One of the most intense encounters in the game of Fingeance are the boss battles. The Dolphin Empire has trained, manufactured, and bioengineered these big baddies to prevent your team from reaching the heart of the their territory. You and your crack team of fishes will need all the help you can get to defeat them. Luckily, the Escape Industries development team is on your side. Here’s a breakdown of a few of the boss fights you’ll encounter.

The Jellyfish Queen

We’ve talked about her a bit before, but the queen of the jellyfish is no slouch. Armed to the tentacles in jelly servants, this regal rival won’t allow you to shoot her easily. The trick is to avoid her minions as long as possible, and focus her rather weak body. Solo ships are going to have to alternate between shooting the boss and the subordinates, but in a team it’s helpful to have a ship or two on cleanup duty. Make sure not to get overwhelmed either: the Jellyfish Queen’s minions will continue to chase you until they run into your hull, then explode in a freezing blast, making you an easier target for the queen’s bullets. A tankier teammate may consider this a good thing, and can use their increased durability to clear through them quickly (though you lose out on the scrap they would drop).

Devastator Sub

Partly responsible for the mutated and corrupted Kelp Forest, this monstrous machine is piloted by a ruthless dolphin. This boss has been equipped with a huge assortment of ammunition, and needs to be dealt with carefully to ensure your ship’s survival throughout the fight. A tank is very powerful here: the sub fires several different types of bullets, but many are fairly weak damage wise. A damage sponge can create safety zones for squishier teammate to hide behind. A tank however will not protect you from some of the more deadly attacks. The Devastator Sub can fire toxic missiles that leave clouds of eroding gas, slowing and constantly damaging ships foolish enough to pilot through them. When low on health, the sub will fire a giant laser, truly devastating everything in its path.

You don’t want to be in front of this.

Look for the glowing windows! That’s when the sub is charging the laser.

Darkbomb

This is a big bad bomb boss found in the depths of the Deep Sea Cave. This boss fight is somewhat of a test of endurance: regular damage output won’t affect this boss at all. Instead, buttons have been placed around the battlefield. Firing at them moves the tumbler around the giant bomb, and when it reaches the very top, a giant laser will fire at the bomb, damaging it for a third of its total health. Your goal in this fight is to activate that laser by firing at the buttons and moving the tumblers into the top position. The Darkbomb has a few tricks though: it fires bullets timed with its clicks, and can summon other enemies to prevent you from finishing it off. Be quick though! The Darkbomb has a timer (indicated by the red ring around it) and when it ends, it will continue to fire burning and exploding bullets until it is destroy or you are!

Hopefully you can use these tips to give you a fighting edge against the boss encounters found in Fingeance. If you have any tips to fight the Fingeance foes, you can comment about them here on our blog, tweet at us on out Twitter, or comment on our Facebook page.

Escape Industries has been working hard over the holidays to bring you new content (who needs sleep anyways?). This includes new enemies, bosses, parts and, most importantly, biomes. Without further ado, we bring you the next area of Finn and friends’ journey, the Kelp Forest.

The Kelp Forest sleeps just beyond the Coral Reef, and is one path you can choose to reach the heart of the Dolphin empire. Of these paths, the Kelp Forest has the advantage of being relatively uninhabited by dolphins. This was not always the case, however. Deep within the murk, you’ll pick out traces of long-abandoned dolphin buildings and machinery. Once, this must have been a mighty bastion of dolphin-kind.

So why did they abandon it?

One clue comes from the forest’s current inhabitants. Enemies in the Kelp Forest are teeming, overgrown, and wild. If there was a battle here between nature and technology, nature won. And it was a massacre.

But questions remain. How did things get this way? How were the dolphins involved, and why did they leave? As you explore, keep an eye out for answers and discover the truth.

The Kelp Forest features a plethora of new enemies, most of which are more organic than those of the Coral Reef. Floods of enemies can invade your screen quickly and aggressively. If you enter this biome, have a teammate ready to dish out area-of-effect damage, and someone able to patch up the team once the frenzy subsides.

Visually, this biome distinguishes itself by its lush and overgrown feel. The backgrounds are filled with giant kelp stalks and leaves, which we’ll use to embellish its themes of ancient mystery and wild monstrosity.

