Version 0.2 is Out Now!

How’s it going Pardners? Shuffled cowpoke productions here—after a bit of hard work on the new version of Doc’s Shufflin’ Shootout, we thought we’d provide an update on what we’ve been up to since December! We have a lot to unpack so let’s get into it!

New faces!

If you are eagle-eyed enough you might’ve noticed some new greenhorns hangin’ around. 

• Patrick is a friend of Justin’s who has long wanted to get into game dev, and has worked as a software engineer before. Welcome Patrick!
• Sadly in the time since the original jam version, Annabel had to step away from the project. We all wish Annabel luck on her further ventures, and she left us with the tall task of finding someone to continue her excellent work. Adam was lucky enough to meet someone who knew a great artist at M+Dev 2023, and we were able to find Lizzie: you might’ve seen her art already as the Fire and Burst Shot cards. Welcome Lizzie!

With these new additions we’ve been working hard and are excited to see an eventual v1.0 on the (distant) horizon!

What’s New? 

If you were around for the original Jampus 2024 game jam you may have heard that we were looking to revamp several aspects of the game and expand it into a proper rogue-lite deck-builder bullet-hell type game. The current build represents a next step in fleshing out the deck building aspect. Internally our game has been overhauled to add basic deck building mechanics like adding new cards, building hands, and removing cards from your deck—all in the name of dealing with darn bandits. 

You might also notice some new foes too, The Cross Bandit Twins: X and +, Radial Burst Bandit, Sniper Bandit, and a new big guy: The Shotling Gunner. He is like a regular Gatling Gunner with the bullet spread of the Shotgunner. Bandits also got an AI overhaul and use Unity’s behavior system instead of a Fininte State Machine (RIP to the team that was working on that, we really hope they continue working on that feature).

Changes to waves and reloads:

You are no longer forced to reload at the end of each wave. Instead redrawing your cards and reloading has been consolidated into a new reload menu! Hold down the reload button and you’ll enter a bullettime-like menu where time is slowed down and you can pick the cards while maintaining control of your character. If you release the reload button, you automatically select any cards you haven’t picked yet! On mouse and keyboard controls, the reload button has moved from R to space to make keyboard controls less cluttered. 

Next steps:

We have a rather long road ahead of us but we’re planning to open up our social media and a community discord for folks who want to follow the production of the game a bit closer and participate in our community. Currently we are looking at logical next additions to our game, like adding a tutorial and refining, polishing, and extending our existing mechanics. This build was made in time for Justin to go to GDC, where he passed tons of high Charisma checks and got lots of people interested. The next big milestone we are shooting to have a more fleshed out game for is M+Dev in Wisconsin this November.

Feel free to leave feedback on the newest build on itch.io, we always love to hear what y’all have to say about Doc’s Shufflin’ Shootout. Keep your eyes peeled for more news as we open up social channels for folks to engage with! (As one of the programming and design leads I, Adam, am very surprised and elated to see how positive the response to our game is and am ecstatic to see where things end up.) We are nowhere close to releasing on Steam yet, however in these early stages it is best to keep people who are interested and well-fed!

Anyway, this is Shuffled Cowpoke Productions signing off, and we hope all you gamers, outlaws, and cowboys take care on the road—y’all come back now, y’hear?