Tag: The Chaser’s Voyage

A Quick Look at Our Playable Tutorial

We’re working hard on the playable tutorial. Here’s a little sneak peak at what it looks like.

 

Since the tutorial is also the prologue for our game, you aren’t yet the captain of the Chaser. Instead, it looks like you’re flying some kind of Imperial ship. Fun fact: It’s design is actually based on an early design for the Chaser.

 

And since you have yet to meet the other crew members, your crew is actually just this person named Argi. He’s seems nice.

 

This is how we’ll teach players how to play the game, with big arrows!

 

We’ll even have the controls automatically change based on which controller you are using.

 

You can also follow us on Twitter and join our Discord for more news and to give feedback! If you wish to play The Chaser’s Voyage, you can buy it while we’re in Early Access on Steam:

Accessibility and Difficulty – Talking About Voyager Mode and Other Options

This week I wanted to talk about The Chaser’s Voyage and accessibility. Cameron and I are both firm believers that games should be accessible for anyone to play, either by having those considerations baked into the game itself or by having a plethora of options to allow players to customize games to maximize their enjoyment. This includes difficulty settings.

 

We’ve always envisioned The Chaser’s Voyage to be a hard game. Even now, part of my job is to find that level of balance where the game will be challenging to new comers until they’ve demonstrated a certain mastery of the system, and even then, the game shouldn’t become a cakewalk. That balance just makes paying back your debt on time all the sweeter. A reward for becoming an ace pilot. However, we have plenty of friends and family members who aren’t expert gamers. We’ve encountered plenty of people that have become interested in our story, experiencing the crew interactions, and just overall want a less demanding and stressful experience.

 

And, I don’t know, maybe we’re on to something?

 

Taken from https://www.jesperjuul.net/text/fearoffailing/

 

We also have both been up to date on the several “accessibility vs. difficulty” debates that spring up every now and then regarding games like Cuphead, Soulsborn games, and Celeste. I was even very vocal WAY back when Nintendo started adding their assist modes that would take over and show you how to complete a level after dying a lot of times and when they added casual and phoenix modes to Fire Emblem. Personally, my stance is and will always be “if you don’t use those options, why do you care?” I’m also glad that they are there. Like, as someone who really loves the Fire Emblem franchise, I’m glad that more and more people can get into that series thanks to the easier modes, even if I don’t use them.

 

Getting back to The Chaser ‘s Voyage though, once it had become clear that we needed to adjust the difficulty of our game, we thought it was best to split the game into three modes: Captain, Ace, and Voyager Mode. Inspired by the way that some games were trying to de-stigmatize the connotations of playing on an easy or beginner mode, we opted to have each mode be guided by an idea. Captain Mode was to be our primary mode. We would describe it as “the way The Chaser’s Voyage is meant to be played.” It has a difficulty level that ramps up, it has permadeath, and it’s designed overall for those players seeking to play our true vision of the game. Ace Mode was our challenge mode, defined primarily by making you play the game entirely in Captain Mode’s hardest tier. It was actually our original vision of the game, the one we toned down after feedback because, well, we didn’t to scrap that option completely.

 

We have three difficulty settings. Captain and Ace mode have permadeath where Voyager mode has several respawn options.

 

For Voyager Mode, we wanted to be careful and make sure to describe it as anything other than “easy mode.” It’s true, it can be easier and we do recommend it for beginners to learn how to play the game, but it’s not the “easy mode.” At first, we were using “it’s our accessible mode” as our guiding mantra. We wanted to add in options to allow players to make the game as easy as they wanted or needed to. We were also thinking of it as a kind of training mode, a way people could practice or experiment with strategies before tackling the other modes. When we started implementing these options though, we realized that it would actually be less work to just transfer over all the tools we had made for balancing and debugging purposes.

