We will be demoing Fingeance at Gamer’s Rhapsody 2015!

Gamer’s Rhapsody is a video game convention that aims to highlight the artistic side of video games. There will be special performances by Nerd Enhanced Sound, Benjamin Briggs, and Do a Barrel Roll! as well as many other acts. Also there will be guest appearances by Emily Reese of Joon Media and Tim Turi from Game Informer as judges critiquing games from the Gamer’s Rhapsody Game Jam.

You can check us at the convention on November 14 from 10am – 7pm. Tickets are available at the Gamer’s Rhapsody website. We hope to see you there!

Last week, we talked about the visual features we’re adding to the game for the high level parts of Fingeance. In order to increase the amount of levels players can go through (we can’t stress enough how much players have been asking for this!), we’ve been working hard to bring high level content to the game. We’ve been doing more than just adding backgrounds though: we’ve also been creating new parts for players to upgrade.

Level Up Your Parts

High level parts have been a bit tricky to develop. They need to feel more powerful than the early game parts, but still need the distinct weaknesses and strengths defined by their predecessors. If you’ve played our recent Alpha Demo, you may have seen some of these upgrades already. Upgraded versions of starting cannons (like the Adept Cannon to Finn’s Starter Cannon) were designed to increase the potential of that part without just adding more numbers to it. In many cases, the high level parts have increased reward on their ideal use patterns.

For example, Bubbles’s Showstopper can deal about twice as much damage as other starting parts, but it’s hampered by its low range. Bubbles wants to get up close to enemies to hit enemies with all five bullets to maximize her damage output. The Heartstopper, Showstopper’s Tier 3 upgrade, ups the reward upon hitting all 5 shots: Heartstopper heals the user by a percentage of his or her missing health. Players can use that additional healing to build a berserker styled ship. It’s also nice to be able to top off your health when playing a more evasive ship.

The high level part Heartstopper heals each time the player connects all 5 shots. It also deals more damage, of course.

Gadgets work the same way: high level gadgets gain increased utility and better reward on their advantages. Last week we showed you the Phantom Gear as one example. That particular part increases the utility of the Ghost Gear by adding utility (in this case damage) while active. This gives the upgrade more uses than just the defensive cases players would use it for in the past.

High Level Enemies

Parts aren’t the only things being upgraded for high level areas: we’ve also been working on more difficult enemies. These enemies don’t just have more health and damage either. High level enemies will have new attack patterns for players to have to play around with. This includes bosses! We’ll have more to show here in the coming weeks.

Excited for these new changes? We’d love to see your feedback. You can comment here on our blog (we update weekly!), as well as our Facebook and Twitter.

One of the most commonly asked questions after we demo the game at conventions and the like is, “Why is it only 3 levels! We want to play more!” That is a really humbling question to hear: it means that we are doing something right. The honest answer is that we just don’t have the content to support more levels yet. We have been polishing up and adding new features to the existing content and slowly expanding the game, but we haven’t pushed the scope of the game for a while.

But that isn’t the case anymore.

These last couple of weeks have been more focused on getting ready for the new push for content after those initial levels. We are starting to magnify the scope of the game to get a better feel of how the game is at later levels. What better way to signify this than the creating on new areas, parts, and characters!

Yes, you read right, characters!

Introducing Spike

Unlocks in Fingeance is a topic that we here at Escape Industries take seriously and we want you, the player, to feel rewarded for all of your feats in-game. One of the ways that we hope to achieve this is through characters, and Spike is our first foray into this sphere.

Spike is brute that can take a beating but can dish it right back at you. He puts his body on the line to help defend his comrades from danger. This extends to his initial loadout which emphasizes taking damage head on.

The idea behind new characters that you unlock is that they are more specialized roles and standout personalities within the game, expanding the starting loadout possibilities. We are still testing the waters with adding in new characters and how they will interact with the rest of the team. But we don’t want to spoil too many characters as we want to save some surprises when you guys finally get your hands on the game. So don’t expect a huge expose on the latest characters adding in the game anytime soon.

