Crab Champions News

This month a lot of work has gone into increasing the replay value and variation of each Survival mode run. It's really important in any game with roguelike elements to have the potential for wildly different builds with a lot of difficult decisions to be made on each run. I felt that the game was lacking some of this depth so a big portion of the month was spent adding content and mechanics to give players more options. There'll be more on this next month with a look at the finalized weapon levelling system.







I've always wanted boss fights in Survival mode to be a lot more exciting than just facing a bullet sponge enemy doing basic attacks. After a few experiments and a lot of optimization, this bullet hell style encounter ended up working really well with the high mobility that you have as a player. It really increases the intensity compared to normal islands. The visuals and animations are still quite rough here (the boss itself will be fully redesigned, it's here mainly to test out the new mechanics) but the gameplay feels great and many of the other bosses will now feature more hectic, bullet hell attacks.





One of the most important parts of the shop in Survival mode is being able to experiment with weapon mods to create new builds. Without a target that has a damage per second indicator, there was a lot of guesswork in terms of the range and damage output of your build. Now there are multiple target dummies in the shop area, allowing you to clearly see how well your build is performing.







Being greedy and biting off more than you can chew, resulting in the end of a Survival run is always something that is really interesting to me. I've spent a good portion of the month revamping the old greed perk system in a way that offers a LOT of power to players but with some heavy drawbacks which can make for difficult decisions on each run.

The greed mechanics have been split into two sections: perks and totems.

Greed Perks: These offer a huge benefit but also come with a guaranteed downside. When you pick one up, it cannot be removed but has a lasting passive effect. They can be stacked for stronger effects as normal perks can.

• Leap Of Faith: Max health greatly increased, but fall damage is enabled
  
• Bribe: Max health greatly increased but lose crystals when taking damage
  
• Double Trouble: Max health greatly increased but so is enemy health
  
• Cracked Helmet: Block damage in front of you but take double damage from behind
  
• Heavy Armor: Gain immunity to a random elemental damage type but movement speed is reduced by 50%
  
• Glass Cannon: Damage massively increased but you lose most of your max health
  
• Playing With Power: Damage massively increased but you can hurt yourself
  
• Brute Force: Both outgoing and incoming damage heavily increased
  
• Beginner's Luck: All damage dealt has a chance to be greatly higher or greatly lower than usual
  
• Think Fast: Damage greatly increased at the start of each island, but decreases over time
  
• Metal Claw: Damage heavily increased but no more chests spawn for the next 10 islands
  
• Up The Ante: Damage greatly increased but easy portals no longer appear and more enemies spawn
  
• Untouchable: Damage is greatly reduced but is increased every time you eliminate an enemy. If you get hit, the damage boost is reset
  
• Slippery Slope: Gain crystals over time but also lose health over time
  
• Double Edged Sword: Gain crystals when dealing damage but lose crystals when taking damage
  
• Workaholic: Far more crystals drop when eliminating enemies but you lose most of your max health
  
• High Stakes: Far more crystals drop when eliminating enemies but elite and armored enemies have a chance to spawn instead of normal enemies
  
• Gambler: Chance for more crystals to drop when eliminating enemies but also a chance for no crystals to drop at all
  
• Cursed Lottery: Gain a gigantic amount of crystals but lose most of your max health
  
• High Roller: 50% chance for double chests to spawn but a 50% chance for no chests to spawn
  
• Hoarder: Double the chests spawn after each island but double the enemies also spawn
  
• Cursed Loot: Chance for shop loot to be free but also a chance for it to be empty
  
• False Confidence: Normal enemy health is reduced but boss health is greatly increased
  

Greed Totems: These have instant one-off effects (for example gain crystals but lose max HP) and can be repeatedly purchased (with the price exponentially increasing).

• Feeling Lucky: 50% chance to double max health, 50% chance to halve max health
  
• Last Resort: 33% chance to fully heal, 66% chance to take a small amount of damage
  
• Blood Money: Gain crystals but lose 33% of your health
  
• Instant Gratification: Instantly spawn a chest of a random rarity but lose 33% health
  
• Insurance: Gain 200 max health but lose all of your crystals
  
• Impatience: Upgrade a random perk tier but lose 25% health
  
• Focused Power: Lose a random 50% of your perks but gain +4 tiers on perks that remain
  
• Claw For A Claw: Lose 3 random perks but get a legendary perk
  
• Bill Pay: Gain 3 random perks or mods but increase future shop prices
  
• Scrap Metal: 50% chance to increase your weapon level, 50% chance to do nothing
  
• No Pain No Gain: Instantly get a level 10 weapon but lose 75% max HP
  
• Greed Heart: Gain a short term +500% boost in health, but it is reduced every second down to 50% of your original health
  
• Together Forever: Your currently equipped weapon gains 10 weapon levels but cannot be swapped for a new weapon later
  
• Inseparable: Your currently equipped weapon gains random (Rare+) mods in all empty slots but cannot be dropped or swapped for a new weapon later
  

Both greed perks and totems can be found occasionally in shops and temples, maybe saving a run... or dooming it?