 

With that came some options such as damage sliders, that would allow players playing Voyager Mode to reduce the damage their shields and hull take individually, all the way to zero if they’d like. They also would have the option to increase the damage they take. By a lot too, up to 300%! It was from that point on that we decided that the guiding principle for Voyager Mode was to make it our “customizable mode”, where we will let the player adjust most settings in order to make the game truly the challenge they want.

 

 

To further not stigmatize playing games the way you want to, we don’t hold back any content from Voyager Mode. You can earn all the insignias and their corresponding achievements, you can unlock every entry in the crew journal (once we implement it), and you can still get both endings. The one caveat regarding insignias is that each mode is separated into their own little bubbles. So, even if you unlocked every insignia in the game in Voyager Mode, you’d still have to unlock each one in Captain and Ace Mode, and vice-versa. We also keep the records separate. So, if you want to brag about beating The Chaser’s Voyage on Ace Mode, you’ll have to back up your words by showing off your Ace Mode records.

 

In addition to these difficulty modifiers, Cameron and I are trying to be conscious of anything else we could add to better accommodate all kinds of players, so people who just want to enjoy the story or take on the challenge can get what they want. This includes turning off certain background elements a player might find distracting (across all modes) and completely customizable controls. We’ve even added in some other features that, I personally, wasn’t too sure about adding, but was convinced because, it was easy.

 

And ultimately, when it comes to making games more enjoyable to a wider audience, not only is it the right thing for a game developer to do, it’s also easy to do.

 

You can also follow us on Twitter and join our Discord for more news and to give feedback! If you wish to play The Chaser’s Voyage, you can buy it while we’re in Early Access on Steam:

Patch Notes for Update 0.2.2 – 8/22/2022

We released Update 0.2.2 yesterday and I wanted to go over some more changes we’ve made!

Since our last patch came out earlier than planned, this patch finishes off things we started in Version 0.2.1. On top of the previous Voyager Mode additions, we’ve now added Wolfe’s Secret Options. Unlike the base Voyager Mode options, these options only serve to increase the challenge of Voyager Mode, further leaning into it’s place as our Customizable Mode. The Secret Options are as follows:

• Added a slider to adjust the rate at which the Space Jump Drive charges. (1% – 100%) [Note from Eos: As of right now, the game is pretty balanced with the rate of the current space jump charge rate. If you adjust this value too high, just don’t expect to get the good ending.]

• Added a slider to adjust the damage the player deals to Enemies. (0% – 100%)

• Added a slider to adjust the damage the player deals to Obstacles. (0% – 100%)

• Added a toggle to prevent respawning.

 

While we don’t expect many players to use these options to the max challenge, they were very easy to add and make for a much more challenging Voyager Mode to those seeking it.

 

 

To follow up making the Jump Drive charge faster in Version 0.2.1, we wanted to reward perfect play and make sub-optimal play more punishing. Rather than decreasing the amount of money players get, we decide to up the cost of repairs. This means that players who play very well will see little change, but reckless players who take a lot of Hull damage will find Lady Styx’s 100 Day time limit more challenging to meet!

This is the last planned small update before we fully dive into implementing the playable tutorial, and I’m glad we could get in these expanded customization options and balance changes!

 

Finally, there are some miscellaneous bug fixes. You can read the full patch notes here, and we hope you look forward to our next update!

You can also follow us on Twitter and join our Discord for more news and to give feedback! If you wish to play The Chaser’s Voyage, you can buy it while we’re in Early Access on Steam:

Patch Notes for Update 0.2.1 – 8/11/2022

Last Thursday we released Update 0.2.1 and I wanted to go over some of the gameplay changes included, but first, BUGS!

• Bug Fixes:

Bugs are the reason why this update did not release on our usual preferred day. With the implementation of Gamepad Support, we had to revamp our input system. This resulted in 2 different bugs popping up in regards to our cutscenes. The first prevented the player from progressing the cutscene that plays when they fail to pay back their debt on time. Thankfully you could still skip the cutscene and continue playing the game, but obviously that is far from ideal. The second bug made the dialogue for the cutscenes progress when you let go of the Left Mouse Button. So if you were just clicking to progress the cutscenes, it would skip every other line of dialogue. I squashed these bugs right away and we decided to push out a patch that we already had been working on as soon as we could. Hence a random Thursday update!

