Rogue Wave - Pre-Alpha Demo - September Symphony

The September edition of Rogue Wave is here. This update has focused mostly on the upgrade experience and the players ability to craft their own path through the game.

There are now over 50 upgrades available and this means you have some control over how you will escape. This release adds a number of features for crafting your journey. For example, the levels are no longer linear, if you want to grind until you have a specific upgrade, no problem stay in the earlier levels, but if you want to push hard and power through with your skills alone, jump ahead a level or two.

As well as adding a few more upgrades we’ve also added features to ensure the player has enough information about upgrades and enemies to select the best upgrade offered to suit their chosen strategy. A new level launch screen provides (almost) everything you need to know, but we have kept a few surprises for you.

So, are you a gunslinger who powers their way through or a defender who wears down the enemy? Will you do the hard work letting the Nanobots focus on keeping you alive, or perhaps you will let them do the work while you strategize?

With this release the path is yours to define, download it now and let us know what you think. Remember, we are still in a pre-alpha stage so your feedback is essential for setting the direction of the game.

Below is the changelog for this version and a roadmap for the next version, October Overdrive.

Changelog Rogue Wave September Symphony

Here’s a quick summary of the changes in this version. Give it a play and let us know what you like, what we should do more of and what you aren’t so impressed with.

Game Play

• Screen effects showing player damage now much more noticeable.
• Added a Level Selection screen allowing players to choose their path (and thus play style) to the Portal.
• Discoverable Item will now always provide a recipe not currently owned (or a large resource drop if no recipe available).
• Multi-Level buildings add more variety to the levels.
• Buildings have a larger range of colours making it a little easier to navigate the level.
• Upgrades on Hub screen now have informative tooltips.
• Number of enemies in Level 7 increased significantly.
• Smoothed out the challenge rating of some of the mid-game levels.
• Synthos now becomes more transparent with player damage to provide clearer player feedback.
• Reduced the amount of resources gathered in early stages at default difficulty.

Upgrades and Achievements

• Fireball cooldown upgrade.
• Fireball damage upgrade.
• Fireball range upgrade.
• Health upgrades now have a higher weighting, meaning they are offered more often.
• Health (Max) upgrades now increase players starting health, as well as max health.
• Radar lines are now dotted to help distinguish them from enemy lasers.
• Resource Scavenger achievement.
• Synthos will always be offered in upgrades if not already acquired.
• Synthos’ weapons no longer damager spawners.
• Other than Dash all movement upgrades have been disabled as there still isn’t a good way to trigger them.

Enemies

• Bottlecap movement speed reduced.
• Bottlecap audio reduced in range significantly.
• Flying enemies no longer hover over the player (where they are hard to shoot).
• Enemies will no longer spawn in the same cell as the player on level startup.

Player Experience

• In-Game notifications when an achievement is unlocked.
• Better placement of Join Discord menu item.
• Add buttons for following the project and adding to the wishlist from within the demo.
• Maximum Nanobot level reached is now reported correctly in stats screen.
• Number of runs started now reported in stats.
• When paying to make a temporary weapon upgrade permanent the associated ammo is also made permanent (without extra resource cost).
• Progress bar for Nanobot level moved to below the Nanobot level readout.
• Player upgrade details shown on the Level Selection Screen
• Level details, such as items present, enemies present and challenge rating, shown in the Level Selection Screen.
• Weapon Loadout screen now part of the Level Selection Screen.
• Tooltips provide additional detail on all data in Level Selection screen.

Engine and Tooling

• In game console allows for entering cheat codes for testing purposes.
• Enemy prefabs are now self-documenting, meaning that the UI is much more easily updatable.
• Times in stats are now reported as HH:MM:SS rather than seconds only.
• Stat reports now include a mini game log showing which levels were played, in what order and what the outcome was.

Miscellaneous

• We are continually optimizing the code, but this release has a number of significant perf related refactoring. Paying down that debt.
• Added scrolling sections to Hub screen to ensure player can view all upgrades.

As always there are a raft of smaller bug fixes and tweaks too.

Roadmap for October Overdrive Release

What is implemented each month depends a great deal on testing and player feedback. However, we do like to enter a monthly sprint with a general idea of what we will focus on. So here it is, the plans for the October Overdrive release of Rogue Wave are:

New Stuff

• Procedural Level Generation enhancements to allow crafted areas for optimal gameplay
• Add a time pressure to the levels, do it quicker for more rewards
• Smarter Ammo Building decisions
• More hidden items to discover
• Hints about the location of hidden items
• Audio feedback on pickup collection
• Buy additional offers in the Hub
• Treasure Hunter achievements for finding hidden items
• Provide suggested default names for new profiles
• Beautifying the stats page shown on regeneration
• Add ability to provide in-game feedback

Known Bugs in our Sights

• Player can be immobilized by contact enemies
• Enemies occasionally pass through buildings and walls
• Stingers pass through uneven ground

Note, these items are not guaranteed to be delivered, but they are at the top of our target list. In many months we deliver much more than planned… be sure to checkout the changelog when we release in October.