I definitely did not mean for several months to go by between posts here, but I have gotten an insane amount of work done on this game since B-12's reawakening in August last year.
The first public alpha release is finished aside from some sound effects. I'll be trying to finish those this week in the evenings after my shift at ze day-job. The alpha download should be ready within the next 2 weeks at most. Hopefully less. Anyway, here is the trailer. Keep reading below the video for some more details if you're curious.
If you go back and read the last news post then watch the new trailer, you'll notice that I've changed my mind on a few very important things. The game is still quite a minimal/arcadey affair, but instead of keeping the gameplay basically simplified to just jumping+shooting, I ended up adding melee combat and a pound attack. That added a lot of fun and variety to the combat.
I also hadn't planned on their being any sort of up-grades/gear, but having the procedural levels and all these crates, the game was begging for SOMETHING to drop other than health/energy pickups. Once I came up with an idea for how to add them but keep it in line with the minimal/arcade-aesthetic, I couldn't resist. Every now and then, when the RNG smiles on you, a smaller yellow crate will drop from the blue ones (can be seen in the trailer). This will give you a random upgrade from the six (for now) available, but if you get destroyed, you lose all your upgrades and the current level is re-generated.
The current gear/upgrades are: Jetpack (fly! uses your secondary power), Armor (take less damage), Boots/Gauntlet (do more melee/pound damage), Radar (helps a bit since this is a no-map game), Spread-shot (three shots instead of one, and they all do a bit more damage), and Supershield (makes your shield deal some damage on contact).
In addition to the melee combat and upgrades-system, a ton of other work was put into my level-generator, camera, controller, and AI scripts as well. I created menus and added in-game options. I also made modules/assets for the first three levels to show a base-line of what my level-generator can do. These levels will get better and have more variety over time. They are already fun to play, but the module-set for each level is still rather limited. I think you'll be surprised by the increasing amount of variety in the levels and environments as development progresses.
Let me know what you think and if you have any feedback or questions about the game. And stay tuned! The alpha download is coming soon. For real this time.
Can't wait.
This is looking really good, glad you're still working on it.
I think there's a big difference between a game being minimalist and there not being enough for the player to do or enough variety to keep it interesting.
The new additions look good. You seem to have a good variety of level designs and I like the jet pack.