 

 

• The Space Jump Drive:

Now onto the gameplay changes we were working on! In this patch we upped the speed at which the Jump charges while at Level 2 and 3 Engines. For Level 2, 25% was buffed to 50% speed and Level 3, 50% to 75%. We made this change to punish players a little less for not being able to keep their engines at Level 4 (130% charge speed!) constantly. Level 4 is still the far superior choice for charging the jump quicker, and thus getting to your next client quicker, and THUS paying back Lady Styx quicker! But the increased obstacle damage that comes with it can make piloting at Level 4 a difficult challenge for less experienced pilots. So this should allow a little more wiggle room for players to switch up their engines more as the situation requires it.

 

• Accessibility Options:

We had recently gotten feedback over some of our visuals and realized that we could easily extend our current Graphics Accessibility options. So we added in toggles to disable a few different visual effects in our game that may be a bit jarring for some players. These effects are:

– The Ship UI shaking when the player takes damage

– The Speed Lines that help show that the Chaser’s speed is different at different energy levels. (These exist since we refuse to have the space background behind you scroll, as that is a pet peeve of ours for space games.)

– The Warp Lines that flash across the screen while you’re Mid-Jump.

If anyone notices any other effects that would benefit from a toggle, please let us know! We really appreciate all the feedback we get!

 

• Voyager Mode Options:

The above bugs reared their head as I was partway through adding more options for Voyager Mode. Before this update, there were three different options (Overall Damage Taken Modifier, Shield Damage Taken Modifier, and Hull Damage Taken Modifier), but we’ve been wanting to expand Voyager Mode’s customizability with some options not directly related to the amount of damage you take. The newly added sliders modify the rate at which Systems break when the Chaser takes Hull damage and the rate at which Systems are depleted when the Chaser is struck by Ion Weapons. As with the previous damage options, both of these can be set anywhere from 0 to 3 times the default rate! We also went ahead and slightly rearranged the layout of the existing Voyager Options to make room for these new options and future planned additions.

 

That covers all the major changes in last week’s patch, but there a few more minor changes that you can read up on by visiting the official patch notes here!

You can also follow us on Twitter and join our Discord for more news and to give feedback! If you wish to play The Chaser’s Voyage, you can buy it while we’re in Early Access on Steam:

Playing The Chaser’s Voyage with a Gamepad

With our Gamepad Update now live on Steam, we have finally entered into the second part of the “Making our Tutorial” phase… actually making the tutorial. Implementing gamepad support was an exciting, but necessary, detour, as adding it was always one of our biggest desires and the tutorial was always something we were gonna save for last. During our time in Early Access, we have really come to grasp how badly our game needs a playable tutorial. The video we have that plays when you first load up the game asks the player to take in a lot of information before they’ve even touched the game and right now, our quick overview of gamepad controls, may be too ambiguous. These were never meant to be permanent. While they could exist in some forms later, they will most likely be removed once we have finished building the playable tutorial. After all, when it comes to video games, the best teacher is actual experience. In the meantime, we ask that you continue to be patient with us and use this article as another resource for learning how to play with the gamepad!

 

 

Probably the most essential part of playing with the gamepad is learning to associate which button goes with which system.

•Weapons: A (on Xbox) / Cross (on PlayStation)

•Shields: X / Square

•Engines: Y / Triangle

•Auxiliary: B / Circle

•Space Jump: Right Shoulder

 

When pressing any of these buttons alone, you will begin repairing that system if it is broken. If your Space Jump Drive is fully charged, pressing the right shoulder button will send you to the next area. Otherwise, pressing these buttons on their own won’t do anything.

