Changed the site to have a simpler blog-like layout recently. Not over the moon with this theme but I’ll probably keep it somewhat similar – just text and easy access to posts. Main reason is I that I may post a few longer devlogs / game-design rambles on here, and a simpler format is more conducive to that. No promises that I’ll post a ton as I’m busy with the project itself, but we’ll see. I have a bunch of long rambles in a txt file so I could dip into that, for example.
Otherwise, still steadily churning along. I’m at the point of focusing primarily on technical issues: perf, bugs, and project cleaning/refactoring. The main goal is to make the game as stable as possible before the EA release, so that I can smoothly roll out updates and new content without breaking the game, breaking old saves, and so on.
The project has tons of technical debt, as I’ve been using this unity project for years – it originated as the PROCJAM entry ‘Gigastructure’ and has transformed several times since, so there is literally still code for flying robots, modular laser guns, and procedurally-animated sword-swinging zombie robots… I’m steadily ripping those pieces out, but some of it is of course entangled with the stuff I am still using, so it will take a bit before I can be confident the project is as small as it can be.
Aside: in terms of the overall history of the project, it basically went something like:
Blame-inspired cyber dungeon crawler → Exoplanet paranormal city crawler → Ruined arctic crawler
I sometimes forget that the second phase existed, as I pretty quickly pivoted towards a more realistic setting. During that phase I was playing with things like invincible flying ghost enemies which spawned zombies (inspired by Brogue’s ‘Goblin Conjurer’ enemy), plasma guns, and so on. The paranormal aspects did add some interesting strategic considerations, but the more I developed, the more I was drawn to more tactical, low-ttk style of combat, so moving to something a bit more grounded felt more appropriate. I still do have interest in experimenting with full on magical/paranormal style combat maybe in a later project, but there is I feel an entirely different logic to a well-done system done in that way, so can’t really fit it into Arcticide.
Anyways, bit of a ramble, but I might post here a bit more going forward. Long-form posts tend to feel most natural for me, and yet posting them on a big site like twitter/steam/etc seems silly as these aren’t for marketing/PR really.