Void Crew News

[h2]Hello Ectypes![/h2]

Today the triple-i initiative starts, where we, as a small independent studio, have been honored to part of their showcase! So check it out here!

With that, I thought I’d share a few words on the state of things, taking a breather from trenches we are currently in, churning away at a very exciting update 4!

We acknowledge Update 3 was a stepping stone update with some compromises we weren’t proud of, but it did move us closer to our three goals.

So what are those three goals? I’ve been itching to share, so let’s go over them - here’s a few words on the three biggest topics we are bringing to the next big update (in addition to all the in between stuff, of course)



It’s been teased previously, but after an internal play session yesterday I can just say … wow - it just clicked (well, someone else said it, but I agree!). True, there’s much work left, and the following updates will definitely include more work. It’s taken us some time to get here, and being a small studio and all, we've been a bit hesitant to just jump in with both feet ... until now.

But as the community already has vocalized: This is what the game has been missing. So thank you for helping us make what feels like the right choice.

Note: We may discontinue the “old” pilgrimages and the concept of unlocking blueprints in the fabricator (via Player Ranks that is), but for update 4 we will support both the new and old experience, even if the old is relatively “limited” in comparison. The final decision will of course depend on the reception (For example: Is everyone just playing the Endless now?)

The endless run will likely have a disclaimer in line with:

DISCLAIMER: 

This is an Early Access Experimental Game mode!

For each jump, the difficulty increases, as do the rewards.

Your Rank Unlocks are NOT used in this mode. Instead, you start with a preset in addition to your chosen starting ship.

How far can your crew get?

Also, after completing an objective in the Endless mode, you get a care packge with goodies of your choosing!


Another topic on our most wanted list has been making the characters feel more unique, each with their own ability and customized perk selection for some meta game madness.



So the next big update will include 4 new “active” abilities and the first array of perks, one column for each role (Engineer, Gunner, Pilot, Scavenger). Now the sweet thing here is players can multi-spec perks, so no need to stick to one column! So do you specialize down one tree, or go wide to become jack of all trades?

And my favorite Ectype ability so far - the Scavenger's GRAPPLING HOOK!





As mentioned in my previous blog, there is the very important social aspect. We’ve already sneak peaked on a few things - including the Ectype-C02-Panic-Exhaust, allowing Ectypes to move slightly when panic occurs in vacuum, more tactile feeling with repair hands ingame, and the dear Salute to praise METEM ... or even getting those flappy ectype arms to behave with Inverse Kinematics!



But, today I’d like to reveal another one of our “immersion” social features we’ve been working on: "ingame contextual voice alteration" (in lack of an official name yet!). Of course still some work left, but here's a video snippet LINK. (Disclaimer: Though this might not be for update 4)

[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]

[h2]Closing words[/h2]
To close off, we will take our time to ensure we have more time to test and bugfix. It’s Early Access, yes, but we’ve found that people’s tolerance varies a lot - and all we want to do - duh - is give our players the best possible experience. Don't worry - Update 4 is coming very soon, and we can't wait to get it in your hands!

Don't forget to comment, like and head over to our discord and share your ideas in the Feedback channel :)

Until the next rambling ...

// Daniel, Creative Director
Hutlihut Games

Exciting news, ectypes!

Void Crew has received two nominations in the Danish Game Award: Spilprisen 2024, an award created as a tribute to Danish-developed videogames.

We’re nominated for the Best Debut and Best Game Design categories!

Regardless of the outcome, being nominated is definitely a boost of motivation and confidence for the team to keep working hard every day, and make Void Crew the best possible co-op experience for our community!

The Spilprisen 2024 Game Award ceremony will happen on April 30th in Copenhagen.

You can learn more about the event, and get tickets if you’re interested, in the Spilprisen 2024 website .



Before you go on with your day… can we ask you a favor?
Send all your good vibes our way, please! Winning the award would be great for the team, and would give Void Crew more visibility. 🤞

[h2]METEM PRESERVE YOU![/h2]

With love and excitement,
The Hutlihut Games team

Hey ectypes!

Last September we released Void Crew on Early Access - that means we've been on this journey for around 6 months now. Time flies!

These months have been filled with a lot of work to make Void Crew the best possible experience, and we still have a lot to do! We're currently working hard on Update 4 - if you want to know a bit more about it, we recommend taking a look at the Highlights from our latest Dev Stream, where we talk about some of the upcoming changes for the game. We have a lot of awesome stuff on the pipeline!

Psst... we also recommend joining our Discord server. We sometimes drop sneak peeks and teasers around there!

We wanted to thank all of you, our community, for these months. Your continued support, feedback and help pin-pointing issues have motivated us to keep working hard, and have greatly helped shaping up Void Crew. We couldn't have done all this without you!

Take a look at the video below to take a trip with us down memory lane; a review of what has changed in Void Crew during these past few months, and what's still to come.

[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]


We hope you stick around for the rest of the journey. We are very excited about the future of Void Crew!

[h2]METEM PRESERVE YOU![/h2]

With love and gratitude,
The Hutlihut Games team.

While we continue to work hard on the next update, here's a patch with a few bug fixes, as well as bringing an end to the Month of Stars and Love. We appreciate all of your feedback!

[h3]General[/h3]

• Ending the Month of Stars and Love - until next year!
  

[h3]Fixes[/h3]

• Fixed an issue where 4 color schemes that are being given out temporarily upon login, as compensation for an earlier bug were still not being received by some players. These colors will be given upon login until the next big update (Update 4)
  
• Fixed an issue where if the player was kicked while holding an item, the item would disappear for the rest of the party
  
• Fixed an issue where dying at the same time as the ship is exploding would make the player stuck in Sarcoraph Printing Queue and they could not transition to Tally Screen
  
• Fixed the door lever in Ambush base being interactable while the power is off
  

Thanks again to our community for helping us iron these out!
The journey continues ... (including more bugfixing ...)

