Hi - first of all, many thanks to every one of you who posted a review (we're over 300 already! Great stuff!) or left feedback on the forums/Discord! I am doing my best to read through all of your stuff (though I did have to implement some more strict time management rules to still make sure I am productive as a developer) - so rest assured that even if I haven't posted an answer to your post, I have read it and processed it to an actionable work item on my end.
Let's talk about future plans for Shardpunk. Here's a list of things I want to focus on:
Note that the items in the list come in no particular order, except for the 1st element which has the highest priority.[h5]1. Stability[/h5]
There are at least two game-breaking issues that some you are experiencing: one related to the game becoming unresponsive after the combat part (especially after finishing a cave mission), which forces a reload and may prevent the player from removing a vermin activity, and one with the inability to load a game if it has been saved during combat. I am working with some of the players who are able to reproduce these issues, and hopefully I will have a fix for both of these issues soon.
[h5]2. Game balance[/h5]
Don't worry, It's not about nerfing Tilly ;). What I want to address is the overall difficulty curve. For starters, I want to reduce the snowball effect that might happen in the late game, especially in Chapter 3. There should be more enemies appearing in the later missions.
What is more, I want to look at certain character skills (example: free shots from Mycroft, combined with a hair trigger) which feel way too OP. I will also look into buffing some of the skills that are reported as too weak for the moment (there are a few nice threads in the forums about the balance stuff). The balance changes will come in small batches and I will be listening to your feedback along the way.
[h5]3. Localisation support[/h5]
I want to add community-driven localisation support to the game, probably using Steam Workshop. I have to do some more research on how to do this, but I'm 100% positive it's doable. And I'm working on a Polish translation as well.
[h5]4. Customizable difficulty[/h5]
This will be an interesting one. I want you to be able to customize your runs in a way that makes the most sense to you. Maybe you want the enemies to have more base HPs? Or you want to have the ability to reload your latest mission instead of starting a new run? Maybe the enemies should not be dropping any stimpaks/grenades, or maybe your base Stress gain should be higher?
Of course the standard difficulty levels will remain, but I do want to add a custom one as well.
[h5]5. New content/QoL stuff[/h5]
Based on your feedback, there's lots of stuff I would like to implement. Few examples:
a) allowing the player to encounter rescuable characters even when they're at max squad size. The player would then have to choose which character they should let go,
b) adding a "blueprints" system that will narrow down the available weapon upgrade types in a run - meaning that you can only upgrade, say, the weapon's auto-cooling system if you happened to find a blueprint that allows that. It will make the runs less predictable, which some of you might like (still, this should be present as a customizable difficulty option),
c) more shelter actions, more ways to spend these Shards!
d) numerous QoL changes: more game speed options, alternate fonts, removing camera movement restrictions, movement waypoints system, colorblind mode, more key binding options, enemy tooltips,
e) more tangible content - new enemies, a new playable character, perhaps...?
[h5]6. Improved controller/Steam Deck support[/h5]
The game can be played with a controller, but there are moments where the UI focus is lost and you need to have a mouse to help you out - I want to address that as well. Also, I might reconsider the current "d-pad is used to navigate through some of the menus" approach and put all of the top buttons/categories (team skills, unlocks, codex) under L1/R1 navigation.
Note that the above list is not set in stone and it might change based on your feedback.
Also, last but not least, some good news:
Shardpunk will be featured on Tacticon that starts May 11th! I hope that it will allow even more players to find out about the game!
Thanks for reading! And again, thanks for all the feedback! And if you haven't posted a review on Steam, consider doing so!
You all rock, take care!
