Power of Ten News

Hey folks, I got another, mostly, bug fix update for you all. Thank you for all your reports in Discord they are really helping to squash these as quickly as possible:

Bug fixes:
- Fixed a crash with death exploding upgrade on certain enemies.
- Fixed a bug that caused the Mining Laser to not consume any ammo.
- Fixed a bug that cause the game to crash if you died while firing the Mining Laser
-Fixed a bug that caused several settings to not save properly (Screenshake, Ship Theme and Trail selections)
- Fixed a crash when you shielded the last planet with a shield breaker ship present in the system.
- Fixed a crash when pausing in the final system it reactivates some objects that weren't supposed to activate.

General Improvements:
- I've removed the functionality that would unbind keys that were set when you bound something to that key. It seemed like the biggest problems were caused when it would unbind something unintentionally so removing that should help. Please let me know how this works for you.
- Added some "in between" interface sizes. Some of these don't look great, in my opinion, but I know they will help with readability for some folks but I want to clean them up a bit in the future.

Ammo Balance:
I've upped the starting ammo to 300. This will also increase each ammo pickup by 5. Folks are running out of ammo a little too much for my liking. The ammo mechanic is still doing a great job of encouraging exploration and encouraging trying out weapons you might not normally try but I think there's a bit of a dry spell after the first few systems where you might not have enough ammo upgrades yet to sustain you in the dry periods.

Once players pick up enough ammo upgrades and increase their max ammo some it starts to be come less of an issue.

We'll see how this plays out and I'll adjust more if necessary.

Hey folks, I've got a day zero patch ready to go, fixing up some issues people have come in contact. Here's what's fixed with it:
* Crash when destroying a trader ship.
* Crash when player dies while on fire or with acid.
* Fixed item sprite alignment for Flamespreader.
* Small rescuable ships should no longer leave their text boxes behind after you activate them.
* Increased deadzone for gamepad. Trying to fix some drift players have been experiencing. Please let me know if it still happens.
* UI bug on end screen where it would be positioned too high to see all of the content.
* Slightly increased ammo rewards rate.

Here's what I'm still looking into but will take a bit longer to fix:
* Controller drifting. Hard to reproduce but still investigating this.
* Keybinding's not always working as expected.

Back in 2019 I started messing around with Gamemaker tutorials. A few months later I had a very mediocre top down shump prototype. Many iterations later, Chris Inston composing the music, and I'm now releasing the Early Access version for all of you to enjoy.

I am very excited about getting back into a tighter feedback loop with you all and I'll be posting more soon about what's to come with EA. For though, enjoy the game!

Thank you so much,
Andrew Richardson

Hey folks! It's time for the big date announcement! Early access is happening at this time:

Date: June 3rd
Time: 9:00 AM PST

Details about EA below!


Excited? Let me know in the comments!

[h2]What Early Access will contain[/h2]

So here's what wil be in the game (without spoiling anything):

[h3]Three full regions + one final encounter[/h3]
If you played the demo it contains a single "region" that you can complete so when I refer to a region that's what I mean, basically the demo's scope more or less. Each will have a few unique mechanics and difficulties. They each a have some light story that will be expanded upon as Early Access develops.


[h3]An introduction area to help explain controls and mechanics to players much faster[/h3]
Do not fear! I hate tutorials as much as the next gamer and I put in a lot of work to make the "learning mechanics" part of the game integrated and tied into the game play. If you played the demo you'll probably fly right through it in minutes but hopefully it'll help new players get into the game faster.

[h3]Hybrid Weapons[/h3]
This is a fun mechanic developed for the extended game play. As you progress you have a good chance to find weapons that also fire almost any other weapon at the same time. The ammo cost is increased to balance out this increase in power. Never miss a chance at a new weapon you may stumble over some incredibly overpowered combos!


[h3]Multi Language Support[/h3]
Fonts have been updated and systems integrated to translate the game into most Basic Latin character languages. Right now French, German, Spanish and Portuguese have enough content to support a in game language but if you want to help with localization please jump over to Localizer and contribute.

[h3]New music, enemies, weapons, upgrades, in game mechanics and things to discover[/h3]
A lot more of everything else. May your runs be many and varied!

[h2]How Early Access will work[/h2]
I'm hoping for a very involved community in Early Access. I want to update the game at least once a month after EA goes live until I consider it a 1.0 product and it can fully release. Here's more details (which can also be found on the store page):

[h3]Why Early Access?[/h3]
“Early access gives the ability for a continual feedback loop between the players and myself. That feedback loop was essential for making the core game play a success and I want to continue that process while expanding the game. The game is in a very solid state from a game play standpoint, folks have already sunk many hours into the demo and the EA version has much more content.”

[h3]Approximately how long will this game be in Early Access?[/h3]
“I'm hoping for six to twelve months till a 1.0 version. It's very likely that development will continue on after 1.0 but that work has not been scoped at this time.”

[h3]How is the full version planned to differ from the Early Access version?[/h3]
“Same game just more of everything that makes it good. More weapons, items, ships, enemies, story and anything that adds variety to the core game play. There will likely be several big features along the way like new game plus modes for those that want to continue playing on a higher difficulty. Quality of life features like run history may also make there way into the game.”

[h3]What is the current state of the Early Access version?[/h3]
“The game is fully playable. Has a beginning and ending and a lot of content in between. It has over 40 weapons with a hybrid system that takes the possible combinations into the hundreds, along side dozens of items and upgrade it's a varied and fun experience. Story is very light right now but expect more to come on that in the future. Polish will probably be a little rough in certain areas and balance might not be quite right but I will be iterating on these often and feedback form Early Access will help inform the progress here.”

[h3]Will the game be priced differently during and after Early Access?[/h3]
“The price may increase a small amount when we leave Early Access based on the amount of content that is in the game at that point.”

[h3]How are you planning on involving the Community in your development process?[/h3]
“The community is already involved in the development. The demo would not be what it is without feedback from the community. This is typically happening in Discord but I will be looking at forums on Steam to inform the development path of the game. Jump into Discord to join in the fun!”

---

Hope all that sounds like fun. If you are excited, have questions or feedback please comment here or join us in Discord.

This will be a short update but I wanted to assure you all that I'm barreling forward with development and I'm starting to do polish and balance passes on the Early Access version of the game.

I'm putting together a larger update for a few weeks from now to share with you a lot more details. I do want to share a bit of what the scope of the game will be at Early Access to set expectations. If you played the demo it contains a single "region" that you can complete so when I refer to a region that's what I mean, basically the demo's scope more or less.

At a very high level the Early Access game will include the following:

1. Three full regions + one final system which is a "boss/final" encounter
   
2. An introduction area to help explain controls and mechanics to players much faster.
   
3. A new hybrid weapon system that take the number of combinations of weapons to nearly infinite.
   
4. Multi language support.
   
5. New enemies, weapons, upgrades, in game mechanics and things to discover.
   

I'll go into some of these in more detail in that follow up post with the EA release date.

Let me know if you have any thoughts or questions (Preferably in Discord). I'm excited to get this out to you all very soon!