With a new biome comes a new song! Check out this preview of the Kelp Forest theme.

Charles McGregor, the composer, had this to say about the Kelp Forest theme: “For the song, I wanted a much more mellow tone throughout the track compared to the Coral Reef. To help give the lush feel to the environment I emphasized the pads chord progression on all of the instruments and made the pads have longer chords that are more drawn out.”

So, how do you feel about the Kelp Forest? You can comment here on our blog, or on our Facebook and Twitter.

Hey folks, long time no see! I’m sure those following us have wondered where we’ve been, as we’ve been fairly silent since our recent demo at Gamer’s Rhapsody. We’re still here, working tirelessly to provide you with the underwater mayhem you crave. Unfortunately, real life can get in the way. Recent events (finals week, weather, etc.) have slowed down production, and article production has suffered. That isn’t to say we don’t have anything for you though; we’ve recently posted a new narrative featuring our newest character Spike.

So, I’m here to tell you about the future of Fingeance, and what to look forward to in the coming months. After the holidays, we’ll be ramping up our rate of creation. This means new parts, enemies, bosses, and characters to look forward to! However, even game developers need a break, so we’ll be taking the next few weeks off from posting articles here on the blog to get some much needed R&R. Articles will be returning January 6th, and will definitely be coming with some exciting new developments regarding Fingeance. We’ll be previewing future plans for the game, as well as display some of the work we’ve got to share.

You can continue to follow this blog for any future news regarding Fingeance. We’ll also be updating our Facebook and Twitter as well, so you can follow us through those too.

Last week, we talked about the visual features we’re adding to the game for the high level parts of Fingeance. In order to increase the amount of levels players can go through (we can’t stress enough how much players have been asking for this!), we’ve been working hard to bring high level content to the game. We’ve been doing more than just adding backgrounds though: we’ve also been creating new parts for players to upgrade.

Level Up Your Parts

High level parts have been a bit tricky to develop. They need to feel more powerful than the early game parts, but still need the distinct weaknesses and strengths defined by their predecessors. If you’ve played our recent Alpha Demo, you may have seen some of these upgrades already. Upgraded versions of starting cannons (like the Adept Cannon to Finn’s Starter Cannon) were designed to increase the potential of that part without just adding more numbers to it. In many cases, the high level parts have increased reward on their ideal use patterns.

For example, Bubbles’s Showstopper can deal about twice as much damage as other starting parts, but it’s hampered by its low range. Bubbles wants to get up close to enemies to hit enemies with all five bullets to maximize her damage output. The Heartstopper, Showstopper’s Tier 3 upgrade, ups the reward upon hitting all 5 shots: Heartstopper heals the user by a percentage of his or her missing health. Players can use that additional healing to build a berserker styled ship. It’s also nice to be able to top off your health when playing a more evasive ship.

The high level part Heartstopper heals each time the player connects all 5 shots. It also deals more damage, of course.

Gadgets work the same way: high level gadgets gain increased utility and better reward on their advantages. Last week we showed you the Phantom Gear as one example. That particular part increases the utility of the Ghost Gear by adding utility (in this case damage) while active. This gives the upgrade more uses than just the defensive cases players would use it for in the past.

High Level Enemies

Parts aren’t the only things being upgraded for high level areas: we’ve also been working on more difficult enemies. These enemies don’t just have more health and damage either. High level enemies will have new attack patterns for players to have to play around with. This includes bosses! We’ll have more to show here in the coming weeks.

Excited for these new changes? We’d love to see your feedback. You can comment here on our blog (we update weekly!), as well as our Facebook and Twitter.

Fingeance is a game about teamwork. Or at least, that’s what we’d like to say. The teamwork aspect of our game hasn’t been emphasized as much as we’d like. So, we’re working to change that.

