The All’s Eye Update
There's more where that came from!
Infinite Level game discussed: The Future Project
Last month I said I was working on an update to The Future Project and promised I'd have more details in the next dev blog. Well, the next dev blog is here, and as promised I do have news and information about The Future Project's 1.1 version. Oh yes, I'm thinking this is a major enough change to warrant upping the second number in the version number (I use three numbers formatted #.#.#, first for main game which will probably never change, second for major updates, third for patches). In brief, this 1.1 update will contain an entirely new boss battle designed around 100% completion, alongside a small expansion to the Heaven world to accommodate this new battle, and finally a new difficulty mode for those who want an even greater challenge.
The meat of the update is in the boss fight, so most of this blog post will be focused on that. I'm expanding the Heaven map a little bit to include a new boss called All's Eye. Have you ever seen those artist depictions of biblically accurate angels? That's more or less what I'm going for here, minus the excessive number of eyes. Instead, I opted to give All's Eye a large singular eye in the middle of its body, with wings of light coming out from all around it. With such a design, it's perhaps no wonder why I decided to place it in Heaven. But, there's other reasons too. I wanted to avoid changing up other worlds too much in order to accommodate a new boss fight. Being a metroidvania, a big part of The Future Project's gameplay is the map itself, so making drastic changes is something of a no-no. However, Heaven is largely a tutorial world with a handful of extras, so adding a few new rooms leading to an optional boss fight doesn't change the flow of the world a whole lot. Plus, Heaven was originally going to be a bit bigger and more sprawling anyway, but many of those rooms ultimately got cut. With this update, a few of those cut areas are returning and being repurposed for the lead up to All's Eye.
The Heaven extension as seen in-editor. This image shows the basic layout before any objects are placed inside rooms.
I have to be careful not to let unequipped players just wander into the boss and get squashed out of nowhere, so I'm forcing players to at least acquire the Aether power to even access the extra content at all. From there, players must also go through a platforming gauntlet as a sort of test for the boss itself. I'm intending it to be some of the toughest platforming sections in the game, requiring fairly liberal use of late game powers in order to get by. Fast moving lasers and large gaps are the name of the game here, though I'll also be repurposing some objects from Alien Remnant to make the area a bit more interesting, with an updated look of course to fit in with the rest of the Heaven world. This would include the moving and rotating platforms of Alien Remnant in particular. Add those in with some Heaven specific obstacles and we should have quite the late game area on our hands. The whole point of this section is to encourage the player to make use of those late game powers that, admittedly, don't get a whole lot of time to shine during the main game. It also serves as a skill barrier to prevent players who are not ready for the boss from accessing it too soon. All's Eye will be the hardest fight in the game, so I'm making sure you're ready for that by confirming you know how to use your equipment before letting you pass.
Once you get through the platforming challenges, you'll be up against All's Eye, the main focus of the upcoming 1.1 update. As mentioned earlier, All's Eye is designed around the idea that you'll have already gathered every power and upgrade in the game. As a fan of the metroidvania genre myself, I'm familiar with the feeling of gathering every item in a metroidvania and becoming so overpowered as a result that even the finale feels like a cakewalk. And in fairness to those other games, usually those remaining items are there more to incentivize playing through optional challenges or perform completionist speedruns. Knowing that, I wanted to throw in a little extra something for those who have explored all the game's nooks and crannies and want something to use all that gear on. What this ends up meaning is that All's Eye will generally attack quickly, and individual attacks do a lot more damage per attack than other boss fights. Like the platforming gauntlet before it, there will be a pretty big emphasis on using those late game powers to secure victory, so be prepared to use them!
