hey there :) i was wondering what program did you use to do the pixel art effect for the banner ? i really love the pixel art grading for the shadows and the whole thing looks amazing !
After more than a year(I think?) I still play this absolute masterpiece from time to time. This game's replayability is only matched by top-tier roguelike games. Please never abandon this game's development!
Thanks for the kind words and continued interest! It's still being actively worked on. I didn't expect people to replay the demo much honestly, but I'm very happy to hear that. I'll have a new progress report showing off some new things to play with hopefully in a month or so.
An absolute blast to play and a visual gem of a game! I adore (and have fallen in love with retrofuturistic/cassette cyberpunk aesthetics because of this project) the visual style of this game because of how seamless it is with 2D to give the impression of 3D (how this game is only sprites is beyond me, speaking of which, if you don't mind, what programs did you use for the art?). Also, Val's a cool character, but I gotta wonder if there's more to her than "killing is cool"! One thing I would certainly love to see in future progress logs (or maybe even as a standalone DLC when this project comes to Steam) are an artbook detailing the design process of the game, and maybe separately we could get a lore sheet to somewhat connect the dots and find out what the intel doesn't tell us about the world. I would really appreciate this too because I somewhat wanted to start work on a worldbuilding project involving mechs (called Powergears, taking inspiration from naming conventions), and I am one of those people who are really into the lore and world history of games.
Some possible suggestions? (although they may not be the greatest ideas ever) Perhaps a cluster bomb or even a short-delay sticky grenade would be pretty neat. I do believe the former is possible since you would just tweak the smoke grenade to make a cluster bomb (possibly as a tertiary weapon? it would just be a single bomb that detonates into smaller explosions really), and the latter could be a nice finesse like the spider remote bomb. I think thermobaric weapons would be a neat addition (yet more anti-structure, but maybe also for organic enemies since they suck nearby oxygen?) Speaking of which: enemy infantry carrying MANPATs or even recoilless anti-tank rifles could be a decent challenge since they are somewhat difficult to hit and maybe they would come in transport helicopters/APCs. Perhaps to also deal with the difficulty of distinguishing the player and enemies with muted environments would be tiny accents on the vehicles. I believe it could also make sense with the different allegiances and affiliations too since we do see a lot of that distinguishing in warfare with friend-foe-identifiers. I would also add that with thermal smoke, enemies would probably keep shooting even if you aren't visible since it doesn't stop incoming projectiles, but breaking their line of sight is absolutely still invaluable.
Also, I did some reading and on the topic of a Discord server, while it may be a time-consuming task to moderate, maybe you would be able to take community moderators? I know having a few people across different time zones could really help with that. Of course, no pressure to create a server if you don't want to make one!
Anyway, I absolutely love this project, and I will keep tabs with great interest! I've already told a couple friends about this and decided to write this post after getting an S on every mission (took about 2 hours looking at the battle data, and maybe that just says something about me being bad at games). Keep up the great work, and I hope this game finds success! From this guy anyway: you're getting a supporter for life.
It's mostly MagicaVoxel for all of the buildings and vehicles in the levels, along with Paint.net for drawing the rest of the art.
Also, Val's a cool character, but I gotta wonder if there's more to her than "killing is cool"!
There is, but it's difficult for me to show that with just the combat in the game right now. I wrote a bunch of different dialogue and interactions with other characters, but it's been difficult for me to get it into the game since creating cutscenes takes a long time. I also have yet to implement the rest of the actual story in the game so it'll all line up and makes sense. I really do want there to be more of a story and character element to the game on top of more ways to show the visuals and world, but it's been a major challenge to tackle honestly.
One thing I would certainly love to see in future progress logs (or maybe even as a standalone DLC when this project comes to Steam) are an artbook detailing the design process of the game, and maybe separately we could get a lore sheet to somewhat connect the dots and find out what the intel doesn't tell us about the world.
This would be really cool to see. I'd love to show some of the design process and evolution of some of the units in the game, but it'll be some time before I can make such a book.
Some possible suggestions? (although they may not be the greatest ideas ever) Perhaps a cluster bomb or even a short-delay sticky grenade would be pretty neat. I do believe the former is possible since you would just tweak the smoke grenade to make a cluster bomb (possibly as a tertiary weapon? it would just be a single bomb that detonates into smaller explosions really)
I've considered having a grenade that splits into a small field of a dozen or so mines since people have complained that the current secondary weapon mines in the game are somewhat underwhelming. Right now I've been experimenting with air strike grenades which mark an area with smoke and have a bunch of missiles bombard it, so that probably would make cluster bombs obsolete. It's worth a shot experimenting with though, maybe it'll actually be interesting like the EMP grenades.
Speaking of which: enemy infantry carrying MANPATs or even recoilless anti-tank rifles could be a decent challenge since they are somewhat difficult to hit and maybe they would come in transport helicopters/APCs.
This has been suggested for a while now, but I've found that humans at the scale of the game would be roughly 3-5 pixels in size, which makes them almost impossible to see. It just doesn't work for the game's scale I'm afraid, sorry.
I would also add that with thermal smoke, enemies would probably keep shooting even if you aren't visible since it doesn't stop incoming projectiles, but breaking their line of sight is absolutely still invaluable.
I agree, and I intend to rework the smoke completely so they don't just freeze up no matter what. It's way too OP right now.
