If you take a quick little look to the changes list at the bottom of this post, you might notice the amount of fixes and tweaks easily outweigh the amount of new additions in this weeks update.. for good reason! My main goal this week was to squash any bug I ran into, and also rebalance a bunch of things to make the game a bit easier. With the original Space Grunts game I think I hit the right sweet spot between “difficult but possible” and my aim is to get as close to that with this game.
A few things I did in this update to accomplish that is tweak the settings on a bunch of aliens, from attach chance to hp and more. But I also tweaked a bunch of cards and gave the characters more HP from the start. I noticed that right now, altho I haven’t complete the game, I do have that feeling that I could do it if I don’t make too much mistakes.. it might still need a few changes left and right, but it’s getting close!
A lot of time was also put in squashing a crash-bug that happened way too often between two levels, and I’m now 99.9% sure I fixed the cause of the crash!
In the latest devlog I also talk a bit about all the polish that goes into getting a game ready for release, so check that out here:
Full changes list:
- added: new card Drill
- added: new card Block
- added: new skill card – Cautious
- added: Touch controls don’t have icons on them
- added: double-click / tap cards to play (alternative to dragging)
- added: aliens can now run away from things like fire
- added: dialogs for player getting sick + better
- added: Event – Hunter/Predator
- added: map-view now shows player’s head instead of a small orange dot
- added: inventory + skill cards to continue-game screen
Fixes and tweaks:
- fixed: reactivated tutorials (oops!)
- fixed: hud shows +4 on first level entry
- fixed: wall-shades still visible in darkness
- fixed: some aliens leave invisible blockade on the map (hopefully)
- fixed: crash at new level loading (hopefully)
- fixed: inventory cards now fly properly from A to B
- fixed: using Boring skill made aliens go into 0hp mode and sometimes unbeatable
- fixed: tricorder fails if creature dies that turn
- fixed: increase pause-button touch area (mobile)
- fixed: fire now damages plasmabombs
- fixed: “phantom death sounds”
- fixed: some attack-points on “non-attack” cards didn’t register
- fixed: dialogs/tutorials/info not correctly showing up
- fixed: added “modifier” cards to the savegame
- fixed: bibot doesn’t show up in level-progress (head-icon)
- fixed: if player is sick, fists don’t do any damage at all (feels weird)
- fixed: when playing EMP card, opponent doesn’t respond to it until ending card-battle
- fixed: pressing button on character-select screen (without selecting) crashes game
- fixed: teleport card during uiplaycard does work, but doesn’t exit “battle”
- fixed: Random crashes between level
- fixed: various moments where a hit isn’t doing damage to an alien
- tweak: added deck-card animation
- tweak: player being sick isn’t apparent (effect is, but what it means isn’t)
- tweak: alien-spawn count now corrected for “alternate routes”
- tweak: special inventory items aren’t shown at entities if already “mounted” (ie.: grunt-boots at acid barrel)
- tweak: huge amount of stat tweaks on items and aliens (balancing)
- tweak: flamethrower now ends round
- tweak: gave characters more HP (balancing)