truebug

GROVE is my 1v1 stealth action game about two invisible players hunting each other down.

0.3.7 is here, and writing all this out made me realise how many changes I've made! That's exciting!

The main changes this version brings are...

ADDITIONS

• Pickups- There are now items in the game. At the moment they are limited to the Sword and the Gun

  • Sword - provides a stacking 20% increase to your attack range.
  • Gun - makes your next attack a huge blast across the arena. Use wisely.

• Invisibility Meter- No longer reveal immediately when standing still

  • There is now a meter that ticks down whenever you stand still. You will only reveal when that meter is empty. 
  • Use this grace period to lie in wait for your enemy. 
  • Moving refills this meter. 

• UI - Adding more complex mechanics has forced me at last to add a UI

  • HP Bar, that ticks down in chunks depending on how much health you selected.
  • Invisibility meter that works as described above.
  • Attack Ready sprite to make it clearer when your attack comes off cooldown. This is very much placeholder of a placeholder atm.

CHANGES

• Better environmental effects

  • Leaves now consider the player's location when receiving knockback
  • Bushes have been remade from the ground up and produce a more subtle, stable effect
  • Blood splatter now reacts to the attacking player's position

• Player Sprite - the player is no longer a circular blob. 

  • Using the excellent PicoCAD,  I've modelled a lil model to give players a better sense of their character. I think it's cute!

Roadmap
Thanks to some excellent play testers in my local FGC, I've realised that the game needs a lot of help with accessibility. My main two areas to focus on are Readability and Controls. Following that, I'll work on more Content.

• Readability

  • Make the "Attack Ready" effect much clearer
  • Add visual indicators to pickups
  • Clearer HP bars, with pips or markers to indicate player damage chunks.

• Controls

  • The two players, one controller thing is cute but not... fun or comfortable.
  • Add multi controller support. 
  • Test support for 3+ players.

• Content

  • More powerups
  • Player classes
  • More environmental effects

testing adding a GUN to my 1v1 stealth invisible stealth game and, along with my swaggy new leaf animations, it POPS

demo here

Grove is a combat game for 2 players sharing a single controller, you are both invisible while moving and you must use environmental context clues to tell where your opponents is and where YOU are.

Play GROVE here! - https://truebug.itch.io/grove

I've been away from GROVE dev for a little while (went on holiday to Japan and it was great!)
I haven't been able to make a ton of progress but I did want to put an update out before getting back to development and figuring out what's next for the project.

So here are the changes I've made since last I updated!

I've added a new map feature! It's tall grass that'll react to your movement and allow you to hide amongst it. If you're opponent isn't obversant, you may be able to ambush them!

I've also bolstered the Random Map feature, allowing you to select which map features will be generated.

Want to fight among water and grass? You got it!

Leaves only?? Yep!

If you're a real freak you can even uncheck everything and have a true battle of wits in a Grove with absolutely nothing in it. Just you and your invisible opponent.

The next steps for the project are refactoring some things to open up more customisation like player size and speed, as well as powerups/health drops that will force players to battle for certain parts of the map throughout the match.

At the moment, the only thing pushing players together is the need to attack, but missing an attack can be a little too punishing, so I need something else to force players to move into certain parts of the map or be able to predict their opponents movement a little better.

Four weeks off development has somewhat stalled my momentum, so I need to draw up a shortlist of things to work on, as well as figure out all the jank code I wrote before I went away.

But it feels good to be back at it!

Play GROVE here! - https://truebug.itch.io/grove

the good news is on Friday m going to Japan and Korea for 3 weeks
the bad news is ill have to come back to Grove without looking at it all that time and decipher my own bullshit code

before i go away, id like to get a build up with granular randomised option (Only spawn ponds etc) and add this new map element.
It's a patch of grass that allows you to stand still inside it, but movement in and out should be fairly obvious, plus there's gaps in the canopy

its not a game changer but i do like that its adds a little sneaky element for now (ive got bigger plans for this)