pricing the game at what I felt it was worth, but I'm also my harshest critic.
At the time of launching into EA, I felt the game was light on content (I still do actually) and didn't have enough replayability. I've come to find that's the wrong attitude to have and it's just not true as I've had countless players tell me how enjoyable the game is despite the limited number of enemies and bosses.
I've also come to realize that if you don't value your own work, no one will. So I'm raising the price by $2 with the next big update (v0.16). I want to reassure people that this won't be a regular thing throughout EA. Ideally I want to get it up to $10 for version 1.0, but that's including story mode and a handful of other features that won't be completed for a long while.
Also, I always value player feedback, if you think something could be improved or just want to chat please feel free to comment here or on the Stumphead Games Discord. I'll be sure to make another post before the price goes up in case anyone wants to get in before that $2 bump.
Edit: Unfortunately it appears that steam updated the proposed price earlier than I expected.
