Shardpunk News

These were some crazy two weeks.

It turned out that Shardpunk has made it to Digital Dragons (a Polish gamedev conference), as one of the most promising indie games of the season.

This resulted in the game being part of an online Steam event. What is more, I was able to present my game during the physical event that took place on 16-17th of May in Krakow.

In short: it was pretty awesome.

I managed to gather lots of valuable feedback from the players. In general, people who are into strategy games - which, obviously, are my main audience - had no issues with playing and feeling the game. It was a great experience just seeing how the players react to Shardpunk.

Laptop with the latest playable build on the left, and one playing the gameplay video on the right.

Me (on the right) observing the player.

Most of the issues I got from the feedback were related to smaller usability things: lack of tooltips, and the possibility to execute a melee attack action even if the mouse cursor was not hovering over a valid tile.

Aside from all the feedback, I was able to meet fellow indie game developers! It was an awesome experience, talking to other people who are in the industry and are creating all these great games.

Less than two years ago, I was a software developer dreaming of becoming an indie game creator; currently I'm attending conferences and showcasing my own game. The feeling is great.

Tune in two weeks from now to see more updates on Shardpunk's devlog. And do remember about the Discord channel!

Take care!

Howdy!

I'm gonna keep it short this time. I am sticking to the grind and working towards making the game complete. Working on new level types, new skills and characters.

I like how the game is shaping up. I am already able to play through the first chapter, right to the end of the second one. Shardpunk is really starting to turn into a tangible product - I'm very excited!

Due to lack of time, I won't be going into details, but here's a bunch of screenshots from one of my playthroughs:


Mycroft getting happy about all the loot, then pretty angry at spotting the vermin

New visuals for the charging station for automatons

Rescuing a downed ally

Medical bot stunning the enemies

Take care!

I am aiming to have ten playable character types in Shardpunk, plus three different automaton types. I am proud to announce that another - the ninth one - has been added to the game.



This is Hector, and he is skilled in revolver shooting as well as in melee combat, using his blade.



Lore-wise, he is an Imperial political officer who has been caught in the middle of rat attack on the Capitol. Now he is helping to get the automaton to safety.



This character is the only one who has the "melee overwatch" skill, which allows him to attack enemies when they move through adjacent tiles. This might become useful when guarding narrow passes.



As you can see, the blade overwatch skill has multiple charges - so same as regular overwatch shots (which is related to the overwatch changes I wrote about in my previous entry). The more rat kills, the better the game gets, right?

Other than that, Hector can use his revolver and blade for regular attack, which makes him a pretty versatile warrior.

The fun thing about all these character classes, skills and enemy types is that I don't even know how many fun strategies/meta concepts will emerge in Shardpunk, and I love it. A game where the player tells their own story and which is replayable is something I would definitely like to play! I guess that's why I am still not bored when playing Shardpunk for a thousand time ;)

Take care!

My main goal right now with Shardpunk development is to make sure that I, well, finish creating the game. That means adding more assets, characters, enemies, and levels. Basically creating more content based on the existing game mechanics.

At least that's how it looks like in theory - because the truth is that new game mechanics (or changes to existing ones) are still being added by me from time to time. I am aware that such behavior results in scope creep; on the other hand, occasionally trying out something different can result in making the game even more fun, right?

One of the most frequent feedback I got from players playing the demo was that the multi-overwatch action of the sniper character is pretty fun, due to the possibility of killing multiple enemies in one turn.

So I tinkered with game rules a little to see what would happen if any character would be able to perform a "multi-overwatch" thing, similar to the rules that the "Gears Tactics" game introduced. Basically, when a character enters overwatch, the number of unspent Action Points would translate to the number of overwatch charges. So if a character does not perform any movement their turn and just enters overwatch, they'll have two overwatch charges available (assuming that the weapon's heat will allow for that, of course).



This worked pretty well. The player can now decide whether to move more or to spend their points on more firepower. And the original "multi-overwatch" skill of the sniper has been altered so that it simply grants even more overwatch charges:



As usual, a single change brought a number of related gameplay changes that I had to introduce to keep the game balanced. The most important change is that attacks are no longer ending the character's turn - meaning that it's not a problem for a character to shoot first, and then move. Or shoot twice.



Now, such behavior was already possible in Shardpunk, but only for revolver weapons. The other types (shotguns, heavy, sniper) were only meant to shoot once per turn in most of the cases. Well, that's gone now.

With this increased amount of attacks per turn that players can take, I've also increased the number of enemies. I've played through several test missions so far, and I do like these experimental changes; I'm pretty sure they will make it to the final game, as they're allowing the player to wipe out a large number of vermin pretty quickly, which always sounds like a good idea.

Other than that, I played with the robotic characters more as well. They now move with the same speed as human characters and I've allowed them to search for loot, which will open up new strategies. I gotta test these changes first though. They make sense, but even I am not sure whether they won't destroy the game's balance. Who would have thought that making - and balancing - a game is that much work, eh?



That's it for today's entry. Take care!

Howdy!

There's been a separate piece of news about it on Steam already, but here I am to inform you that the latest demo of Shardpunk is available for you to play. I hope that you will have a blast playing it.

I'm posting a few gifs from my gameplay session as well.

Take care!