Challenge runs (not to be confused with regular challenges) are Survival runs with a specific condition, loadout or world modifier applied to make the run difficult or unusual. The goal is always to simply complete the base Survival loop (3 biomes) with the challenge active. Completing each challenge run rewards the player with cosmetic unlocks and are a fun way to jump into a Survival run with a specific goal in mind.

Some examples of challenge runs currently added:

• Complete a run while keeping a friendly wandering penguin safe throughout
  
• Complete a run where ALL mods and perks you find are chaos themed (leading to an increasingly unstable run as most chaos related loot increases damage but makes projectiles wildly fly around)
  
• Complete a run with ALL greed perks active at once
  
• Complete a run where the instagib world modifier (enemies die in one hit but so do you) is always active
  
• Complete a run where enemies have less health but 4x as many spawn
  
• Complete a run in 30 minutes but time moves faster after each completed island
  
• Complete a run facing enemies from all biomes who are using random weapons
  
• Complete a run where only greed loot spawns
  

There will be many more challenge runs added to the game over time and they will also feature bronze, silver, gold and diamond medals for completing them with a certain score (score is calculated from damage dealt, damage taken, time taken and crystals remaining when finishing the run).

• Movement Speed Changes: Movement speed has been lowered for Survival mode and increased for Racing mode (though it's still possible to get incredibly fast with perks when on a Survival run)
  
• Grenade Weapon Mod Compatibility: Any weapon mods can now be placed in grenade slots, allowing them to synergize with your current build!
  
  In this example, the grenade has a Split Shot mod which splits a single projectile into multiple smaller ones shortly after being spawned.
  
• Enemies Using Mods: As mentioned previously, enemies will begin getting weapon mods after the first loop in Survival. This means that existing encounters constantly get spiced up.
  
• Weapon Choice: Because of the new weapon leveling system, players will no longer always start with a basic pistol and will instead get a choice of 3 random level 1 weapons when starting each run.
  
• Multiplayer Improvements: I've made some huge changes to ensure that players with high latency still have an experience as close as possible to playing offline (big improvements to movement, hit detection and more).
  

Thanks for reading!



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In Survival mode, when players choose to continue past the "final" boss, they enter the end game loop where they will return to old biomes with stronger enemies and also encounter new, exotic biomes. The triangle biome is the first of these to be added: a mysterious place where triangles are sacred!



Unique themed loot drops in every exotic biome including weapons and weapon mods!



As with all new biomes, triangle biome themed Racing and Duel maps will be added to the lineup of maps in the game.







Previously, weapons were either hitscan based (shots instantly hit targets in a straight line when fired) or projectile based (shots have a lifetime and can move with various forces like gravity). This led to a confusing split in weapon mods: some were hitscan only, some were projectile only.

Since I wanted a unified weapon mod system (where any mod could be placed on any kind of weapon, including grenades), all weapons were converted to be projectile based. With a bunch of tweaks and a completely rewritten projectile movement system, this approach actually ended up working nicely, and I was able to add a lot of new weapon mods that directly affect the movement characteristics of projectiles. This new system coupled with matching FX for each mod (projectile trails, sparks and more to help distinguish which mods are active) turned out to create some interesting results.



Since there are thousands of meaningful combinations of weapon mods and projectile types, I stumbled onto interesting and powerful synergies that had previously been unseen. This is exactly what I was hoping for when creating the weapon mod system: to let players mix and match different mods to create unique, surprising and overpowered versions of the core weapon archetypes.



Over 50 new weapon mods have been added this month, some reworked from older versions and others from the long list of ideas to add. Some examples:

• Glue Shot: Shots stick to enemies with a delayed explosion
  
• Chaotic Shot: Shots fly in a chaotic pattern but deal increased damage
  
• Homing Shot: Shots home towards nearby enemies
  
• Piercing Shot: Shots can pierce through (and damage) enemies multiple times without exploding
  
• Growing Shot: Shots get larger and deal more damage over time
  
• Wide Shot: Shots are wider horizontally
  
• Damage Aura: Shots have an AOE damage bubble around them
  

You can probably imagine some combinations that'd work well together from those examples already. The fun part is that the same combination of mods will look very different on each base weapon type (like the Claw Shotgun or the Coconut Launcher) so there's some strategy to work out what mix of mods will best suit your currently equipped weapon.



Some mods now have cooldowns as they are too powerful to be triggered every time a shot is fired. Cooldowns are most often seen on mods that are triggered when a shot "explodes" after hitting a surface or enemy as they usually have very powerful effects.

Some examples of mods with cooldowns:

• Spinning Blade: Shots spawn spinning blades that damage nearby enemies
  
• Shockwave: Shots spawn shockwaves that knock back nearby enemies
  
• Black Hole: Shots spawn black holes that suck nearby enemies in
  
• Scatter Shot: Shots multiply in the air and scatter into smaller shots
  
• Spikes: Shots spawn spikes when hitting surfaces
  
• Bombs: Shots spawn a bunch of rolling bombs when hitting surfaces
  

In addition to this, a bunch of new firing patterns have been added for weapons to fire in more interesting ways rather than just straight forward. Weapons can now fire groups of projectiles in many shapes such as arcs, circles, lines, triangles etc.