Expanding Parts

In the spirit of expanding the later content of the game, we’ve been creating new higher tier parts. Some of these will be completely new, but many will be direct upgrades to parts you’ve seen in the past. For example, we’ve recently added the Phantom Gear as a Tier 3 part. This gadget is the upgraded version of a past part called Ghost Gear, and while it is active it will give you’re ship ghostly properties. The ship becomes intangible to all contact (except scrap, for you greedy guppies out there) and emits a haunting trail that damages and chills enemies. 

Preliminary Biome

The other main area that we are focusing on is a new place our heroes will traverse. The next area will be a Kelp Forest. Overgrown with vegetation and algae, this area is an organic locale that our fish friends must navigate through in order to proceed.

Or at least that is the plan anyway.

Right now it is in some very preliminary stages and not really that fleshed out yet, but I wanted to leave you with a very small preview of what we have so far.

So there you have it, as you can see we are starting to slowly make our way towards the “end” of the game rather than just staying in the beginning. We hope you like what you see, and if you want, you can leave a comment below or on our Facebook page as well as tweet at us. Until next time.

Wait, is that… No… It can’t be… can it?

Fingeance is a game about teamwork. Or at least, that’s what we’d like to say. The teamwork aspect of our game hasn’t been emphasized as much as we’d like. So, we’re working to change that.

Teamwork Revisited

So what have we done to fix it? First, we’re looking at remaking the starting parts of some of the characters to better accentuate the teamwork aspect of Fingeance right from the beginning. We’ve got a few parts currently in the game that are very teamwork oriented, but they’re not available until later levels, and even then you may not get access to the parts. Having starter parts have more of a cooperative tinge should help players get in a team mindset when they enter the shop for the first time. These new teamwork parts still match the kinds of gameplay we want each character’s ship to have. For example, Finn, the angry leader of the group, has the gadget Rally Cry, which when activated increases the rate of fire of every ship’s cannon. Finn can use this gadget to organize a strong offensive when he sees a point of weakness in enemy patterns (or he can just use it when he’s mad, we won’t judge).

Secondly, we’re working on upping the teamwork strengths of some of the roles you can take in the game. We’ve already done work on tanks in the past, but soon we’ll be taking a look at the other parts of the game. This will involve creating new parts that make new possible cooperative builds. Supports are next!

We’re also working on new enemy and boss encounters that will feel a bit more like raid bosses from popular MMO’s. Not so much to the extent where you’ll be forced to have a tank on your team, but instead having separate objectives for players to coordinate around. Objectives like secondary enemies to kill (like One Tough Puffer’s turrets), or points of high bullet output (The Twins icy fire) help emphasize the kind of teamwork we’d like to see from players.

Equipping Works!

Equipping parts work finally! We’ve added the ability for players to select which gadget they’d like to replace when buying a new gadget. The shop has been updated with additional features and tweaks to maximize player usability.

Bullet Trails

Special bullets now have trails that follow along on their path to destruction. These trails can give extra clarity when shooting really fast bullets, and they just look really cool overall.

Have you felt like teamwork has been a part of your strategizing? We’d love to hear from you. You can comment and follow us here on our blog (we update weekly!), send us a tweet to our Twitter, or comment on our Facebook page.

The backgrounds in Fingeance tended to look really bland and a tad bit misleading. There wasn’t much going on, there was no life in them and sometime people thought that the ships were flying in the air. It isn’t their fault though: there wasn’t much to go off of. In fact, I bet you didn’t know that you are navigating through a coral reef. Of course you didn’t, there’s no coral! Well, that is about to change!

Underwater Backgrounds

I have been working on sprucing up the backgrounds by adding in some life and vegetation. And that added a lot in terms of ambience and depth (let alone telling you that you are underwater and in a coral reef). Honestly, I could have stopped there as it was looking leaps better but we also wanted to update the lighting. Now, I have already stated how lighting adds so much from before, but when I finally implemented the new lighting system… That was when it was raised to another level. See for yourself.

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It really is phenomenal how much of a difference the shadows make and how it helps add a new level of physicality to the game. Right now I am currently messing with a bunch of different situations as both the backgrounds and lighting are still works-in-progress. You can see that I am messing with putting the bosses in this environment to see how they look. But probably the thing that I am most excited about is how dark areas in the game will be. Night time is going to look awesome and I can’t wait until we explore that part more.

What are your opinions on the new backgrounds? Do they look too dark to you? Feel free to let us know!

