Changelog 23.2 - Large update & Revamped first time user experience


Greetings!

It's been a while after the last update. The game has been progressing but I lost track of time after my holiday break. Got to keep a break even from the things you love to do :D 

I posted my game for review by some very experienced people from the Finnish games industry and got some great feedback I've been working on lately. 

In summary the main feedback points were:

  • First time user experience
    • None of the testers completed any missions. No wonder since there isn't any indication on what you should do. The purpose and goals of the game needs to be communicated a bit better to the player
  • Vehicle driveability
    • The vehicle was a bit floaty and hard to drive. I agree.
  • Somekind of setup phase between missions
    • It's frustrating to explode when you are plannig on a build for your car. The game is about making builds and thinking about the best weapon combinations and currently there isn't really a safe area to do that.
  • Combat juice
    • I really want the first 5 minutes of the game to feel as good as possible. On review I noticed a lot of essential feedback (sounds and effects) are completely missing in combat making the combat feel a bit flat.

-- But without further ado, here's the new stuff ---

Graphics

  • Tweaked the sky to differentiate the sky and the ground better from one another. The ground was red-ish brown and the sky was brown-ish red so it was hard to notice any difference

New attachments

      • Multi-barrel weapons: now every weapon is only single barrel on default
      • Double Barrel attachment that adds two barrels increasing fire speed
        • On Epic or higher rarity Double barrel gives 4 barrels instead
      • Octuple Barrel attachment adds 8 barrels adding even more fire speed but with a great cost for weapon accuracy.
        • On Epic or higher rarity Double barrel gives 16 barrels instead (lol)
      • Rotating Barrel attachment makes the weapon into a minigun with a rotating barrel and a wind-up time
      • Charge Trigger attachment gives the weapon a wind-up time before firing increasing damage


      Gameplay

      • Turret rotation is halted when holding middle-mouse button
      • Weapon recoil now causes physical force on the vehicle
      • Enemies now flash when taking damage
      • Enemies flinch and are slowed down when taking damage
      • Added new loot spawn effect when completing a mission
      • Added OnFire status effect for any entity (not sure if I created an attachment for applying this effect tho)
      • Increased turret rotation speed making aiming more accurate
      • Increased mortar and plasma projectile speeds
      • Added new "kill 15 enemies" mission objective
      • The car can not be easily flipped on its roof anymore
      • Healing items heal relative to player health (eg. 25% max health)

      UI

      • Added mission objectives list on the player HUD
      • Added "New" and "Completed" notifications on mission objectives when the objective is created or completed
      • Added a new notification on the HUD when player arrives at the mission area
      • Added new "Press F to pick up" indicator on interactable items like pickup items in world space
      • Added ammo inventory amount in the HUD
      • Added current ammo amount in HUD

      Audio

      • Fixed audio settings not being applied on the start of the game if set previously
      • Added enemy hit sound 
      • Added critical hit sound

      VFX

      • New awesome hit effects for kinetic damage weapons
      • Display hit effect in the screen center when dealing damage to an enemy
      • Added pickup item trails with rarity colors

      Fixes

      • Fix plasma explosion force targeting the player

      Files

      DEMON_ENGINES.zip 131 MB
      Feb 25, 2021

      Get Demon Engines Demo

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