Phoenix - coming soon

It's always dangerous to make predictions, so I'll stick to the actual situation (which I think is more interesting to read for you guys anyway?) The game has not been submitted yet, but we're working hard and aiming to do so this week.

We're happy with the current balancing and pacing, so gameplay wise we're good. We're now wrapping up some work on the high-score servers and sound&music (which we do with a third party).

The game will be translated to several major languages, but if that would cause a delay we will probably patch it in later and launch in english only. We're not sure about this yet so we'll see.

So, not submitted yet, but we're very happy with the result so far and are working hard to finish the whole package with equal high quality.

 

Hey guys, short update.

We will not submit it this week (boooo, i know ), we got some pretty high scores from our testers, so we've made sure the top end of the spectrum also brings some new stuff. This means we're doing some more testing this weekend. Everything audio should also be finished on monday. Those seem like the major tasks that are still open, so not much at all
I'll see if I can get some new screenshots up soon for you guys.

 

The star system: A peek under the hood of Phoenix.

The speed is a lot higher now than in the previously posted video's, don't you worry about a thing.
Actually it might be too much for you guys now, but we'll see

I'll give a short explanation about the difficulty system. As the game has 'dynamic' difficulty, this system is a bit more complex than similar titles. I'll explain the 'basic' system, but also a bit how it works underneath.

Please, do mind: You don not have to know/understand this to enjoy this game.

We express the difficulty with stars, more stars means higher difficulty, simple!
But how does it exactly work?
-First up, there are 5 stars and you always have 1. That's the 'easiest' gameplay.
-Clearing encounters earns you these stars. An encounter can be 1 or multiple enemies, it depends on the enemy type.
-When you get hit, you lose a star, 1 star per hit! Until you're back at 1, unless you exploded from the hits of course

What does it mean to have stars?
- It increases the score you receive for kills, via a multiplier. More stars = higher multiplier = more score from destroying enemies!
- It increases the speed of the enemy projectiles!

This means, when you are a good player, it will be more challenging and you will get more points! (yay!) This multiplier is of course high enough to make it actually worthwhile to keep your stars high.

Now, because we like to make things interesting we added another option, which you bullet-hell enthusiasts will love.
- Before you start you can 'lock' any amount of stars in position. Which means, you won't lose them when you get hit, so it will stick to the higher speed and score multiplier.
Get it so far? Good, because here's the big kicker, you get an extra score and enemy bullet speed bonus for locking stars! We advice anyone not to start with 5 locked stars on their first game as you will get vaporized!

These are the most important aspects of Phoenix' difficulty system. There are some other mechanics I have left out to keep the information focussed on the star system, but obviously there's more to it. I also didn't go into details on the exact numbers as I think that's not necessary at this point. I can tell you though that locking 5 stars increases the enemy bullet speed over 50%!

For a more streamlined experience, we also made sure that the game ramps up faster when locking more stars. So every try will always start at 'the beginning' (no checkpoints etc), but you will get to the difficult parts really quick when locking stars.

Feel free to post your questions and remarks, I can answer with more 'under the hood' information if the questions requires.

As you guys noticed we posted a new screenshot on the website recently. You can see the 5 stars in the top left corner.
The first star is locked (with the little clamps), the second star is filled, the remaining 3 stars are empty. So at the time of the screenshot this person had 2 stars.

 

It's coming along great, though I fear we haven't submitted it yet!
The high score servers are ready now and we're currently adding some final touches to the leaderboard interface in game. There's some small tasks open but they're not a lot of work to complete. As soon as its done we'll be give it a thorough run through.
If you guys want to see a screenshot of a particular part of the game, just let me know, I might be able to help