Hi there Prospectors,
We thought we'd update you on what we've been up to since we released the demo. First of all, we've been reading everyone's feedback and watching all the streams. It helps us understand how you've been getting on with the demo, the issues you've encountered and the strategies you've been using. This in turn helps us focus our attention on the things that need changing or improving… but you all know this stuff.
The following is definitely subject to change so don’t judge us too harshly if some of this doesn’t get into the final release.
So this month our main focus has been clarifying and implementing the meta game. But "how is it going to work?" we hear you cry! Well good question and the first place to start would be with the playable characters.
The TerraTech universe now has characters which we are really excited about and have been wanting to do for a while. Each character represents a corporation from the TerraTech universe. They can earn Block Bucks (BB) during a run by collecting resources and cashing them in at the end. BB can then be used to invest in your character's skill tree. Each of the character skill trees has some really fun buffs and abilities that are thematically linked to their corporation. They also have a unique boost ability that will change up how you play.
This month we've been working on our second character, who some of you managed to play with by taking advantage of a naughty little bug. Here's a sneak preview for the players that didn’t:
Jean Pierre’s Tech is slower due to its heavy armour, large crushing treads and spikes that can damage anything that gets close. His character speciality means blocks are heavy and affect Tech performance by reducing boost power, but increase impact damage scaling. The more massive blocks a Tech has means it doesn't boost up to high speeds, but when it does boost, it does more damage to the things it hits. His unique boost ability activates a damage reduction bonus, allowing you to refine your impact damage build.
We've continued to improve the "Dust Bowl" map with new scenery, terrain and foliage. We've also been working on our next map called "Magma Hellscape." You unlock maps by defeating the end boss of the previous map.
New bosses have been added to the rotation. We've been focusing on bosses with melee attacks to make the boss gameplay more varied. Below is a boss with a big fist attack and another with a spinny drill attack.
We've been beavering away making lots and lots of new locations. We have a whole bunch of them now with different interactions and challenges you need to overcome to access your reward. As you can see from below some of the corporations have even had their buildings corrupted by the Legion A.I.!
There is also a new member of the Legion horde:
Finally we've continued to create loads of new blocks:
We've made some good optimisations on large packs of enemies. You can now select their detail level and reduce it if you have a less beefy computer. We've also added AMD FidelityFX™ Super Resolution and selectable Vulkan drivers which should also improve the performance on the Steam Deck (and other PCs).
Until next time, Prospectors!
- Team Legion