Major Update!


NEW:

  1. Sound FX: added new sound effects.
  2. Story Events: when you explore, you can encounter story events. In them you can do actions which have positive or negative effects.
  3. Needs research: added a small sprite to the resources that need research, to make them popup and give them more importance.
  4. Day progress: added a visual bar that shows the progress of the day when you move your robot on the planet map screen.
  5. Log: added the log to the exploration screen, it shows you some of the things that happen while you explore in case you miss something.
  6. New jobs system: it allows for many different types of jobs and activities in different sector. When a job is complete, it gives a reward.
  7. Dead explorer tutorial: when the explorer dies, there is a new tutorial explaining that you need a new employee to fill that role in order to keep exploring.
  8. Unconscious: when a person's health goes to 0, he gets unconscious, which is a new property. He won't be able to do any activities until he recovers after a few days.
  9. Vitality: a new property that tells you how many times a person can recover from near death experiences.
  10. Lab icon: an icon for the research lab, it matches with another small icon that refer to items that must be researched in the lab.
  11. Pilot role: the person assigned in the pilot role will use the property "pilot" to determine the speed of travel on the planet map.
  12. Tiles discovered bar: a new visual bar that indicates how many tiles are left to discover in a sector.
  13. News Day indicator: added a new entry in the news section to show what day it is. That way the news will be separated by day and will be easier to navigate.
  14. Enemy item drops: now some enemies drop items like health, oxygen, energy and repair to the terrain protective tool.
  15. Menu buttons: added a new game and credits button to the menu.

IMPROVED:

  1. Current effects: improved the display of the current active effects when you explore, so its cleared what is the source of each effect.
  2. Enemy's speed: increased the small enemy's speed to make the combat more exciting.
  3. Market pistol: added the pistol to the market, so when you run out of weapons, you can still buy the most basic one.
  4. Effects with timer: changed the label for some terrain effects so its easier to understand that they get activated each x number of seconds.
  5. Robot movement: the robot movement on the planet map is now smoother.
  6. Explorer UI: the exploration screen will show the face of the assigned explorer, and some icons to explain the different colored bars at the top. The explorer face will also indicate the state of the explorer if he gets unconscious, if he dies, and if there is no employee with the explorer role assigned.
  7. Shooting enemies: balanced the amount of shooting enemies depending on the danger of the sector.
  8. Terrain damage: Now the terrain damages a protective tool instead of the health of the player. When the tool reaches a value of 0, the terrain damages the health directly.
  9. Market protective tools: the tools that protect your from various effects (like poison) are cheaper to buy in the base's market.
  10. Terrain damage and oxygen consumption: is now more balanced, it does not kill you so quickly, instead, if you are not careful, in the long term it can become a problem.
  11. Explorer inventory list: can be scrolled up and down in the exploration screen.
  12. Short term goals: now there are 2 goals active at the same time in the planet map, so you have a bit more options to choose where is best to move your robot.
  13. Weapons reset: now, instead of loosing all your equiped weapons when going back to a base, you just un-equip them and return them to your robot storage, ready to be used again when you explore.
  14. Explorer sprite collisions: the explorer collision box was reduced to better match its sprite.
  15. Terrain detection: the place in the sprite of the explorer that detects the terrain he is walking on is now placed at the bottom of the sprite and not its center.
  16. Saving: now the game saves on the map screen too.
  17. Lab and workshop: now they show the amount of unlockables, but do not reveal what they actually are, that's a surprise.
  18. Terrain types: now, lower danger sectors have only 1 type of terrain, this makes things simpler for the player to survive there.

FIXED:

  1. Enemy's paths: small enemies did not want to go trough narrows spaces, now they will follow the explorer wherever he goes.
  2. Knowledge: the "knowledge" property appeared as if it needed research in the lab, but it should not need that.
  3. Terrain effects: the effects activated when an explored touched a terrain where not working correctly.
  4. Explorer Tutorial: when the explorer made an evasion movement and a tutorial appeared at the same time, the explorer kept moving when he should have stopped, sometimes making him go outside of the screen and turning the game unplayable.
  5. Weapons reset: when returning to base, some powerups did not reset.
  6. Market weapons: buying weapons and transfering them directly to people is now forbidden.
  7. Market selling: fixed a glitch that appeared when trying to see the robot storage when in selling mode.
  8. Market buying: you could buy a bigger amount than the maximum allowed of certain items, now the excess is sent to the storage of the robot.
  9. Sector walk speed: in the exploration screen, each time you entered a tile the speed of walk changed a different amount when it should have been constant.
  10. Planet map movement: sometimes the pathfinding of the robot did not work correctly, making the robot leave the map, or take weird paths towards the desired destiny.
  11. Floor resource UI: when taking a floor resource, it showed +0 when it should show the real quantity of taken resources.
  12. Glitched projectiles: fixed the melee punch and flamethrower remaining on screen after firing.
  13. Evasion movement: fixed an issue that made the evasion movement jump too far ahead. Also small attackers cannot harm you anymore when doing this move.
  14. Invisible rewards: the resource that dropped an attacker after being killed was invisible.

Files

Planetary Exploration Company v59.zip 20 MB
Dec 08, 2022

Comments

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That's a lotta things! But tell me, how many responds or downloads( or just any player activity) do you get on this project?

Here on itch.io I got 2,134 views in total, but I think it was a bad idea to post the game in such an early state, when it was not eye catching or playable, because in the beginning was when it was exposed to the most amount of people, but I lost that opportunity to generate traction and followers to create and grow a community around the game.
I also got 327 downloads.
It has been very difficult to get followers, I guess the 2 main reasons are that its not easy to generate viral visual content with this game, and because it was uploaded in a prototype early stage.

On Steam I got around 300 wish-list, most of them I generated in the Next Fest, without me doing anything. I got the steam link here and on tweeter, but that does not do much.

I am still trying to learn new ways to promote the game. For example, I am planing to release a web version to make the game easier to try, that way I can get more feedback. I also want to create a better trailer and upload it to imgur and tiktok which I haven't tried yet.

Hmm... Maybe I'll come up with some ideas. Right now, I've got these:

1. Try to give the project more tags for both Itch and Steam- for instance, i think tags like #scifi #8-bit #retro #management would fit the project and could increase numbers of encounters. Also adding name variation can help(for ins.:#scifi, #sci-fi, #sciencefiction, etc)

2.Edit your creator page. People will click your profile to find out more, and finding a blank page would be pretty unsatisfiing.

3. I think the description is good, its straight and not too long,but a little brittle. You could give it headlines, inflate it with shapes(but not too much)! For instance:


2. Maybe stop the development for a while and instead participate in game jams? Start on easy ones, and maybe tease your game in your submission by a similar theme, style, gameplay... although It could be in violation with its rules.

3. Maybe stop for a while and create simple and small webgames with similar style, but more remote -> more tags -> greater chance of getting players and followers.

Hopes this helps.

Thanks a lot for taking the time and effort to share those ideas, I'll implement them shortly.

(1 edit)

Oh and by the way... I don't know if you want to participate in a game jam but since I randomly stumbled upon it, I'll put a link in here, just in case:

https://itch.io/jam/bullet-hell-jam-2023

btw which engine are you using?

Thanks a lot for letting me know!.
I'm using Unity 2018.3.14