Hi everyone,
I'd like to highlight some of the biggest changes we've made in the last year, and give you some updates on what we've been up to this last month.
But first, a quick announcement - we won't be releasing a patch this month. We're in the middle of overhauling our battle system, which has ultimately impacted how the first hour of the game is played. We want to make sure the game is in a good spot before we release any major changes.
The 5 Biggest Changes we've made this year
Now, Lets go over the 5 biggest changes we've made since Early Access
1. A sense of purpose
This morning I went back and played the first hour of our original Early Access build, and it was very clear how unclear the objective of the game was. We also noticed this in our original playtests, but just didn't know how to properly deal with this.... until now!
We've recently been experimenting with the "Project H.U.M.A.N." map. A high level overview of your mission and purpose. We rolled out a prototype this month to our private test group (join the discord if you'd like to be a part of it) and have seen amazing results.
This, in tandem with the fuel depot update, makes it clear as to what your objective is, and better ties in with the core gameplay loop.
2. Fuel Depot
Speaking of the fuel depot, this was certainly the biggest change. Automating fuel as the core focus of the game has really solidified the game and given a clear purpose as to why the player needs to automate right from the start.
Even though I loved spamming the fuel depot button, this change makes a lot more sense.
3. The Pickerpal
After changing focus to the fuel depot, we needed a way to automate fuel, so we added the pickerpal - a lumbering creature that picks plants for you.
They alleviate the pain of constantly having to manually refuel, and you can get straight into the automation portion of the game without having the learn about factories and ore harvesters. We've also noticed most playtesters have a lot less trouble getting through the beginning section of the game thanks to this more natural progression of gameplay.
4. Fixing our worst feature - Battery Death
The biggest complaint we got was the 14 minute death timer. In fact, most of our negative reviews come from this death timer. Because it's core to the premise of the story, we couldn't exactly take it out of the game, but we've done a couple of things to alleviate the frustration.
This upcoming patch, the battery shows up only for about 10 seconds before you die (most players tend to just stand there and wait to die if we show it any earlier), and the respawn is wicked quick (no loading screen, just straight respawn)
These two simple changes have turned the general reception of the feature from mostly negative, to almost all positive (or at least neutral).
5. Fixing our second worst feature - Tall Factories
The second biggest complaint was that you couldn't see behind any of the buildings! (A massive oversight by us when we started designing the world of Atrio.)
But thanks to Early Access, your feedback steered us in the right direction and we "squished" the factories down, making them wider and flatter.
In addition, we gave them the ability to pull from automation lines, simplifying the automation process.
After playing both the old version, and our newest internal build, I cannot believe how much better the game plays! I'm so proud of how far we have come.
New Features
Let's talk about some new features on the way
Battle
As per our last post, we started to experiment with "delivery pods" that attract creatures when they're busy retrieving helpful items for you. We've now officially named them "Underground Supply Pods", and they'll be scattered throughout the world. Do note the art is placeholder, but the functionality is coming together nicely. We're still experimenting to figure out what's fun and not fun, but the supply pods are definitely staying, as they provide a way to acquire the pickerpals, and give a secondary objective to the player. They also let you choose when you want to enter combat, as opposed to our random spawning of pickerpals in our original build (people HATED that.... hooo wee)
In addition, we're prototyping out the wall healer and the stun turret.
If you provide fuel to these, they will automatically heal your walls, or shock incoming dangers.
These are definitely still quite raw, and their designs are all in the early stages, but hopefully these will end up staying.
We've also decided that they both pull from assembly lines, which means in order for them to be effective, you have to automate their fuel lines!
Buffs
Lastly, we've added buffs into the game.
After you unlock the ability to consume battery's, you get the ability to choose from a variety of batteries, each with their own unique buffs (healing over time, damage resistance, water resistance).
Oh, and you can now die from standing In the water (you're an android… what were you expecting!)
What an amazing year, and we can't wait to release this bad boy in 1.0 (sometime this year!)
Hopefully you'll love the battle update when we release it in the next couple of months.
Stay tuned and thanks for all the support!
Stephen and the Isto Team