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.

Phew!

As we said last week, we’ve finished up a HUGE push. It was pretty intense; we spent a lot of time working on new content for the game. We worked on new enemies, bosses, and environments (like the Kelp Forest). I wanted to take this time to reflect on the experience, talk about what we are doing now, and what is to come.

Push for More Content

The main reason why we were doing this push was to add a ton of content to the game. For the last year, we have really only been polishing up gameplay mechanics and 3 levels (really 2, but I digress). We have reached a point where we needed to figure out what an entire playthrough of our game would look like, how that would feel, and how players actually progress as you play through the game.

So we geared up for a huge push for content in a month’s time; working 14 hour days, almost every day. It was grueling, challenging work, but it was still a blast to work on. Seeing all of the new environments come together, the new bosses taking shape, and the new enemies introduced during this huge push was a humongous morale booster.

I am extremely proud to say that we succeeded reaching our goal. It is now possible to play a full campaign from start to finish (That is SO great to say). It isn’t by any means balanced or final, but it is playable.

But where do we go from here?

Loading…

The most immediate area that I have been working on personally is adding in a loading screen. It really is starting to show that we need some sort of indicator saying, “Hey, the game didn’t freeze, it is just loading right now!” as many times while we play test the game people wonder if the game crashed.

It is still in its early stages of development but this new loading screen should do a few things:

1. Tell the player the game didn’t crash.
2. Make going from one part of the game to another part a lot more seamless.
3. Give you a status update on your progress in the campaign.

I am pretty excited about adding this in because what I have so far already make the game feel more cohesive and smooth rather than a jarring transition between one part to another (and you know how much I love transitions!).

Here are some designs to the loading screen that we are trying out, which do you think is the best so far? Leave a comment below or message us on Twitter or Facebook!

Shopping in Progress

The longer term area that we have been working on is the shopping experience. We previously mentioned how much of a pain it was before we revamped the design before, but it still is a place that players are the most confused and least engaged. Don’t get us wrong; this redesign is WAY better than the last design, but it still isn’t fulfilling what we want the experience to be. We are figuring out what the best way to present the shop and we are even looking at the three different categories of Cannons, Gadgets, and Augments that are being presented. So there is a lot of work in front of us on that end of the spectrum that we are going to be tackling for the next couple of weeks.

Catching Our Breath

We have been easing up on the pedal bit this past week after this push to look at where we need to go next and also to catch our breath. We worked hard these past weeks and we do need a bit of a rest. One way that we are doing that is we are going to be participating in the Global Game Jam 2016 this weekend! Global Game Jam is an event where you make a game within 48 hours based around a theme (or not, you don’t have to follow it). We are going to be at the GameCraft Jam site here in Minnesota so if you are going we hope to see you there! Working on other projects helps reinvigorate our drive to making Fingeance. If you want more information about what the Global Game Jam is check out their website!

This is actually only our second time participating in the event. You can check out our last game we made What Do Oujia Do Now?

First things first: we did it! As of 11:59pm on January 19th, we have a full-length game on our hands.

Our plan was as ludicrous as it was ambitious. It took us just under 18 months to make the previous two levels, and we challenged ourselves to make the next six in just three weeks. We ended up cutting a few corners (you won’t see new bosses previewed here for a while, for example, because we don’t have finished art), but we now have a fun, full-length Fingeance adventure to explore. If you’re in the Twin Cities area, we’ll be demoing it for the first time ever at Glitch Headquarters this Friday at 5pm. Join us!

In weeks to come, we’ll be talking about the new content, and discuss some upcoming changes to player progression. Today, we’ll be showcasing another new backdrop for your adventuring pleasure. We present…

Dolphin City

At last.

From the moment four friends were dumped, quite literally breathless, out into the far reaches of the coral reef, they’ve been waiting for this moment. Now, they watch nervously as enormous dark structures loom larger and larger in the distance.

The dolphins know why you’ve come, and they’re armed to the teeth to stop you. As you seek vengeance, you’ll find out what the empire is truly capable of.

Finding your Way in the Darkness

We won’t say much about the fish’s intentions here, beyond saying that the dolphins do not like them. In Dolphin City levels, you’ll encounter increasingly desperate waves of an army bent on stopping you at any cost. Destruction will be ubiquitous. Danger, profound.

Let’s be clear about something: dolphins in this universe are malevolent, yes, but their intelligence hasn’t changed. They’re still the smartest things in the ocean. When you fight against dolphins, expect canny creatures with a broad suite of tactics and devastating firepower. They’re highly social, and have a penchant for forcing lackeys to do their bidding. Against a dolphin formation, your greatest ally is maneuverability: often all it takes to crack an invincible army is being at the right place at the right time.