Hey ectypes!

Highlights from our Dev Stream #9 are up! And if you're interested on knowing what's going to come with Update 4, you have to watch this one (or scroll down for a written summary!)

Watch the Highlights video here (including the Update 4 sneak peeks):
[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]

If you want to watch the full stream, you can do that here:
https://youtu.be/YZQBRVznhrk



[h2]Overhaul of the progression system[/h2]
The new system will bring things more in line with how the lootboxes are given out, and also will give more usability to gene points - in the current state of the game, when players get a lot of gene points they end up not having anything to do with them.

Players will have their gene points that they'll be able to distribute amongst the different perk trees, allowing dual spec if they want to do that, or diving deep into a specific perk tree. This will also come with a huge perk tree rework.

[h2]Class-specific abilities[/h2]
These abilities are something that will enhance the class identity, and give you a moment were you feel like super cool and bringing super extra to the team - like some kind of "ultimate" abilities.

You can only choose one of them, but it will really supercharge whatever your character is good at. Right now they're at a prototype stage: they'll have a cooldown and recharge over time, but of course we'll look into how you charge them, how long they last, how effective they are, etc.

We'll also look into what they do - some of them might be too fun to just keep them tied to a single perk tree, and we might want to make them more widely available.

An example of ability that we're playing with (but might not make it into release, so take it with a pinch of salt!) is a Gunner ability that would allow them to temporarily change the damage type of the weapon they're currently using, making it bypass all kinds of checks (shields, etc).

[h2]Endless mode[/h2]
We're working very hard on this. We think we'll make it so the endless mode is a choice you can make while still keeping the current pilgrimages - we're trying to support both rather than substituting pilgrimages with the new system right away. This is mainly because the endless mode is something we'll have to work a lot on, in terms of balancing and polishing - so we don't want to diminish the game by pilgrimages being removed, but rather you can choose to try an endless run or play a pilgrimage.

Endless mode calls for a new approach to how rewards are given out, and how power progression works during the session. With Endless Mode, objectives come with a in-run reward, and you'll be able to do multiple objectives where you can choose from one or another - your objective choice will be about what you're going to get on your ship as the next reward. So you can maybe chose an easy objective that will give you like a mine field summoning shard, but you can also chose to go for a very hard objective that will give you maybe an epic turret as a permanent installation on your ship for that run, for example.

We're in the early days of developing this, and we have to figure out how it plays best - but the idea is that you can do very long runs with scaling difficulty and seeing if you can actually get the ship to be able to withstand the difficulty increase. This will bring the game closer to that "roguelite with friends" feeling, which was the original vision that Daniel had when he sat down and started thinking about Void Crew back in the days.

[h2]Tactile mechanics and hand animations[/h2]
We've already talked about introducing emotes in the past. How could would it be to salute your fellow ectypes? You'll be able to!

One of the pillars that we have when designing Void Crew is tactile interactions; the idea that you're logging things around and placing them down. But that tactility, the presence of your hands in the game, has been missing. There's a few interactions and animations with hands that are visible, specially when you watch other players - but we wanted to bring that even more forward, and getting the hands in play. This will be both when interacting with the world (there will be hands animations when you do stuff around!), and also for emotes; when you do emotes you'll be able to see your hands animated, on top of the 3rd person animation that other players will see.

We're working on foundational tech for this. This wasn't only about the saluting emote, but also unlocking Daniel E., our CG Artist, to do more fun animations with the hands and improve how ectypes interact with the world.

Laurids, as our Lead Designer (and one of our resident loot goblins), mentioned he can see the ability to get unique hand gestures through the reward pools, that players can unlock and then maybe even get a full-on emote wheel. He also mentioned he wanted the exclusive ability to flip the bird on people, but let's not talk too much about that...

[h2]Swimming on zero gravity[/h2]
The idea of getting blown out of the airlock was always part of the "core fantasy" of things going wrong in Void Crew. But specially in single player, when it happens it also feels like "okay, this is fun, but it's also a bit sad that I lost agency". So we wanted to go ahead and give ectypes the ability to "swim" on zero gravity situations. So, if you get thrown out of the airlock without EVA, you will be able to swim around in space - full-on hands animations and everything! It does look ridiculous, but in the good way. And it means that in those situations, you will be able to try and swim back to the ship. Keep in mind the swimming is slow, though - if you have a pilot that doesn't like you and keeps driving away, you won't be able to get back in. You'll have to coordinate!

This also unlocked another thing for us: we can turn off gravity inside of the ship... in certain circumstances. No spoilers on that yet, sorry! We have to keep some secrets.

When there's no gravity on the ship, you'll be floating around and will have to swim down to the floor before you can move again. While we can't talk much about this yet, Javier mentioned that the first time we tried this internally was the time he laughed the most playing Void Crew... so keep an eye out for this!

How hard do you have to get hit by a carriable before you actually take damage? This is something we'll have to evaluate at some point, because it's happening now...

[h2]Making ectype deaths funnier[/h2]
Let's be honest... we all laugh when someone on our crew dies in the most ridiculous way. And while it's still fun for the person dying as well, we want to make it better. We're experimenting with this and trying to make it so you can see your own death instead of your screen getting blocked automatically and going back to the sarcograph. We want you to be able to laugh with your crew!

While we're trying very hard to get this into Update 4, we can't 100% assure it - but we're definitely working on it!

As Daniel E. said... any chance to improve dying is an improvement to fun. He subscribes to that idea, and we do as well!


Hope you like what's coming to Void Crew! Let us know what you're more excited about in the comments. And, as always...
[h3]Metem preserve you![/h3]

With love,
The Hutlihut Games team