Enemies now explode into tiny crystal shards when eliminated. These examples are a bit over the top but it's fun to push the explosiveness of the effect to the max!





I had never been fully happy with the gameplay loop in Duel mode: it felt a bit too basic and standard, a typical round based duel with no real interesting mechanics other than "you are a crab!".

With all of the weapon mod changes mentioned above (and the huge chunk of time it takes to properly implement and test each mod), a big change was made to the codebase to allow for weapon mods in Duel mode. With that, the rules have been changed to make the mode much more unique.

At the start of the first round, all players pick a weapon out of a random selection of 3 (all players get the same random selection).



At the start of all future rounds, players are offered a weapon mod out of a random selection of 3. This means that as the match goes on, players will become more and more powerful with a growing list of mods affecting each shot that they fire.

The losing players of each round will have their health doubled.

The players that reach the score limit first win the match!

In my early tests, this has created a much more dynamic and varied Duel experience, with no two matches turning out the same way. Players might make similar choices leading to a close fight, or completely different choices leading to chaotic battles being won or lost in sometimes unbelievable ways!

• Tony's Evil Brother: Word has it that Tony's evil brother has stolen some of his goods and is selling them at discounted rates!
  
• Survival Enemies Using Weapons With Mods: Thanks to the codebase changes mentioned above, Survival enemies can now make use of weapon mods: this is the perfect way to spice up late game enemies with unpredictable combinations of mods on weapons that they usually fire (stay clear of enemies firing chaotic shotguns!).
  
• Movement Speed And Scale Tweaks The world has been scaled down with enemy size and speed also tweaked to match: teammates are now much more visible and this also makes Duel matches more fair as it's much easier to target enemies.
  
• Hazards: Hazards now have a small chance to spawn on any Survival map, adding chaos for both you and enemies!
  
  
  
  
• Resolution Quality Setting Added: This allows players to improve performance issues by lowering the quality of the game resolution. It also can be raised up to 200% for those that want it.
  
• Target Dummies: Target dummies have been added to all shops in Survival mode for players to easily test out new build options.
  

As the weapon mod system is probably the biggest part of the game in terms of replay value and fun, I explored many different ideas before locking down the current system for the beta release. One of these ideas was a completely modular weapon system which allowed players to mix and match various parts to build unique and interesting weapons. Players would always start with the same basic pistol but build up to a much more powerful modular weapon as the run went on. While this idea sounded great on paper, when I implemented the prototype it ended up with a few shortcomings that ended up feeling worse than what I had before, mainly that it's not fun to find weapon parts that all look similar and then have to (sometimes tediously) put them together in a game that is mainly about fast paced action.

There are some things I'd love to explore more from this idea but it's more important to get this beta out, so that takes priority for now.

Thanks for reading!



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Work continues on every aspect of the game this month: I'm playtesting daily and making thousands of small changes that are adding up to create a satisfying game loop.



I'm very pleased to announce that Crab Champions has received a MegaGrant from the amazing folks at Epic Games (creators of Unreal Engine which I use to make this game). Huge thanks to them for their generosity, I'm beyond grateful for the support! Their MegaGrant initiative is helping devs finish their projects everywhere: if you are making a project in Unreal Engine it's definitely worth checking out.


Since ammo is unlimited in Crab Champions, having a reload mechanic was a bit redundant and uses up a keybind for very little value in return. I've decided to move to a new heat based mechanic to replace traditional reloading. Before you raise your pitchforks: this will not result in your weapon doing a frustrating overheat or jammed animation where you can't fire for several seconds. Instead this heat mechanic factors deeply into the mod system as mentioned below, making it so that stacking high cost mods will mean your weapon heats quickly and will require special cooling mods or perks to circumvent, adding a new layer of strategy to builds.

This prevents any one weapon from creating a meta (this would have been the minigun in previous versions of the game as it had a huge clip, fast fire rate and no penalty for stacking the most powerful mods). Anyone not using the minigun was at a disadvantage. Now, each weapon has a different cooling speed and max heat stat, allowing for much more balance across the weapon types in this regard.





In Development Update #9, I shared the list of perks that were added to the game and mentioned that they would compliment the new weapon mod system. I'm happy to say that a huge amount of progress has been made on this system and it's feeling great. There was a lot of hidden complexity in getting this stable as some of the combinations can produce crazy results!

As a quick recap: weapon mods are a core focus for Survival mode, allowing players to stack powerful upgrades on stock weapons with a near infinite number of combinations. Mods can be placed on your primary and secondary weapons as well as your grenade.

These mods tie into the heat system mentioned above: each mod has a heat cost when triggered which means that players must strike a balance between raw power and being able to fire fast enough to eliminate enemies. Sure it's possible to fire a shot that spawns 12 burning blades which each spawn a black hole when exploding but it'll cost a lot of heat, meaning you won't be able to fire again until your weapon cools enough to afford the heat of another shot.

