Shardpunk News

Howdy! I did mention two weeks ago that I was planning to work on another revolver-wielding character. And there he is! Please meet Silas:



On the contrary to Mike - the other revolver-wielding character who's kind of of a "leader" type - Silas is more of a loner.

Well, calling him a "loner" might not be the most accurate thing. Here's his starting trait:



which means:



This makes the guy immune to external stress-altering factors; other characters cannot cheer him up.



(Frankly, I am a little worried I will be getting mentally closer to Silas's personality as the game development progresses. Hopefully not!)

Now, here's the thing: our crazy friend can spend stress to enter a more aggressive mode, making him slightly overpowered. In the upgraded state, the "All in" action grants significant bonuses to aim and critical shots AND grants an extra action point. This state lasts for a few turns. The downside is that it generates stress and reduces your defense. Still, it's a good way to kill some more enemies.



Silas calms himself down by telling jokes that aren't funny to anyone else (which increases the stress levels of other party members). He can also spend action points in the shelter on... whispering sweet words to his revolver - which obviously increases the max damage output!



I had the most fun designing the skills for this character. It was the first time I decided to use Stress as a resource.

Also, Kurt (the talented pixel artist I work with) came up with a great way of presenting Silas as that gunslinger guy, who is keeping his weapon holstered. This might actually be a very good decision for the future if I decide to visualize different weapon types on characters - as Silas's weapon is not being displayed in most of his animation frames.

Anyway, that's it for this entry. Thanks for reading and you'll hear from me, as usual, in two weeks!

So yeah, I've spent some time adding new content to the game. And I'm proud to announce that revolvers in Shardpunk are now a thing!

Yeah, that's the tier 1 revolver from the game, named "Old Revolver".

Still, do remember that there are no weapon "bullets" in the game's world (weapons are more of energy weapons type) so these revolvers don't have real drum magazines. But they still look cool!

Now, this new weapon type does not deal as much damage as other types, but shooting a revolver does not end the character's turn. It means that you can spend both action points on shooting:

Killing rats is the most fun thing in the game; doing it twice a turn is double the fun!

Or on shooting and reloading, if necessary:

Enemy is dead and you're all set for the next turn!

The first revolver-wielding character (which was already present on the above screenshots) is Michael: a "revolver leader" character type. He has some abilities that help others in combat, like the possibility to reduce their stress:

This will keep the other guy from the crazy zone for a little longer.

Another action type for this character is the ability to grant an extra action point to a character that can be spent on whatever you like:

With 3 APs, a dash AND a shot is a thing!

That's it for now! I will be working on another revolver-wielding character now, so expect the next devlog entry to be about it.

Take care!

As you might already know, citizens of the Capitol were not prepared for the attack from the Vermin Horde. What is more, the attack came from the seaside. No one could ever predict that the rats would be able to somehow... dig tunnels undersea?



But - the characters you will be controlling (survivors of the initial attack, who try to escape the city) won't be defenseless. Citizens of the Empire have basic training in weapon usage and every character you control does have a piece of weapon.

So let's talk about these weapons a bit.

I am planning to have four different weapon types in the game. Three of them (shotguns, rifles and heavy guns) are already present. The fourth one (revolvers) is in the making.

Every character has a single weapon proficiency - meaning that a shotgun-wielding medic girl will only be able to use shotguns, and so on. With sixteen planned characters, there will be four characters per weapon type.

Shotguns suck at long range but deal more damage. Also, they have an increased % to hit for point-blank shots.



Rifles, on the contrary, are not very good at short distances. They do prove useful for taking out targets that are further away though.



Heavy weapons are the main damage dealers and can be used as melee weapons (e.g. the ground stomp weapon of the retired soldier character).



Every weapon comes with different tiers. Right now there are three weapon tiers available - but as I will be playtesting the game, I will see how many are necessary to keep the game progression interesting. Here's a shot of three shotgun tiers:



What is more, every weapon has a number of upgrade slots, which come in three flavors.

Aim modifier slots allow you to install a scope/aim to the weapon, which can increase its accuracy and/or critical chance:



Energy cell slots allow you to increase the "ammo" capacity of a weapon and reduce the chance of the weapon backfiring when used in the overheated state:



Special slots can hold various different items: It can be an auto-cooling mechanism that allows the character to perform free reloads, or a damage amplifying module that, well, increases your damage output but reduces accuracy.



