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!