https://sgth.itch.io/razerwirenanowars
Hello everybody,
Emiliano here, and not without a bit of pride, announcing my very first game release (even though this game is the last I begin working on of my ongoing projects).
A necessary premise is that this is my very first solo project (beside the music made by a friend), so despite being a programmer, I had to take care of design, and art as well. I went for a sort of "simplified" pixelart, where, well, where I could hide a bit my artistic lackings ;) Therefore for example all the animations are handled in the engine and are not "pixel perfect", and all the VFXs are procedurally generated as particles.
The game itself is simple, comes from an idea i had 2-3 years ago. Two generators, one static large one and one small moving one, and a wire/laser (technically it's a monomolecular filament wire :D ) between the two.
The generators have to be protected/avoid the enemies, the wire does the killing. If the big generator takes too many hits, it's game over, if the small generator (the WireDrive) takes hits, the shields go down until it's incapaticated for a given time before recovering. The shields recharge over time, the main generator health doesn't.
The enemies are represented by 7 types of nanobugs looking to extinguish humanity (shallow plot but i needed a touch of color ;) ), each with completely different movement patterns, 2 variants in case they are able to shoot or not, up to 4 different shooting types and up to 2 levels of armor.
All this is managed procedurally according to the wave progress.
The overall game approach is a bit "rogue-lite" in the sense that as said the Generator health doesn't recover in any way, so each run lasts as long as possible (there are checkpoints every 20 waves), then upon destruction of the generator the player can spend points to buy upgrades (9 different ones with 3 tiers each) or unlock powerups (8 different ones that will spawn on map once unlocked, each with 3 tiers as well), to then restart the battle (either from the checkpoint or from the beginning again).
The game went through 3 rounds of beta testing already, the average time to max it out is between 3 and 4 hours, with the best players having reached wave 900 (past waves 3-400 the game becomes pretty hardcore, around wave 800 it becomes REALLY hard)
I have loads of ideas on how to possibly extend the game for the future, but for now i wanted to have it really optimized in terms of performances (and it is as it was born with the objective of learning more in that sense), robust gameplay and enough contents for the value of 1$. The testers all said it should have been sold for 2$, but i'd rather leave it like this and have player more satisfied by the value for money than cashing in more.
The plan is to release now, see how the people like this version (it's releasing both year and on Steam) and then decide if to pick up a whole lot of ideas i have in a drawer and maybe make a sequel or a XXXL version of it. (Not to mention the larger project I am now working on since 5 years, but that I can't disclose yet :P )
As we came out pretty happy about the soundtrack as well (10 tracks, 2 minutes each, synty-/vaporwave 80s inspired), we did put that one for sale as well, the money will go to pay the composer in that case. Ah, in order to enhance a bit the cheeky visual feeling, I did provide the player with optional camshake, and three optional retro filters (80s, Arcade and Old TV), hope you will like them, personally I can't play any longer without the 80s one activated ;) )
Every feedback is welcome, I home you have the same fun by playing it as i did have it by making it!
Cheers,
Emiliano, @DokHgn