Other happenings

The new backgrounds weren’t the only thing that we worked on. A lot of what we did was behind the scenes getting ready to add in some more content like bosses and enemies, so we can’t show that off just yet. But what we can say is that we now have a page over at the new Unity website: Made With Unity. Made With Unity is a great place to find new and interesting games made on the Unity game engine (like ours!). You can check it out here: http://madewith.unity.com/games/fingeance. Drop by and share the page with your friends; we really do appreciate all the support you guys have so far given us and can’t thank you enough!

Displaying at the Welcome Geek Event

This past week, we displayed Fingeance at Welcome Geek, hosted by Glitch Gaming in Minneapolis. We’d like to thank all of those people who gave our game a chance at the event! It was a blast watching players team up for some fishy fun, as well as a valuable learning experience. Some interesting notes from the event:

• Have you tried using the Goliath Engine other energy regenerating parts? The combination is very strong. One player was able to get a lucky draw with several energy regen augments, and kept the engine running almost constantly!
• Extreme difficulty continues to claim several submarine lives. Can it be beaten? It may help to take a look at our guide for some tips.
• People of various skill levels playing through Fingeance is always refreshing to see. From the saltiest dogs to the greenest of greenhorns, players at the event enjoyed the underwater thrill ride, often making it to the end.
• Firestarter is OP! That bad boy rips through enemies like damp butter. Woe to the team with packed to the brim with them though; movement in shmups is still important, especially without a tanky teammate.
• The art style still impresses people, which is good because we’re planning to add to it in the coming weeks! At the event, our style was compared to a classic game called Fantasy Zone.
  

  Fantasy Zone is an old school shoot ’em up on the NES and Sega Master System. Some folks at the event felt we have a similar art style!

Alpha Demo Update

In preparation for the event we have updated the newest Fingeance Alpha Demo! This update improves the performance of the game during high intensity moments (such as during boss fights). In addition, we’ve added some new content:

• Force Feedback – Feel the rumble of your Bomb Launchers explosion, or the rattle of your ship’s damaged hull
• Part Tuning – Gadgets have generally been generally buffed (in some cases significantly) to increase their overall effectiveness, while cannons are just slightly weaker
• Improved Lighting – Huge boss attacks now have fancy lighting effects, so players will know when to be wary
• Added Parts – Adaptive Armor and Reflector are additional parts purchasable in-game

We’d love to hear how you feel about these additional changes or your opinion of the event if you could make it; you can let us know in the comments here, or on our Facebook and Twitter pages.

Late post this week! Sorry about that. We have been hard at work on some new and interesting additions to the game this past week.

Manta Ray

If you’re a regular reader, you may have noticed that we use the same bosses again and again in our screenshots (especially that ever-photogenic Puffer…). Well no more! We won’t be revealing everything on the site, but we’ll give some peeks into what we’re working on. Our latest boss is a Manta Ray, and is tentatively named the GIANT DEATH RAY. Here’s a crash course.

• He’s a change-up boss. When he’s facing you, your survival will hinge on precise movement around his slow-moving bullets. When he’s facing away, it’s an all-out scramble to keep up with him and dodge the debris he chucks your way.
• For this boss, we devised methods that let us meddle with the game’s scroll speed (how fast you move through the level) on the fly. Prepare for rocket boosts that send you hurtling through knots of obstacles.
• Because of all the destructible objects being flung your way, you’ll need to make snap decisions on dodging vs. blasting your way to safety.

I have been creating a bunch of art concepts for the Manta Ray boss. I also have been working on a lot of polished art for the boss as well. I have some plans to include these into the game in a meaningful way but right now I am still working on making that system. I had a bunch of fun making these and think that they turned out really well. With that said, check out some cool action poses!

Background Concepts

I also have been working on adding more interesting backgrounds in our game. Right now, the background looks like a barren, rocky area devoid of life. So I have been working on some concepts to include some vegetation in the game. This will hopefully help the game feel like it is more underwater and alive than before. Check out a concept that I am testing out:

Again, right now it is in the concept stage but I am working on getting these into the game very soon. What do you think about the new backgrounds? Do you think that it is too much? Remember there is only one layer of vegetation in the concept picture, each layer will have coral and kelp scattered throughout the scene.

Rumble!