Teamwork Revisited

So what have we done to fix it? First, we’re looking at remaking the starting parts of some of the characters to better accentuate the teamwork aspect of Fingeance right from the beginning. We’ve got a few parts currently in the game that are very teamwork oriented, but they’re not available until later levels, and even then you may not get access to the parts. Having starter parts have more of a cooperative tinge should help players get in a team mindset when they enter the shop for the first time. These new teamwork parts still match the kinds of gameplay we want each character’s ship to have. For example, Finn, the angry leader of the group, has the gadget Rally Cry, which when activated increases the rate of fire of every ship’s cannon. Finn can use this gadget to organize a strong offensive when he sees a point of weakness in enemy patterns (or he can just use it when he’s mad, we won’t judge).

Secondly, we’re working on upping the teamwork strengths of some of the roles you can take in the game. We’ve already done work on tanks in the past, but soon we’ll be taking a look at the other parts of the game. This will involve creating new parts that make new possible cooperative builds. Supports are next!

We’re also working on new enemy and boss encounters that will feel a bit more like raid bosses from popular MMO’s. Not so much to the extent where you’ll be forced to have a tank on your team, but instead having separate objectives for players to coordinate around. Objectives like secondary enemies to kill (like One Tough Puffer’s turrets), or points of high bullet output (The Twins icy fire) help emphasize the kind of teamwork we’d like to see from players.

Equipping Works!

Equipping parts work finally! We’ve added the ability for players to select which gadget they’d like to replace when buying a new gadget. The shop has been updated with additional features and tweaks to maximize player usability.

Bullet Trails

Special bullets now have trails that follow along on their path to destruction. These trails can give extra clarity when shooting really fast bullets, and they just look really cool overall.

Have you felt like teamwork has been a part of your strategizing? We’d love to hear from you. You can comment and follow us here on our blog (we update weekly!), send us a tweet to our Twitter, or comment on our Facebook page.

Displaying at the Welcome Geek Event

This past week, we displayed Fingeance at Welcome Geek, hosted by Glitch Gaming in Minneapolis. We’d like to thank all of those people who gave our game a chance at the event! It was a blast watching players team up for some fishy fun, as well as a valuable learning experience. Some interesting notes from the event:

• Have you tried using the Goliath Engine other energy regenerating parts? The combination is very strong. One player was able to get a lucky draw with several energy regen augments, and kept the engine running almost constantly!
• Extreme difficulty continues to claim several submarine lives. Can it be beaten? It may help to take a look at our guide for some tips.
• People of various skill levels playing through Fingeance is always refreshing to see. From the saltiest dogs to the greenest of greenhorns, players at the event enjoyed the underwater thrill ride, often making it to the end.
• Firestarter is OP! That bad boy rips through enemies like damp butter. Woe to the team with packed to the brim with them though; movement in shmups is still important, especially without a tanky teammate.
• The art style still impresses people, which is good because we’re planning to add to it in the coming weeks! At the event, our style was compared to a classic game called Fantasy Zone.
  

  Fantasy Zone is an old school shoot ’em up on the NES and Sega Master System. Some folks at the event felt we have a similar art style!

Alpha Demo Update

In preparation for the event we have updated the newest Fingeance Alpha Demo! This update improves the performance of the game during high intensity moments (such as during boss fights). In addition, we’ve added some new content:

• Force Feedback – Feel the rumble of your Bomb Launchers explosion, or the rattle of your ship’s damaged hull
• Part Tuning – Gadgets have generally been generally buffed (in some cases significantly) to increase their overall effectiveness, while cannons are just slightly weaker
• Improved Lighting – Huge boss attacks now have fancy lighting effects, so players will know when to be wary
• Added Parts – Adaptive Armor and Reflector are additional parts purchasable in-game

We’d love to hear how you feel about these additional changes or your opinion of the event if you could make it; you can let us know in the comments here, or on our Facebook and Twitter pages.

Hey everyone! First, we at Escape Industries would like to thank you for giving our newest alpha demo of Fingeance a playthrough. We really appreciate it. Working on Fingeance would not be nearly as rewarding without the feedback and support we’ve gotten.

Speaking of feedback, one thing has been coming in loud and clear: player roles (such as Tank, Assault, Support) should be more meaningful. Teamwork should be more interesting. Right now, Fingeance players do rely upon one another, but all too often, that reliance goes like this:

Two of us can deal damage twice as fast as one of us.