Anyway, I absolutely love this project, and I will keep tabs with great interest! I've already told a couple friends about this and decided to write this post after getting an S on every mission (took about 2 hours looking at the battle data, and maybe that just says something about me being bad at games).
Thank you kindly, and nice job S-ranking every mission! It's very impressive, especially considering how difficult Mission 7 is to avoid damage currently. I'm glad to hear it's doable though.
Absolutely, no problem and thank you for your dedication and hard work! I'm pretty grateful for a response on a possible art/lore book even if it is a significant future undertaking, and I will say that airstrike signal grenades sound way cooler than cluster bombs (although I'd love to see both, especially given currency I can assume will allow us direct upgrades as long as entirely new weapons). Also I feel a little better about how long it took to S-rank Mission 7 (speaking of which, reminds me of Metal Gear Solid) haha. Regardless though, keep up the good work! For the meantime, I'll watch this project closely, this one's definitely gonna be part of my aesthetics study.
man i can't wait to see the armor design you'll give him. i can't wait to see how he will interact with the current pilot. is there more info about the characters that you'd like to share? concepts and themes you'd like to explore. i am just as interested in the story beats as the gameplay and designs. thank you for your time and have a good day :D
can there be a really cool guy (or even a girl that the protag gets attached to) who's very strong that betrays you later in the story and has a crazy story arc for a comeback in the final boss? (may or may not be mandatory)
A game that's this light yet feel rewarding is quite rare of itself, even more in 2025 where there's so much AAA games that's bland. I'd say that the game is quite optimized (i'm not sure how much optimized it is with my own rig),honestly i'm surprised that there's a lot of gun that i can choose from. That Glorious A-10's GAU 8A 30mm knockoff is shredding everything like butter with it's blazing fast fire rate (Although you'll find it'll drain ammo faster than anything else), the enemy posed no threat as long you're moving in the right dimension.
The enemy LOSAT carrier does spook me a few times with it's amount of damage it can deal, imagine you're focusing on a halo when suddenly it ambushed you. However from the gameplay wise, you're not really punished standing still in the game for a couple seconds. Which makes the stacked munition launcher (Practically the Metal Storm no?) is hilariously easy to clear the game, was thinking about how a certain mechanic like enemy artillery can hit you (With at least 3 layers of armor, but then, up to the dev) so you're forced to constantly move on a certain mission
With how the powerplant and armor kit absent and the dev are considering to remove this mechanic, i do have suggestion on filling the role. Albeit not very specific
Powerplant - Overdrive! i am pretty sure you'll spam that sprint button the moment you see you're surrounded or even saw some far-off enemy, but have you ever thought that you wanted your cruiser to be "I wanted to tradeoff Overdrive for faster cruise speed so i can dodge the enemy" or, if a certain mission reward you with better coolant so you can overdrive far longer than what you're used to?
-Cruise speed, it's your main speed whenever you didn't overdrive it. I really think that it should be a focus on certain mission especially in the solid open field so you can avoid halo and LOSAT launcher that's definitely will see an increase of it's usage (Or is it?)
- Acceleration, of course the acceleration helped the mecha to get into your cruise and overdrive speed. but do think about it, what if there's an option to actually see a use of low cruise speed and high acceleration like swamp?
- With how weight worked, i do expect that the heavier you are on a certain terrain. You'll get either a buff or a nerf, let's take a look at the cruiser's legs. You see, something weird happened if you put a stick on a sand with that much weight on a cruiser. You get stuck easily and mud can slow you down, and or. heavier powerplant can take down a building more easily because of how much mass you slam on a building.
But how about Armor Kit? it seems like it can be used on the cruiser in a different way, if it shrug smaller arm and still receiving no damage that would be boring.
- Angled armor Basically used to focus on deflection, however i see no stats on enemies that suggest if it have certain penetration rather than certain damage dealt, could this mean that the bullet itself have fixed stats in the future? we'll see it in the future
- Armor w/ CRAM CRAM is practically used when every defense (In this case, your 20mm Minigun) failed to intercept a missile if you're surrounded or this could be your only defense to missile especially LOSAT, plenty of ammo and decent fire rate but lower than average accuracy seems to be viable
- Armor w/ APS Lovely APS have been used for atleast a few decades to hard kill anything big and fast (Such as missiles), they can react fast but it should only cover a fair bit of angle and limited ammo because you can only carry so much APS even with the Cruiser. LOSAT doesn't have to be nerfed though, it's practically APFSDS disguised as missile. Still perfectly balanced so you can be surprised sometimes, although i see no reason (yet) to actually consider light or heavy armor since it will require another tweak
But even as i'm writing this, all of this is merely a suggestion and i could be wrong on a certain part as i'm not really an expert to this kind of technical jargon
lastly, the art feels quite neat i can stare it all day and still not bored of it. I admit that i'm not really good with spotting art but i can see how much hours did you put into the game you really loved with, thanks for getting us some good stuff for our time to play. Now if you'll excuse me from this holy long text that feels like even my own eyes sort of suffered a bit, i'll see this page on a bit
Thanks for playing and the feedback! The stacked munitions launcher is definitely quite OP at the moment, I'll likely lower the damage or fire rate a bit since it's way too easy to take out enemies from afar with it; it's basically like wall hacking. Enemy artillery units are also planned, I'm already working on a system for certain enemies to call in air strikes when they see the player.
