After much planning, a quick recharge of the batteries, and lots of coffee and booze, we’re done with the planning stage!
Previous roadmap recap
In the previous roadmap we set out to figure ways to clean out various elements in the game that were bogging down development and slowing the production of new content (levels, etc).
After countless hours of planning, meetings, mindmaps, testing and medicinal stims, we’ve reached some fruitful conclusions about things that can be improved, which we will tackle in the upcoming prototype stage.
Levels
There are numerous things in the way the levels are constructed which drastically slows the creation of new levels.
For example the specific indoor layout, having to interact with furniture while investigating, specific cryptids that have to spawn from specific places and many more that can all be improved upon.
So for starters we want to address the above and finally test the waters on a brand new level.
Investigation
Even though the current investigation is fun at first, it gets repetitive very fast, and limited us from giving you more gadgets which is the whole point of this game :P
There are many other gripes, for example there’s little choice as you have to use X gadget to pick up X clue, but instead it would be much more fun to give the player a choice which gadget they want to use for the specific circumstance & preferences.
In the upcoming prototype we’ll test various ways to improve upon those points, allowing you to be the paranormal investigator you all came here to be ;)
Combat
Aside from the points mentioned above, everyone knows how many issues the combat has, not to mention it mostly relies on grinding rather than investigation.
However HellSign’s vision was always for the player to be a badass investigator that uses their knowledge to crush the enemies, things like specialized bullets have been one of the top requested features from the community.
And thanks to the planning there are many fresh ideas on the table to make it a reality, which we can’t wait to prototype!!
Ghast
Many of these technical elements also limited what we could do with the ghast, which ended up being pretty superficial.
In a game about ghosts (doh), it was always strange that the main threat ended up being the cryptids and not the supernatural ;)
So another thing we’ll be exploring, is making a more exciting ghast/s, with more varied attacks & behaviours.
Bosses
The way the bosses are currently laid out, forces you to play a 20-30min level just to learn their attack patterns, not to mention you’ll likely get a different boss each time :P
This leads to a grindy experience, so we’ll be prototyping ways to fix this issue without harming the random investigation element.
That’s enough words for now, time to get down and dirty and start on the prototype!
Although this will keep us busy from releasing patches for the current game, we’ll be keeping you updated on the progress as usual.
Thanks for your support, and we can’t wait to hear what you think of it all!
Happy hunting!
-Ballistic