Compared to other team-centric games, this is boring, and falls short of Fingeance’s design goals. Over the next few weeks, we’ll be testing ways to add diversity to the team roster. Our first major step is taking a long look at the tank role.

The Tank Role

So, you want to throw yourself in danger, to be the bulwark, the salvation of your comrades. Right now, with just a meager handful of “Tank” parts in the game, you’ve got a hard road ahead of you. On the flipside, if you do pull together a tough, damage-resistant ship, you might find the game suddenly becomes too easy, as formerly terrifying enemies barely make a ding in your impressive HP bar.

We can do better.

Not the tank we had in mind…

So, what is a tank? Generally, a tank’s job is to prevent the other players from taking damage or being attacked. In most games, tanks provide a group with a big, damage-soaking, enemy-taunting behemoth. In some ways, a Shoot-em-up is the tank’s ideal playground. Unlike in traditional action RPGs (see World of Warcraft or League of Legends), a Shoot-em-up tank can literally throw himself in harm’s way to protect his teammates. Each bullet absorbed by the tank creates a little pocket of safety for his allies.

Unfortunately, there’s a problem. Shoot-em-ups are, fundamentally, all about dodging bullets. If you create a character who’s tough enough to absorb bullets, you have a very difficult time providing compelling gameplay for that character. As anyone who’s played a game in “god mode” (where you take no damage from enemies) can attest, being an invincible warrior isn’t nearly as fun as it sounds. So, how do we keep the game exciting and still allow you to play the savior and protect your friends?

Temporary toughness.

We’re working on a number of parts that let you go from zero to hero when it counts. Here are a few work-in-progress parts.

Adaptive Armor

In order to allow players to tank while still needing them to dodge things, we’ve created a few parts that make you temporarily extra-durable. This way, a player would need to look for opportune points in enemy attack patterns to block damage. One example of this is the new Adaptive Armor augment: equipping this augment causes your ship to take significantly less damage for a short time after getting hit.

Shields

Shields are another way to provide ships with temporary tankiness. You might have played with an example already, called Shell Shot, that generates a shield upon input release. The upgraded version of this cannon, Shell Shot Mk. 2, is even better at this as its shield scales with the damage its dealt before release.

We’ve got a handful of other parts like these we’re working on right now. This should make tanks feel powerful, but not ridiculous.

Content Creation at Full Steam!

Since most of the gameplay systems in the game are finished (though, some could use a tune-up), we’ve cranked up content creation to 11. You should see examples of our most recent parts, enemies, and art in the coming weeks. Just like the new tank parts, we’re focusing on creating content that help emphasize roles in the game until we feel we’ve hit a good point.

Any roles you’re really passionate about? We’d love to hear from you. You can find us on Twitter and Facebook, and here on our blog. Feel free to comment below as well!

What a productive week! Since last Wednesday, we’ve been on a roll making new parts for Fingeance. I guess showing your game off to a group of kids has that effect.

Character Select Screen

Charles has redesigned the character select menu. It took him a few days, but it turned out really nice. Check it out:

This fancy new menu comes complete with animations, telling you when you’ve changed from your current character. In addition, the new character select screen makes it easier to see what you’ll get when you pick your favorite fish. It’s quite an improvement!

Old CSS vs New CSS

Readying up is also less tricky than it was before, as we’ve implemented a smooth transition from picking your character. We also added an “everyone is ready” screen. When all players have decided who to start with, the screen fills with a border telling you it’s time to fight.

We’ve also added made it so that if one character is picked, other players cannot jump in the game as that character. This should reduce confusion in-game, though unfortunately you can’t go Team DNA with Gil’s Laser Deploy anymore.

Character Augments

Not pictured in the character select images is a recent addition to each character’s ship.

Each character now comes with their own unique augment to start out with. These augments cannot be bought in the shop. They have particularly special effect from the parts you’ll find in game too. Finn’s, for example, will cause him to enrage when his ship health dips under 30%, healing his ship health by 50% of its maximum health. As you can see, Finn is no gentleman.

