Breachway News

Hi Friends,

It’s been a while since the last development post (3 months!), so let's see what we've been up to

We’ve been busy attending games-industry events for the first time this year. It takes a lot of time, energy and resources to attend these events, but somehow makes what we're doing seem more real, and seeing people pick up the game and enjoy it is a great feeling.

Most of what we've been doing however, is developing the meta-game aspect of Breachway.
Digging into the non-combat meta-game opened a lot of cool possibilities for gameplay and interesting wats for the player to interact with and discover the universe we’ve been creating

The game has always had a mind of it’s own, guiding us in the direction it wanted to develop in. This can result in a game that is more experimental and that doesn’t aim to replicate any specific formula, and it’s fun to discover the game bit by bit as you’re working on it. The big downside of this approach however is uncertainty and scope creep.

This process of discovery (and the resulting scope creep) has also led us delay the release of our game, so we don’t compromise our vision, and so that we can spend more time on polish, bug-fixing, and improving the player experience.

Here is a quick breakdown of what we did since July:

• Attended Gamescom, saw a lot of people play and enjoy the game, we even met one of the people in our Discord server, he beat the demo twice on two separate days :D
  We actually have a few stories of people beating the demo on their first run, including a dad and his ~12 year old son. Gamescom was a blast!
  
  
• We have Qualified for the Indie 80 Selection, and received a booth in the Indie space at the Tokyo Game Show, so we took that as the perfect excuse to go and visit Japan before the event started
  
  
• We implemented the first iteration of the meta map, and started testing the game loop , including the faction relation system and non-combat events.
  
  
• We created 20+ events, both generic and narrative events that are specific to the situation in our first solar system map
  
  
  
• We further defined the factions, and fleshed out crew characters and the crew abilities
  
  
• We are testing a fuel system to go with the more free-roam approach, similar to FTL. You will have a limited amount of fuel every time you enter a solar system, and while you can get more fuel from space stations and some events, the quantity will be very limited.
  
  
• We added a new ship explosion system
  
  
  
• Added targeting reticles and improved the general UX
  
  
  
• Added more enemy animations, making them more reactive to player actions
  
  
  
• Lastly, we’ve added a lot more characters to our world, here are a few of them:
  

The next 3 months are going to be very important for Breachway's development, we're almost done with the features we set out to create, we only have a couple more unique features we need to playtest and validate.
From here on out we'll mainly be focusing on adding more ships, enemies, cards and equipment, as well as tightening up the game experience as much as we can.

This is it for now, see you next time, Space Cowboy.

Victor

Hi friends,

It's about time we have another development update, as a lot of things were added this past month!



June was all about designing and implementing "meta-game" elements (in this context, elements outside of the core combat loop), and adding some cool new visuals.

Designing the meta-game presented a bunch of challenges that basically had to be solved at once before we could test them and get a feel if they work together as intended, as all of these systems are interconnected and you can’t get the full picture of how the meta-game play until all of the pieces are in place and work together.

So we really focused on implementing a first iteration pass of each of these systems.

The biggest of these pieces, that interacts with all other meta-game elements is the faction relation system. This will define your interaction options and outcomes in narrative events and quests, how regular non-combat nodes play out, access to space stations, and how likely it is that you will encounter hostile ships as you traverse regions of the solar system controlled by these factions.

Narrative events are major story events that happen in each system, based on what the system's theme is, and each event involves one or more factions. These events can have multiple possible outcomes, and a lot of branching ways to get to each - based on your relationship with each of the factions involved, who you have on board and what their specialties are, your crew’s morale, your ship’s equipment, and what items you are carrying in your inventory. So there's plenty of things to keep track of as we're making them.

Quests are basically even more complex narrative events that unfold across multiple nodes.

Non-combat events are a much simpler, more generic version of narrative events (they play in a similar way to distress beacons in FTL), and how they unfold is based on the relation you have with the faction that controls the area that event takes place in.

On the combat side, we have added some new additions in the form of activatable crew abilities and in-combat events:

• Crew abilities are based on your crew’s level and role. The higher crew’s morale, the more often you can use these abilities.
  
• In-combat events allow us to have a greater variety of combat encounters and victory conditions, outside of either ship blowing up. This can enable things like escaping combat (for both you and your enemy) if combat is not going well (this will also allow us to have a greater variety of optional enemy difficulty). Additionally enemies can offer you bribes to let them go, or allow you to disable a ship’s engines, and weapon systems in preparation for boarding them.
  

On the graphics side, we have a new battleship ready, for end-game enemies and bosses:



Also now when you attack and destroy a ship’s weapon or equipment, you actually see it blow up, and get rebuilt after a duration. We are now working on a visible ship damage system that persists between fights until you get repaired:





Oh and you can also space people 🧑‍🚀



See you next month, Space Cowboy.

Victor

Hi friends,

things have started to finally settle down, so this is a great moment to reflect on the conclusion of Tacticon, and what a fantastic event it was!



[h2]Breachway Demo[/h2]

Releasing our demo amidst a such exceptional games was both an honor and a slightly nerve-wracking experience. Our initial hope was that our demo would attract a modest number of players and perhaps be overshadowed by the larger games showcased at the festival.

However, the response we received surpassed our wildest expectations! Each day of the event, we witnessed an average of approximately 1,000 new players installing the demo, thanks to the support of our dedicated community and the efforts of both larger (some very large) and smaller YouTube channels that created some amazing playthrough videos of our demo. Thank you so much!