Here are some of the weapon mods added this month (many more are planned for future updates):

[h2]Common Weapon Mods[/h2]

• Cooling Shot: Shots that hit enemies cool your weapon
  
• Light Shot: Projectiles are no longer affected by gravity
  
• Bouncing Orb: Chance to fire a bouncing orb along with your normal shot
  
• Heatsink: Cooling speed increased
  
• Extended Mag: Max heat increased
  
• Wind Up: Damage increased for each shot fired in a row (resets when overheating or stopping fire)
  
• High Caliber: Damage greatly increased but max heat is reduced to 33%
  
• Iron Sights: Damage increased when aiming
  
• Glue Shot: Shots slow enemies
  
• Charm Shot: Shots charm enemies (they will temporarily fight for you)
  
• Ricochet Shot: Shots ricochet off surfaces
  
• Snake Shot: Projectiles move in a wavy pattern
  
• Fast Shot: Projectiles fly faster
  

[h2]Rare Weapon Mods[/h2]

• Stun Shot: Shots stun enemies
  
• Weak Shot: Shots weaken enemies, causing them to deal less damage
  
• FMJ: Damage increased to shots dealing more than 85 damage
  
• Cluster Shot: Fires an inaccurate cluster of 2-8 shots
  
• Chaotic Shot: Projectiles deal much higher damage but fly in random patterns
  
• Big Shot: Projectiles are larger (both in terms of visuals and hitbox)
  
• Explosive Core: Projectiles have a larger explosion radius
  
• Ghost Shot: Chance to not heat the weapon when firing a shot
  
• Poison Dagger: Chance for enemies to get hit with poisoned daggers when being damaged by this weapon
  
• Iron Shot: Projectiles are far slower and heavier but deal much greater damage
  
• Combo Counter: Deal bonus damage when hitting the same enemy multiple times in a row (resets when missing or hitting another enemy)
  
• Precision Laser: Damage increased for each shot you hit without missing
  
• Earthquake Shot: Shots knock enemies back
  
• Close Shot: Large damage increase when hitting nearby enemies
  
• Distant Shot: Large damage increase when hitting distant enemies
  
• Afterburner: Every fifth shot is a guaranteed crit
  
• Mace Ball: Chance to fire a heavy but damaging mace ball along with your normal shot
  

[h2]Epic Weapon Mods[/h2]

• Damage Shot: Damage greatly increased
  
• Crit Shot: Chance to crit
  
• Power Shot: Crit damage increased
  
• Mega Crit Shot: Chance to megacrit (3x crit) when landing crits
  
• Giga Crit Shot: Chance to gigacrit (10x crit) if all other mods on the weapon are crit based
  
• Supercharger: Fire rate increased
  
• Stacker: Elemental damage stacks increased
  
• Heatseeker: Shots that hit enemies spawn additional shots that fire at nearby enemies
  
• Quad Shot: Fire 4 shots with reduced damage and increased spread
  
• Looper: Projectiles have a chance to explode multiple times
  
• Random Shot: Every time a shot is fired, a random projectile is used
  
• Piercing Shot: Bullets pierce through enemies
  
• Saw Blade: Chance to fire a sharp saw blade along with your normal shot
  
• Elemental Shot: Shots have a random elemental damage type
  
• Crystal Blast: Chance to fire a close range AOE blast with each shot
  

[h2]Legendary Weapon Mods[/h2]

• Double Barrel: Shoot an extra shot each time you fire
  
• Splash Shot: Shots deal splash damage to a radius around their impact point
  
• Black Hole: Chance for a black hole to spawn at the impact point of each shot, sucking nearby enemies and projectiles in
  
• Blade Cluster: Chance for a cluster of blades to spawn at the impact point of each shot
  
• Homing Shot: Chance for projectiles to home to nearby enemies
  
• Ice Shot: Chance for shots to freeze enemies
  
• Fire Shot: Chance for shots to burn enemies
  
• Lightning Shot: Chance for shots to shock enemies
  
• Acid Shot: Chance for shots to poison enemies
  
• Clone Shot: Chance for projectiles to duplicate while in the air
  
• Fireball: Chance to fire a fireball along with your normal shot
  

To make the divide between weapon mods and perks more clear: weapon mods now only affect what comes out of a weapon when fired and perks can handle any other cases. Some mods have been converted to perks such as Exploding Enemies (enemies explode when eliminated) or Icebreaker (enemies take damage when thawing from ice). This allows for many more mod and perk synergies, making perks more interesting and viable rather than being purely for utility. There'll be more work done to make sure that the mod system feels easy to learn while still allowing some crazy combinations.

Here's a fun quick example: the grenade has a Black Hole mod which creates a black hole when exploding. All nearby enemies and projectiles are sucked into it. In the clip below I'm firing an orb launcher with a mod that spawns blades when exploding. You can see them being sucked into the black hole until it runs out and then the homing mod kicks in and sends all of the projectiles to the nearest enemy.




New challenge modifiers have been added to challenge islands this month, increasing the amount of potential variation across runs.

• Army Of One: All enemies are of one random type
  
• Afterlife: Enemies are invulnerable for 5 seconds after being eliminated
  
• Friendly Fire: You can damage yourself with projectiles and explosions
  
• Shrapnel: Enemies explode into a burst of projectiles when eliminated
  
• Rebirth: Enemies spawn a random lesser enemy when eliminated
  
• Ocean Of Lava: The ocean is made of lava: watch out!
  
