The shop has been a major problem for players for some time now. When the player is first shown the shop, a bunch of info is thrown at them: items available, item descriptions, item costs, etc. It was a very intimidating view.

This is especially true when there are more than one player playing. So much text is shown that many players just said “Nope,” and moved on to the next scene. We definitely don’t want that to happen: building a custom ship is a core part of Fingeance. We set out to make this interface approachable.

Working on the new shop

The primary issue came from the amount of info presented all at once. Looking at the shop scene for the first time was like looking at a friend’s overcrowded desktop: it’s an incomprehensible mess. I then asked the question, “What if we divided it into separate menus?” This way, we can have simple, clean default view. Other functions can be accessed with buttons. Pursuing this angle, we came up with the idea of a “main menu” that shows what you currently have equipped.

In the main menu, you can select ‘shop’ from a list of options. This way, you aren’t shown all these unfamiliar parts right away. You opt-in to looking at them. The shop view also got a huge update. For one thing, we cut down on text. The items are presented as smaller “cards” that condense relevant information into icons or keywords. If you want more info on the item, then at the press of a button you can get a full description.

You may have noticed that the shop has a new area called “Slots”. Currently, we are experimenting with the parts and loadouts that the player can make, so we are trying out this new system. We want to help players realize their ideal playstyle, so we are expanding the system to allow more options for the player to be creative with their builds. But again, we are just in the testing phase. Don’t expect to see this fully fleshed out in-game anytime soon.

Bullet Flair

In addition to working on the shop, we also started work on changes with the bullets, but how much does bullet cost? Lane has been working on making bullets visually more appealing by adding the ability for bullets to flash and updating the bullet trails.

Along with these visual changes, he has also been working on making the bullets do more interesting things beyond “move forward”. These bullet patterns aren’t in the game yet, but expect to hear more on it soon!

Blog Changes

So, you may be wondering why I am talking about things that the others have been doing. Well, that is because we are changing our blog post schedule. Writing these blogs is pretty time-consuming and we want to work on the game more, do social media more, and try out other avenues to reach out to you guys! From now on, posts will be on Wednesdays only. But that doesn’t mean that you won’t hear from the others: we will alternate every week. We may also post on other days if we feel it is appropriate (or if we are just too excited about something to hold ourselves back).

So stay tuned and remember to check back next Wednesday for more updates! Be sure to check out our other social media outlets in the meantime, Twitter & Facebook.