 

One of the most important mechanics in The Chaser’s Voyage is the ability to reallocate power from one system to another quickly and effectively to fit your preference and the current situation. The right and left triggers take the place of the right and left button on your computer’s mouse. Only this time, you hold down a trigger and press one of the system buttons to change the power. Left trigger to take power away and add it to your reserves and right trigger to put power in from your reserves.

 

We had a lot of discussion of how to properly convey this when making the controller image above, but we were worried it might be to vague. For example, one way I thought of transcribing it was:

 

•Increase Power to Weapons:   RT(Hold) + A.

•Increase Power to Weapons:   LT(Hold) + A

 

But Cameron was worried that this would imply that you had to do both at the exact same time… which you don’t have to. So I thought about writing it like:

 

•Increase Power to Weapons:   RT(Hold), A

 

But it was by that point that I remembered that this is why I never got into fighting games besides Super Smash Bros. as a kid. We concluded it was best to just use plain language and wait until we can make the players do this in a tutorial.

 

I think our other buttons are much more straight forward. We have many of the ship’s other functions set to the D-Pad but opted to move Activate Communications to the left shoulder button simply because in the heat of a thrilling battle, that button is more accessible.

 

To be honest, I wasn’t sure how The Chaser’s Voyage was going to play on gamepad, which is why I didn’t want to focus too much on it during early development. It was something Cameron really fought for to add in before proper work on the tutorial would begin. Now, playing on gamepad is the only way I play The Chaser’s Voyage and I’m kicking myself for not pushing to get it down much earlier in production. Consider this lesson learned!

 

You can also follow us on Twitter and join our Discord for more news and to give feedback! If you wish to play The Chaser’s Voyage, you can buy it while we’re in Early Access on Steam:

The Long Awaited Gamepad Update is Now Live!

Hello everyone! We’ve finally done it! You can now play The Chaser’s Voyage using gamepads! In this week’s article, I’m gonna give you a rundown of what’s new in Update 0.2.0.

 

 

Let’s start with the obvious: Gamepad support! Since the next goal of ours is to make a playable tutorial, we first needed to add in gamepad controls. This took much longer than we expected, mainly due to implementing full menu navigation via gamepads. (You can read more about what that entailed here.) Besides navigating the menu with gampeads (and now keyboard as well), we also added in rumble, rebinding of gamepad controls, and even some neat interactions with the PS4 and PS5 gamepad lights! Those lights will now match the Chaser’s Cockpit Color and will also change to match whenever a character is speaking. Of course, you can also pilot the Chaser using a gamepad, and we have a handy control mapping (seen above) in game to help people understand the controls until we implement the playable tutorial. We also have notifications that pause the game to tell you when a gamepad controller gets connected or disconnected, a must have for gameoad support!

 

 

An important note regarding Steam’s Input Controller. Currently, The Chaser’s Voyage does not support Steam’s Input Controller. Gamepad support has been implemented to be used through Windows, so if it seems like the gamepad isn’t working at all, make sure to set the “Override For The Chaser’s Voyage” (under The Chaser’s Voyage Properties->Controller) option to “Disable Steam Input”. This should allow Windows to do it’s thing without Steam’s interruption. (Not all controllers work with Windows though, so keep that in mind.) We would like to eventually add support for Steam’s Input Controller, but as we have a form of gamepad support already implemented, it is currently not as big of a priority compared to things like the Tutorial or Crew Journal.

 

Next, thanks to some feedback we’ve received, we’ve gone ahead and made a few non-gamepad related changes. The first is that we’ve changed the default Power Level Configuration. Before it was 2 power in Weapons, 2 in Shields, 2 in Engines, and 2 in Auxiliary. An even split made sense to us as a middle ground between any customization the player may want to use. However, it is also a absolutely TERRIBLE configuration to keep one’s power at, and by making it the default power, we wrongly enforced the idea that it should be the main power configuration. To address that, we’ve now made the default configuration as follows: 0 power in Weapons, 3 in Shields, 3 in Engines, and 2 in Aux. The most important things when playing The Chaser’s Voyage are to go fast, and to not take too much damage. This configuration should hopefully prime players into a more optimal play style.

