Development Blog #1: Beef Cat and Mouse Flail, Also Level Up Improvements

[h2]Beef Cat and Mouse Flail, Also Level Up Improvements[/h2]

Howdy,

So this is blog #1 on Beef Cat Ultra and all the fun stuff going on in the game. I'm going to start at the most basic today and introduce the first playable character, the titular Beef Cat.

[h3]Beef Cat, Mouse Flail, and Ultra Effects[/h3]



Beef Cat is your default hero, boasting no particular strengths or weaknesses. Beef Cat Ultra is in the burgeoning Survivors style of games. What this means in a nutshell is that you start every stage at Lv.1 acquiring upgrades and choosing stat boosts, adapting on the fly to the needs of your situation. Every character has three level up options divided into three categories: Weapon, Survival, and Bonus. The level up screen is paced to be a fast decision that won't bog you down.

Every character has their own starting weapon, and only they can get unique upgrades for that weapon - ultimately making it function differently than it will on the other 5 characters. Beef Cat's weapon of choice is the Mouse Flail.



This destructive mouse swung by it's tail can only hit so many enemies before breaking. Picking up additional mouse flails increases the size of the mouse. Beef Cat has unique upgrades in the level up screen to increase the number of enemies the flail can strike before breaking. There's one more ace in the sleeve of each character and their starter weapon. The also titular, Ultra effects.

Ultra effects are unique to each character and their starter weapon, unleashing chaos on the screen for a brief window of time after the trigger conditions are met. As you can see the Mouse Flail gets a little bit larger.



In addition to being absolutely massive, the hit limit is removed. So when Beef Cat triggers his ultimate, the Mouse Flail sweeps the screen absolutely decimating entire hordes of enemies at once.

So yeah - each of the six playable characters has a starter weapon that they get unique upgrades for as well as a devastating Ultra skill. The goal with the different characters is to force sometimes radically different approaches to combat situations.

[h3]Notable Work Done This Week[/h3]

I want to highlight in each blog one or two changes made in-game the week the blog is posted. A fresh piece of game that I'm proud of and want to show off. This time it's the overhaul of the level-up screen's visuals.

Let's start with the original:



This was largely placeholder for most of development but I kind of got attached to the simple one word options. Play testing is good though. And our very first play tester feedback specifically mentioned wanting more info in the level-up screen. My partner also mentioned this while watching me tinker and I tend to trust her instinct. So this week, one of the goals was to finally re-vamp the screen.

This is the re-vamped level-up menu:



Not only does it pull in the three categories each character has by name, it describes the stat bonus with granular detail. I think I also still accomplished keeping a retro aesthetic despite having a much crisper and readable font. Which is good. Yay.



So yeah, this was the first little devblog! I plan on doing these weekly until launch so if you like this kinda stuff - wishlist and follow, share your thoughts. Please be kind. See you next week,

-Kyle