Gameplay advancements and the future - Prototype Update 0.03

Hello! Thank you for joining me on this devlog, It's been a few weeks since the first update to Prismfire's prototype and I've been quiet since, but the progress hasn't stopped!

I've been working on adding several mechanics at once, so as a consequence none of them are quite finished and there's still much work to do, but the basic framework is there:

• Added 7 items to power up the player in a variety of fashions, similar to those found in other rogue-lites
• Added a boss fight at the end of every stage and two starting bosses. They drop an item from their corpse / wreck so make sure to grab it before proceeding to the next stage!
• Player's fighter cockpit has been redesigned
• Impact and explosion effects for weapons redesigned
• AI movement adjusted to be able to catch up to the player more easily and in general look more natural
• All new items and enemies added to Sandbox
• Nebula cloud material improved drastically
• Small number adjustments everywhere

What's next?

Enemies

I believe the core of a good action game is more often then not reliant on how interesting the game's enemy design is. With this in mind I've been putting a lot of time into modeling and designing some space-fairing life with potential for proposing unique challenges to our player's fighter ship, some of those WIP designs can be seen in the screenshots above. So in short, expect a variety of creatures and hostile ships to fight in the future.

Items

The current 7 items added are relatively simple, I plan on adding a very wide variety to create emergent gameplay mechanics from combining and stacking them over a long run very similar to other rogue-lites such as The Binding of Isaac, Risk of Rain, Shotgun King, as well as many others. The intent will be the same as these other games, to make every run a unique and novel experience.

Ambient Spawns

Currently in the primary stages enemies spawn in waves, with the next wave delayed if you destroy an enemy from the previous. I will continue to refine this system, however I plan on implementing 'ambient spawns' to make space fauna appear procedurally, as well as optional mini points of interest for the player to encounter and challenge themselves with for a reward, unrelated to the main force of enemies attacking you in waves.

Feedback

If you try the new build I would greatly appreciate any feedback sent. Outside perspectives are very valuable and I need as many as I can get.

Thank you for reading!