7 Big Upcoming Changes to Omega Strikers

WHAT YOU NEED TO KNOW: The Omega Strikers PC Open Beta will end at 11:59pm ET on January 1st, 2023.

Omega Strikers is now scheduled to launch in April 2023 for PC, iOS, Android, and consoles with full cross-platform support.
All your account progress will carry over when we come back with our full launch.
Full launch will bring a new ranked season, battle pass, and major content updates.

Read on if you’d like to see a sneak peek at some of our in-progress work, including new features and content that’ll arrive alongside full launch.

But first, let’s talk about changes to our release plans.

[h2]WHY WE’RE DELAYING TO APRIL[/h2]
Let’s not beat around the bush. We’ve pushed back release dates a couple of times now, which can be frustrating—for both you and us. We’re a small team with big ambitions, so we’ve had to go through a bit of a learning process with this PC Open beta.

Now, though, we’ve got an incredibly strong roadmap for features and content that we think players will love, and we want to be realistic about the level of work it’ll take to get all this stuff ready. Pushing back to April gives us needed time to develop and polish these major changes to the game, which makes us confident we’ll be able to hit this new launch target.

Okay, so now it’s time to actually show you some of the cool stuff we’re working on.

[h2]7 UPCOMING CHANGES TO OMEGA STRIKERS[/h2]
We previously shared that we want to make some big improvements to Omega Strikers before we go forward with our full launch. The most important of these changes will be targeted at adding appreciable depth to gameplay and increasing variety from match-to-match.

Today we’d like to show off some progress we’re making in these areas, ordered roughly in order of the impact we think they’ll have on the game.

[h2]1. Goal Barriers[/h2]

To make playing as (and against) goalies more interesting, we’re developing a new environmental obstacle called goal barriers.

These are destructible energy walls that must be struck by the core before your goal gates open. Since they must be broken down piece-by-piece, the arena gets re-shaped and broken down in different ways over the course of each round.

[h2]2. Core Flip[/h2]

Another major gameplay change is a new ability for all Strikers called Core Flip (final name TBD!):

The Core Flip will be a new action that gives Strikers a moment to shine. When used, your Striker will knock away nearby foes, become unhittable for a short while, and launch the Core into the air. While the Core is airborne only you can hit it and your next hit against it will be greatly empowered.

In playtests, we’ve seen this combination of mechanics create some very impressive plays. For example, Strikers can now make the Core dodge a critical hit from an incoming ability and reverse a scary situation by hitting a very powerful angled shot back at the enemy. We’re still tuning the mechanic, but we’re feeling really good about how it’s coming together. We hope to share more about it soon!

[h2]3. Map Hazards and Buffs[/h2]

By introducing environmental hazards into the arena, we hope to more meaningfully differentiate maps from each other. One small example would be new areas where you can get knocked out. This map concept has a deadly hole in the middle of the arena.

Another concept we like is a “gravity anomaly” device that sits in the middle of the arena and sucks in both players and the core if they get too close.

Environmental buffs like “speedgates” will increase both the speed of both Strikers and the core. Here’s a closer look at a map which features speedgates along its edges.

[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]
We’re also developing “game buffs” that differ from match-to-match. For example, on Super Surge all players will get a buff that grants huge match-long buffs to dashes, hastes, and blinks.

Another map grants the “Gigantify” game buff, which makes you much bigger after using your special.

Some of our other experiments with game buffs have arguably gone too far:

[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]

We plan to have five different game buffs at launch! What buffs would you like to see added?

[h2]4. Striker Affinity System[/h2]

We've heard that players want more ways to achieve progress in-game outside of ranked and the battle pass. So here’s a peek at “Striker Affinity,” a new character-specific progression system that rewards you with cool cosmetic rewards as you master new Strikers.

Striker Affinity also has a leaderboard component, so you can track your progress on that character against other players.

[h2]5. Visual Improvements[/h2]

We want maps to play and feel different from each other, so we’re working on new background environments. Here’s an in-progress concept for a “night market” background:

We’re also taking to heart your feedback about the UI/UX around the game. In general, we want to polish up menus and make the game look more “done.”

Here’s an early look at a new “VS.” screen that appears between Strikers Select and the start of a new match:

And a mock of the new End-of-Match screen:

[h2]6. Reporting and Quick Chat[/h2]

Along with purely visual UI/UX changes, we’re adding new features like better player reporting:

We’ll also launch with a party chat feature which lets you quickly shoot pre-made messages to each other, including your Discord info if you’d like to set up a call or talk with more freeform text. The idea here is to make it easy for people to party up without requiring people to pull up a keyboard if they aren’t playing on a PC.

[h2]7. New Cosmetics[/h2]

Finally, we want to level up our game when it comes to skins and cosmetics. Put bluntly, we want to keep funding the development of this game by making awesome skins that explore new fantasies for our Strikers.

So here’s a sneak peak of some upcoming skins, including original goal score art that will come alongside certain premium skins:

Raindrop Era

[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]

Wizard Prodigy Luna

Orbital Force Estelle

[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]

[h2]THIS IS ONLY THE BEGINNING[/h2]

We hope that if there’s only one thing you take away from this post, it’s how serious we are about making Omega Strikers as great as it can be for you. Instead of rolling straight from our PC Open Beta into launch with no time to breathe, we want to actually take the necessary time to implement big changes based on what we learned from the beta.

Your feedback has been so crucial to help light the way for us. Over the coming weeks and months we’ll be sharing more sneak peeks of our progress in our Discord, which you can join here. We’ll talk soon!

–The Odyssey Interactive Team