v0.5.5: Bounce/Pierce rework, new item


Bounce and Pierce are different now

The items that grant your projectiles the ability to bounce off walls or pierce through enemies now use a charge-based system, not a chance-based one. Each one, when chosen, grants your projectiles a charge of the appropriate event, but reduces damage by 20%.

For example, if you have two Bounce items, your projectiles can bounce off of two walls before being destroyed, but their damage is reduced to 64% of its original value. Two Pierce items, same idea, but they can piece through two enemies rather than bounce off walls. Of course these items can be combined to create projectiles that pierce and bounce all around the screen for a long time.

The Camera limits are reduced slightly

The walls are still located along the edge of the camera, which is not necessarily the same as the edge of the viewport. I have reduced the camera limits a little bit, mostly because I thought the game's play area was a little too large. The other upside is that the bounces are now constrained into a tighter space, which I think is more fun.

A New Item

All ships and weapons have access to a new item! This item is simple but strong, I think. Whenever you heal any amount of health, you deal 1 damage to all enemies. This is a low number, but with high enough health regen, lifesteal, and stacks of this item, it can become pretty powerful.

A Note On Balance

I think the game is probably way too easy now.

I have not done anything at all to increase the difficulty of the game since adding all these Items, and the Items make the player sooooo much stronger. I have to revisit this; my first idea is to give enemies in tier 2+ significantly more health. Maybe the first tier of enemies can be fairly untouched, since those are supposed to be very easy while the player gets a build off the ground, but by wave 5 I think I can and should assume the player will be steamrolling.

Another idea that isn't even mutually exclusive is to maybe borrow from Risk Of Rain's system of increasing the cost of Upgrades as the player levels up. So the base value for a common is 30 gold, but maybe every two levels this increases by 10, or something.


Thanks for playing!

Files

bb.zip Play in browser
Aug 29, 2024