The Crude Shape of Things to Come

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This week’s demo is extremely rough around the edges, but it provides a preview of some new features and systems.

Gameplay now begins with a simple non-intrusive tutorial, which provides onscreen prompts for the keyboard and mouse controls (and which disappears as soon as you collect your first orb).
All missions are now time-based, rather than being completed by collecting orbs.
The earlier missions are shorter, and have fewer enemies than the later missions.
There are no enemies in the first mission, to allow the player to get a basic feel for movement before facing combat.
The player’s accuracy (shots fired vs. hits) is displayed between missions.
The player’s drone is more maneuverable than before, and it flies constantly forward. This helps avoid enemy fire, and provides a very different gameplay feel.
Instead of completing missions, collecting orbs now allows you to level up.

There are a number of known issues, however:

At the moment, leveling up does nothing. In future, between missions, you’ll be able to pick one upgrade for each new level you earn.
The auto-retreat system has been removed, but I haven’t implemented a proper “fail state” for the game, so losing all health leaves you with a barely functioning drone, getting repeatedly pummeled by an ever-growing crowd of enemies.
There are some intermittent glitches regarding the first level-up after starting a new mission.
Most frustratingly, the Windows-only bug from last October has reappeared, resulting in the player’s cannons failing to fire roughly 75% of the time when the game is run on Windows. I didn’t discover this until testing today, and I will have to look into it next week.

Regardless, the download link is available from the Ko-Fi post.

(Archived gamedev post from 2026-01-16)