Slow Rush Games

A fair few people have tried the 'Signcrafting' (gun/ability upgrading mechanic) now, and they love the powerful guns they can make - once they "get" how it works.

It has been a hot minute since my last update, hasn't it?

Signs of Danger has both online and local co-op.

Most roguelites let you collect items to make overpowered builds, based on characters with some starting skills.

Woah, what a weekend.

Huge news: today my game officially has a name, and a Steam page.

If you want a tile-based level-editor, there are at least three good options to choose from.

This game is for PC but odds are that something like 70% of you are reading this on your phone.

"Blooming hells, has it really been 4 weeks since you heard from your friendly ghost falling sand dev?"

I went to Melbourne International Games Week for the first time, and boy was it a lot.

Someone on the internet said this game was ugly, which brought a tiny lil tear to my eye.

All the terrain in this game is made of individually simulated "atoms" (pixels) - just like the water, acid, flammable gas, etc.

Some players were having a hard time aiming their guns at enemies.

For a while our player characters have been looking a bit, well, boring.

With abilities now being customized by collected perks, it wasn't fun to start over each time you died.

Okay, look, I know loot boxes get a bad name from the (many) publishers that use lootboxes to encourage microtransactions that milk their players for every last cent.

Last week's ability experiment was fun, but I had some concerns about it being too confusing.

I wasn't happy with the current spellcasting system, so I tried something totally different.

This week's project hasn't quite come together yet, so let's talk about something totally different: rotating images.

A year ago I added support to the game for loading levels, but since then I didn't actually.. make any levels, ya know?

We have sounds for reactions between atoms now, so you can hear when the level catches on fire, or when acid corrodes - even though there may be hundreds of atoms reacting!

Ahh, rollback networking: you're wonderful, and I love you, but you make so many things even harder.

No, that's not a typo - last week we were effecting sound, but this week we're affecting sound!

Toot toot!

Last week I hinted that timing animations was a bit of a pain, but fear not!

I'm back, and now only slightly sleep deprived!

Happy holidays!

Networked multiplayer now works in the playable web demo!

Last week I quipped that networked multiplayer should work on a dialup network connection.

As of last week, network multiplayer worked in moment-to-moment gameplay, but still had sharp edges.

After a week of cleaning up last week's mess, networked multiplayer is starting to get into shape.

I implemented the most horribly hacked-up version of rollback-based networked multiplayer.

I rewrote most of the atom movement and made it about 40% faster on my big test level.

Improving performance of the atom simulation has been like pulling teeth: slow, painful, and not well suited to being featured in short videos paired with a couple hundred explanatory words.

I carefully made a surgical change that dramatically improved the performance of the entire game.

I simulated what game performance would be like in a rollback-networked online multiplayer world, and the answer was "Terrible".

I added a lightning spell so now you have a full(-ish) roster of spells to cast.

This week I've got some wild news to share: I've secured some funding!

Some weeks, it's hard to think of what to build next.

A surprisingly common question I get is "what are you using to send out those emails?".

Continuing on our spell extravaganza, you can now cast Mine spells.

If a player summons two elements that merge into another element, but the player didn't see the merging happen... did the merging even happen?

Continuing from last week's elemental spellcasting, this week I added support for casting Rock spells and Shield spells.

So far we have had spell casting based on a lookup table, and it worked but felt a little lackluster.

I've been brainstorming how to make the spell system more customizable, and one of the ideas I had was to explore using gestures to cast spells.

Being new to game dev while also working solo is great fun.

Finally, we have explosive barrels!

Levels now have ladders.

Facing family flu season in full force, I figured fiddling with flow was fitting.

A core feature of Broforce is chaotic chain reactions, and this week our untitled wizarding game gains a bit of boom juice too!