Adding these augments makes character selection a little more important. These augments are unique per character, and each can help push a build in a novel direction. These augments have been tuned to support flexible playstyle, however, so don’t be opposed to grabbing that supporting gadget which Bubbles (even though she wouldn’t like it!).

Cooldowns

Lane’s been hard at work implementing several balance changes to the game, but gadget cooldowns are especially cool.

We’ve realized that – though spamming your gadgets is fun – sometimes you need a crazy powerful boost to your enemy-blasting abilities. That’s where cooldowns come in. Some gadgets now have a wait time after activating them. These gadgets have some seriously powerful effects, and when used at the right time can be a huge buff to the team.

You can keep track of any gadget’s cooldown by looking at the pulsing ring around your ship. The ring can split in up to three parts to correspond to each gadget currently attached to the ship.

So that’s that. Another menu made excellent, player roles made more diverse, and ship parts made crazier than ever. Join us next week, when we’ll no doubt have a LOT to say about making support parts and demoing in Minneapolis. We’ll be at Rally Cry | Video Games tomorrow, see you there!

Last week has been somewhat difficult productivity wise. We’ve all been preoccupied with other projects, and so creation has somewhat been slow. That doesn’t mean we’re empty handed though!

New Shields

Lane introduced you to augments last time. The bulk of our work has been in making augments, but we’ve also introduced a new mechanism that ships can use.

Shields protect a player (or miniboss/boss, possibly) from damage for a duration. They also have a set amount of damage, shown on your health bar, that they can take. Once its damage limit has been reached, the shield breaks and your ship takes regular damage again. Think of a shield from a game like League of Legends; that’s pretty much how shields work here.

Augments and Other Parts

With this addition, we’ve added a few tentative parts as experiments. These may not be in the final game, but they’re definitely proofs of concept.

Panic Button – Augment
• -25 health
• Large, long lasting shield is deployed when the player reaches 20% of their total health.
• Useful for beginner players, or those player who like to take large risks.

Energy Chalice – Augment
• Energy regeneration is increased based on the amount of energy your ship is missing.
• Regeneration scales based on the amount of missing health, not a percentage (missing 200 energy will increase regen twice as much as missing 100 energy).

Shell Shot – Cannon
• Provides the player with a shield when the player stops shooting after a period of time.
• Lower rate of fire and range, but damaging bullets

Bloodlust – Augment
• Ship is healed a very small amount each time the player hits a target.

As you can see, adding in the ability to make an augment or add a shield to players gives us more design space to work with. Shields in particular are very useful effects for tanks. Keep in mind, a player can add as many augments as his/her ship has room for, so feel free to experiment!

In a previous version of our game  (we’ve been doing this for nearly a year now), every cannon came with an alternate fire option. This was back when different kinds of hulls existed for the player to buy. Alternate fire shots were accessed by holding the shoot button down for a period of time, which depended on the cannon chosen. Back then you had tap to shoot constantly.

We had decided on this option for players as a method of increasing uniqueness in the cannons. Alternate fire would add interesting choices while playing the game, and keep each cannon different from others by having a powerful shot special to that cannon. It did its job well: we felt like charging up a cannon gave players decisions that could feel special without making the cannon complicated, in addition to having to make a conscious decision to lose out on dps in order to gain access to the alternate fire shot.

Unfortunately, we ran into the downsides of alternate fire. In our playtests, we noticed players opting not to use them. Players had more fun just shooting. Some players also found it tedious to have to mash the button to continually fire. The input was also not optimal; players could not constantly press the shoot button with the correct timing every time it was possible. This was especially problematic with the varying rates of fire, making us unable to make fast shooting cannons for fear of causing the player to hurt their fingers mashing the shoot button.

We came up with a solution: have the alternate fire charge while the player is not firing, and allow players to hold the button to shoot. This resolved many of the problems of the original alternate fire system. It was also more obvious to players that the weapon was charging since it would happen automatically in a game (there are some times when firing is discouraged, like in a minefield). Currently, we don’t have many finished cannons with an alternate fire, as we’ve noticed that novice players still don’t use them and we’ve been focused on the earlier parts for the demo. The Ice Trident is an example of such in the demo (in the updated build). Try it out there, and let us know what you think!