Xenomarine Demo Launch (now at v1.1.0)

[logophil]

Hi All,

I've been working on XENOMARINE, a sci-fi graphical roguelike for about a year now. I haven’t shared this before today as I wanted to first get the game to a stage that illustrates it’s gameplay potential, and I feel I’ve finally got there - hooray! I now have a stable playable demo version, consisting of the first five fully-featured levels, which I’ve just made available for download on itch.io.

Here are the key features of the game:

-Simple mouse and keyboard interface

-Weapon and armour choices are reflected in the 'look' of your character
-Many thousands of possible weapon and armour combinations (including 'dual-wielding')

-Over 70 individually upgradable weapon types (approx 15 in Demo version)

-Unique useable items such as scanners, stimpacks and directional forcefields.

-Over 150 visually distinct enemy types (5 in Demo version)

-Multiple damage types and status effects

-Over 60 learnable skill upgrades

-Crafting (basic items can be crafted and armor upgraded with the relevant skills)

-Interactable scenery: moveable crates, exploding barrels, functioning doors

-Realistic sound effects

-Over 50 unique randomly generated levels (5 in Demo version)

-Infinite gameplay
- levels get harder and harder until you die: complete as many as you can! (Not in Demo)

-Permadeath

-Classic highscore board



Instead of posting some bad screenshots, here is the link to the website. It has a video trailer which should give a good idea of the game, and has a link to download the free demo (for PC, Mac and Linux):

http://www.ascifiroguelike.com/

Any and all feedback will be greatly appreciated, and may help shape the future direction of the game!

[logophil]

It's only been a few days, but I've been working hard to fix a few niggling issues that have come to my attention since launching the demo - so I can now proudly present: version 1.1.0 (released today)!

BALANCE: minimum level size increased to ensure more gradual early character progression
BALANCE: reduced change of weapons with bonus characteristics
BALANCE: slightly increased scrap drop
BALANCE: reduced change of weapons with bonus characteristics
BALANCE: scrapping weapons now returns any ammo in the weapon to inventory.
FIX: Occasional error removed in weapon damage readout on mouseover in main game screen
FIX: Workbench now shows craftable weapons and armor with full ammo/condition, as they in fact are
FIX: Can now see mouseover info for ammo and scrap in inventory
FIX: Special damage resistances now working correctly for shields.
FIX: Mouseover weapon in main game screen now shows name of weapon
FIX: Alien health bar no longer sometimes off-centre
FIX: Bug fixed when starting new game returns to splash screen.

The most significant change is the first one. Some people pointed out something that had also occurred to me, namely that the early levels, especially the first one, could be very small at times, meaning that certain early stages of character development were sometimes skipped over.

Anyway I hope the update makes the demo version even more fun to play - I'm certainly enjoying it!

Would still really appreciate any feedback on the game so far!