Cryptark (now at Early Access v0.9) $

[getter77]

http://store.steampowered.com/app/344740/ $12.99 Win/Mac/Linux

Cryptark is a 2D roguelike shooter that challenges players with boarding and neutralizing procedurally generated alien starships to earn income for their Privateering enterprise. Purchase improved equipment and weapons to tackle more dangerous targets, but be cautious as failure will result in a loss of investment and profit. The decaying alien arks will defend themselves from intruders with a wide arsenal of cyborg monstrosities, robotics, and security systems, all obstacles that must be surpassed to achieve victory, the destruction of the ship’s central System Core.

-Complex, procedurally generated alien space-hulks to board and defeat.
-Challenging, re-playable campaign that tests your strategy and tactics.
-Over 60 weapons and items, including frag-cannons, tractor-beams, flamethrowers and nukes.
-High-score leader boards to rank your skills.
-Fully lip-synced voice acting brings your fellow shipmates to life.
-Blood-pumping soundtrack perfect for intense firefights.

Game Wiki: http://cryptark.gamepedia.com/Cryptark_Wiki

Why Early Access?
“With Cryptark, we believe we have developed a compelling gameplay core, but in order to add new features, iterate on designs, and create final polishing touches, we need to have an ongoing dialogue with our audience over the course of development. Cryptark is a roguelike action game designed to be played repeatedly in short sessions, open to a wide array of different playstyles. To help us find the best directions to grow the game in a way that’s fun and challenging to play, we need input from a dedicated community who understands the game at an intimate level. With early access, we hope to curate the type of community who can aide us in our vision and create a better game for everyone.”

Approximately how long will this game be in Early Access?
“We plan on continuing Early Access development for 6-12 months before making a retail release. Regular updates after release from Early Access are planned as well.”

How is the full version planned to differ from the Early Access version?
“While the core meat of Cryptark gameplay is fully playable, there’s still a lot more content we want to add for players to really dig into. More weapons, more enemies, more ships, more narrative to explore, challenges to overcome and tactics to create! The end goal is a game that players can have fun with over and over again, with new experiences and surprising elements to discover each playthrough. There’s really no limit to the amount of interesting systems, mechanics, and artwork that could be devised. With the help of Early Access community, we hope to discover and refine as many as we can come up with.”

What is the current state of the Early Access version?
“The Current Early Access build of Cryptark features a fully playable roguelike campaign where players must progress through several procedurally generated levels of increasing difficulty before finishing with a challenging final ship. Dozens of weapons, items, enemies, and level types ensure that no two playthroughs are the same, and players are encouraged to run through the gauntlet multiple times. Daily leaderboards and high scores are also available for those with a competitive streak. Cryptark’s visual and audio scape is fully realized, with rich detailed environments and animated characters, a unique hand-painted lighting system, fully lip synced voice acting, and a blood pumping soundtrack.”

Will the game be priced differently during and after Early Access?
“Depending on the landscape of the independent games market, and the quality of the final game product upon release, the price point of Cryptark may be increased after we leave Early Access.”

How are you planning on involving the Community in your development process?
“As Cryptark can be played so many different ways and each mission can be tackled however each player sees fit, we really need as many eyes and hands on the game as possible. We hope to foster a community of players who understand the game’s intricacies, mechanics, and style to help give us better insight into problem areas, new ideas, and refining the direction and scope of the game over the course of development. We will be active on the community forums to maintain an open dialogue with players, taking community input and feedback to heart as we push forwards towards release.”

Each day another of these enters onto the grand stage is a good and more interesting day than otherwise!   

[getter77]

v0.3 

Our focus for this update is our new progression system based on artifacts, which can be used to by our new 4 player suits.

