Shardpunk News

For starter, here's a reminder that the 0.3 "Shelter and Stress" update is already live. You can download it on itch.io at https://bryqu.itch.io/shardpunk#download, and the Steam version should be available in a few days.

[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]

This is the third time I've "released" Shardpunk. It does feel nice to have such an iterative approach and to be able to gain player feedback for the ever-increasing slice of the game. As usual, I will make sure that I respond to every person who has participated in the post-game survey.

Releasing a game (well, a piece of it) does take time. I basically spent the last two weeks doing no game development at all - it was all about playtesting, creating new screenshots, putting the trailer all together, updating the webpage, etc. etc.

I also had to get familiar with the Steamworks stuff to be able to upload and release the demo to Steam. It turned out to be fairly easy to use and well documented.



I knew that being an indie game dev requires wearing a lot of hats, but it turns out it's even harder than I thought.

Anyways, life goes on, and it's time for me to focus on my next goals. These are: creating the next alpha and increasing the amount of the time I spent on game development.

Let's talk about the next version first. I've named the 0.4 update "Map and XP", which means that two new major features will be map travel (being able to select the next mission, as right now it is not possible) and leveling your characters.



Besides these two major features, I will be surely addressing any reported issues and filling some gaps in gameplay mechanics. For instance, I need to figure out how to solve an issue with the player not having any fusion core available (and these are necessary for finishing a level). I will write more about this in my future entries.



As for increasing the amount of time I can spend - this will be a tough one. I am not able to quit my day job, as I have a family to feed. Going full-time indie would require me to secure some funding, so I'll be pitching the game to publishers. I've been working on a game pitch document (well, a presentation) that I will be sending over in few places.



I am also participating in two competitions in Poland which should increase awareness about Shardpunk.

Lastly, I am considering giving a mixed approach a try. First of all, I could consider taking a month break from my day job and see how much progress I am able to make when focusing purely on game development. It should allow me to flesh out the estimates I have for the remaining work on the game. If this works well, I might be reducing my day job to half-time - but only if I'd be sure that I can deliver the game in a reasonable amount of time AND if I would see that the game would be able to sell well (I guess it will all be about the number of wishlists I will have by the end of 2020).

So yeah, we will see how it goes. I am keeping my fingers crossed that Shardpunk will get recognized during the competitions. And one way or the other, I am starting to work on the next feature. It will be a slow but steady process. Heck, it will be especially slow in September, as the children are going back to school so this period is extra time-consuming.



Take care, everyone! And go play that demo!

Ok, let's keep this one short. I've released the 0.3 alpha demo of the game.

You can grab it on itch.io already, and the Steam version of the demo should be available in the near future as well.

I am looking forward to your feedback!

Also, here's the v0.3 trailer I made. Enjoy!

[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]

Aah, here's some piece of good news: it turned out that two competitions that I wanted to register Shardpunk in are back! They were delayed due to the COVID thing, but luckily they will take place.

The competitions are Digital Dragons Indie Showcase and Pixel Awards Europe. And the deadlines are less than two weeks away (at least for the first one), meaning that I need to have the demo ready before that.

It means that the next devlog entry will surely be created after the next alpha goes live.

Here's brief info on what has changed since v0.2:

The shelter phase

Yeah, that's the biggest addition. If you were following my previous devlog entries, you know that the design of the shelter phase has gone through a major rework. Between each combat mission, player characters stay in a shelter. Here they can craft some stuff, heal themselves, or perform other actions. Also, here the player needs to distribute the food supplies.







Stress

Each character has a stress meter. It goes up when a character is hit, it goes down when you kill enemies, heal yourself or rest in the shelter. Too high stress gives negative modifiers to a character, and increases the possibility of receiving a negative quirk.







Better combat visuals

There are new obstacle types available, some of them being searchable. The combat levels have been re-made to use the new obstacle types. Few character animations have been tweaked.



I am currently working on creating a new trailer and I'm playtesting the demo a lot. Also, I will be in need of a Steam demo for the Digital Dragons Indie Showcase 2020, meaning that the next thing right after I release the next demo will be making sure that it is available directly on Steam.

That's it for now. Expect the demo to be released in the upcoming days!

Note: this is the first time I am posting the devlog on Steam. To browse the old ones, visit my itch.io or IndieDB devlogs, or my TIGSource Forums thread. I will still be updating them along with Steam entries.

Expect a new entry every two weeks!


I am pretty close to releasing the 3rd alpha demo of Shardpunk! The scope for the demo is sealed, I have all the assets I need and I am focusing on the final touches. The demo should be out in August.

That being said, I did make some changes in how the game works, so let's take a look at them.

It all started with these new graphics of shelves, which I've started using as high cover objects.



The shelves were looking great as an obstacle; however, I wanted to allow the players to search them for loot. The problem was that the loot points system was too simple to handle it. Until now, loot points were always 1 tile big, and the element (whether it was a corpse or a locker) that was lootable had to be placed on the same tile.



Such an approach was not enough for the shelves. A character was not able to stand on top of the shelve to loot it. What is more, it would be cool to extend the searchable area so that a character can perform the looting from more than one location.

Therefore, I decided to extend loot point definitions. After my changes, it is allowed to have a separate definition for "pickup points" for loot (which define a place that character can stand on to perform the search action), and a separate location where the loot point indicator is located.

Here's how it works for shelves:



I started to use the same approach for crates as well. So now the game has searchable cover objects!



Besides the shelves, there are other new obstacle types present in the levels that make them look nicer. This includes windows (shattered, to make sure characters can shoot through them) or pieces of furniture. And with some randomness in asset generation it can look slightly different each time:



So what's next?

I'm focusing on polish right now and making sure that the game is not too difficult. After all, I want the players to finish the first mission and see the shelter phase.

Take care!