Category: Gunhead

Gunhead July Dev Log – PAX10, Mission Generation and objectives, VR Test

Vermeulen

Hello again!
For the past month we’ve been focused on getting Gunhead ready to show at PAX West, since it got accepted into the PAX10:
http://west.paxsite.com/indie
We were really surprised to get into this! We’ve always submitted our games to PAX10 and never got a game in so early in development (the build we sent them was a pretty old demo of the game). So we are happy to get some external validation that the game is actually very fun.

Some of the things we are working on include:

Refining how procedural generation algorithms work for adding enemies/systems to ships:

Ship Salaged UI for after a ship is beaten:

End stats shown after failing (similar stats shown after beating the campaign):

And we are working on bringing Cryptark’s Mission Objectives system to Gunhead. These are bonus objectives you can go for to get additional bonus money.

And finally completely unrelated to PAX, we spent a few hours trying out a VR version of Gunhead:
It is definitely fun – and I think we know a good way to handle locomotion for this (not just teleporting). After testing this we decided that if we did make a VR version it would need to be its own tailored experience – a large amount of the game would need to be adjusted, and doing it now would negatively affect the desktop/non-VR version we want to focus on. So if we do make a VR version it will only be after the game is released.

If you haven’t yet you can wishlist Gunhead on Steam to keep up to date on development! It’ll also help us gauge interest in the game from players – and help with our release:

thanks!
– Lee

Gunhead Dev log

Vermeulen

On Steam: https://steamcommunity.com/games/704000/announcements/detail/3428810198737136806

Hello everyone! Now that we are done showing our Gunhead demo at SXSW / GDC, and are working on the main campaign, we’d thought we’d update everyone on our plans.

We started development on Gunhead because we wanted to expand on a lot of the ideas of Cryptark – the mix of high level strategy and moment to moment action – but create a experience that was more streamlined and action based (less resource management / trade off decisions).

We originally thought we’d move away from the roguelike genre to a more typical single player campaign – but after experimenting a lot with the mechanics of the game we decided the roguelike structure works best with how ships / scenarios are procedurally generated.

Here is a example of the start of the campaign (all dialog is placeholder!)

Unlike Cryptark, when your player dies the run will be over, and a typical run to the beat the game (reach the end boss) should take about 2 hours (there will be a option to keep going after beating the end boss however).
Campaign will start by warping into the first ship. You’ll see a map of the generated enemy ship and the systems on it. From here you develop a plan of attack, and buy weapons/items needed for your plan.
You’ll start the campaign with a complete loadout, and find weapons/items in the enemy ships (from weapon pick up spots). Unlike Cryptark, you are not buying your whole loadout between each ship. You’ll keep the weapons you used / found from the last mission, and have the option to buy new ones. We want there to be less trade off type decision making – but still give the option to buy/customize your loadout in case you need something to accomplish your plan.

Preview of weapon stations found in ships to swap weapons / items:


Gunhead will also have a heavy focus on bosses – large enemies that will replace the core in some ships. Bosses right now include the Juggernaut (giant flying enemy shown at end of Gunhead trailer), Arachnix (giant spider that lays eggs), Mechrazor, Slithor (giant flying snake), Observer (giant long legged brain with an eye), and Nigguarth (giant squid tentacle monster).

Slithor snake:

Mechrazer mech:
https://gfycat.com/PassionateClearBlackfish

Follow us on twitter to see some of our other boss prototypes (like a early version of the squid – https://twitter.com/banjoduarte/status/960976709662093313 , or long legged brain – https://twitter.com/Alientrap/status/1002219045477928960 )

We hope to finish a beta of Gunhead this year (and give Cryptark player’s early access) – with a release on Steam / console early next year.

Also ALL of our games are on sale this week – so if you haven’t got Cryptark now is the chance:

https://store.steampowered.com/app/344740/CRYPTARK/?snr=1_5_1100__1100

Let us know any thoughts / comments! thanks!
– Lee