- Artifact system: Ships will now sometimes appear with ARTIFACT labels on them, and contain artifact objectives.
Each artifact is unique, and is tied to a specific objective, and will come with a bit of narrative that we will be expanding over time. Artifacts are also Steam achievements, so see the achievement list for how to get them.
- 3 new music tracks
- 4 new suit options! Each with their own special ability (replacing the Gunhead's dash), starting weapons, and some built in power ups. New suit types are: Rook, Jennet, Salamander, and Intruder. Each suit also has paint job options that can be unlocked.
- 'History' menu, to see past campaigns you've won or lost, and lets you go back and check out the narrative for any artifacts you’ve recovered, and see how many are left to find.
- New Items: Buddy drones and turrets - buddy drone will follow you and help take out any enemies. Also a new Thermal Javelin spear, and the Vulcan Laser (a heavy energy weapon comparable to the chaingun)
- New System: the Shuffle system in Hazard ships. It will count down a timer, then teleport every system on the ship to a different location.
- No more time penalty: The goal timer that penalizes players for going over time on ships has been a source of much discussion on our forums. The timer itself is an important pressure element of the game, and probably won’t be going anywhere for the main game mode. However, we did remove the money penalty for going over time, and adjusted the timers and rewards to compensate.
- Crosshair options
- A bunch of items now operate on a recharging timer to make them more useful, such as the cloaking weave, emp field, and aegis shield.
- New bonuses: destroy all systems, no repair kits, no alarms tripped, kill number of juggernauts, keep X systems, destroy X systems

We are still working on optimization! There have been some optimizations and fixes, but did not address performance enough with this update, and still have plans for that for the future

Big list of small changes:
- Greatly increased slime damage against enemies
- Optimized flame thrower
- Cursor now locked to screen, with mouse sensitivity options
- Player can no longer die after destroying the core
- Some level generation fixes
- New leaderboard: End Bank amount
- New loadout ship graphics
- Equipment rebate no longer included in total revenue
- Gamepad mode now defaults off
- New resolution options
- No Controller vibration option
- fixed alarm flashing light sometimes not stopping
- No Nuke defense when destroying last core
- Fixed Speed Loader item. It was adding time to the next shot, not subtracting it.
- Limited casing spawn rate
- PS4 icons for map screen
- Made mines die when the last core dies.

- Fixed problem with setting mouse4 / mouse5 buttons to the fourth attack option
- More resolution options: 2560x1600, 2560x1440, 3440x1440
- Better 4K resolution support
- ingame map not controlled by what is set to movement keys in control settings
- Fixed dialog coming up over video on restart campaign
- Added 'Boost' instruction to tutorial
- Fixed dialog not starting bug in tutorial
- fixed problem with shield physics body staying active, blocking own melee
- fixed failsafe destroyed message
- fixed 'use gamepad mode' prompt sometimes not setting gamepad mode off
- fixed alarm lure crash

[getter77]

v0.45

Rogue game mode:
- No time limit
- No enemy selection, finishing a level just goes to the next ship
- No money, weapons\items are just picked up ingame
- Dying means the end of the game

Basically it turns the game into a more typical roguelike, like Nuclear Throne / Isaac, while still having all the complex system interactions in the levels.
It's a lot more difficult than the campaign! So if you've beaten the campaign Rogue mode will still give you a lot of challenge.

Complete changes for 0.45:
- 3 new music tracks
- New 'Nuke Tank' hazard, Emp generator hazard, bumper hazard, cage generator hazard,
- The sound that AI hear from firing weapons now stacks when firing multiple at once - so firing quadguns will attract a lot of enemies
- New sound effects: Storm Hammer, Hushpuppy, Vulcan Laser, Tractor Beam,
- Random generation changes to have tech advances and keys be farther from others of the same type
- Fixed crash on playing video if windows media player wasn't installed
- Fixed exploit with translocator and firing through doors
- Enemy shields now block tractor beam
- Alarm system level 2+ now shifts it's shields. Now spins slower
- Some drawing optimizations
- Fixed error with shield's physics body staying on after being in a nuke explosion, stopping bullets
- More health for helper drones / sentry drones

[getter77]

Update #4

We probably should have had at least one update between this and the last one. After this we just have 1 major update to make before release.

