Devlog - 58

The latest changes and refinements have this darling evolving into something truly special.  

-The beam has already been done masterfully in many shmups, but sword weapons are much less common and have room to expand on. Also, it just feels cool to slash things, and satisfying to risk the close range. Furthermore, we've decided to drop the beam weapons and focus the level design around the sword and spread shot. To create incentive to use the sword, not only is it more powerful, but we've tied it to the blood resource needed to use your psycho missile attack. Acquire blood only by attacking with the sword. Procure golden jewels for extra score only by attacking with psycho missiles. The player can manually control how long they want to shoot missiles for precise scoring strategy. If you have max blood, you can take a hit without dying, and it will sacrifice your blood. 

The blood pickups will be modified to be less noisy and clearly distinguished from bullets. Jewel pickups and score feedback are not yet implemented, but we're close to nailing all the fundamental play mechanics. We also have a few more killer ideas up our sleeve to further contextualize, and deepen the sword, to blood, to missile scoring loop. Can't wait to flesh it out, heheh!  

-I've revised all the enemy designs to be more colorful and stand out from the background. Also, revamping the level design with platforms that can host tanks, turrets and other ground elements.

-The spider tank is an evolution of the walker tanks in Hyper Echelon. Now they can jump and have much livelier animation. The attack plays up the spider concept.

-Pretty standard multi directional turret that will always keep its sights on you.

After an uncertain and sluggish start to the project, team Gango looks to be back in fine form.