I just finished the latest version of my game CASE (previously known as BRRRRRT Life).
https://cosephgames.itch.io/case
You can play in browser or download it (Windows build).
I guess you can call this a beta version - most of the features are now in the game and it mostly works as desired.
You earn bounty on each mission and can now spend the cash on buying better airframes, hardpoints and equipment. There are already quite a few airframes and hardpoints to choose from but there are more I will add when I continue it.
There are currently 10 campaign missions and you can random seed skirmish missions too for endless combinations.
Any feedback on this would be useful as not many people have seen it yet. But I'd be interested in what people think of the way enemies spawn in the levels, how balanced it feels, how important stealth and speed seem to be, and how clear the hardpoint system is.
A bit more explanation on some of the features:
Karmic Balance system
This is a feature I've been experimenting with just because I've been thinking about it for a while and wanted to give it a try. It "evens out" luck, causing an average distribution to occur. If you've ever played strategy games like XCOM you'll know the frustration of a 95% success chance failing repeatedly, causing you to fail a mission for no fault of your own (and with a game that punishes failure as harshly as XCOM, the only real option is to save scum, which I don't like as a design feature). In this game, it's evened out over 20 rolls so e.g. if you have an event with a 55% chance of success, you will almost always get 11 successes and 9 failures over 20 attempts.
In CASE, guns have a chance of deflecting off a target hit (depending on the guns damage and the target's armor). So I used this system for adjusting the chance of deflection.
Mission Flow system
Overall the missions are procedurally generated but within some very strict boundaries - each mission has a set selection of enemy waves you face and has a "threat flow", which affects the rate and strength of waves that spawn. The rolling background is made out of 10 segments which are randomly placed (never repeating the same pair) in front of the player as they "move forward" (technically the tilemap is moving downwards). To deal with the problem of ground spawns overlapping with buildings, each tilemap section has set spawn points that ground units may be placed on.
Overall I'm pretty happy with how the levels work out. You can build your strategy and select hardpoints to counter the enemy types you'll face in the level, but the order and position they arrive in is not predictable so you need to stay in the moment and dynamically respond.
A unique thing I included in this is that the further forward you move on the screen, the faster the tilemap scrolls. So if you're further forward you get less time to react to new enemies appearing, but you'll move through the level faster. It also adjusts the rate at which enemies appear behind you (because you're flying faster and they take longer to catch up). Stealth systems also have a big impact on spawning - all aerial waves spawn more slowly if you're flying one of the stealthy jets.
Future Features
As well as extending the story and adding more planned missions, plus additional airframes and hardpoints and a "super weapon" slot, there are a couple of things I'm already considering for the next version (start TBD as I want to work on a 3D project next):
* Adjust how waves spawn in the level to more evenly distribute the threat across the screen. Currently it's possible for a bunch of waves to all spawn on one side of the screen at once, which might make the difficulty quite unpredictable. I have some ideas for influencing wave spawning to "even out" how much danger any area of the screen poses at once and how the bullet hell is spread out.
* Add menu elements indicating if a hardpoint is not permitted to your current airframe/any airframe you have. Hardpoints have a size rating and each airframe can only fit hardpoints up to a certain size. So I am concerned that players might not notice that a hardpoint they want wont fit the airframe.