Hello Drifters,
This update focuses on achieving two main goals: Offering an even smoother experience on Steam Deck than we already do, and preparing the game for porting. While there are many optimization challenges associated with porting (the focus of the next update), I'm particularly excited to share the game experience with mobile and Switch players.
A few highlights from 1.1:
- Reworked the Settings menus: Each category section is now a tabbed page
- Fonts are crisper & more readable, especially at non-native / small resolutions
- Ensured all controller glyphs, tutorials, and messages are accurate, large, and clear for Steam Deck and future consoles and mobile devices
- Reworked unlock progression, improving the pacing for players of varying skill levels
- Support for virtual keyboard high score entry on Steam Deck
- Many bug fixes
New Content For Nova Drift?
Now that I've had a fair bit of time to recover from launch and play with a few other projects, I'm feeling ready to start thinking about new content for Nova Drift again.
Last month, we previewed a few ideas for Nova Drift Weapon Mutations.
I've continued iterating on what Weapon Mutations could be, and have arrived at a experimental concept for each existing weapon. The challenge is balancing unique weapon identity with the difficulty of tuning effectively twice as many weapons as the base game has. It still sounds insane to me, but... I'll figure something out?
Here are a few more experimental concepts:
- Blaster Mutation: Kinetic Blast
- Kinetic Blast is an innately-charging, hard-hitting, close-range weapon that fires a pair of focused blasts ahead of you. These blasts can launch enemies
- Kinetic Blast automatically charges up while you move, gaining charge from your speed. While equipped, mobility reductions don't affect you
- Kinetic Blast fires either manually or triggers when you collide head-on. In the latter case, its damage is also scaled by your crash damage modifiers
- Targets launched by Kinetic Blast can collide with other targets, dealing additional blast damage to each-other on impact, based on their respective hull strength and velocities
- Grenade Mutation: Sticky Bomb
- Instead of exploding on impact or proximity, Sticky Bombs attach to enemies and explode after a short fuse, triggering all other nearby Sticky Bombs
- Stacking additional Sticky Bombs on a target that already has some increases the fuses of the other attached Sticky Bombs
- Sticky Bombs triggered by other Sticky Bombs increase their damage and blast radius for each reaction in the chain
- Compared to Grenades, Sticky Bombs have a greater rate of fire, and deal more damage, but produce no cluster explosives
- Dart Mutation: Harpoon
- Instead of dealing splash damage or burn damage to targets they're lodged in, Harpoons deal burn damage via a searing hot tether strung between them and their shooter
- Compared to Darts, Harpoons deal much more impact damage, last longer, and have a much slower rate of fire
- Swords Mutation: Greatsword
- Instead of deploying a pair of Swords, you deploy a massive Greatsword
- Compared to Swords, Greatsword is slower, larger, much more powerful, and indestructible, but cannot create Spark Projectiles
- Greatsword deals more damage the more missing hull you have
- Wielding a Greatsword provides a small amount of armor and damage reduction
I'm sure these ideas will change and evolve as I experiment with them. My current estimation is that Weapon Mutations will appear in Nova Drift's first DLC, which may ship alongside all new Gear.
New Gear? Fan Inspiration!
A few years ago, I received this amazing piece of fan art, and I never got it out of my head:
Shield Gear: Chakram, by Arch_Imedes
If there's time, I'd love to introduce something like this to the game. Since there is considerably more Weapon and Body Gear options in the game than there are Shield Gear, maybe this DLC could include a small Shield Pack to even it out.
Don't want to miss my next project? Follow me!
On BlueSky (My preferred platform), Twitter, Instagram, or TikTok
We've got quite an active discord with a very chill and inclusive community. The dev team is also pretty active there. There are channels for #ask-the-devs and #feedback. I also enjoy the #game-dev-help channel, which is a space for current and aspiring developers to learn and collaborate. So... come chat with us!
Want to help Nova Drift grow?
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Thank You
To everyone who has patiently awaited the release of Nova Drift throughout its long development, I appreciate you! It wouldn't be half the game it has become without its community, and I thank you for the opportunity to do what I love for a living. I can't wait to show you what I've got planned for the future. Good luck out there, in the cosmos!
Jeffrey (Chimeric)