Rogue Wave hits Alpha - October Overdrive Release

Rogue Wave, the first person roguelite horde shooter, has reached the Alpha stage. With this release, codenamed October Overdrive, we are signalling the completion of the full inner and outer game loops. The game is not done yet, not by a long chalk, but it now contains the minimum we wanted to be have before we called it a complete game.

We’d love your feedback, it is still early enough for you to help influence the development of the game as we move from Alpha to Beta, then playtest, Demo and finally, release.

Changelog for Rogue Wave: October Overdrive (30th September 2024)

Here’s a quick summary of the changes in this version. Give it a play and let us know what you like, what we should do more of and what you aren’t so impressed with.

Game Play

• Addition of more discoverable items within levels
• Discoverables FX added to give player more opportunity to see them from a distance
• Nanobots produce healing items more frequently
• Nanobots now produce more pistol ammo in each batch
• Shields and Armour upgrades appear more often
• Destruction Beam (Passive Weapon) upgrade appears more frequently

Upgrades and Achievements

• New achievement - Treasure Hunter for those finding the discoverables

Enemies

• Spawner visuals completely redesigned to make them easier to find, as well as prettier
• Shield FX had a big upgrade, they now respond to weapons and provide feedback to a player attacking them
• Enemy descriptions on the level selection menu now have images of the enemy
• Enemy damage effects now match enemies more closely

Player Experience

• Fireball (a passive weapon) has had a significant FX upgrade
• Fireball now dissipates when it collides with an enemy
• Added an FX to show blast radius of explosions
• More audio feedback when picking up items
• Resource counts now have thousands commas for readability
• Auto-generation of profile names, handy for those on devices without keyboards

Engine and Tooling

• Improved Command Terminal autocomplete behaviour

Miscellaneous

As always there are a raft of smaller bug fixes and tweaks too.

Roadmap

What is implemented each month depends a great deal on testing and player feedback. However, we do like to enter a monthly sprint with a general idea of what we will focus on. So here is our currently planned focus for the next month or two:

New Stuff

• Contact enemies need a weapon of some description
• Reduce damage if the source is behind the player
• Improved tutorial system
• Improve ammo building decisions
• Procedural Level Generation enhancements to allow crafted areas for optimal gameplay
• Improve enemy obstacle avoidance
• Improved weapon graphics
• Add a time pressure to the levels, do it quicker for more rewards
• Hints about the location of hidden items
• Buy additional offers in the Hub
• Beautifying the stats page shown on regeneration
• Add ability to provide in-game feedback

Known Bugs in our Sights

• Shield core provides no damage feedback
• Player can be immobilized by contact enemies
• Enemies occasionally pass through buildings and walls
• Stingers pass through uneven ground

Note, these items are not guaranteed to be delivered, but they are at the top of our target list.