It's been a busy month working on Crab Champions- lots of great progress has been made. I've been mainly focusing on getting Survival mode finished as it is the main mode of the game with the most content to add. Here are a few things I worked on this month:



Perks are passive upgrades found around each Survival map in chests that can be opened in exchange for crystals (enemies drop crystals when they are eliminated). Perks only last for the current Survival run- when you are eliminated, you start the next run fresh with no perks. If you get a duplicate perk, it levels up and makes the effect stronger.

Here are the "basic" perks that are in the game so far. I have a long list of more creative and interesting perks that'll require more work to implement and will be added with future updates.

• Fortitude: Max health increased
  
• Efficiency: Shots that hit enemies return ammo to the clip
  
• Time Is Money: Earn crystals over time
  
• Scavenger: Heal when collecting crystals
  
• Vitality: Damage increased when at full health
  
• Shield Siphon: Damage blocked by your shield heals you
  
• Haste: Ability cooldown time reduced
  
• Endurance: Heal after completing each wave

• Adrenaline: Health regeneration speed increased
  
• Souped Up: Ability leveled up
  
• Second Wind: Damage increased when at low health
  
• Speed Demon: Move faster and jump higher
  
• Personal Space: Max health increased for each enemy eliminated at close range
  
• Stunner: Enemies are stunned for a short time when hit
  
• All You Can Eat: No ammo is used for 2 seconds after eliminating an enemy
  
• Grim Reaper: Heal after eliminating enemies

• Claws Of Fury: Increased weapon damage
  
• Sharpshooter: Increased weapon critical damage
  
• Supercharged: Increased weapon fire rate
  
• Grave Dodger: Invincible for 3 seconds when at 1 health
  
• Rare Treasure: Enemies have a small chance to drop a random perk when eliminated
  
• Bonus Crystals: All crystal drops contain bonus crystals
  
• Bulletproof: Chance to completely block incoming damage
  
• Strength In Numbers: Gain an extra use of your ability

• Exploding Enemies: Enemies explode when eliminated
  
• Splash Damage: Bullets deal splash damage to nearby enemies
  
• Storm Cloud: A lightning bolt strikes low health enemies, dealing AOE shock damage
  
• Piercing Rounds: Bullets pierce through enemies
  
• Firepower: Shoot 2 extra bullets per shot with higher spread
  
• Powerslide: Sliding surrounds you with fire that burns nearby enemies
  
• Ice Flip: Flipping freezes and knocks back nearby enemies
  
• Care Package: An asteroid containing perks and weapons drops in a random location at the start of each island

I've been looking at switching up the gameplay to avoid the repetition that many wave based survival games suffer from. One way of doing this is introducing different types of islands which dramatically change the pace of the game, keeping players on their toes. While one strategy may work great for standard islands, a challenge island may require something very different, forcing players to adapt.

The goal of Survival mode is to reach Crab Island and complete each of the 4 (more will be added later) biomes on the way there. Players can choose to keep going endlessly after Crab Island and loop back over the biomes with tougher enemies. Each map starts with a random time of day, randomized enemies, randomized loot locations and more. Currently to complete a biome, 5 islands must be survived and they follow this structure:

Standard Waves: Mixed enemy spawns at a normal pace.

Challenge Island: The island has a specific gameplay modifier that switches up gameplay in a challenging way, here are a few examples:

• Low Gravity: You and enemies can fly meaning you can reach certain areas of the map more easily but can be left vulnerable floating in the air
  
• High Gravity: It's harder for you to jump and your projectiles are more affected by gravity
  
• Speed: Everything moves faster (including enemies and their projectiles!)
  
• Instagib: All enemies are eliminated in one shot, but so are you
  
• No Shield: All shields are disabled, so certain enemies become a much larger threat
  
• No Health Regeneration: All health regeneration is disabled- playing carefully here is a must
  
• Lethal Liquids: Watch your step- touching water, acid pools, lava or other liquids results in an instant elimination!
  
• Invisible Enemies: Enemies are almost invisible so it's much easier for them to sneak up on you
  
• Tiny Enemies: Enemies are much smaller than usual which makes them harder to hit

Here's a look at the Low Gravity modifier in action:



Horde Island: Enemies come at a much faster pace in one long intense wave. This is a great island to get a lot of crystals to loot up before the boss.

Boss Island: Beat the boss to complete the biome and move on to the next one with a legendary perk and weapon dropped as a reward.

The weapon selection is starting to feel nicely varied- check out the newly added flamethrower, complete with fire propagation!



I'm also currently working on a Gravity Cannon, a Boomerang Gun and a bunch of other fun weapons- more on those next time!

Here are a few things that aren't quite ready yet but will be explored in future updates:

New Survival Lobby
The Survival lobby used to be a boring menu- now it's a fun map where you can practice shooting, choose your abilities for the run, find secret areas and even listen to a crab band while you wait for more players to join!



