Waves 2: Notorious News

Join the few, the proud, the multilingual!

If you speak any languages in addition to English then perhaps you can help translate the text in the game so that others might enjoy it as much as you do!

I'm using a site called localizor to manage the community translation of the game and so far Polish is winning by about 30%.

Joining is free for translators and you can suggest translations and vote on them, the top voted translations go into the game.

https://www.localizor.com/waves-2-notorious

If a language is missing from the list then just leave a comment or DM me either on Twitter or Discord.

Several members of the Discord are already hard at work translating the game into French and Polish and will be happy to help if you have any problems.

For the next few hours, I will be live over on Twitch creating the new "Attract" Utility item (aka a black hole).

Part of the next update will be a re-vamp of all the Utility Items in the game.

Utility Items are (as their name implies) not about killing things but being generally useful. They use Energy instead of Adrenaline and the most popular Item to date has been the default "Stop" (aka slow-mo).

It's important that every item in the game have a use but so far Stun, Repel, Rage, Barrier, and Glitch have not lived up to their potential always being out-done by Stop.

I intend to change this.

Today as part of a Live Stream I converted the old Glitch (previously called Emergency Teleport) into a brand spanky new Dash move (also called Glitch).

It lets you do things like this...



or even this...



oh and let's not forget about this...



Your ability to Glitch through/over things is only limited by the Cooldown and having enough energy and the Overdrive will cause a shockwave at the location you were at stunning nearby enemies.

I've been enjoying this Item a lot and I can't wait until everybody else can get their hands on it!

I will be aiming to do a Live Stream of some Dev work every Saturday and I will try to announce them here, on Twitter and on Discord so make sure you're following at least one of those!

Cheers!

Rob

If you've just joined the Waves community recently or you've been around since the start you can find other fans on the Squid In A Box Discord Server!

By joining the Squid In A Box Discord Server you can:

• Ask the Devs direct questions and get a direct answer.
  
• Promote your stream of Waves!
  
• Chat with the Devs and other fans about almost anything.
  
• Share pictures of your pets!
  
• Organise multiplayer games.
  
• Use Waves themed Emotes (clearly the best bit).
  
• Submit Bug Reports (It is still early access after all).
  

Join us over in the Squid In A Box Discord!

2020 just sucked, didn't it? Good riddance I say.

It's no secret that Squid In A Box Ltd is in fact just one person. It isn't a studio with a half dozen full-time employees it's just Li'l ol' me trying to get as much done as I can.

2020 was just awful for that. Between starting a new job so we could pay the bills, moving cities, and everything else it left me going from working full-time on Waves 2 to working at weekends. I've been averaging maybe 6-8 hours a week this year where before I would be working 40-50.

The Winter 2020 season in-game has lasted all year rather than the 3 months a season normally lasts and it will continue until the next major update sometime in Jan of this year.

So if there haven't been any major game updates in 2020 what have there been?

[h2]A Growing Community[/h2]

There are plenty of loyal fans playing the game every single day, especially on the last day of each month for those last-minute leaderboard grabs! We've been at around 200 monthly active users all year which is actually an increase over 2019 so the community has been growing which is amazing!

Plenty of bugs have been reported both on the forums and in the discord and I am addressing all of them as best I can.

[h2]Console Ports[/h2]

A Nintendo Switch version of the game is in the works! It's currently playable but needs lots of UI changes and optimizations and won't be released until after PC reaches 1.0 but it is definitely going to happen!

[h2]Achievements[/h2]

Steam Achievements are coming soon! Most of my 2020 has been spent working on these and I have 36 achievements* implemented that are currently undergoing testing and balancing. Some of them require changes to Items in the game so it's taken longer than expected but they will be part of the next big update.

[h2]Boring Project Management Stuff![/h2]

Finalizing the design of the game and getting all of the work needed into a task tracker (Jira for those that are curious). Not all of it is required to ship but it's good to have a definitive list of everything left to do.

2021 will hopefully be different. I'm working on the next major update and while I originally planned for it to be released in December that didn't happen due to a small case of catching Covid and being put out of action for almost 3 weeks.

There are almost 800 hours of work left to do in my backlog for the game. Was I working full-time this would be around 6 months of work (including contingency) but at my current rate of around 8 hours a week that shakes out to over 2 years.

Unless I can secure funding to allow me to work full-time again then either big features have to be cut (such as all of Dive mode and Multiplayer) or everyone is going to have to keep on waiting.

It's not the news you all wanted to hear and it's not the news I want to deliver but it's the way things are.



I will continue with development until my last breath if I have to. I love this game and I love our community and I want to do my very best for all of us!

I hope you have a good 2021 and with any luck maybe I can get back to full-time development again.

Please follow me on Twitter for more frequent updates and don't forget to tell your friends about this great little twin-stick shooter called Waves 2.

* I also need 36 achievement icons, so if you are an artist and interested in developing a visual style for them then get in touch at rob [at] squidinabox [dot] com