Another feature that we added in is RUMBLE! While you battle your way through countless enemies now you will feel tactile feedback when you fire a huge blast or take some damage. It really adds a lot to the way the game feels, giving you a large amount of feedback just through vibration alone. A very cool instance of this is the battle between “One Tough Puffer”: when the torrent of bubbles swarm you and your allies your controllers vibrate in response.

In other news, I know it is a bit short notice but we are going to be at GlitchHQ in Minneapolis today for PLAY/TEST. You can come check out the latest build and talk to us about the game, we love meeting up with you guys and hanging out. Be sure to swing by if you can the event is FREE!

Hey everyone! First, we at Escape Industries would like to thank you for giving our newest alpha demo of Fingeance a playthrough. We really appreciate it. Working on Fingeance would not be nearly as rewarding without the feedback and support we’ve gotten.

Speaking of feedback, one thing has been coming in loud and clear: player roles (such as Tank, Assault, Support) should be more meaningful. Teamwork should be more interesting. Right now, Fingeance players do rely upon one another, but all too often, that reliance goes like this:

Two of us can deal damage twice as fast as one of us.

Compared to other team-centric games, this is boring, and falls short of Fingeance’s design goals. Over the next few weeks, we’ll be testing ways to add diversity to the team roster. Our first major step is taking a long look at the tank role.

The Tank Role

So, you want to throw yourself in danger, to be the bulwark, the salvation of your comrades. Right now, with just a meager handful of “Tank” parts in the game, you’ve got a hard road ahead of you. On the flipside, if you do pull together a tough, damage-resistant ship, you might find the game suddenly becomes too easy, as formerly terrifying enemies barely make a ding in your impressive HP bar.

We can do better.

Not the tank we had in mind…

So, what is a tank? Generally, a tank’s job is to prevent the other players from taking damage or being attacked. In most games, tanks provide a group with a big, damage-soaking, enemy-taunting behemoth. In some ways, a Shoot-em-up is the tank’s ideal playground. Unlike in traditional action RPGs (see World of Warcraft or League of Legends), a Shoot-em-up tank can literally throw himself in harm’s way to protect his teammates. Each bullet absorbed by the tank creates a little pocket of safety for his allies.

Unfortunately, there’s a problem. Shoot-em-ups are, fundamentally, all about dodging bullets. If you create a character who’s tough enough to absorb bullets, you have a very difficult time providing compelling gameplay for that character. As anyone who’s played a game in “god mode” (where you take no damage from enemies) can attest, being an invincible warrior isn’t nearly as fun as it sounds. So, how do we keep the game exciting and still allow you to play the savior and protect your friends?

Temporary toughness.

We’re working on a number of parts that let you go from zero to hero when it counts. Here are a few work-in-progress parts.

Adaptive Armor

In order to allow players to tank while still needing them to dodge things, we’ve created a few parts that make you temporarily extra-durable. This way, a player would need to look for opportune points in enemy attack patterns to block damage. One example of this is the new Adaptive Armor augment: equipping this augment causes your ship to take significantly less damage for a short time after getting hit.

Shields

Shields are another way to provide ships with temporary tankiness. You might have played with an example already, called Shell Shot, that generates a shield upon input release. The upgraded version of this cannon, Shell Shot Mk. 2, is even better at this as its shield scales with the damage its dealt before release.

We’ve got a handful of other parts like these we’re working on right now. This should make tanks feel powerful, but not ridiculous.

Content Creation at Full Steam!

Since most of the gameplay systems in the game are finished (though, some could use a tune-up), we’ve cranked up content creation to 11. You should see examples of our most recent parts, enemies, and art in the coming weeks. Just like the new tank parts, we’re focusing on creating content that help emphasize roles in the game until we feel we’ve hit a good point.

Any roles you’re really passionate about? We’d love to hear from you. You can find us on Twitter and Facebook, and here on our blog. Feel free to comment below as well!

Play the alpha here!

Right now, you can go try out the first major update to the Fingeance Alpha. It loads up fast, and a playthrough takes 10 minutes. We highly advise that you give it a try.

If you didn’t play our game when it first came out, let me catch you up. Fingeance is a co-op underwater shoot-em-up. Between levels, you can buy equipment and upgrade your ship. The game has a heavy emphasis on boss battles, with mechanics that emphasize teamwork and feel more like MMO raid-bosses than traditional shoot-em-up fodder.