I appreciate your ideas for the powerplant system. It's an interesting way of implementing it though I think it might be a bit difficult to balance the changes to speed due to how fast the enemy's bullets are currently set up so you can dodge incoming fire. I do think different armor types will make it in with basic effects like health regeneration, and a random chance for bullets to ricochet without counting as a hit. If you check out my latest progress report you'll see I've been working on an APS system for the player to stop incoming missiles and mortar rounds; I didn't think to bundle it with the armor kits before but now that you mention it it might be a good idea.
Thanks again for the ideas and feedback! I'll keep them in mind.
Glad that you're getting some insight on my suggestion, dev! The idea of the top 2D perspective of a mecha reminded me of the same mech genre but quite different on it's own style, i'm not not really promoting any game except there's a game called "Mech Engineer". You might can take some reference from it since there's an artillery mechanics and more, it's also an indie game that's created by only one person too (!). There's too much mechanics there or this comment can be a long ride from top to bottom trying to explain them, but my only hope is quite straight; That this game can improve so much more, and there's lot of room there already
In the meantime i've been reading through your progress report and honestly quite surprised that this game have existed for a while, i'm quite upset with myself that i can't try the game way more earlier. And looking at your own struggle with the pathfinding is quite amusing (Even though i'm not a developer, yet), however you might need to check the latest progress report (pathfinding) since some picture from A* pathfinding onward is well...simply gone (Firefox and opera is alright, but not on chrome, i think either the site or the hosting hated the pic or gif?). But aside from that, the APS looked quite solid. The progress log you've mentioned also have a quite promising overall
However there's something quite strange with the enemy that moves very fast at a desert terrain, i can't quite put it. a Hover-like tank or is it BTR equivalent of enemy. Maybe a hybrid from both? for something as agile as that and tanked around 100 rounds of a vulcan with depleted uranium round and still not guarantee a kill is quite...something. With the same weapon, i can kill a tank with around 30 rounds of vulcan's depleted uranium. It might be quite a task to balance things not to be fragile while at the same time, not too spongy that absorb numerous of bullets (or shells). However for now i'll take these enemies as challenge on how not to deplete my ammo mid-fight
Keep it up dev, you don't have to promise everything. But your delivery on what we could have in the future assured us that it could be better in the future. Cheers!
really fun game so far, needs afew fixes here 'n there but overall just some good bones for the game. funnily enough, the thing that hooked us for this game was the audio settings menu 'n the fact it had real-time visualizers to show you how loud or quiet that particular channel was. (and just the settings in general displaying what they're affecting, rather than just text giving you a vague idea of what it is changing)
it does have afew issues though, mostly with visual clarity/eyestrain problems with the player mech, mostly in more grey/beige environments (i.e. the first mission) since the colors blend together so well it becomes hard to distinguish where you are when you're stood still.
same with weapons being way too strong or way too weak for what you need them for. (though the progress report does show that's being fixed so this is really only a problem with the current version) but the grenades seem to be fitting into their own niche, though the incendiary, from our experiences, tends to out-perform the H.E. grenade more oft than naught.
the side-weapons are an interesting case, the landmine tends not to be useful since enemies just tend to.... not go over them, or otherwise miss them (somehow) making them more of a detriment to you if an enemy launches an explosive at you or hit a wall with an explosive that had the mine near it, especially if you'd only just placed the mine. the missiles tend to be fairly useful, though the rapid-fire ones are hit or miss with their usefulness.
the lil' bomb drone (my beloved), however, is basically always useful cuz holy shit that explosion radius 'n damage is nuts, to the point where its' limited range/fuse time hardly affects it 'n it just overshadows the other options, as we found ourselves using it just cuz it got all the jobs we wanted the missiles to do done way faster and with far more consistency and with far more safty.
music is currently only for the menu, bay, and mission select screen so missions tend to be very silent. which tends to make the places you fight feel very "dead" for lack of a better term, which if it's intentional then it sets the mood really well 'n adds a sense of tension. but if not then it makes things feel far too empty despite the fact that you've turned half a city block into swiss cheese via a minigun, attempting to kill some fodder and a heli at the same time.
the melee, though, in our experience, tends to go unused alot since getting close to enemies is really not good when they can just shred you to shit at close range with, y'know, their bullets. outside of maybe the worms/grubs since it seems to one-shot them but that's a gamble due to the fact they come in hordes. hopefully it finds a place in the kit in the future.
those issue aside, the game's got some really good bones for the gameplay, 'n the audio design's also really good, weapons 'n such all are very punchy or otherwise have a satisfying sound when in use (caseless explosive launcher specifically for us) and what music is there is really good too.
all 'n all it's just a really good game, minor issues here 'n there but that's to be expected. 'n we had a relatively fun time playing through what's available currently. damn good job so far, keep up the good work mate.
(apologies if this sounded overly negative, that was far from our intentions with this.)
Thank you for the detailed feedback and playing through the demo!
funnily enough, the thing that hooked us for this game was the audio settings menu 'n the fact it had real-time visualizers to show you how loud or quiet that particular channel was. (and just the settings in general displaying what they're affecting, rather than just text giving you a vague idea of what it is changing)
I'm glad you like that aspect of it. I want everything to be as visually interesting as possible, even if it's just something like a settings menu.
it does have afew issues though, mostly with visual clarity/eyestrain problems with the player mech, mostly in more grey/beige environments (i.e. the first mission) since the colors blend together so well it becomes hard to distinguish where you are when you're stood still.
