This month a lot of work has gone into increasing the replay value and variation of each Survival mode run. It's really important in any game with roguelike elements to have the potential for wildly different builds with a lot of difficult decisions to be made on each run. I felt that the game was lacking some of this depth so a big portion of the month was spent adding content and mechanics to give players more options. There'll be more on this next month with a look at the finalized weapon levelling system.
King Skull: Bullet Hell Boss
I've always wanted boss fights in Survival mode to be a lot more exciting than just facing a bullet sponge enemy doing basic attacks. After a few experiments and a lot of optimization, this bullet hell style encounter ended up working really well with the high mobility that you have as a player. It really increases the intensity compared to normal islands. The visuals and animations are still quite rough here (the boss itself will be fully redesigned, it's here mainly to test out the new mechanics) but the gameplay feels great and many of the other bosses will now feature more hectic, bullet hell attacks.
Target Dummy
One of the most important parts of the shop in Survival mode is being able to experiment with weapon mods to create new builds. Without a target that has a damage per second indicator, there was a lot of guesswork in terms of the range and damage output of your build. Now there are multiple target dummies in the shop area, allowing you to clearly see how well your build is performing.
Greed Revamp
Being greedy and biting off more than you can chew, resulting in the end of a Survival run is always something that is really interesting to me. I've spent a good portion of the month revamping the old greed perk system in a way that offers a LOT of power to players but with some heavy drawbacks which can make for difficult decisions on each run.
The greed mechanics have been split into two sections: perks and totems.
Greed Perks: These offer a huge benefit but also come with a guaranteed downside. When you pick one up, it cannot be removed but has a lasting passive effect. They can be stacked for stronger effects as normal perks can.
- Leap Of Faith: Max health greatly increased, but fall damage is enabled
- Bribe: Max health greatly increased but lose crystals when taking damage
- Double Trouble: Max health greatly increased but so is enemy health
- Cracked Helmet: Block damage in front of you but take double damage from behind
- Heavy Armor: Gain immunity to a random elemental damage type but movement speed is reduced by 50%
- Glass Cannon: Damage massively increased but you lose most of your max health
- Playing With Power: Damage massively increased but you can hurt yourself
- Brute Force: Both outgoing and incoming damage heavily increased
- Beginner's Luck: All damage dealt has a chance to be greatly higher or greatly lower than usual
- Think Fast: Damage greatly increased at the start of each island, but decreases over time
- Metal Claw: Damage heavily increased but no more chests spawn for the next 10 islands
- Up The Ante: Damage greatly increased but easy portals no longer appear and more enemies spawn
- Untouchable: Damage is greatly reduced but is increased every time you eliminate an enemy. If you get hit, the damage boost is reset
- Slippery Slope: Gain crystals over time but also lose health over time
- Double Edged Sword: Gain crystals when dealing damage but lose crystals when taking damage
- Workaholic: Far more crystals drop when eliminating enemies but you lose most of your max health
- High Stakes: Far more crystals drop when eliminating enemies but elite and armored enemies have a chance to spawn instead of normal enemies
- Gambler: Chance for more crystals to drop when eliminating enemies but also a chance for no crystals to drop at all
- Cursed Lottery: Gain a gigantic amount of crystals but lose most of your max health
- High Roller: 50% chance for double chests to spawn but a 50% chance for no chests to spawn
- Hoarder: Double the chests spawn after each island but double the enemies also spawn
- Cursed Loot: Chance for shop loot to be free but also a chance for it to be empty
- False Confidence: Normal enemy health is reduced but boss health is greatly increased
Greed Totems: These have instant one-off effects (for example gain crystals but lose max HP) and can be repeatedly purchased (with the price exponentially increasing).
- Feeling Lucky: 50% chance to double max health, 50% chance to halve max health
- Last Resort: 33% chance to fully heal, 66% chance to take a small amount of damage
- Blood Money: Gain crystals but lose 33% of your health
- Instant Gratification: Instantly spawn a chest of a random rarity but lose 33% health
- Insurance: Gain 200 max health but lose all of your crystals
- Impatience: Upgrade a random perk tier but lose 25% health
- Focused Power: Lose a random 50% of your perks but gain +4 tiers on perks that remain
- Claw For A Claw: Lose 3 random perks but get a legendary perk
- Bill Pay: Gain 3 random perks or mods but increase future shop prices
- Scrap Metal: 50% chance to increase your weapon level, 50% chance to do nothing
- No Pain No Gain: Instantly get a level 10 weapon but lose 75% max HP
- Greed Heart: Gain a short term +500% boost in health, but it is reduced every second down to 50% of your original health
- Together Forever: Your currently equipped weapon gains 10 weapon levels but cannot be swapped for a new weapon later
- Inseparable: Your currently equipped weapon gains random (Rare+) mods in all empty slots but cannot be dropped or swapped for a new weapon later
Both greed perks and totems can be found occasionally in shops and temples, maybe saving a run... or dooming it?
Challenge Runs
Challenge runs (not to be confused with regular challenges) are Survival runs with a specific condition, loadout or world modifier applied to make the run difficult or unusual. The goal is always to simply complete the base Survival loop (3 biomes) with the challenge active. Completing each challenge run rewards the player with cosmetic unlocks and are a fun way to jump into a Survival run with a specific goal in mind.
Some examples of challenge runs currently added:
- Complete a run while keeping a friendly wandering penguin safe throughout
- Complete a run where ALL mods and perks you find are chaos themed (leading to an increasingly unstable run as most chaos related loot increases damage but makes projectiles wildly fly around)
- Complete a run with ALL greed perks active at once
- Complete a run where the instagib world modifier (enemies die in one hit but so do you) is always active
- Complete a run where enemies have less health but 4x as many spawn
- Complete a run in 30 minutes but time moves faster after each completed island
- Complete a run facing enemies from all biomes who are using random weapons
- Complete a run where only greed loot spawns
There will be many more challenge runs added to the game over time and they will also feature bronze, silver, gold and diamond medals for completing them with a certain score (score is calculated from damage dealt, damage taken, time taken and crystals remaining when finishing the run).
Other Changes
- Movement Speed Changes: Movement speed has been lowered for Survival mode and increased for Racing mode (though it's still possible to get incredibly fast with perks when on a Survival run)
- Grenade Weapon Mod Compatibility: Any weapon mods can now be placed in grenade slots, allowing them to synergize with your current build!
In this example, the grenade has a Split Shot mod which splits a single projectile into multiple smaller ones shortly after being spawned. - Enemies Using Mods: As mentioned previously, enemies will begin getting weapon mods after the first loop in Survival. This means that existing encounters constantly get spiced up.
- Weapon Choice: Because of the new weapon leveling system, players will no longer always start with a basic pistol and will instead get a choice of 3 random level 1 weapons when starting each run.
- Multiplayer Improvements: I've made some huge changes to ensure that players with high latency still have an experience as close as possible to playing offline (big improvements to movement, hit detection and more).
Thanks for reading!
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