Rogue Wave is a prototype game being developed with heavy input from our community. I’m lucky enough to have a growing group of people willing to provide feedback on what is fun and what is not. This release focuses on that feedback with a bunch of gameplay tweaks.

But there’s more to be learned from other players who don’t have the time to give detailed and direct feedback. This new release also focuses on getting that information to the developers. Why not try it out, your play data will help us no end.

This is achieved through some automated gameplay data collection. After each run an anonymized report is sent to our developer team who can see what your favourite weapons and upgrades are, where you found things easy, where you found them hard and more. All this data will help us make the game more fun.

Here’s the major changes in this version:

Game Play

• Added weighted random number generation (RNG) to the enemy spawning algorithm to provide more control over the flow of the game. We published a DevLog video discussing the use of weighted RNG if you are interested in this approach.
• Made the Wave Function Collapse algorithm recursive, opening up new possibilities for level design
• AI Director now attempts to flush out a hiding player

Upgrade System

• Added upgrades for the magnet
• Added upgrades to the Passive Pulse weapon
• Increase the likelihood of an owned stackable being offered as an upgrade
• Run upgrades can be made permanent (for a cost) in the hub screen

UX

• Failed run state is now obviously different from the successful run
• Added progress bars to Nanobot upgrades, Level waves and recipe builds
• Hub scene now shows run upgrades as well as permanent upgrades
• Added a stats tracker and achievement system (with Steam integration)

Tooling

• Added ability to send gameplay stats back to developers
• Built a system for balancing and managing upgrades in a spreadsheet