This has been a pretty common complaint from players. I'm still trying to find a way to have more varied/colorful environments where enemies and the player stand out while retaining the overall muted desert aesthetic. It's a difficult thing to balance, but hopefully I'll have it sorted out.
same with weapons being way too strong or way too weak for what you need them for. (though the progress report does show that's being fixed so this is really only a problem with the current version) but the grenades seem to be fitting into their own niche, though the incendiary, from our experiences, tends to out-perform the H.E. grenade more oft than naught.
At the moment while all weapons are unlocked, the plan is to have different arms dealer characters who you purchase them from; plus different types of missions where excessive collateral damage will actually be punished so as to incentivize using less destructive weapons sometimes. I think the very standard H.E. grenade will be a lot more useful in those types of levels.
music is currently only for the menu, bay, and mission select screen so missions tend to be very silent. which tends to make the places you fight feel very "dead" for lack of a better term, which if it's intentional then it sets the mood really well 'n adds a sense of tension. but if not then it makes things feel far too empty despite the fact that you've turned half a city block into swiss cheese via a minigun, attempting to kill some fodder and a heli at the same time.
Eventually stages will have music added in. I know right now things can feel pretty quiet/dead even with the slight stage ambience in the background. I've just been struggling with trying to figure out what the gameplay tracks should actually sound like, honestly. I'm still looking for a composer since I don't think I'll be able to compose the combat tracks myself.
the melee, though, in our experience, tends to go unused alot since getting close to enemies is really not good when they can just shred you to shit at close range with, y'know, their bullets. outside of maybe the worms/grubs since it seems to one-shot them but that's a gamble due to the fact they come in hordes. hopefully it finds a place in the kit in the future.
Different melee options are still planned. Some have suggested a charge/shield function with it too, and I think the plasma slash will just serve as the basic level 1 attack.
all 'n all it's just a really good game, minor issues here 'n there but that's to be expected. 'n we had a relatively fun time playing through what's available currently. damn good job so far, keep up the good work mate.
Thank you! I really appreciate it.
(apologies if this sounded overly negative, that was far from our intentions with this.)
Not at all, no worries. This kind of feedback and criticism is invaluable to me, thanks again!
Gonna download the newest update, absolutely loving it so far! I am glad I paid for it, I might do it again next major update. I am really loving the art, and especially the vehicle, but one big thing is the pilot armor and helmet, its really awesome to see! I assume you based the helmet off something like the HGU-56? I own one and I have been super tempted to 3d scan it so I can print the shell of it and then make something like a VR visor for it like how it appears ingame. Cant forget the clamshell armor which makes me think of Hammers Slammers. Good shit man!
I assume you based the helmet off something like the HGU-56? I own one and I have been super tempted to 3d scan it so I can print the shell of it and then make something like a VR visor for it like how it appears ingame.
I think you could say it's vaguely based on it, but honestly there wasn't any direct inspiration from any real life helmets. The VR visor as well was sort of improvised. Here's two shots of the somewhat crude model:
Good luck with your 3D print!
Cant forget the clamshell armor which makes me think of Hammers Slammers. Good shit man!
hi, can i ask what program did you use to model and what's your work flow? this is really similar to the style i want to model in so i wanted to ask. (gorgeous helmet design by the way)
Hello. It's just Blender with some inverted hull shading for the outlines. I draw my textures directly with the built-in texture painter tool. Nothing really fancy in terms of workflow, just low poly modeling with flat UV projection.
If you don’t exactly remember who I am, I’m the person who complained about enemy visibility when in motion or something similar, I don't know man...
I’ve been silently watching this game's progress over the past few months on Bluesky and the like. Things seem to be going smoothly.
A couple of months back, I played the updated demo and DAMN! This shit is fire! The art style of this game REALLY grew on me, I’ve had a void for clunky, yet still “advanced” technology in media ever since I watched Cowboy Bebop for the 86,438th time. I really want to mention Signalis here, but that’s more tech stagnation, if anything.
Moving on to the efforts of my LAST comment, either my eyes improved or something changed with the game so I could actually see the enemies before they started slinging sabot rounds at me; both are positives.
If there are ever 3d models of most of the in-game vehicles/enemies (especially that dropship thing that drops you off on some of the levels), I would be more than happy to shittily recreate them in something like Stormworks or Plane Crazy. Seriously, they are WAY too cool not to replicate, and with the game being top-down-ish, it’s hard to get a good POV to work with.
I really liked fighting the MBTs ingame (K41A1, if I’m not mistaken), and it would be nice to see some more enemies like them later on down the line.
Cough cough space BTR-82, anyone? cough cough...
Uhhh... yeah, that’s probably it lol, once again hope to see more content from this project. Probably even more than last time, seeing as the other indie game I liked almost religiously got violently carpet bombed by both the community and the devs.
The art style of this game REALLY grew on me, I’ve had a void for clunky, yet still “advanced” technology in media ever since I watched Cowboy Bebop for the 86,438th time. I really want to mention Signalis here, but that’s more tech stagnation, if anything.
The design work and the overall aesthetic of the vehicles has been very important to me. Even though they're not too visible due to the general size and angle of the view, I spend a lot of time trying to make them look as unique and interesting as possible since I think there's no reason they shouldn't be.
