Hello everyone!

I just updated the development version. This is build 102. As it is my first update, I figured I’d first show what’s already done!

What’s already done

“Menu”

Let’s start by the beginning, I made a title card for the game,

as well as a launch animation, which transitions directly into the startup screen.

The startup screen itself is playable and acts as a tutorial/training.

Game elements

All the basics are already here, such as player physics and controls, energy management, and procedural terrain generation. The landscape starts easy but gets progressively more treacherous, populated with more enemies and less bonuses. Each game is unique, but all aspects are still deterministic, allowing a “daily” mode where everyone can play and replay the exact same level (landscape and enemies and bonuses etc.).

Energy

Ammo and health are a single resource, energy, which is represented on the player itself as the shading of its body. A panic indicator contracting around the player is displayed when critical energy levels are reached.

Enemies

Here are the current enemies :

• fixed turret: turrets scan the sky looking for you. When you’re in their line of sight and close enough, they start firing and try keeping you in their line of sight.

• tanks: tanks follow you and aim a bit ahead of your current position. They fire 4 rounds every two seconds.

• planes: planes fly in formation of one to four planes. Ultimately, they will fire homing missiles.

Movements

Spinning your cannon fast enough extends in into a blade, which can be used to deflect incoming bullets. With good timing (and some luck) you can send bullets back to their sender!

The blade also interacts with clouds, which you can harvest this way and regain energy. Swiping clouds also repels you, allowing you to gain a light boost,

double jump,

surf on clouds or break your fall,

but also, because it is really reacting depending on your position, it can slow you down or bounce you back down

You must have seen coins here and there also. These grant you a tiny bit of energy and a tiny boost. Energy also replenishes when you are flying very fast.

Now for the updates in this release!

Parallax background

I added a parallax background to liven up the scenery. For now it’s just a placeholder perlin noise and is pretty empty, but I plan to make it use actual future terrain data and add various features to hint at incoming difficulties.

Day/night cycle

I also added a day/night cycle with a moon and varying illumation of the ground.

I spent an awful lot of time working on patterns, especially those for the clouds, so that they work nicely at day and at night, from dusk to dawn, but that is a story for another blog post!

As you might have noticed, the screen is entirely deprived of any numeric indicator, such as distance traveled or health, to remove as much distraction as possible. The day/night cycle as well as repeating features on the terrain are used to give a sense of progress.

Boost/dash

Finally, I implement a chargeable boost/dash, which can be used to gain a lot of speed quickly and to power through enemies without loosing speed or taking damage. However, boosting consumes a lot of energy!

But you can quickly fire the boost without charge to dash through enemies.

Charged boosting also doubles as a huge laser for tough enemies.

The boost is also used to start the game from the startup screen

All those gifs are of course silent, but I’ve also been working on sound effects, as well as some bug fixes and a lot of optimizations here and there to keep the game running as smooth as possible even with a lot of action onscreen!

See you for the next update!