To give you an idea of the kinds of attacks that All's Eye will have, let's take a look at my personal favorite of their attacks, which I call "Pillars of Creation", so named because of the light beams acting as sort of pillars. They don't create things though. In fact, they're rather destructive. You can see in the GIF above exactly how this attack works. The only attack of its kind, Pillars of Creation starts by encircling the player and following them. You can walk around as much as you'd like, but for a brief moment they will perfectly encompass you and not be left behind. After a couple seconds though, they'll expand outward before quickly closing in on your location. How would you dodge this? You actually have two options. You can either use Aether to teleport past them just before they close in, or use Time Warp, one of the last abilities in the game, to simply walk past the beams of light as the attack is finishing. Another attack that I quite like is one I call Rising Sun (I had a lot of fun with these names that you'll never see in-game). This attack involves All's Eye steadily rising into the air, summoning what I envision as a literal sun from underneath the battlefield. It covers the entire area and lasts a long time, so how do you dodge it? You'll have to use an earth summon before the sun rises to effectively make a platform for yourself to stand on for the duration of the attack. Getting hit means taking damage for however long you're standing in the attack plus getting the burn status inflicted on you, so definitely don't hang around when you see All's Eye looking like its lifting something. These are just a couple of its attacks! There will definitely be more to see once the update drops, and even now there's some concepts and attack ideas I'm experimenting with.
To finish things out, let's talk about the new difficulty mode, titled Master Mode. While it is essentially the other half of the content update, it's much simpler to describe. It's simply a difficulty that's harder than hard. The enemies do double damage now, while the player's damage has been reduced further. But that's not terribly exciting for a content update, huh? There is, in fact, a catch. Two catches even. Enemies will not drop pickups to restore health and ammunition, ever. This means that health and ammo restoration can only happen at restoration stations. You can't rely on enemies dropping pickups anymore if your health is low, for instance. This includes the forced pickups dropped by enemies whenever you're nearly out of health or have no missiles remaining, a convenience feature I added in to make for a more pleasant experience on other difficulties. What this means is that you have to be cautious of when you decide to deplete your last bit of ammo. You might end up needing that for a later combat encounter, or to simply open a door to the next area. The other catch? Reduced missile and health upgrades, specifically how much they increase your maximum missiles and health. Obviously, less overall health in a game mode where enemies are hitting their hardest will further increase the challenge, and fewer missiles means you don't have as many of your big damage projectiles as you normally would. Element ammo upgrades, however, are unaffected, so use that to your advantage! This might seem like a weird exception, but I wanted to implement Master Mode without needing to change things like the map to accommodate. And since several areas in The Future Project call for a certain amount of element ammo to clear its platforming, I left those untouched. Frankly, you'll want the help. I'm being charitable here.
The 1.1 update will most likely come with some other adjustments to the game as well, though those additional adjustments are the sort of thing you'd also find in a typical patch. Bug fixes, balance changes, that kind of thing. There are a few things I'd like to include in the 1.1 update to make it a little more substantial, but they're not big, important items like the boss fight and new difficulty. They could just as easily be included in a small patch, so I'm not going to be too bothered if they don't make it in right away. Additionally, I'm expecting to release the soundtrack for The Future Project on Steam around the same time (sorry EGS folks, but far as I'm aware soundtracks cannot be bought and listened to from the Epic Games Store). If there's enough interest then I'll certainly look into making the soundtrack available elsewhere, but for now I figure Steam's own music player will be plenty sufficient for the average person. So, by the time it's all said and done, the update will be bringing a fair amount to it. Gotta make that increased version number mean something, you know?
As for when this will release? No idea! But I anticipate it will be soon. I definitely want to get it out before the major holidays start rolling around, so anytime between now and then is when the 1.1 update should be released. Much like the original release of The Future Project, I'll be atop the social media mountains announcing the update when it launches as well as making a short announcement blog here, so if you follow me anywhere you should know exactly when it's coming. As of this writing, I'm currently putting together the logic of the boss itself (the logic within its different projectiles is implemented) and have already put in some early work on the new difficulty. Adding Master Mode should honestly be a fairly easy endeavor, so my eyes are on All's Eye (please laugh) for the time being. Hopefully you'll be getting the opportunity to fight this angelic being yourself soon, but for now, I hope you're looking forward to it.
Until next time!
-Lance T.