Moving on to the efforts of my LAST comment, either my eyes improved or something changed with the game so I could actually see the enemies before they started slinging sabot rounds at me; both are positives.
I've increased the shadow hardness of enemies and added more indicators along with adding more color contrast in levels, so that's probably the reason they're more noticeable now.
If there are ever 3d models of most of the in-game vehicles/enemies (especially that dropship thing that drops you off on some of the levels), I would be more than happy to shittily recreate them in something like Stormworks or Plane Crazy. Seriously, they are WAY too cool not to replicate, and with the game being top-down-ish, it’s hard to get a good POV to work with.
There will be dedicated intel pages for every design, and I intend to show some closeups and other angles in cutscenes when possible. It's early, but I am considering the possibility of making an artbook eventually showing them off in even greater detail.
I really liked fighting the MBTs ingame (K41A1, if I’m not mistaken), and it would be nice to see some more enemies like them later on down the line. Cough cough space BTR-82, anyone? cough cough...
Since smooth steering behavior has now been implemented, I plan to have more conventional ground vehicles show up too.
Once again hope to see more content from this project. Probably even more than last time, seeing as the other indie game I liked almost religiously got violently carpet bombed by both the community and the devs.
Appreciate the kind words! That's a shame to hear, what's the other indie game?
pls buff smartgun
Coming in the next build! I actually just tweaked it a few days ago.
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こんにちは！とても良いゲームです！製品版が完成したらぜひ日本語も対応してください！きっと日本に潜在的なファンがたくさんいるでしょう！
Hello! This is a great game! Please make it available in Japanese when the final version is complete! I'm sure there are many potential fans in Japan!
It's been a while since I've checked in on this, I hope all is well and happy holidays! I plan on resuming the model i was making soon too!
hey there :) i was wondering what program did you use to do the pixel art effect for the banner ? i really love the pixel art grading for the shadows and the whole thing looks amazing !
Just checking in to wish you Happy Holidays !
That's very kind, thank you and same to you!
After more than a year(I think?) I still play this absolute masterpiece from time to time. This game's replayability is only matched by top-tier roguelike games. Please never abandon this game's development!
Thanks for the kind words and continued interest! It's still being actively worked on. I didn't expect people to replay the demo much honestly, but I'm very happy to hear that. I'll have a new progress report showing off some new things to play with hopefully in a month or so.
An absolute blast to play and a visual gem of a game! I adore (and have fallen in love with retrofuturistic/cassette cyberpunk aesthetics because of this project) the visual style of this game because of how seamless it is with 2D to give the impression of 3D (how this game is only sprites is beyond me, speaking of which, if you don't mind, what programs did you use for the art?). Also, Val's a cool character, but I gotta wonder if there's more to her than "killing is cool"! One thing I would certainly love to see in future progress logs (or maybe even as a standalone DLC when this project comes to Steam) are an artbook detailing the design process of the game, and maybe separately we could get a lore sheet to somewhat connect the dots and find out what the intel doesn't tell us about the world. I would really appreciate this too because I somewhat wanted to start work on a worldbuilding project involving mechs (called Powergears, taking inspiration from naming conventions), and I am one of those people who are really into the lore and world history of games.
Some possible suggestions? (although they may not be the greatest ideas ever) Perhaps a cluster bomb or even a short-delay sticky grenade would be pretty neat. I do believe the former is possible since you would just tweak the smoke grenade to make a cluster bomb (possibly as a tertiary weapon? it would just be a single bomb that detonates into smaller explosions really), and the latter could be a nice finesse like the spider remote bomb. I think thermobaric weapons would be a neat addition (yet more anti-structure, but maybe also for organic enemies since they suck nearby oxygen?) Speaking of which: enemy infantry carrying MANPATs or even recoilless anti-tank rifles could be a decent challenge since they are somewhat difficult to hit and maybe they would come in transport helicopters/APCs. Perhaps to also deal with the difficulty of distinguishing the player and enemies with muted environments would be tiny accents on the vehicles. I believe it could also make sense with the different allegiances and affiliations too since we do see a lot of that distinguishing in warfare with friend-foe-identifiers. I would also add that with thermal smoke, enemies would probably keep shooting even if you aren't visible since it doesn't stop incoming projectiles, but breaking their line of sight is absolutely still invaluable.
Also, I did some reading and on the topic of a Discord server, while it may be a time-consuming task to moderate, maybe you would be able to take community moderators? I know having a few people across different time zones could really help with that. Of course, no pressure to create a server if you don't want to make one!
Anyway, I absolutely love this project, and I will keep tabs with great interest! I've already told a couple friends about this and decided to write this post after getting an S on every mission (took about 2 hours looking at the battle data, and maybe that just says something about me being bad at games). Keep up the great work, and I hope this game finds success! From this guy anyway: you're getting a supporter for life.
Thank you for playing and the feedback!
It's mostly MagicaVoxel for all of the buildings and vehicles in the levels, along with Paint.net for drawing the rest of the art.
There is, but it's difficult for me to show that with just the combat in the game right now. I wrote a bunch of different dialogue and interactions with other characters, but it's been difficult for me to get it into the game since creating cutscenes takes a long time. I also have yet to implement the rest of the actual story in the game so it'll all line up and makes sense. I really do want there to be more of a story and character element to the game on top of more ways to show the visuals and world, but it's been a major challenge to tackle honestly.
