Some news about the 2.0 development

In december, I've announced that a big 2.0 update for the game was in the works. I think it's time for me to give you some news about the development.

So without further ado, here is a first glance at what it's all about!

Steam post image The main menu of the work in progress update.

Customisation at the heart of the experience

One of the major change that was announced was the ability to customise the tank unit instead of having to select a premade unit. With the 2.0, it's now a reality.

Steam post image Customisation between different turrets, not exhaustive yet.

Turrets, front weapons, and side-weapons can already be modified to fine-tune a build. The chassis can also be modified, but it's only a cosmetic decision.

Later-on, processors will enable you to also fine-tune the characteristics and stats of the tank. For example, trading some movement speed for armor.

A more coherent atmosphere

To be perfectly honest, I don't really like the actual "story" told in the game. It's not interesting and it doesn't feel engaging at all.

So, how about this little addition?

Steam post image Hello you little camera drone!

One thing that I've been hearing many times about the game is how it reminds people of some TV shows and videos about robots battling each other. And as I was laser-focus on building the game, I think it didn't resonate much until the past days when RealGenericDemon made a video about the game in which he talked about that once again.

And funny enough, as I said, it wasn't the first time. For example, this topic in the Community Hub of the game was already a discussion about it.

As I really think embracing this idea of battling robots for the show is neat, it also help having a coherent game. Designing a game for everyone usually means doing it for nobody; whereas it's probably a better idea to try matching a specific vibe and audience.

So now, we do have this little camera drone orbiting around you in the arena to showcase your performance to some audience!

Steam post image Can you see it? Yeah, it's right behind the big robot chasing us.

Obviously, it's not the only change pointing towards this atmosphere. For instance, upon completion, your ranking is now an amount of Likes your audience gives you based on your performance. And the currency you earn is now a payout from sponsors based on this amount of engagement!

Better UI, for real

To match with all of these atmosphere changes, and the quality improvement of the visuals of the game, the UI has been entirely redone.

Steam post image I mean look at these juicy cards!

But it's not always a good thing to go crazy: simplicity is usually better than complexity.

Steam post image Yeah, it wasn't my best run.

What's next?

To ensure that the development is going in the right direction, I'm currently working on organizing a private playtest session in Discord. Plus, it will help checking if the performance of the game is still correct on more devices. It should happen in a week from now.

Now, in the "roadmap":

• Polish the arena combat system to make sure it's interesting and fun

• Add the 5 other unique arenas, with their own enemies, traps and atmosphere

• Plug the meta progression to the customisation system, so that you can now unlock and purchase new gear to play with

• Work on adding the new unified leaderboard, using Likes as scoring system

• Add a few more interesting items to unlock for more potential builds

• Add the few settings that are missing, such as the graphics options

• Work on a save file converter, to properly retrieve your previous progress and adapt it to the new game

• Rework the achievements

List not exhaustive, obviously. There are three more things that I'm considering for the future, and I'll be happy to hear what you think about that.

1. Saving and storing the 1.0 build of the game on a separate branch; that way if you prefered the 1.0 of the game it's still available to play (and its leaderboards still active).

2. Working on a supporter pack. Yeah, the 2.0 is months of work and will be entirely free so I was considering the option to add a supporter pack that you could purchase as a "thank you", and that would unlock a unique supported skin for an ingame tank chassis (purely cosmetic).

3. Pushing for a public playtest before releasing the 2.0. It might delay the launch, but it could be beneficial.

Again, thank you for your trust and for all of your kind comments. Stay tuned for more information later on!

Shidy.