Next after Nextfest: Hyper-5 demo V5 update

Many thanks to everyone who tried out the demo of Hyper-5 during steam NextFest and especially those who took the time to provide feedback. As a result, I have made some improvements which I am pleased to announce are available now in the V5 update of the demo. This will be the last demo update before release. The most significant changes are:

Faster ship movement speed Although speed upgrades are available, the player ship movement was too slow by default. This has been increased by +25%.

Selectable font for menus and on-screen display Choose between original “stylised” and new “readable”:

High visibility display mode This disables “cluttering” visual effects such as particles, trails etc and also enables a new “terrain collision guide”. Damage rate from terrain collision has also been reduced significantly.

Support for mouse button input for firing controls Mouse buttons can now be used to trigger weapons, movement remains via keyboard / gamepad only.

Improved post-processing Depth-of-field has been implemented which as well as looking nice in cut scenes helps separate foreground from background in certain sections of the game.

New and improved options to reduce GPU load Raymarching effects e.g. clouds, fog, volumetric lighting can now be fully toggled off, significantly reducing GPU burden. AMD Fidelity FX 1.0 has been implemented which can also reduce load for a minor decrease in fidelity. With Fidelity FX “Quality” mode enabled I can run in-game at 4k 60hz vSync on a RTX2070. Of course, YMMV, especially in cut-scenes. Yes, vSync is now an option 😊

I hope you like these improvements and look forward to your feedback. The full game is now content-complete including two bonus “top-down” time-trial stages and going through internal testing.

I am now intending to release end January 2022. Thanks again to everyone for your interest and support!

Jamie, Developer of Hyper-5