 

 

The second change was made to spice up Minefields. While Minefields can be very challenging when fighting off enemies, a Minefield on its own was a bit lack luster. We wanted to spice up Minefields so that they were more interesting without an enemy, but not too much harder when there was someone to fight. Our solution? Moving mines! Each mine in a Minefield now has a chance of moving up and down in addition to the left. These mines are marked with a yellow pulsing light, instead of the normal solid green light. These make minefields much more exciting, and we originally tested out having all the mines move in this way, but that made fighting enemies within a Minefield much too challenging. By only having some mines move, we hit a nice balance between interesting and not overly punishing.

 

 

Finally we made some much smaller changes: We made The Phantom Nebula Insignia’s free repairs now work with Neutral Imperial and Neutral UGS Fleets, we rearranged some buttons on the Customize Ship screen (and added a Randomize All color option), updated some UI, and fixed a whole bunch of bugs!

 

Here’s a link to the full patch notes for more details, and for more news follow us on Twitter and join our Discord. (Where you can also give feedback!)

Fun Little Gamepad Features

We’re still working hard on getting our gamepad update done! A lot of what’s left (at the time of this writing) is getting it so that when a controller connects or disconnects, the game will pause and notify the player. In the mean time, please enjoy just a taste of what is to come regarding playing with a gamepad.

 

You can follow us on Twitter and join our Discord for more news and to give feedback! If you wish to play The Chaser’s Voyage, you can buy it while we’re in Early Access on Steam:

3 Tips When Playing The Chaser’s Voyage

Last week I talked about some of the ways we’ll be updating, and not updating, The Chaser’s Voyage based on feedback we’ve received. So while we begin crafting the tutorial, here are some tips to help you succeed at The Chaser’s Voyage.

 

1) Gotta Go Fast!

We’re experimenting with what the default engine power should be, but remember that you only have 100 days to earn your one million units. This 100 day limit is not a flavorful timer, it’s real, and your space jump drive charges faster the more power you have in your engines. This doesn’t necessarily mean you need to have level 4 engines on all the time, but having them fully powered up often, especially when in empty space or during other opportunities when you can auto-pilot, is a must.

 

 

2) Experiment With Power Set Ups / Balanced is Bad

As mentioned last week, we are changing the ship’s default power distribution from 2 Weapons, 2 Shields, 2 Engines, and 2 Auxiliary to a 0/3/3/2 set up. This is because the 2/2/2/2 set up is really bad. It’s like driving the speed limit in a racing game, it’s safe, it’s boring, and you aren’t gonna win. Instead, you should be experimenting with extremes. Choose a system you want to focus on for each situation. For example, when fighting pirates that you want to quickly dispatch of, you should try and have your weapons set to power level 3 or 4. Then decide whether you want to put more power into your shields or engines. Some situations might demand more shield power than engines, such as flying through a dense asteroid field. Others might demand more engines power, such as if the pirates are using ion weapons that easily chew through your shields.

 

The point is, you definitely need to shift your power around in order to succeed. Especially, remember to set your engines to max power when you can cruise on auto-pilot. After all, you are in a race against time!

 

3) Look Over Client Information

I think a lot of players will be tempted at first to just pick the client who is paying the highest amount of money. That’s usually fine early on, but eventually, a lot more factors are added into the equation and if you expect to survive and pay back your debt, you will need to take them into account.

 

 

For example, some clients have specific factions that are after them, like the Empire or the UGS. When looking at the right side of the client select screen, you can read that fun little story about why they need to hire you and find out if anyone is after them, which should factor into your decision if you scroll down further and see which territories their trip will take you in. (The client face portrait backgrounds are also colored to reflect any enemies or allies they may have.)