Abilities
These are chosen in the lobby before the Survival run begins and more can be unlocked by leveling up- I'll be diving more in depth on the progression and rewards system in a future update. Abilities are intended to allow the player to choose a certain playstyle- the Sentry Gun works for players that like to set up a defensive position and hold it down while the Dab Of Death is for those that like to get up close and personal. There are also defensive abilities such as Burrow- this allows you to hide in the sand and not take damage for a short period of time- more on these in the next update!

Soundtrack
Work on the soundtrack continues, I keep adding new songs! Currently there are at least 15 tracks with a few more that I'd like to add before release.

Bugs
As always I'm also spending a decent amount of time fixing bugs as well as cleaning up and refactoring the codebase as it shapes up for release- I figure it's better to spend extra time doing this work now than having a mess to deal with later. This way I can add new features and content much faster in the future, building on a solid foundation.

Thanks for reading, see you next month for another update!

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It's about time to start making regular development update posts! I'll be posting previews until the early access launch and will continue after to show upcoming content and changes.



Before I start, let's address the most frequently asked question by far:

"WHEN IS THE GAME COMING OUT?"

If you didn't know, the game was originally planned to release on August 20th but nearing that date I quickly realized that the game wasn't ready and needed more time to get it to be as polished and fun as possible, with enough content to ensure a good amount of replayability while future updates are being developed.

"Why not just release it now and add more stuff later?"

While this sounds like a good solution, there are a lot of core features that are heavily in development which would lead to both an unpolished experience in game and users losing their save progress when the cleaned up version of the game arrives later. I want everyone to have a great time playing the game and have a positive first impression- in my opinion, early access should be a stable and polished product that just lacks content, not a buggy mess. To summarize: I am steadily working as hard as I can and ignoring the urge to rush the game out because I know spending the time to get it right will be infinitely better for the end result.

"Cool.... but when will the game be out?"

The second I am satisfied with how the game is looking, playing and performing I will upload it to Steam and release it alongside the launch trailer, it's as simple as that. I feel promising another date is not the right call as it's impossible to predict the various curveballs that development throws at me but rest assured, I want the game out ASAP!

Ok with that out of the way, lets get into the good stuff.... some eye candy! I have worked on too many new features to count in the last few months but here are a few fun ones.



I am starting to add more interesting weapons than the standard rifles you'd expect, here's a look at the Blade Launcher, Orb Launcher and Crossbow! I'll continue to add as many unique weapons as possible before the early access launch, I expect there to be at least 20 different weapons at that point, each with different rarities and special variants.



I've added the concept of elemental damage which falls into 4 categories:

• Ice: Freezes players and enemies in place, they are unable to move or shoot until it thaws but will slide in the direction of the nearest slope. Water or fire instantly melts ice.
  
  
• Fire: Ignites players and enemies, dealing damage over time. Can be extinguished with water or ice.
  
  
• Lightning: Slows movement and creates chain lightning from affected players and enemies to nearby friendlies, dealing damage.
  
  
• Acid: Weakens affected players and enemies, causing them to take more damage from incoming attacks.

Some legendary variants of weapons have one of these elemental damage types applied on each shot.

Also, in order to make each biome more distinct and add more ways to eliminate enemies, I have added destructible elemental damage obstacles to each map which can propagate their effects across the map and block off pathways... or create new ones!



Making nice looking water that reacts to the gameplay happening around it is a challenge but I'm working to make each level feel alive and seamless with underwater sections of maps being a possibility.



Since delaying the game, I have had the chance to try out a lot of experimental ideas that could greatly alter how the game plays and see if they add to or remove from the core gameplay experience. I believe this is an essential part of making a satisfying game loop- here's a brief rundown of some that worked... and some that didn't.

Consolidating Survival Loot
Previously I had multiple colored chests for different loot types (Defensive, Offensive, Movement, Weapon, Ability, Legendary), but this meant that the "fun" rng of maybe getting a legendary upgrade or maybe getting an offensive upgrade was lost and players would gravitate towards one type of upgrade, leading to the same kinds of runs every time. I have now consolidated loot into two different types of chests- Weapon and Perk chests. Weapons now have a rarity associated with them (before all weapons were the same color- boring!) and have much more variety in value. Likewise, I removed any lackluster upgrades in favor of a more lean set of perks that are really fun to go for. More on those in the next update!

Dual Wielding
This was always something I had wanted to try- having double pistols or shotguns felt great but in situations where you had a full auto weapon in one claw and a semi auto in the other, it felt really clunky. It also clashed with the shield mechanic which I've been designing many of the enemies around, so I decided to leave it for now- maybe it'll come back in another form in the future!

Stamina
On paper this seemed like it would help balance out jump spam and add some tactics on when to use your movement abilities, but in reality it just felt bad to not be able to jump or slide when out of stamina. It was worth exploring but this game is all about speed and action and this slowed things down considerably.

That's all for this one, thanks for reading!

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