• Trapped: All traps and hazards on the island are enabled!
  
• Homing Enemies: All enemies have homing projectiles
  
• Double Edged Sword: All explosions do far more damage in a far larger radius
  
• Randomized Mods: All weapon mods are randomized for this island
  
• Sharpshooter: Missing shots causes you to take a small amount of damage
  
• Elemental Enemies: Enemies explode into a random elemental damage area when eliminated
  

These are in addition to the challenge modifiers mentioned in a previous update such as Low Gravity or Instagib.



I've been doing a lot of playtesting on controller and noticed that aim assist was badly needed. I've added two settings that players using controllers can use: a Low setting that simply lowers sensitivity when near a target and a High setting that offers a subtle magnetic pull when aiming near enemies. Players can of course play without any aim assist if they wish. In Duel mode, only the Low setting will be applied for fairness.

• New Icons: Placeholder icons are starting to get replaced: I'm going for a nice clean and simple style with these icons: aiming for them to be easy to read no matter the size on screen!
  
  
  
  
• Horde + Wave Island Types Consolidated: As I want each portal type to offer a meaningfully different style of gameplay, I am merging the Horde and Wave island types as they were too similar. A similar experience to the old Horde islands can still be found when on a challenge island with the Army Of One challenge modifier active.
  
• Pacing: Previously, all portal types had the potential to spawn after finishing the first island which meant that an underpowered player could take on an elite challenge which of course ended up feeling unfair. It also meant that it was possible to get very overpowered early on if you only chose hard portals and got Epic or Legendary rewards. I have done a lot of work to balance this out with the harder portal types slowly trickling in as you progress through each biome. The current layout is:
  Island 1: Horde (1 wave)
  Island 2: Horde (2 waves) OR Defense
  Island 3: Horde (3 waves) OR Defense OR Challenge
  Island 4: Shop
  Island 5-8: Defense OR Challenge OR Elite
  Island 9: Shop
  Island 10: Boss
  
• Respawn Tweaks: Downed players now respawn with only 33% health to prevent downing on purpose to regain health.
  

Thanks for reading!

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Keeping it short and sweet this month, I did a huge amount of playtesting to go over the structure of the game to get it solidified for the upcoming beta. Aside from the content left to add and the loose ends here and there, I'm really happy with where it's at in terms of the gameplay loop: Survival mode has a clear direction and flow now, something that it had been lacking for months. Visuals and content are now the prime focus moving forward to get them up to scratch.





While playtesting, one big thing that stood out to me as needing improvement was the level design: there was a lack of platforming elements and hazards to dodge. The old islands were in general very easy to traverse at top speed without much concern for dodging or platforming. Boss fights were made too easy because of this and in general I want the player to build mastery over the movement and platforming mechanics, not just the aiming and shooting mechanics.

Some of the first hazard types have been added this month: spike traps, falling platforms, spinning lasers and slamming cliff traps. In Survival mode they will be randomly chosen on each island so there are many combinations that can change how it feels to move through familiar areas. Hazards hurt both players and enemies so it can be a good strategy to lead enemies through them!

Hazards will also be added to Racing maps, creating more challenge and variety there.







I spent a good chunk of time this month doing playtests to ensure that the game is playing as expected in multiplayer scenarios, especially at high latencies. I'm happy to say that these went really well with latencies tested as high as 320ms being smooth for all players. It was also great to get reassurance that the major changes in structure over the last few months were for the best. While playtesting, I did a huge balance pass on weapons, enemies, map layouts and more. There'll be a few more alpha playtests as I finish up more content and then... it's beta time!

It's fun to see how the game plays differently in multiplayer with tougher enemies needing teamwork to take them down and how discussions are had at chests and shops to figure out which pickup works best for each player.





It's been an interesting process to try and get a clear read without going too stylized with the visuals. While I love photorealistic graphics, many games suffer from the problem of having too much detail that can take away from the clarity of the game. I wanted to avoid this heavily in CC while still keeping an appealing aesthetic. Not quite there yet (no real detail assets in the worlds yet, just broad shapes) but it's going in the right direction!

• Crystals are now auto collected after an enemy is eliminated: you no longer have to go and physically collect crystals (the only exception here is if the enemy was eliminated by a hazard without taking damage from a player: in that case they will drop their crystals as before and the player can physically pick them up when nearby). The amount of crystals auto collected is given proportionally to the damage that each player did to the enemy- this prevents the previous issue of one player doing all the work but another player being nearby and finishing the enemy off, collecting all of the crystals
  
• You can no longer knock back teammates: this was something that happened quite a lot with projectiles and other AOE attacks and while it sounded like it could be fun on paper (to allow for rocket jumping), it was really annoying in practice
  
• Shops now have separate sections for each category of pickup, making it easier to find what you are looking for
  
• Potions have been removed, and hearts now both heal AND increase max health. Hearts have also been removed from the chest loot pool and can only be found in shops (shops are guaranteed on the 4th and 9th islands of each biome)
  
• Weapons have undergone a huge balancing and cleanup pass. Many weapons that were too similar to others have been removed for now in order to ensure that each weapon serves a specific purpose and new players aren't overwhelmed with similar weapons to use
  
• Weapons have been removed from the chest loot pool and no longer have rarities. This change may seem drastic, but I realized that the weapon mods do all the work when it comes to the power of your weapon, and the actual type of weapon used by the player is more down to personal preference. A guaranteed weapon chest now drops after completing the first island and weapons can also be obtained in the weapon section of the shop
  
• Weapons can now affect the movement speed of the player
  
• Destructible rocks now fire projectile shards in random directions when exploding, creating more chaos and making them less predictable and more dangerous!
  