Since our first release in May, we’ve upgraded nearly every aspect of the game. Equipment is better. Enemies are more exciting. Heck, even the menus are more fun. The game also runs faster, and without all the bugs that plagued version 0.01.

So, what’s new?

Equipment

So Much New Stuff. Tripled the number of parts in-game. Added an entire new part category called Augments. They passively make your ship awesome.
Game Changers. Greatly expanded what parts can do. They can now apply buffs and debuffs, grand passive bonuses, and unleash charged abilities.
Showmanship. Added sounds, animations, and particle effects to all Cannons and Gadgets.
Upgrade!!! Stronger equipment will appear as the game unfolds.

Levels and Bosses

Dastardly Deeds. While we reveal no new bosses in this demo, existing bosses have learned several new tricks.
Fiendish Foes. Added a menagerie new small enemies. Created several new chunks (premade battlefields knitted together to form a level).
Bewitching Battlegrounds. Greatly improved our level-building algorithm. Levels are now shorter, more exciting, and better-adapted to your chosen difficulty.

User Interface

An Honest-To-Goodness Functional Interface. We did it! You can buy equipment and choose characters now. It doesn’t feel awful. Hallelujah.
Snappiness. In addition to being functional, the UI looks worlds better. It’s all animated, and the game feels more engaging and alive.

We owe a giant debt to our commenters, our followers on Twitter, and our friends at Glitch Gaming. Their feedback has been invaluable. As just one tiny example, one commenter suggested that our HUD should change color to reflect the health of living players. We tried it out. The difference was MAGICAL. All of a sudden, players could read their HP in their peripheral vision. People can see how close they are to death without looking away from the action, and easily figure out which allies they should heal. This change, obvious in retrospect, was something we totally missed. It’s thanks to readers like you that Fingeance has come as far as it has, so thank you.

To check it out, CLICK HERE.

After reworking the Shop Menu and the Character Selection screens I told myself, “No more big systems for a while…”

So naturally, I’m working on another big system.

This time I am reworking the player HUD (Heads-Up Display, for those unaware) that tells the players what is going on with their ships.

Reworked Player HUD

At a glance, it looks pretty similar to the older version aside from the slanted edge. Indeed, not much more info has been added to the HUD… at least at first glance. While it now has that stylish slant it also has the ability to use animations.

So far, I’ve created an intro animation. This will play at the start of a level, when a new player joins, or when you come from the pause or continue screen.

This, as you might imagine, is super slick when multiple players are in the game. Right now, I’m still working on the other HUD states. For instance, the HUD needs to shrink when unused.

Here’s another feature I’ve added:

The health now changes color as you get damaged. The health even begins to flash as you are near death! This is useful for reading health from your peripheral vision. When you’re busy dodging, it’s tough to take a moment and check your health. Now, you don’t have to.

In fact, this feature was suggested by the community. We are always listening to you guys and really do value your opinions and suggestions. Feel free to drop us a line in the comments below or on our various social media channels (Facebook and Twitter).

Firestarter

While I was working the new HUD, Lane got busy making new parts.

The first part, the Firestarter, turns you into a devastating long-range turret. As long as you fire the gadget, you’ll launch explosive fireballs in whichever direction you choose. The longer you use the Firestarter, the faster it will shoot. This comes with a price, however: while shooting, you’re slowed to a near-standstill.

The design goal of the Firestarter is to turn a player into an objective the team must protect. It dishes out unparalleled damage, but its immobile user can be torn apart in seconds by enemy fire. Before, we’d built parts that allow players to tank. Now, we’re making parts that reward tanking.

Teleporter

The second part is called the Teleporter. It… pretty much does what the name suggests. It lets you warp around the battlefield really fast. Or, if you hold it down for a moment, it lets you power up for bigger warps, letting you pull off some pretty impressive defensive tricks.

The goal here is to provide a fun way to boost movement speed without making characters harder to control. In this phase of design, we’re adding several enemies with zone-control attacks and exploitable weak points. As we continue, movement gets more and more valuable. We also wanted a defensive option that doesn’t require fine control of the analog stick. Lastly, teleportation is just plain fun.

Lots of new things being added to the game! Please leave us a message as we do read, listen and respond!