I Had No Idea What I Was Getting Myself Into

When I first started making GTTTOD...I'm talkin' like 2015, I was 18 years old and literally like two weeks into the project - I remember telling my friend that I'd have this game done by March (which was in like 6 months at the time).

130 months later, I'm starting to think I was a little off.

Before I get into this, though...

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Steam post image In the last 7 months we have made absolutely staggering progress filling GTTOD with content and building out its world, story, characters, and personality. We're stringing together a chain of events in GTTOD that will be a center point of all of our games moving forward. There will be lots of familiar locations, music, and themes - but overall, 2025 was spent going over every aspect of GTTOD and improving it. We'll start with... Steam post image

Movement, as per-usual, has gotten a lot of overhauls...but this time, these changes are almost entirely focused on

C O N S I S T E N C Y

and

V E R S A T I L I T Y A lot of games out there have gone for that "Titanfall" style movement since GTTOD released into Early Access. A lot holy God there's a lot of 'em now. Though, I've noticed very few of them have focused on some of the main aspects that made that movement system so GOOD. First off, it was extremely satisfying. Your camera pre-leaning into a wall, the impacts when you hit it, the sounds, all of it came together to make it FUN to utilize - but what made it USABLE was how consistent it was. I don't think, in all my hours playing the campaign, I ever glitched that son of a bitch out.

GTTOD's movement system has bridged that gap even further for 1.0, being more focused on usability, consistency, and verticality than ever before. Everything just kinda schmooves really well, and it's way way easier to explore around and navigate with some crazy precision compared to how it has been, traditionally, in this God forsaken game. There's a lot of nitty gritty details that work together to make it feel really good to move. For instance, Gravity has been increased substantially, but you're given more tools and options to fight against it and mitigate it. This means that, compared to the base game, you can USE gravity as a means to dodge attacks and quickly drop out of sight and flank around enemies undetected. Things like your dash and your double jump even apply a force over time to reduce the affect of gravity while you maneuver in air.

It's the little things like that that tie everything together nicely. On top of that, however, there're also FAR more movement options and tools in the environment itself to help you navigate. Rail grinds, balance points, monkey bars, low-gravity anomalies, and even various points along surfaces like pipes and sheer cliffs that you can use to scale straight up it. There's more I'm forgetting, for sure, but movement and navigation has never been more important than it is now - so make sure you're ready for that aspect of the game to be significantly expanded.

I also took some gameplay of me just moving around a bunch, so if you wanna see that, go ahead and check this video out. You can see me drop off a cliff, and because the walking and air control is so tight and precise at this point, I can easily thread the needle and land on like tiny ass platforms and stick the landing. It's pretty good.

Last time, I talked about GTTOD's new inventory and item system and how that basically meant everything can be integrated with everything else. While this is MOST prominently seen in Blurses, which we'll get to that later - guns, apparel, equipment, melee, and melee weapons all work in tandem to make a really really satisfying gameplay and combat loop. I feel like if I say "I really liked the whole '30 seconds of fun' thing from Halo" I'm just going to sound like every other FPS game developer on Earth, but it is true I really liked the whole 30 seconds of fun thing from Halo, and I feel like GTTOD 1.0 very much adheres to that idea.

Next time we talk, it'll be more about boss fights than anything - but considering that's what I gotta start on in like a week or two, I'm more so in the "ideas guy" phase right atm. But, for the time being, I feel really really happy with the core combat loop in GTTOD 1.0. I mean it's just fun dude idk what to say here.

A lot of attention has gone into not only how The Shatter generates, but what it generates with. How many lootables, and what are we putting in them? Where are we placing them in the level, and what are significance do we want that to have on our player's build? What I've found is that it's not that players don't want to explore a level - it's that they want their time invested INTO that exploration to be low, while their reward for the exploration to be high. This is all about pacing, and so that has been a key point to focus on here in GTTOD. Easier, faster, more rewarding exploration.

So basically we're just launching your shit around the world at Mach 10 and if you want to open something, just hit it really hard or shoot it with a gun.

Nah jk but that is kinda true actually.

One thing I think a lot of people will like to hear, from the nitty gritty details, is that most cars are destroyed by default, and only cars that are not destroyed can be opened. That means less cars to loot, but we keep the same amount of loot on the loot table overall - so you're more likely to get keys, crafting ingredients, and ammo from less cars. More on keys, bunkers now prefer to spawn towards the END of the level, so backtracking isn't nearly as common or necessary. As you saw in the last post, too, Bunkers are much more significant as well, especially in later levels. You can load up a lot from a single bunker in most cases, so you'll be spending less time looting, more time exploring, navigating, and fighting.

This is kinda what I'm working on right now, and it's just about making the power progression in 1.0 feel as close to perfect as I can get it. Funny enough, 1.0 has LESS Curses and Blessings than the current version on Steam - and that's because each Curse and each Blessing has way way way way more to it than before. For most of them, ranks don't just increase the stats of a Blurse, but adds significant gameplay changes that combine with other items, weapons, apparel, whatever - for some really insane build variety and build powers. Each individual Blessing or Curse is also far far more interesting and powerful too, especially at Max Rank.

Even the way you GET Blurses now is more entertaining. You beat it out of the tablet now. You can also shoot it but beating it is way more satisfying.

MY BAD PIMPS but yeah the shop system finally is real and exists. It's not just a random bunker with jack shit in it anymore. That was a bad call leaving that in there for so long tbh.

I just really liked this GIF tbh I don't have a whole lot more to rant about unless you guys wanna get into the super nitty gritty details.

Thanks for reading and watching, and I'll see you all very soon with some PLAYABLE CONTENT. My bad it's taken so long! I'm very slow and I remake things too much.

-Andrew, GTTOD Dev Creature

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