• Enemy spawn logic has been much improved with better pacing and selection across each biome. Previously, a greater number of enemies would spawn after each island without getting reset after each biome, leading to extremely tedious late game islands
  
• Enemies now all have at least 3 attacks, anything from simple ranged and close attacks to special attacks like spawning lesser enemies or teleporting (Ignore the janky attack animation here haha)
  
• Players now take damage when stepping into ice, fire, acid or lightning damage areas that they created by exploding projectiles or shooting destructible rocks. Be careful when throwing those lightning grenades!
  
• Temples now are guaranteed to spawn on the 8th island of each biome (8th = Temple, 9th = Shop, 10th = Boss). Previously, Temples required a key to enter and simply gave the player a reward instantly. I've significantly changed how temples work in this update- they are now one of the most difficult islands in a biome as you must traverse a platforming challenge while fighting off enemies. This way the reward in the temple is earned and the build up to the boss fight is intensified.
  

I started a bunch of the final features that are planned for the beta this month including:

• Companions: Get support from friendly Puffins, Penguins and more on your Survival runs. They can equip weapons but be careful: they may cause more trouble than they are worth!
  
• Challenge Runs: An alternate Survival sub mode with the goal of finishing a run with specific conditions such as having to escort a very unstable companion to Crab Island or having to finish a run without a weapon but hazard spawns are pushed to the max (all enemies must be lured into traps to progress)
  
• Giant Spider: A new powerful enemy type that can be found on the Sand biome
  
• Head To Head Mode: A competitive Survival sub mode where players compete on the same team for the highest score when the run ends OR to be the last alive- whichever happens first! A fun mix of risk and reward
  
• Mini Objectives: I want to add more life and depth to some of the islands with small secondary objectives occasionally appearing for various rewards
  
• The Forge: As part of a balancing pass, I'm considering adding a forge to shops which will be the only place that players can equip and swap weapon mods, adding a layer of strategy and deliberation to builds. Currently you can swap mods at any time even during battle which is powerful and fun in other ways so I'll be putting a lot of thought in before deciding whether the forge will go ahead or not
  

Free For All is a newly added sub mode to Duel, allowing players to skip the round based Duel format and simply battle it out against other crabs to be the first to hit 25 eliminations! In the future I may expand to other party style sub modes such as Gun Game and Infected!

That's it for this one, seeya next month!

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This month I've focused on creating a lot of content to fill out the gameplay loop in Survival mode. Mostly temporary visuals here, the time has been spent on design and implementing the features rather than making things look pretty (that comes next). There's a lot of new stuff so let's get into it!







Temples are a new type of island in Survival mode where legendary ancient crab ancestors are worshipped and powerful rewards can be found. A random temple from the list below is chosen when entering a temple portal (entering a temple portal requires a key):

• Temple Of Light: Spawns an epic or legendary chest
  
• Temple Of Greed: Spawns a greed chest
  
• Temple Of Evil: Interacting with the altar gives you random pickups for 25% of your health
  
• Temple Of Doom: Spawns elite enemies and locks the doors when the player opens the spawned chest
  
• Temple Of Joy: Spawns a penguin companion perk
  
• Temple Of Fortune: A large amount of crystal pickups randomly spawn around the temple when entering and the player can try to pick up as many as possible before they disappear
  
• Temple Of Time: Interacting with the altar sends the player back in time, starting a new run but retaining all weapons, weapon mods and perks
  
• Temple Of Chance: Interacting with the altar takes one of your weapon mods or perks, with a 60% chance to duplicate it and a 40% chance to consume it
  
• Temple Of Health: Spawns a gold heart
  
• Temple Of Wisdom: Interacting with the altar levels up 3 random perks by 1 tier each
  
• Temple Of Identity: Interacting with the altar randomizes weapons, weapon mods and perks
  
• Temple Of Strength: Spawns 3 random damage based weapon mods / perks
  
• Temple Of Sacrifice: Interacting with the altar takes 3 random weapon mods (of the lowest rarity possible) and spawns a legendary weapon mod in return
  
• Temple Of Wealth: Interacting with the altar costs crystals but has a high chance to drop a random pickup (costs double each time)
  
• Temple Of Keys: Interacting with the altar costs a key but has a high chance to drop an epic or legendary pickup
  
• Temple Of Peril: The temple is filled with hazards but contains a random legendary pickup in the center of the temple: most players will take damage in order to get the pickup
  
• Temple Of Arms: Spawns 3 random weapons
  
• Temple Of Love: Spawns a random companion perk
  
• Temple Of Purity: Interacting with the altar removes all negative effects of greed perks
  
• Temple Of Protection: Spawns a gold armor pickup
  
• Temple Of Hope: Spawns a Lil Roller companion perk (a tiny pufferfish friend that rolls around and deals melee damage to enemies, growing larger over time)
  

Many of the island types in Survival mode are focused on clearing out the enemies as quickly as possible with an offensive playstyle, but I wanted to balance this out with an island type that is focused on defending an area from incoming enemies, switching things up for a nice challenge and requiring new strategies to consistently clear. At least one player on the team must be in the defense area for 60 seconds to clear: enemies will continuously spawn during that time and if the player leaves the defense area at any time, the countdown will pause until they re-enter.

