Play the alpha here!

Right now, you can go try out the first major update to the Fingeance Alpha. It loads up fast, and a playthrough takes 10 minutes. We highly advise that you give it a try.

If you didn’t play our game when it first came out, let me catch you up. Fingeance is a co-op underwater shoot-em-up. Between levels, you can buy equipment and upgrade your ship. The game has a heavy emphasis on boss battles, with mechanics that emphasize teamwork and feel more like MMO raid-bosses than traditional shoot-em-up fodder.

Since our first release in May, we’ve upgraded nearly every aspect of the game. Equipment is better. Enemies are more exciting. Heck, even the menus are more fun. The game also runs faster, and without all the bugs that plagued version 0.01.

So, what’s new?

Equipment

So Much New Stuff. Tripled the number of parts in-game. Added an entire new part category called Augments. They passively make your ship awesome.
Game Changers. Greatly expanded what parts can do. They can now apply buffs and debuffs, grand passive bonuses, and unleash charged abilities.
Showmanship. Added sounds, animations, and particle effects to all Cannons and Gadgets.
Upgrade!!! Stronger equipment will appear as the game unfolds.

Levels and Bosses

Dastardly Deeds. While we reveal no new bosses in this demo, existing bosses have learned several new tricks.
Fiendish Foes. Added a menagerie new small enemies. Created several new chunks (premade battlefields knitted together to form a level).
Bewitching Battlegrounds. Greatly improved our level-building algorithm. Levels are now shorter, more exciting, and better-adapted to your chosen difficulty.

User Interface

An Honest-To-Goodness Functional Interface. We did it! You can buy equipment and choose characters now. It doesn’t feel awful. Hallelujah.
Snappiness. In addition to being functional, the UI looks worlds better. It’s all animated, and the game feels more engaging and alive.

We owe a giant debt to our commenters, our followers on Twitter, and our friends at Glitch Gaming. Their feedback has been invaluable. As just one tiny example, one commenter suggested that our HUD should change color to reflect the health of living players. We tried it out. The difference was MAGICAL. All of a sudden, players could read their HP in their peripheral vision. People can see how close they are to death without looking away from the action, and easily figure out which allies they should heal. This change, obvious in retrospect, was something we totally missed. It’s thanks to readers like you that Fingeance has come as far as it has, so thank you.

To check it out, CLICK HERE.