Weapon modules can be upgraded (well, repaired) by spending resources, or you can scrap them. The same goes for the weapons.

Finding weapons and upgrading their modules gives a nice feeling of progression between missions, and is a nice addition to the character level progression. In games like Darkest Dungeon, the player had their home base that could be upgraded. Here it is not possible (as your characters are always on the move), so I believe that these weapons/modules are a nice alternative.

I'm looking forward to seeing you trying out these new mechanics yourself! Take care!

I have some good news to share - I have started working full-time on Shardpunk! I will be giving more details about this in a near future; long story short is that I've been able to find someone who believes in the project, who allowed me to take a risk and start spending more time (like MUCH more time) on game development.

This is happening guys. After more than two years of part-time, few-hours-per-week development, F*ck yeah!

All that being said, there is still a lot of work that needs to be done until the game is ready. I am still tweaking some systems, making sure that the core gameplay loop is closed.

Anyway - there will be more announcements when the time is right. As for today, I want to share information about some parts of the game I made progress in:

Improved character AI

There were situations in the game where melee enemies could not find their way to the player. This was especially true in the sewer levels which seem to have more tight spaces. This is now resolved and these pesky rats should have no more issues with pursuing your characters.





It does not mean that the AI will be always making the best decisions possible. There are few places in the AI code where I am deliberately telling it to move to a position that makes them more vulnerable. With AI being too smart the game was not fun to play.

Game start screen

The player will be able to choose up to four starting characters for each run of the game. There will be sixteen characters to choose from. Right now I'm still at four; two more are in the making.





Note: I believe it will be adding more detailed mugshots for every character.

The player will be starting the game with four characters, with the ability to find more characters (but never more than five) during the game. There will be special character rescue missions going on.

Weapons!

I am finalizing the UI for this. You will be able to find better weapons for your characters and tweak/upgrade them during the shelter phase.





Final Chapter One mission

As I mentioned, I am working on closing the main gameplay loop and making sure all the features are there. After that, I will be working on the final mission of the first chapter (so-called "bridge mission" as it will be taking place - you guessed it! - on a bridge). I have the general layout of the final map ready, but there's still a lot of work that needs to be put in,

All in all, I am super excited about the future. I am working at full speed to finish the first chapter of the game.

Take care!

I believe I did mention more than once that traveling through the vermin-infested Capitol is a dangerous thing. I mean there are lots of not-so-friendly big ratmen out there.

Which means your companions might die during the game. Like, perma-die.

Yeah, the perma-death feature from Darkest Dungeon and XCOM (including the original XCOM series) always amused me. Once you lose a character, they're lost for the rest of the game. I believe that this feature was also what hooked me to the first roguelike games I played, including Nethack (anyone plays this anymore?).

Anyway, as the development on Shardpunk was progressing, I noticed that maintaining a good game balance with perma-death present is actually difficult - especially that the player is controlling up to five characters.

In games without perma-death, if a squad member is down, they will quite often magically "recover" after a fight, allowing you to continue the game with no real losses. Sure, you had a disadvantage during that combat, as one of your characters was down, but after that, you're again good and well.

Shardpunk does have permadeath present. But - in order to make the stuff more interesting, characters do not insta-die when their HPs reach zero; they transition to a "bleeding out" state:



Characters are still vulnerable during that state. I mean the AI won't shoot them (that would've been too savage), but they can still be caught in an AOE attack - which will instantly kill them:



The player has a number of turns to revive the character, using a stimpak:



Speaking of which, you can see that now every character has a new "reach out/give" animation that is used for both reviving and healing allies:



After a character is revived, they receive the "severely wounded" trait. It prevents the character from performing any actions in the shelter. Such character needs to be healed using medical supplies in the shelter phase to get back to become fully functional again.



Oh, a character can only become severely wounded once per combat. The second time their health goes to zero, they're gone.



Still, even though this approach will make perma-death less worrisome (as the player will have some means of preventing it), the difficulty scaling issue will still be present. Should it still be possible for the player to successfully play through the game having only a single character left? I doubt it - even though I believe there should be special achievements/unlocks if one manages to pull it off (e.g. finishing at least one mission with a single character could unlock some nice weapon add-ons, or an interesting character).

Also, the player will have the possibility to rescue more characters along the way, which will allow them to replace the fallen ones. This feature is still deep in my work backlog though.

Thanks for reading!