It's great to hear you guys appreciating and enjoying the game! It's true the game is overall challenging, and some bits, like the fourth battle boss, are REALLY challenging. We set out to make the game such that playing it would make your forehead tiny bit sweaty, and we think we succeeded in that pretty well. The fourth battle boss is intended to be the toughest part of the game, and it pretty certainly is. It's the culmination of strategies and skills checks. It's intended to go down so that the player goes with maximum aggression and secondary weapon use at the start of each phase, yet after getting rid of one or two boss guns switches to economy mode and figures out which fighter and weapons to use at the start of the next phase. The other aspect of this is about optimizing your secondary weapon usage; it's a marathon even if you are taking sprints too. Managing the enemy rapid fire firehose cannons also features; the apprentice solution to them is to obviously not get caught in the cone, and the master solution is to "walk" the cones to a convenient location that allows you to hose the cannons (or something else) safely while they're firing. And the warping round saucer enemies are there just to add another layer of things to manage The cluster missile is probably the ultimate weapon in getting a breather from them. To a lesser extent they're there to also not make the final cannon of each phase quite not so walk in the park. As to why the hardest part/boss isn't at the end of the game, which would probably be the conventional design, it goes down to the "realistic" thread we have running in the game. Wars mostly don't culminate in the most epic battle of the war. The decisive battle is fought sometime earlier, after which it's clear who's going to win. But the losing side will pretty reliable still try to do something, to recover whatever there is to recover or then just out of desperation. Specifically in Xenoraid we made the fourth battle (especially with the bossfight) so exhausting that we wanted the player to feel like "this was the decisive battle, now I just need to coast to victory". Even though it's not exactly coasting, but especially for the final boss we wanted to give the player a break, and make the battle more cool than challenging. Purely from a design aspect, as surprise is the theme of the final battle, we gave the final boss some completely new tricks too, and it's not a good idea to give a boss new AND difficult tricks. New and cool but not very difficult tricks are fine.
Completely right about the 4th boss. I finished that one with all my ships except 1 destroyed, but I won, he he he. I don't remember exactly what strategy I followed, but I do remember my main thought: "I need to survive, survive, survive". I still have to begin playing seriously the hard difficulty, but I think this game is worth every penny. Regarding monetization, I prefer buying premium games irectly (like Neon Chrome), but an IAP to unlock the premium game is also acceptable.
I really appreciate the explanation for why the last boss wasnt so difficult. Also, I really enjoyed reading about why the spacecrafts - if you could call them - were so outdated compared to alien enemy types and looked like spaceshuttles. Really keeps me going back at it and immerse myself with those details in mind! Are there any more bonus details that you havent shared with us yet? ☺️
Oh yeah, we definitely looked near for inspiration on the spacecrafts. We made the light fighter first, which we envisioned to be a couple of generations forward from the current X-37B, which have been orbiting the Earth for close to seven years now. You know, this one http://www.universetoday.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/10/SEF14-12246-008_hires.jpg The other two are more futuristic/imaginary, but the point in those and especially why they come in several versions is that initially we're probably going to have very few actually different kinds of spacecrafts available, but several versions will be made out of those, to match with different needs or different missions. Like a van is a van, but you can turn it into an icecream truck, a taco truck, an ambulance, fill it with surveillance equipment, or whatever. We really drew inspiration from how aerial warfare evolved in World War I. At the start of the war no kind of military aircraft existed. Aircraft barely existed! But everyone had a war in their hands, so they started using the planes they had. And then they started to carry bombs and guns in the planes. And then they started to mount the weapons directly on the planes. It was only after that period when the first planes specifically designed for military use were introduced, and even they were minor modifications of previous civilian models. This is probably how starfighters would be born, if starfighters such that we see in Galactica or games made any sense, or were possible regarding the laws of physics, which totally isn't the case But it's a pretty irresistible fiction.
I'm loving this so far. Especially with MFI controller! Plays like a dream even with my little Stratus! #
Love this! That's so cool! You guys have put a lot of thought into this game, and it really shows. Very interesting background info.
Hmm i didn't know the $5 was a sale price. I thought it was just standard. In any case I finally beat the game and the final boss was still very hard for me. It was slightly easier than the previous boss but not by much. Mainly the rapid plasma blasts all over the screen I found incredibly hard to dodge if it aims correctly. I totally failed the first time so the second time I just used stealth to hide between waves and that worked way better. It was still rough and I lost one ship with all the others almost destroyed. Damn that was fun! I do wish there was special music for the final battle or a more convincing victory speech but that doesn't take away from how fun the game was. I just started on hard and it is indeed really hard..
The 50% launch sale ends January 25th. That's really soon! We don't have a content update in plans, but we have been figuring out what we'd include in a balance/feature update. I hope we can put together a plan about when to do it soon.
So it will go from $5 -> $10? Btw I noticed the last tech ability has a typo. I think you meant to write "from" instead of "form". Would love to be able to move the special attack button next to the fire button (I think the ipad has this?). Reaching over to hit the special attack button makes me often not even use it since the battles get so hectic.
Yes, the list price for Xenoraid is $9.99, so that's what it'll be in a couple of days. On the bright side, Neon Chrome is back to $4.99 for a week! https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/neon-chrome/id981035758 Good catch on the typo, fixed that and it'll be included in the next update.
I don't know if that's actually possible. The icon template and guidelines are very strict and there's just no wiggle room in those. So if having transparency is not within the guidelines, it's just not going to happen. And I don't think it is, but we'll check. The Xenoraid badge is very cool!
Well-deserved. I'm at the final boss on my first run and loving it, despite occasionally wanting to throw my iPad at the wall
All the hallmarks of an engaging game achieved, then Great to hear you've been enjoying it though, it means a lot to us.