As a case in point, consider the Controller. This is a new type of enemy that hangs back and sends forth drones to terrorize your party. Against Controllers, raw aggression accomplishes little: drones are excellent at protecting their masters. Instead, you’ll need to position strategically. Abandon pummeling the front lines just long enough to sneak a shot at the eggheads giving orders. Word to the wise: the Teleporter is magic here.

Making the Dolphin City

So much of the Dolphin City just clicked. By the time we worked on this biome, we’d discovered a handful of tricks to making enemies fun without being overwhelming:

• Novel enemies reward adaptive thinking. They produce extra challenge without us needing to put more bullets on the screen.
• Aggressive enemies — ones that hunt players down — stress players, but in a good way. They might only fire three bullets, but they’re all headed right for you and you need to move!
• Interacting enemies — those that cover each-others weaknesses — change the battlefield, even in small numbers.

So, we found that smart, ferocious, and social enemies are the most fun to play against. This made us incredibly happy, since that’s Dolphin-kind in a nutshell. Making the levels in this biome went faster than any other, mainly because everything we tried here just worked. We couldn’t be more excited to playtest it this Friday.

Before I sign off, I’ve got to give a tip of the hat to Stephen. He made one of the major bosses here in a day. That’s insane. Compare to the “One Tough Puffer” boss, which I’ve sunk almost forty hours into. I can’t go into what the boss is or does, but I can begrudgingly salute Stephen for making something so fun in such a short amount of time. Bravo, sir!

Can’t wait to see what waits in the Dolphin City? Join us this Friday at 5pm, right here! Can’t make it? Feel free to comment here on our blog, or on our Facebook and Twitter.

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.

We will be demoing Fingeance at Gamer’s Rhapsody 2015!

Gamer’s Rhapsody is a video game convention that aims to highlight the artistic side of video games. There will be special performances by Nerd Enhanced Sound, Benjamin Briggs, and Do a Barrel Roll! as well as many other acts. Also there will be guest appearances by Emily Reese of Joon Media and Tim Turi from Game Informer as judges critiquing games from the Gamer’s Rhapsody Game Jam.

You can check us at the convention on November 14 from 10am – 7pm. Tickets are available at the Gamer’s Rhapsody website. We hope to see you there!

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.

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!

This past week, I’ve been looking at the movement options we have in Fingeance currently. This blog post is gonna get pretty in depth in some of our design philosophies and understanding of our game, as well as the history of this game’s creation a little. Hopefully you get something interesting out of it.

(Quick note: Lane and I have decided to switch our blog posts around. Lane will be posting on Mondays and I will be posting on Fridays starting this week.)

Initially, player ships had three different parts that could be attached: cannons, gadgets, and hulls. Hulls contained all of a player’s movement and health, as well as had an additional action we called a “defense effect.” These effects ranged from giving the player a shield around him/her ship that protected it from bullets, to a dash that let players move around the screen more quickly. We realized that adding these additional options in the game made customization more complicated. It also made designing unique parts a harder ordeal than we would have liked. Adding in an additional action for players made it necessary for the complexity of each action to be smaller, and we didn’t like the direction that led us.

So, we decided to remove hulls as an option for customization. The stats gained from hulls were moved to cannons and gadgets. However, we were still considering leaving the “defense effect” action in the game by making it the same for all players. This would still give players more ability, but since the action would be consistent across the board, cannons and gadget complexity wouldn’t have to change. As we had difficulty making shields work in the past and liked the gameplay of a dash, we made dashes an action all players can take.

Dashes in previous iterations of the game varied a bit. There weren’t a ton in the game when we decided to remove hulls, but there were three kinds of dashes: a dodge (a dash that made you intangible to bullets when active), a dash (a regular dash with a cooldown), and hyperdash (a regular dash with no cooldown). Each of these dashes came with their own sets of problems. The dodge was satisfying to use when it worked, but was not clear when the intangibility was active and was fairly situational. The dash was clear and less situational, but wasn’t satisfying to use. The hyperdash was fun to use, but it overtook regular movement because it was so safe.

In my analysis, I looked at why we wanted to give every player a movement option, and what that would add to our game. I looked to many different sources for this, including platformers such as a Mario game. In the 2D Mario games, they have a run mechanic that lets players move faster while the button is held down. I actually implemented a run mechanic in our game to see how it would feel. After testing this run mechanic, and retesting the older dashes, we felt that giving movement options to each player’s ship was not necessary, and didn’t add much to the game. We’ve since removed them, but that doesn’t mean we can’t revisit it later to add to a gadget.

Thanks for reading this! It seems like a lot of obvious stuff, but sometimes as a creator you need to step back and look at what you’re making.