Last week we had another pretty big update, so we thought we should let you know what was added.
Mountain Levels
Another 10 new levels were added in a new mountain setting along with 2 new stage mechanics and another music track. The 2 new mechanics are the Unstable Iceblocks and the Hanging Icicles. They are somehow similar but they have different purposes in the battle. Now the Hanging Icicles are pretty straight forward. Shooting them with a harpoon causes them to drop, killing anyone beneath them. They are perfect for killing enemies out of your range, or eliminating “hiding” enemies. The Unstable Blocks are like regular blocks, except that they drop if you step on them. They will also kill anyone standing underneath them but that’s not their primary function. Activating them changes significantly the layout of the level, opening new paths or creating new kinds of cover. You can also see that we went with a “brighter” look on this level. The music track on this level is pretty different too.
The Knockback
We also added a new player action. Players can now “push” other players. It’s a short range attack that knocks but doesn’t damage. You can see the Green player on the GIF above using it to knock the Red player under the falling Iceblock. Now this action is very hard to use efficiently and extremely case-specific but we think it’s adding to the depth of the game. It can lead to some pretty awesome combos in team battle too.
Tutorial
We added a short tutorial that can be played with up to 4 players. It’s currently split in 2 parts. One is about the movement and the other one about the shooting. We will probably add a few more parts later, one for the power ups and maybe one where you lean about all the stage mechanics. We’ll see.
Additional improvements
Players now have the option to select on how many points they want each game to end. You can choose 6, 8, 10 or 12.
What’s next?
For the past two months we’ve been trying to collect feedback on what the game needs, if it’s fun and what we should further improve. We are confident that the game right now is indeed entertaining and in a pretty good standing regarding aesthetics and technical standards. However there’s still some things to be done. We will further improve the design and the appearance of the levels, improve the character animations and of course add some more levels. But the most requested feature is to make it online. Now this is something we expected, we just wanted to make sure that the game is “ok” before expanding it. So we are now developing the online aspect. We’ll start with a simple version, and then add things like group invitation, challenges etc.
Until next time…