At around the 45 second mark things usually start getting intense, with enemies almost becoming overwhelming, leading to a tense final few seconds before the timer runs out. Defense islands are a great way to make use of snipers and other long range weapons + AOE weapon mods as there is usually a line of enemies slowly approaching from a distance.

With the addition of Temple and Defense island types, there are now the following potential island types per biome:

• Shop: Purchase loot from Tony the shopkeeper
  
• Temple (requires a key to enter): Get a reward matching the temple type
  
• Wave (Common Reward): Clear a wave of standard enemies
  
• Horde (Rare Reward): Clear 2 hordes of enemies (each horde being a big wave of a single enemy type)
  
• Defense (Rare Reward): Defend an area against incoming enemies for 60 seconds
  
• Challenge (Epic Reward): Clear 3 waves of enemies with a random challenge modifier active
  
• Elite (Epic Reward): Defeat an elite enemy
  
• Boss (Legendary Reward): Defeat the boss to move to the next biome
  

As mentioned last month with the new weapon mod system, I have overhauled many of the perks and added a lot of new ones: there are now over 60 perks in the game, and that's just for the beta- many more will be added in the future.

[h2]Common Perks[/h2]

• Fortitude: Max health increased after clearing each island
  
• Endurance: Heal after clearing each island
  
• Scavenger: Heal when collecting crystals
  
• Valued Customer: Heal when entering shops
  
• Potent Potions: Heal more from potions
  
• Vitality: Damage increased when at full health
  
• Second Wind: Damage increased when at low health
  
• Collector: Damage increased for each perk that you have
  
• Autoloader: Chance to instantly reload when swapping weapons
  
• Adrenaline: Fire rate increased for a short time after eliminating an enemy
  
• Haste: Grenade and ability cooldown times reduced
  
• Lockpick: Chance for keys to not be consumed when using temple portals
  
• Time Is Money: Gain crystals over time
  
• Paycheck: Gain crystals after clearing each island
  
• Charged Crystals: Crystal pickups take longer to disappear
  
• Tony's Black Card: Shop prices are discounted
  
• Special Delivery: Shops contain more items for sale
  
• Shark Fin: Chance for enemies to retreat when spawning
  
• First Impressions: Chance for the first enemies on each island to have 1 health
  

[h2]Rare Perks[/h2]

• Personal Space: Max health increased after each close range elimination
  
• Medic: Max health increased after each one shot elimination
  
• Grim Reaper: Heal after eliminating enemies
  
• Hard Target: Incoming damage reduced
  
• Sharp Wings: Damage increased when airborne
  
• Checklist: Damage increased after every 10 eliminations
  
• Assassin: Damage increased after each one shot elimination
  
• Life Savings: Damage increased when collecting crystals
  
• Money Is Power: Damage increased for every 100 crystals you have
  
• Tasty Orange: Damage increased for each enemy eliminated in an island (resets for each island)
  
• Speed Demon: Movement speed and jump height increased
  
• Stopwatch: Chance to reset grenade cooldowns after every elimination
  
• Reroll: Reroll chest loot (up to 3 times per island if the perk is Tier 3)
  
• Blood Money: Gain crystals when healing
  
• Scary Mask: Elites and bosses have less health
  

[h2]Epic Perks[/h2]

• Big Hearts: Gain more max health from hearts
  
• Grave Dodger: Invulnerable for a short time when at 1 health
  
• Bulletproof: Chance to block incoming damage
  
• Torn Safety Net: Chance to cheat death and get 25% health back
  
• Gemstone: Damage increased after clearing each island
  
• Grenadier: Gain extra uses of your grenade
  
• Strength In Numbers: Gain extra uses of your ability
  
• Green Dice: Luck increased
  
• Good Omen: Chance to not be affected negatively by Greed totems while retaining the benefit
  
• Restock: Reroll the contents of the entire shop (up to 3 times per shop if the perk is Tier 3)
  
• Repelling Flip: Flipping repels nearby enemy projectiles
  
  
  
  
• Bonus Crystals: More crystals drop when eliminating enemies
  
• Bonus Loot: A random consumable drops after every island (mainly potions or armor, a very low chance for others)
  
• Bargain Hunter: Random pickups in the shop are free
  
• Gold Coupon: Chance for a purchase in the shop to be free
  
• Snatcher: Enemies eliminated at close range drop more crystals
  
• Rare Treasure: Enemies have a small chance to drop a random pickup when eliminated
  

[h2]Legendary Perks[/h2]

