Hey there! Slightly late September review post has arrived! :)

In this post, I would like to share how development of our upcoming retrofuturistic shoot'em up was going for the last two months (because everyone was lazy and we skipped August post).

During these two months we’ve made HUUUUGE changes in game mechanics. These changes should make the game more fun and player-friendly. We completely changed the weapons paradigm in the game, which includes Primary, Secondary, and Ultimate weapons.

Changes to Secondary Weapon

First of all, we completely changed what Secondary weapon is and how the player gets and controls it. Before these changes, the player got a new random Secondary weapon each time their current weapon was out of ammo. The Secondary weapon was also controlled by the player and required constant use of the fire button. This was hard to do on a gamepad, because Primary and Secondary weapons usually have different fire rates and fire modes.

From now on, the player will receive random single-use Items instead of a Secondary weapon. It could be active Items (e.g. drone with auto-turret) or passive Items, e.g. special force field that changes enemy bullets and rockets' trajectory.

Also, we merged the existing Ultimate weapon with new Items. Previously, the player had to gain a required amount of damage scores to receive a new Ultimate weapon. Each Primary weapon had its own Ultimate weapon. Each time a player gets an Ultimate weapon, they can activate it only once (sounds familiar, right?). It was obvious to make this change and to include the Ultimate weapon into the list of Items. We’ve added one meta-Ultimate Item and the game picks the proper Ultimate at activation time.

Damage-Scores System

Because the new Items system couldn’t use the “out of ammo” rule, we adopted a damage-scores system. Once the player gains a required amount of damage scores, they get a new random Item from the pool.

So, the new weapon system is as follows:

• Primary weapon: the player collects it from drops on stage (one drop per stage).
• Single-use Items: active and passive items including Ultimate. The player gets a randomly picked new Item when they gain the required amount of damage scores.

Changes to Glitches

Next important changes are related to “glitches”, which were introduced in previous months. We added more glitches during September, and it became clear that we should make changes. Everything started to be too random in the game. New rules on how glitches work:

• New glitch replaces the active glitch when the player gets to the next stage.
• All glitches are separated into “positive” and “negative”.
• There could be special events during a stage; after the event, the player gets extra glitches—one positive or negative and one special “event” glitch.

Graphics Updates

Talking about changes, we’ve been working on graphics, too. Major updates include new skins for enemies (Elite enemy) and new iterations on updating Sand World.

We have several types of enemies that appear in all game locations. Some of them were already updated at the beginning of summer (all bullet enemies). But we skipped for a while one type of enemy with a very special role: the Elite enemy, who drops a new Primary weapon on death. We decided to make Elite enemy visuals independent from location, because it should appear in all locations, but remain familiar to the player. Still, there are several skins for this enemy, and we pick the skin at runtime.

From early days, background objects were randomly spawned from a pool of objects. This led to issues with the feel of progress. To resolve this, we decided to make each stage unique. But still, each stage is filled with random objects plus unique objects. All stages will have similar generic pyramids, but each stage will have its own decor for them.

Over the last two months, we’ve been working with A.Fruit on the first batch of sounds for weapons and tracks for game worlds. Tracks turned out great, so I hope we will be able to share a sneak peek in the following month.

Overall, the team has completed more than 100 tasks related to code, graphics, and other content, including:

• Pixel-perfect rotation – required for all weapons that can follow the target.
• Elite enemy skins and weapons.
• Started work on the first boss in Sand World.
• New Elite enemy waves and new bosses for Ocean World.
• Tuning and polishing of glitches.
• Tons of bug fixes and improvements.