This would be really cool to see. I'd love to show some of the design process and evolution of some of the units in the game, but it'll be some time before I can make such a book.
I've considered having a grenade that splits into a small field of a dozen or so mines since people have complained that the current secondary weapon mines in the game are somewhat underwhelming. Right now I've been experimenting with air strike grenades which mark an area with smoke and have a bunch of missiles bombard it, so that probably would make cluster bombs obsolete. It's worth a shot experimenting with though, maybe it'll actually be interesting like the EMP grenades.
This has been suggested for a while now, but I've found that humans at the scale of the game would be roughly 3-5 pixels in size, which makes them almost impossible to see. It just doesn't work for the game's scale I'm afraid, sorry.
I agree, and I intend to rework the smoke completely so they don't just freeze up no matter what. It's way too OP right now.
Thank you kindly, and nice job S-ranking every mission! It's very impressive, especially considering how difficult Mission 7 is to avoid damage currently. I'm glad to hear it's doable though.
Absolutely, no problem and thank you for your dedication and hard work! I'm pretty grateful for a response on a possible art/lore book even if it is a significant future undertaking, and I will say that airstrike signal grenades sound way cooler than cluster bombs (although I'd love to see both, especially given currency I can assume will allow us direct upgrades as long as entirely new weapons). Also I feel a little better about how long it took to S-rank Mission 7 (speaking of which, reminds me of Metal Gear Solid) haha. Regardless though, keep up the good work! For the meantime, I'll watch this project closely, this one's definitely gonna be part of my aesthetics study.
Hey man, me again...uh....I have only one question that are you planned to make more than one Pilots?
I would like there to be a second pilot protagonist, one who you switch between or speak to every few missions or so.
man i can't wait to see the armor design you'll give him. i can't wait to see how he will interact with the current pilot. is there more info about the characters that you'd like to share? concepts and themes you'd like to explore. i am just as interested in the story beats as the gameplay and designs. thank you for your time and have a good day :D
Nothing I can really share at the moment, but I'll certainly show more of it when I can!
can there be a really cool guy (or even a girl that the protag gets attached to) who's very strong that betrays you later in the story and has a crazy story arc for a comeback in the final boss? (may or may not be mandatory)
A game that's this light yet feel rewarding is quite rare of itself, even more in 2025 where there's so much AAA games that's bland. I'd say that the game is quite optimized (i'm not sure how much optimized it is with my own rig),honestly i'm surprised that there's a lot of gun that i can choose from. That Glorious A-10's GAU 8A 30mm knockoff is shredding everything like butter with it's blazing fast fire rate (Although you'll find it'll drain ammo faster than anything else), the enemy posed no threat as long you're moving in the right dimension.
The enemy LOSAT carrier does spook me a few times with it's amount of damage it can deal, imagine you're focusing on a halo when suddenly it ambushed you. However from the gameplay wise, you're not really punished standing still in the game for a couple seconds. Which makes the stacked munition launcher (Practically the Metal Storm no?) is hilariously easy to clear the game, was thinking about how a certain mechanic like enemy artillery can hit you (With at least 3 layers of armor, but then, up to the dev) so you're forced to constantly move on a certain mission
With how the powerplant and armor kit absent and the dev are considering to remove this mechanic, i do have suggestion on filling the role. Albeit not very specific
Powerplant
- Overdrive! i am pretty sure you'll spam that sprint button the moment you see you're surrounded or even saw some far-off enemy, but have you ever thought that you wanted your cruiser to be "I wanted to tradeoff Overdrive for faster cruise speed so i can dodge the enemy" or, if a certain mission reward you with better coolant so you can overdrive far longer than what you're used to?
-Cruise speed, it's your main speed whenever you didn't overdrive it. I really think that it should be a focus on certain mission especially in the solid open field so you can avoid halo and LOSAT launcher that's definitely will see an increase of it's usage (Or is it?)
- Acceleration, of course the acceleration helped the mecha to get into your cruise and overdrive speed. but do think about it, what if there's an option to actually see a use of low cruise speed and high acceleration like swamp?
- With how weight worked, i do expect that the heavier you are on a certain terrain. You'll get either a buff or a nerf, let's take a look at the cruiser's legs. You see, something weird happened if you put a stick on a sand with that much weight on a cruiser. You get stuck easily and mud can slow you down, and or. heavier powerplant can take down a building more easily because of how much mass you slam on a building.
But how about Armor Kit? it seems like it can be used on the cruiser in a different way, if it shrug smaller arm and still receiving no damage that would be boring.
- Angled armor
Basically used to focus on deflection, however i see no stats on enemies that suggest if it have certain penetration rather than certain damage dealt, could this mean that the bullet itself have fixed stats in the future? we'll see it in the future
- Armor w/ CRAM
CRAM is practically used when every defense (In this case, your 20mm Minigun) failed to intercept a missile if you're surrounded or this could be your only defense to missile especially LOSAT, plenty of ammo and decent fire rate but lower than average accuracy seems to be viable
- Armor w/ APS
Lovely APS have been used for atleast a few decades to hard kill anything big and fast (Such as missiles), they can react fast but it should only cover a fair bit of angle and limited ammo because you can only carry so much APS even with the Cruiser. LOSAT doesn't have to be nerfed though, it's practically APFSDS disguised as missile. Still perfectly balanced so you can be surprised sometimes, although i see no reason (yet) to actually consider light or heavy armor since it will require another tweak
But even as i'm writing this, all of this is merely a suggestion and i could be wrong on a certain part as i'm not really an expert to this kind of technical jargon
lastly, the art feels quite neat i can stare it all day and still not bored of it. I admit that i'm not really good with spotting art but i can see how much hours did you put into the game you really loved with, thanks for getting us some good stuff for our time to play. Now if you'll excuse me from this holy long text that feels like even my own eyes sort of suffered a bit, i'll see this page on a bit
Thanks for playing and the feedback! The stacked munitions launcher is definitely quite OP at the moment, I'll likely lower the damage or fire rate a bit since it's way too easy to take out enemies from afar with it; it's basically like wall hacking. Enemy artillery units are also planned, I'm already working on a system for certain enemies to call in air strikes when they see the player.
