from the development team / note: this post is from out itch.io dev log.
What a crazy start to the year it has been.
For those unaware via our socials and such, ShapeVS is now available on Steam to wishlist for a launch later this year.
You may notice though the game looks dramatically different from what is below. This is all in part thanks to you, we were blown away by how many people grabbed the demo, played and reached out to tell us how we can improve. From feedback to controls, game rules and more it has been fantastic to see the community involved in helping us make this game.
One of the biggest issues we face is that as a very small team, balance is hard. There is so few of us to get various opinions that we rely on playtests, the community meet and greets and more to help with the game. So let's run down some of the bigger changes:
New Graphical Style
So the first big change obviously is the look and feel. As previously discussed on our website, the theme was something we really struggled with. Here is what we had to say back then:
"For a long time, the “identity” of ShapeVS is something that we have really struggled with and it caused issues that ranged from keeping track of things during gameplay to audio. It was something that we really needed to nail down.
This proved to be a constant battle for the team, finding something that we can solely identify as ShapeVS that still showed everything we needed it to such as players and valuable game information. Feedback sessions were really positive about gameplay but a lot of you agreed the game needed an identifying factor to it.
Well, guess what, we put our collective brains together and came up with the new ShapeVS."
It's been great to see a positive response to the new design. If you want to check out more click on the wishlist or come to our site.
New Rules
Another major change was the rules for a lot of the games. Right now is the main 4 we intend to launch with; Shape Battle, Shape Fly, Shape Move and Shape Rush.
All of which have received significant reworks in their rules and game flow. For example, Shape Rush has moved to more of a capture the platform style game than the mobile game it's based on. We have reworked how players interact with the platforms and how the overall feel of the game is.
For games like Shape Move, we reworked the laser and death cog systems as well as how the stun feature works to allow things to flow a little bit smoother. No longer will you be stunned into oblivion as the player can't fire faster than the person stunned. (I.e, the time to shoot is longer than the stun timer giving players a chance to run away).
We are still changing up options and rules as well as getting feedback from local play sessions. We are also looking at how to get a new working version of the game out to players soon to try.
New Theme
"ShapeTECH welcomes you to participate in their latest aptitude assessment program, ShapeVS. Gather your friends, family members and even colleagues as you participate in a variety of mini-games designed to test your capability of supporting our new society."
The largest change for the game is definitely the new theme. ShapeVS is now a testing program designed by Dr Reginald Pierce, the founder of ShapeTECH, to help determine their capability to join the new society. A little of a dystopian feel and we have revamped the graphics to reflect a similar old tech style. Overall, it's a hugely positive step in the right direction and again helps us with the identity of ShapeVS.
And that's it for this update, we will try to update here more often but to be kept fully in the loop check our socials and main website.
Cheers!