We also want to give a massive shoutout and a huge thank you to all the folks who played our game, sent us feedback, reported bugs, and shared their thoughts on our Discord. Your support and enthusiasm has fueled our determination to make Breachway the absolute best game we can create.


[h2]Looking forward[/h2]

As stated in the demo, what you got to play was just a preview of the core combat loop, there is still a lot we want to add both in and out of combat, as well as fleshing out the universe the game takes place in

At this stage, defining a clear roadmap is difficult, considering there are still many unknowns ahead of us, and many possibilities we want to explore.

Nevertheless, we would like to provide you with a glimpse of what you can potentially expect from Breachway as we move forward.

While we can’t assign dates and a strict order of priority to what we are going to develop, we want to list the things we are planning to work on from now until Early Access.

[h3]Expanding on the meta game[/h3]

• Fully defining and fleshing out the game’s factions
  
• Faction reputation system driven by event outcomes
  
• Quest system
  
• Expanding on non-combat events
  
• Exploring alternate game modes in addition to the “traditional” run-based roguelike game loop
  

[h3]Unlockables and permanent upgrades[/h3]

• Designing and implementing a meta-progression system
  
• Unlockable ships, equipment, subsystems, crew, etc
  
• Unlockable skins (tied to quests and achievements, not grinding)
  

[h3]Combat system[/h3]

• Active crew abilities
  
• Crew experience and levelling
  
• In-combat events
  
• Alternate combat end conditions (player or enemy running away, disarming enemy, convincing him to break off engagement, etc)
  
• Combat range - affecting weapons and various other effects
  
• Combat maneuvers
  
• Player and enemy drones/support ships
  
• Drone fighter squadrons
  

[h3]More diverse content[/h3]

• More characters and crewmembers
  
• More ships, both for the player and enemy
  
• More combat environments, some of which will have an effect on combat: Asteroid fields, Nebulas, Fights in the icy tail of a comet, a planet’s upper atmosphere, etc
  
• More enemy and encounter diversity: Orbital turret emplacements, Space stations(?), Cargo ship raid missions, Capital ships
  

Of course, bear in mind that due to the uncertain nature of designing a game that does not follow a predetermined formula, some of these plans may or may not work out in the end, but we are eager to explore all of these possibilities, and share in the journey with you.

See you next month, Space Cowboy

Victor

During TactiCon, please join us on the store page to check out Wanderbots coverage of the Breachway demo!

https://store.steampowered.com/app/2118810

Hi friends,

It’s time for February’s development recap. What seemed like a month that flew by too fast without much to talk about, actually has some cool stuff when looking back, so let's dig in:

[h2]Equipment targeting[/h2]

The main thing we’ve been working on is refining the Equipment Targeting mechanic. We have changed the way precision attacks work; instead of giving you a percentage chance to damage the equipment based on hull damage dealt, to dealing 1 durability damage per point of hull damage dealt.

AoE attacks like Flak and missiles still have a percentage chance to damage random equipment durability based on damage dealt. This makes damaging and disabling enemy equipment more predictable and just feels better when playing.

We also added a targeting reticule highlighting the equipment on the ship when firing on it with precision attacks.

You can see the change in action below



[h2]Bugs and testing[/h2]

We also started putting out test builds a couple of week ago, first internally, and one to a small early tester group, and we immediately saw how unstable the builds are at the moment.

We acquired a lot of technical debt as we were changing the game’s design to find what works and what feels fun to play, and now that we've found a formula we really like, it’s time to do some bug hunting.

This will be our main focus for March - a feature freeze, and making sure what we already have is stable and balanced.

We should be able to put out some stable builds soon, and let testers get to play the game more than 5 minutes at a time. Once that is done, we can also slowly add new people to our Discord tester group to get more feedback

[h2]New ship and a new skin[/h2]

We finalized another ship this month, a small industrial Tug ship that has both a compact and an extended form (for carrying cargo).



The one you see below belongs to our industrial space mining faction, but you will see it with different paint jobs and components for the other factions as well.

Designed to work either alone, in pairs, or in a formation depending on the size of the payload, you will be fighting these guys mainly in raiding and piracy missions. It might look small and relatively harmless, but it can still pack a punch thanks to having two weapon hardpoints.



Talking about piracy, we also played around with a pirate skin for your starting player ship. Additions like these are really fun to do, and don't take all that much time. We'll look into doing more skins in the future, and other small things that will work well as a meta-game progression unlock, or when finishing a certain quest line, FTL style.



[h2]Other cool stuff[/h2]

Oh ,we also added small astronauts to the hangar, representing your crew, as well as people tinkering on the ship.



Gives a nice scale reference to the ships (we design them with human scale in mind), and we can also send some of these little guys tumbling into space as you unleash some devastating combos on the enemy.

Lastly, we’d like to show you a preview of another one of the factions you will meet in Breachway, the Numen. Seeing the inadequacy and frailty of the human body in space, they aim to transcend flesh and merge their consciousness with their ships.



This is it for this Devlog, if you’d like to discuss anything that is presented here (or just want to show your support,), feel free to do so in the comment section, or on our [Discord Server](https://steamcommunity.com/linkfilter/?url=https://t.co/fQbyj1ENoo)

See you next month, Space Cowboy

Victor