Starbreed's Core Content Complete!

Heyo everyone! Today is the day I can say that Starbreed is officially able to be completed from Start Button to End Screen. There are definitely things to polish, a few features to flesh out, and some assets to get in, but this is a really satisfying milestone.

This week was really focused on 2 major components:

1. Climax animations for the 3 new Hscenes.

2. Transitions and function of Nova's 3 phases.

There was actually 1 more wrench thrown in, however. A supporter, Lunatic Overlord mentioned the remaining Data Chip rewards, which I had actually forgotten about in terms of build wrap up. I figured I would leave the Data Chip rewards with blanks spots, but upon dwelling on it a bit, I came to the conclusion I should try and fill them out. I did some brainstorming, and came up with some ideas. Some of the new data chip rewards are simple, but some I actually think are quite interesting. I think they will be fun to unlock.

I decided to start with these Data Chip Rewards, so let's take a look at the updated Data Chip Screen, and break it down!

So, as you can see, along with filling it up and rearranging, I have also added Info panels. When you hover over these, they will expand on what the perk is, and how to access it.

The first 2 rewards are fairly self explanatory. 1 means you get extra credits for beating levels. (Sort of like Tanya's passive).

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+5 Aff for Help simply means that "Help Sequences" in levels now give more Affinity.

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"Bribe Allies" is also a new one. This will allow you to essentially exchange credits for additional Affinity. The exchange rate isn't great, but it can help if you need just a couple more points, and don't want to do a whole new level for it.

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Which leads to "Affinity Overflow" in a later reward, which is well... the opposite.

If you use an ally who has max affinity, or affinity that is capped at 49, any excess affinity will be converted into credits automatically.

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Next new perk is "+10 Aff for completing levels". It's important to note that this +10 affinity also contributes to Affinity Overflow if applicable.

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Next is a big one. "Aether Clone" is the product of Pom's pregnancy I suppose you could say. This clone works the brothel while you do levels. Any unspent brothel "Stamina" will be converted to credits upon completing a level. This means you can still get money from the brothel without having to do the mini games. (Something that is not implemented, or technically planned, but I would really like to do, is do an Hscene with Aether and their clone. It's not on the base worklist, but if I can sneak it in there, I will).

You might start to see a trend here... Data Chips will unlock a lot of potential for credits. You might be thinking "The last thing I need is more credits", but we'll get to that in a second.

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Let's sidestep to the next reward: "Neural Link"

This is a really strong one, as if you have 14 Data Chips, you are likely beyond endgame anyways.

Neural Link allows you to permanently have access to all character's passives. All these passives will be active during Impreg Trials as well. This should be a massive boon for getting gold on those.

Note: You might not want all the passives. Rooster's passive killing you? Siren's passive shooting at things you don't want it to? Well in the Loadout screen you can pick and choose what passives you want Neural Link to allow.

If you do not have enough Data Chips you will get this prompt.

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Now we have Stat Overflow.

As you know, Aether's stats max out at 100 each. While maxed out, you essentially have 150% values for both HP and Thrust.

Stat Overflow allows you to spend excess credits on additional points past 100. The cost of these will increment with each purchase, but can technically be raised infinitely.

With that, we sum up the new Data Chip Rewards!

As for the Hscenes climax animations, I will not be giving previews for reasons previously mentioned unfortunately, but they were completed as well!

Now let's move on to what was addressed with the Nova's 3 phases.

I needed to fix quite a few issues with Phase 2, as many attacks were buggy and unpolished. I changed how a few of the attacks look, and interact with the player. Once that was done, I moved onto transitions.

Upon beating her 2nd phase, she will freeze you in place with a vortex. She then goes back and charges her final beam.

Before blasting, Tanya comes in with her barrier. Siren will follow up by healing you back to full HP.

Lana and Rooster will intercept Nova's attack. Leaving her open for a bombing by Nika and Pix.

At the end of her rope, Nova opens a portal similar to where she was summoning enemies from, but this time it's pulling you in.

This is where you are introduced to the 3rd phase of the fight.

Last up, was the death animations for the 3rd phase.

It likely won't shrink down like that, but this is a bit of a temporary display ahaha.

After that, you fade out, have a brief exchange with a defeated Nova before beginning the ending sequence.

Alright! That should be it, so a big question is what is coming from here on out? Well I've been working on an outline for how the next months will look. October is likely to be a busy one. I mentioned before that there is still a good amount of polish to go through, and final assets. On top of that, I will going through the whole game, adding translation components to text, and getting it ready for translations.

November is going to be a "comms/docs" kind of month. I will be writing up a lot of documents, and communicating with team members for Music, UI, VA, and SFX. There are still quite a few assets on those ends to cover.

December will be focusing on implementing all of these components, and doing some final passes on them.

January is going to be a lot of "Polish". What I mean by this, is that likely in the stages of October - December, as a team will be looking to get together and go over things we are essentially unhappy with, (or just feel could use some sprucing up) across all components: Gameplay, animations, art, models, UI, SFX, Music, etc.

February is likely to be extensive Balancing along with getting a proper bug testing phase in.

March is scheduled to be addressing the final list of bugs.

April and May will be our "Buffer window". 2 Extra months allotted for in case there are any hang ups, or additions we feel would be greatly beneficial.

Keep in mind, this scheduling could be completely changed as we go, but it is the current outline.

Thank you all so much! I'll catch you all next week with the next progress report!

-Regulus