• Divine Blessing: Damage and health substantially increased
  
• Ground Slam: Gain a large speed boost when flipping in mid air, dealing AOE damage and knocking back any nearby enemies if connecting with the ground during this time
  
• Powerslide: Sliding shoots out fiery sparks that damage and ignite nearby enemies
  
  
  
  
• Ice Flip: Flipping freezes and knocks back nearby enemies
  
• Level Up: Duplicate weapon mods spawn nearby after every boss fight
  
• Duplicator: Chance for pickups to drop twice
  
• Faulty Chests: Chance for unchosen chest loot to not disappear
  
• Care Package: An asteroid containing bonus loot drops after clearing each island
  
• Storm Cloud: A lightning bolt periodically strikes low health enemies, dealing AOE shock damage
  

As you can probably tell from the info above, I'm trying to add as much content as possible to allow for varied runs and support emergent gameplay, ensuring that the game has a good amount of replay value. The goal is for it to be possible to experience different scenarios on each run since Survival mode has some roguelike elements:

• Permadeath: The run ends when you die and you lose any loot collected in that run
  
• Semi Randomly Generated Levels: The order of levels, types of enemies that spawn, loot rewards, hazards that spawn and more are randomized so you can never predict what will happen next
  
• No Permanent Upgrades: Other than unlocking new types of loot that can drop in future runs (of equal quality to the base set of loot that is unlocked when first playing), a player who has played the game for 500 hours will have no health or strength advantages over a player that is starting their first run. This ensures that the difficulty stays consistent and the player earns a victory by improving, not by the game getting easier over time due to persistent strength upgrades
  

The beauty of roguelike elements in general is that you get the fun and satisfying build up in power of a looter shooter or RPG condensed into a play session that takes less than an hour. Personally with the amount of games coming out these days, I don't have the patience to grind through an 12+ hour game to slowly level up my character: it just doesn't appeal to me anymore. It's way more fun to jump into a game with roguelike elements and blast through a session, sometimes becoming overpowered and getting a sweet victory or sometimes being handed a hard defeat due to a mistake. While I'm aiming for a core Survival run to take about 45 minutes if just going straight for the boss, much longer runs are supported by being able to loop back as many times as you want to the first biome instead of facing the boss. In the future when more content is added, there'll be unique paths to take when looping before seeing the first biomes again. Difficulty starts to exponentially increase when looping so if going for the highest islands survived record, it will start getting really tough to survive after the first or second loop.

I believe a good game with roguelike elements requires a number of things to be done right in order to be successful:

• Fast + Satisfying Combat / Looting: Makes progressing through the earlier biomes not feel like a chore
  
• RNG Done Right: Randomness in games can feel unfair in many cases, so it's important to ensure that there's always the possibility for powerful loot to drop at any time in the run
  
• POWER: Upgrades should dramatically increase your power, getting a 5% boost to something is unnoticeable and boring in most cases
  
• Emergent Gameplay: Every run should have a memorable story with unexpected moments, tough decisions and close calls that are only possible through creating a truly dynamic system that combines levels, enemies, loot and hazards together in ways that naturally create interesting scenarios
  
• Depth: Easy to learn, hard to master. By providing the player with a deep set of build options (weapons, weapon mods and perks in the case of Crab Champions) while also having a fairly difficult gameplay loop, there's a lot of fun improving and figuring out powerful combinations and strategies. Too easy and the game no longer is fun and runs don't hold value, too hard and each run ends frustratingly early before the player has a chance to get a good build going
  
• Plentiful Content: Stops things getting repetitive and boring (duh)
  

I'm focusing heavily on all of these goals and will work hard until I'm happy that they have all been met.





While playtesting on Hard difficulty, I had gotten the game balance to a really fun point where each run felt challenging but winnable (there was always something that I could have done differently to prevent my death, enemies were never bullet sponges but also never too weak etc.) and playing for several hours trying to get to the final boss (and failing) was actually really enjoyable. I then playtested on the Easy difficulty and blazed through the entire game first try. Even though this was my goal all along, it of course felt hollow and not fun due to how easy it was.

The fun in any games with roguelike elements isn't the act of completing them, it's the challenge, self improvement and knowledge in the journey towards mastery that is. Enemies that previously scared you become laughable and next level strategies start to form after enough experimentation. Memorable close calls are had and each run towards your first victory feels like "this'll be the one".

For this reason, I'm removing the Easy difficulty as I believe that there is far more value and enjoyment to be had working through a game with a baseline difficulty as long as it always feels fair: earning victory is far more rewarding this way. The main design goal here for me is that with experience it WILL be still possible to blaze through the game, when you have mastered the core mechanics.

I understand that this change isn't for everyone but I'm ok with that and the more I think about it, the less I want to offer a watered down easy mode at all: the intent is for Survival mode to be challenging and for anyone completing it to have experienced and overcome the same obstacles. So as it stands the game will be carefully balanced for the new "Normal" difficulty. The much harder "Nightmare" difficulty will still unlock when completing the game once, for players that like an extreme challenge.



Thanks for reading these long lists and listening to my random thoughts on design this month, it's not for everyone but I thought it was worth explaining what my goals are and the reasoning behind them!

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