Xenomarine is a sci-fi horror themed graphical roguelike in which you play a space marine battling to survive in a vast, alien-infested space station.
Version 1.5.0 of the Demo has been in the pipeline for some time, and has just been released today! It includes some great new features that I think will really improve the game experience:
New User Interface Graphics
- New splashscreen with procedural animation
- New user interface graphics
- New inventory screen and item graphics
Here's an example - the new inventory screen, complete with weapons running out of ammo!
Other User Interface improvements
- One-click ranged combat
- Better pathfinding (A*)
- New main log options (size, detail level)
- Improved sound effects
Apart from the pathfinding, which makes exploring levels much more user friendly, I personally think the best thing here is one-click ranged combat. The previous scheme for using the mouse to attack at range was actually designed with future ports to tablets in mind, so I had designed a two-click system that would work without any 'mouseover' cues. But I recently realised this is not a good way to design the UI for a PC version, and that I could without two much trouble add a one-click system - so here it is!
Gameplay improvements
- Larger levels with more varied layouts
- Improvement to alien AI (more unpredictable movement)
- New skills: shield block and shield bash
Here's a zoom-shot of the new larger level designs:
What else?
Oh yes, improved support for Linux (tested successfully on Ubuntu!) and also for higher screen resolutions, including 1980 x 1080.
If this sounds like your thing, do try the new Demo! I'm always looking for feedback from players - please contribute to the Xenomarine community page if you have ideas for improvements, or bug fixes, or simply respond to this post!