truebug

for added context

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

the nature of game development is that sometimes you will need to multiply a physics number by -1 to fix it. you won't know why. you can either agonize over it all day and still not know why, or just surf that sweet, sweet -1 wave into the sunset