I appreciate your ideas for the powerplant system. It's an interesting way of implementing it though I think it might be a bit difficult to balance the changes to speed due to how fast the enemy's bullets are currently set up so you can dodge incoming fire. I do think different armor types will make it in with basic effects like health regeneration, and a random chance for bullets to ricochet without counting as a hit. If you check out my latest progress report you'll see I've been working on an APS system for the player to stop incoming missiles and mortar rounds; I didn't think to bundle it with the armor kits before but now that you mention it it might be a good idea.
Thanks again for the ideas and feedback! I'll keep them in mind.
Glad that you're getting some insight on my suggestion, dev!
The idea of the top 2D perspective of a mecha reminded me of the same mech genre but quite different on it's own style, i'm not not really promoting any game except there's a game called "Mech Engineer". You might can take some reference from it since there's an artillery mechanics and more, it's also an indie game that's created by only one person too (!). There's too much mechanics there
or this comment can be a long ride from top to bottom trying to explain them, but my only hope is quite straight; That this game can improve so much more, and there's lot of room there alreadyIn the meantime i've been reading through your progress report and honestly quite surprised that this game have existed for a while, i'm quite upset with myself that i can't try the game way more earlier. And looking at your own struggle with the pathfinding is quite amusing (Even though i'm not a developer, yet), however you might need to check the latest progress report (pathfinding) since some picture from A* pathfinding onward is well...simply gone (Firefox and opera is alright, but not on chrome, i think either the site or the hosting hated the pic or gif?). But aside from that, the APS looked quite solid. The progress log you've mentioned also have a quite promising overall
However there's something quite strange with the enemy that moves very fast at a desert terrain, i can't quite put it. a Hover-like tank or is it BTR equivalent of enemy. Maybe a hybrid from both? for something as agile as that and tanked around 100 rounds of a vulcan with depleted uranium round and still not guarantee a kill is quite...something. With the same weapon, i can kill a tank with around 30 rounds of vulcan's depleted uranium. It might be quite a task to balance things not to be fragile while at the same time, not too spongy that absorb numerous of bullets (or shells). However for now i'll take these enemies as challenge on how not to deplete my ammo mid-fight
Keep it up dev, you don't have to promise everything. But your delivery on what we could have in the future assured us that it could be better in the future. Cheers!
TLDR: game's good, needs afew tweaks here 'n there but overall is a good game.
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really fun game so far, needs afew fixes here 'n there but overall just some good bones for the game. funnily enough, the thing that hooked us for this game was the audio settings menu 'n the fact it had real-time visualizers to show you how loud or quiet that particular channel was. (and just the settings in general displaying what they're affecting, rather than just text giving you a vague idea of what it is changing)
it does have afew issues though, mostly with visual clarity/eyestrain problems with the player mech, mostly in more grey/beige environments (i.e. the first mission) since the colors blend together so well it becomes hard to distinguish where you are when you're stood still.
same with weapons being way too strong or way too weak for what you need them for. (though the progress report does show that's being fixed so this is really only a problem with the current version) but the grenades seem to be fitting into their own niche, though the incendiary, from our experiences, tends to out-perform the H.E. grenade more oft than naught.
the side-weapons are an interesting case, the landmine tends not to be useful since enemies just tend to.... not go over them, or otherwise miss them (somehow) making them more of a detriment to you if an enemy launches an explosive at you or hit a wall with an explosive that had the mine near it, especially if you'd only just placed the mine. the missiles tend to be fairly useful, though the rapid-fire ones are hit or miss with their usefulness.
the lil' bomb drone (my beloved), however, is basically always useful cuz holy shit that explosion radius 'n damage is nuts, to the point where its' limited range/fuse time hardly affects it 'n it just overshadows the other options, as we found ourselves using it just cuz it got all the jobs we wanted the missiles to do done way faster and with far more consistency and with far more safty.
music is currently only for the menu, bay, and mission select screen so missions tend to be very silent. which tends to make the places you fight feel very "dead" for lack of a better term, which if it's intentional then it sets the mood really well 'n adds a sense of tension. but if not then it makes things feel far too empty despite the fact that you've turned half a city block into swiss cheese via a minigun, attempting to kill some fodder and a heli at the same time.
the melee, though, in our experience, tends to go unused alot since getting close to enemies is really not good when they can just shred you to shit at close range with, y'know, their bullets. outside of maybe the worms/grubs since it seems to one-shot them but that's a gamble due to the fact they come in hordes. hopefully it finds a place in the kit in the future.
those issue aside, the game's got some really good bones for the gameplay, 'n the audio design's also really good, weapons 'n such all are very punchy or otherwise have a satisfying sound when in use (caseless explosive launcher specifically for us) and what music is there is really good too.
all 'n all it's just a really good game, minor issues here 'n there but that's to be expected. 'n we had a relatively fun time playing through what's available currently. damn good job so far, keep up the good work mate.