Changes:
- Massive optimizations to drawing, and level loading. Should also fix a lot of out of memory errors players were having
- Massive changes to level setups / generation
- Rogue mode dialog - a starting tutorial with the captain, then a lot of new voice acting for each character for rogue mode
- 11 new artifacts to find, all in Rogue mode
- New Character: PDX-40 - Can slow down time for better fighting precision
- New Character: Weevil - Phase Tunneler ability, can teleport a short distance (even through walls)

New Enemies:
- Bee Hive
- Viper - From Advanced Factory. Nimble hunter-killer drones that seek out intruders in deadly packs.
- Leviathan - From Advanced Factory. Mobile factory drone that carries packs of smaller attackers.
- Tank - Heavily shielded drone that requires high-damage weapons to destroy
- Picket Medium - Medium sized turret

- New background star system graphics
- New System: Hazard System

New graphics / new functionality for:
- Shuffle System
- Jammer System
- Failsafe System
- Nuke Destruct System
- Armour System
- Advanced Factory System
- Repair Bee

- New ‘Science Vessel’ ship class: No reward, no bonuses, and a lot of tech advances
- Changed Flak turret seeking projectiles
- New Juggernaut weapons
- Player leaving ship animation after death
- New Weapon: Gas Chamber
- New Weapon: Galvanic Fission Bombard 9000… aka BFG
- New full shield enemy graphics

Known Issues:
- New artifacts do not have lip sync for the dialog yet


- New COOP Campaign option
- 3 new music tracks
- 'Low Detail Mode', which turns off all lighting/effects for better performance on older systems
- Level Hazards: Wall saws, crushers, incinerators
- Destructible Debris
- Environmental Art (machinery, robot arms, player’s crewmates, etc)

Other changes/fixes:
- New Spikedog tail graphics
- New Weapon: Cycle Rifle
- Fixed Bumper hazard starting close to systems
- Intruder suit can now open lock doors by completing arrow combination
- New Slime/Liquid graphics
- Helper drone/sentries now shown as green on map
- Increased MrFixIt enemy health and range
- Mines removed when mine layer system destroyed
- Sentry System now stays open for attack while firing
- Bumpers now show on minimap
- Tutorial instructions shown before dialog text

[getter77]

v0.9

Main additions/changes:
- 'Cryptark Excavation' end game - Unlocked once Campaign and Rogue mode have been beaten - a final battle against the Contractor to claim a alien artifact
- Heavy amount of difficulty balancing - with enemy damages, costs of items/health, and bonuses. We've decreased the amount of waves in the Campaign to 6, and to 5 for Rogue mode
- Massive amount of optimizations (all over, but a lot with AI pathfinding).
- Added HUD voice telling player when systems destroyed, repaired, and other ship actions. Volume set by Voice control
- New graphics/effects: glowing parts on all systems, new 'shielded' system effect, large amount of new particle effects
- 'Cryptark' final ship in campaign/rogue is now a new double core system
- New Artifact screen with detailed descriptions, including unlocked artifacts
- Fixed Bug with losing past artifacts/progress
- Fixed audio cracking/pop bug on some systems after destroying slimer/liquid hazards

This is our final update before we release (hopefully around end of next month). Now that the final content is in we will be focused on balance / more optimizing / bug fixing

Bunch of other changes...
- New Credits video
- Added a 'no weapon equip' random objective, is randomly either 'Bombs / Shields / Energy'
- Fixed a lot of COOP bugs: each player can have different skins, fixed issues with energy weapons and recharging with second player
- Knockbacks a lot more powerful, pushes away enemies regardless of their mass
- Updated weapon/item descriptions adding more detail
- A lot of dialog has a random chance of showing up now when triggered
- Added a delay for the Tank and shielded picket bringing up their shields
- Increased shield barricade so less spinning
- Enemy nuke explosions now have a green effect
- Added starting loadout costs to character select screen
- Removed charge up from Railgun
- Removed cage from nuke system death
- Player now stops holding enemies with tracker beam when going into space
- Better snapping to system in map
- Drone Helper now catches up to player more easily
- Changed 'failure fee' text to read 'pilot recovery'
- Thruster light added to player when in space
- Fixed saw blades doing damage when deactivated
- Fixed shuffle system not drawing correctly after being shuffled
- Fixed issues with Crushers not rotated properly in map
- Fixed music playing over intro video / credit video