PowersVR leaves Early Access

Launch

The time has come for PowersVR to leave Early Access and join the exclusive club of games that were actually released. After years of development and a...small...hiatus the latest and greatest update is now live. To celebrate the occasion a one week discount awaits those who still haven't joined in during Early Access. If you want to head straight into the action you can download it and play it immediately. If however you want to know what's new stick around.

The Sandbox

The hero of this update is ironically not a superhero at all, but instead the map where it all takes places. Hundreds of hours placing buildings, making systems and optimizations as well as creating unique zones to explore mean that Metropolis has now grown about 40 times of what it once was.

Parks, residential and business areas as well as a few unique locations mean there's plenty to discover. With a large amount of collectibles scattered around the island players are incentivized to search every nook and cranny. Remaking the Sandbox was a massive endeavour for me, trying to keep a stable framerate at this scale in VR seemed impossible at times, however it felt absolutely neccessary to truly enjoy the superhero feel.

Because of all the effort that went into the map, all challenges were moved outside of their own smaller maps and made part of the larger Sandbox. With Fuego's Target Practice and Zap's Racetrack challenges being placed in the world map, I had to temporarily remove Whirlwind's Flying challenge as there are some technical difficulties with it's transition, however a new Wave Defense challenge awaits those ready to rumble.

The Enemies

Speak of the devils, enemies and AI have been revamped. The signature 3D Robots which were the only villains you could face during Early Access are gone, replaced by several more thematic and appropriately 2D and comicbook-ey enemies, each with a unique way to try and kill you.

I'll be the first to admit that my 3D skills are subpar, and learning 3D modelling, rigging and animation just wasn't viable, so enemies have transformed into 2D sprites which will menacingly stare you down as you approach. Each drawn from 8 directions, their AI has improved to keep the dangerous but not annoying in case you simply don't want to deal with any evil-doers.

The Powers

Each major release of PowersVR so far has included new heroes and thus new Powers. They were either Combat or Movement Powers and players could equip one of each. The...oddity of this system was brought to my attention several times since the original release, and so this update brings a large update to how Powers work.

Each hero now has a unique Combat and a unique Movement ability. To achieve this, some hero pairs were merged into one. Now you can equip a hero from either hand, and doing so will change the powers in both hands. The merged heroes are as following:

Phaser (Teleportation) + Witch (Telekinesis) = Phaser Zap (Superspeed) + Hiroku (Electricity) = Zap Whirlwind (Flight) + Dark Prinxess (Laser sight) = Whirlwind Alloy (Minigun) + New Power (Heavy Walk) = Alloy Fuego (Fireballs) + New Power (Fire Dash) = Fuego Nightwatcher (Grappling Hook) - Now both hands have grappling hooks which can be alternated to keep moving between builings

In addition some Powers were removed because they didn't suceed in the fantasy goals I wanted for them.

Professor Hex, Ruby and Shield Maiden simply did not feel good enough to warrant existing in the current setting. Bringing very little to the table. While it may seem that there are now fewer abilities in the game, the amount of Powers hasn't changed much. This also leaves room for thematically interesting characters in the future, where their kit can work well together.

The Bad

If you followed PowersVR from Early Access you'll be wondering by now where Story Mode is hiding in this update. Story mode was supposed to be a series of missions featuring specific heroes tasked with doing specific things to advanced an overarching plot. Way back in 2017-2018, I made considerable progress on it by fully completing and polishing the first level, making playable versions of the next two and laying the foundation for another two. And then the slump began.

My own supervillain was the growing realization of just how much I had bitten off with Story mode. How much different it was from everything I had in the game so far and how much work it would actually take a single person to achieve the unrealistic goals I had for it. Motivation became an expensive resource of which I had less and less and in some ways the very prospect of a Story mode is what caused updates to the Early Access version of the game to grind to a halt.

And then things got from bad to bad..er. Level one of the story mode, the level in which Phaser introduced himself and his abilities, taught players the controls and ran through the game's intro was corrupted during an update of the engine. All my attempts to restore it were in vain and it was the final straw for me.

The Good

If you're reading this update, there's a good chance you know that the world is a little crazy right now. This has been pretty bad in the grand scheme of things, so I'm thankful that it meant I could work from home for an extended period of time. In fact since early February I've been at home with an large amount of free time. This is when I began thinking what a version 1.0 of PowersVR could even mean. I'm not exagerrating the difficulty of creating the Sandbox, around 150 to 200 hours went into making it not only look but also perform to my satisfaction.

Most importantly I made the update because of those of you who believed in the project. I can't say whether the wait was worth it or not, however I will say it was a pleasure reading and working on feedback from the community, good or bad. The positivity was motivational and the negativity (mostly rightly aimed) pushed me to do better. I can confidently say PowersVR is a better because it was in Early Access. Thank you.

Now what?

First things first, I'd like to ask players to do what they did during the Early Access period and report any issues as well as share your opinions on gameplay. The next couple of weeks will be focused on stabilizing the game and improving it's feeling. I'll also be adding very cool things such as Steam Trading cards and additional achievement (essentials for a game nowadays I know).

After so many years it's easy to want to move on to something new, but there's a bit more steam left in me. After this initial period of improvement I'd like to go back to the old ways of adding more ways to play in the form of new Heroes, Challenges and enemies (we might see some returning faces in that regard).

Until next time.