(apologies if this sounded overly negative, that was far from our intentions with this.)
Thank you for the detailed feedback and playing through the demo!
I'm glad you like that aspect of it. I want everything to be as visually interesting as possible, even if it's just something like a settings menu.
This has been a pretty common complaint from players. I'm still trying to find a way to have more varied/colorful environments where enemies and the player stand out while retaining the overall muted desert aesthetic. It's a difficult thing to balance, but hopefully I'll have it sorted out.
At the moment while all weapons are unlocked, the plan is to have different arms dealer characters who you purchase them from; plus different types of missions where excessive collateral damage will actually be punished so as to incentivize using less destructive weapons sometimes. I think the very standard H.E. grenade will be a lot more useful in those types of levels.
Eventually stages will have music added in. I know right now things can feel pretty quiet/dead even with the slight stage ambience in the background. I've just been struggling with trying to figure out what the gameplay tracks should actually sound like, honestly. I'm still looking for a composer since I don't think I'll be able to compose the combat tracks myself.
Different melee options are still planned. Some have suggested a charge/shield function with it too, and I think the plasma slash will just serve as the basic level 1 attack.
Thank you! I really appreciate it.
Not at all, no worries. This kind of feedback and criticism is invaluable to me, thanks again!
Dropping in to say that this is such a passion project!
Game got recommended to me by a friend and saw them play it one time during game night!
Definitely hyping this to my circle!
Thank you for playing and sharing the word! Really appreciate it.
i keep getting this error
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FATAL ERROR in Vertex Shader compilation
ShaderName: shd_outline_old
D3DXCompile failed - result
at gml_Object_o_player_Draw_0
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stack frame is
gml_Object_o_player_Draw_0 (line -1)
Please download and run the DirectX patch from the Microsoft website, it's in the description above.
thanks
Gonna download the newest update, absolutely loving it so far! I am glad I paid for it, I might do it again next major update. I am really loving the art, and especially the vehicle, but one big thing is the pilot armor and helmet, its really awesome to see! I assume you based the helmet off something like the HGU-56? I own one and I have been super tempted to 3d scan it so I can print the shell of it and then make something like a VR visor for it like how it appears ingame. Cant forget the clamshell armor which makes me think of Hammers Slammers. Good shit man!
Thanks so much for the support and kind words!
I think you could say it's vaguely based on it, but honestly there wasn't any direct inspiration from any real life helmets. The VR visor as well was sort of improvised. Here's two shots of the somewhat crude model:
Good luck with your 3D print!
Thank you!!
hi, can i ask what program did you use to model and what's your work flow? this is really similar to the style i want to model in so i wanted to ask. (gorgeous helmet design by the way)
Hello. It's just Blender with some inverted hull shading for the outlines. I draw my textures directly with the built-in texture painter tool. Nothing really fancy in terms of workflow, just low poly modeling with flat UV projection.
Guess who’s back... back again.
It’s me, I’m back.
If you don’t exactly remember who I am, I’m the person who complained about enemy visibility when in motion or something similar, I don't know man...
I’ve been silently watching this game's progress over the past few months on Bluesky and the like. Things seem to be going smoothly.
A couple of months back, I played the updated demo and DAMN! This shit is fire! The art style of this game REALLY grew on me, I’ve had a void for clunky, yet still “advanced” technology in media ever since I watched Cowboy Bebop for the 86,438th time. I really want to mention Signalis here, but that’s more tech stagnation, if anything.
Moving on to the efforts of my LAST comment, either my eyes improved or something changed with the game so I could actually see the enemies before they started slinging sabot rounds at me; both are positives.
If there are ever 3d models of most of the in-game vehicles/enemies (especially that dropship thing that drops you off on some of the levels), I would be more than happy to shittily recreate them in something like Stormworks or Plane Crazy. Seriously, they are WAY too cool not to replicate, and with the game being top-down-ish, it’s hard to get a good POV to work with.
I really liked fighting the MBTs ingame (K41A1, if I’m not mistaken), and it would be nice to see some more enemies like them later on down the line.
Cough cough space BTR-82, anyone? cough cough...
Uhhh... yeah, that’s probably it lol, once again hope to see more content from this project. Probably even more than last time, seeing as the other indie game I liked almost religiously got violently carpet bombed by both the community and the devs.
pls buff smartgun
Thank you for playing again!
The design work and the overall aesthetic of the vehicles has been very important to me. Even though they're not too visible due to the general size and angle of the view, I spend a lot of time trying to make them look as unique and interesting as possible since I think there's no reason they shouldn't be.
I've increased the shadow hardness of enemies and added more indicators along with adding more color contrast in levels, so that's probably the reason they're more noticeable now.
There will be dedicated intel pages for every design, and I intend to show some closeups and other angles in cutscenes when possible. It's early, but I am considering the possibility of making an artbook eventually showing them off in even greater detail.
Since smooth steering behavior has now been implemented, I plan to have more conventional ground vehicles show up too.
Appreciate the kind words! That's a shame to hear, what's the other indie game?
Coming in the next build! I actually just tweaked it a few days ago.