 

So, let’s say you pick up an “Evil Scientist” on the run for their experiments. They’re offering you the most money out of your three clients. While reading their story, you find out they’re on the run from the Empire. Then, when you check their territory list, they want to cross 3 imperial territories in a row. From your past experiences, you know that imperial territories have more patrolling imperial fleets that you’ll have to fly through. Also, if in any of those territories you come across a planet, you will not be able to land on it for repairs as it is an imperial controlled planet. So, while that client is offering you the most money, maybe even the best deal as you must take into account how long their mission is going to take, it could still be the riskiest.

 

Those are just some tips I usually recommend to players when first starting to play The Chaser’s Voyage. I know, as the developer, I will not be able to hold the hand of everyone who plays our game, so we’re going to try and emphasize these tips in the tutorial.

 

You can also follow us on Twitter and join our Discord for more news and to give feedback! If you wish to play The Chaser’s Voyage, you can buy it while we’re in Early Access on Steam:

 

Feedback We’ve Gotten and How We’re Addressing It

With our second Steam sale ending this week, I thought this would be a good opportunity to talk a bit more about where we’re taking The Chaser’s Voyage based on feedback we’ve received since going live via Early Access. First, there’s the article Cameron wrote up a few weeks ago talking about how we’ve been busy updating our game to work with gamepad controllers. We should hopefully be done with that soon, but at the time of this writing, we’re currently nailing down rumble features. Also, if you use a PlayStation controller, you’re in for a special treat! One of the reasons we wanted to get the gamepad stuff in sooner rather than later is due to  some feedback we got shortly after launching into Early Access.

 

Interestingly, the other feedback we’ve been receiving has revealed an issue we suspected could be a problem. It’s luckily not about any major game design decisions, as we were pretty determined to make sure our game was close to finalized before entering Early Access. Instead it’s about conveying how to play our game. Even before our Early Access launch, we anticipated this might be an issue. It’s our belief that tutorials should be made last because they are the first thing to become outdated if you change any kind of mechanic and in our case, it’s a good thing because we might have to change some stuff to better emphasize mechanics.

 

Here’s some examples of feedback we’ve received that we will be addressing in some matter or another:

• Going Slow Makes the Game Boring

An interesting bit of feedback we’ve received involves a core part of our game that ties the space jump drive to the engine speed. The general gist of the feedback is always that some events take too long/aren’t interesting enough when going slow, but are too hard and intense when going fast. It’s a kind of paradoxical issue to work out because it comes from players wanting the best of both worlds, something that’s safe and easy but also challenging and dangerous. When designing this game, we made a couple of design choices that we thought would encapsulate the idea of skill and risk that comes from, honestly, a good game.

 

 

The first was that higher speed would mean more punishment for mistakes. It’s a simple risk reward system that is essential to any game where the premise is that you must complete a task by a certain amount of time. In that sense, The Chaser’s Voyage is a bit like a racing game. Playing things safe and going slow is how you lose. However, the second design choice we made is that going slow by removing power from your engines IS sometimes necessary. It’s why we gave you the amount of power that we did and why part of this game is learning how to manage your resources carefully. You cannot have it all, so you must choose carefully, and sometimes when fighting off an enemy, you will need that extra offensive or defensive boost. It’s one of those aspects that, I think, makes our game really interesting.

 

The third design choice was tying the engines to the jump drive. The reason we did that actually came about from testing and was very obvious when we tried having the jump drive separate from the engines. The optimal strategy would just be not to play. Like, say you were in a debris field: you could set shields to max, engines to to zero, and go make a sandwich and by the time you come back, you could just jump to the next area. One really shouldn’t be making a game where not playing is a good strategy. An alternative could have been to make the speed of obstacles always the same and have the jump drive still charge at a fixed pace, with engines just affecting maneuverability. We actually do have some insignias that somewhat do that, but with some added effects to change the game up a bit, but overall the reason we didn’t want that for the default game mode is because it greatly simplifies the experience and reduces the impact of the choices you can make. It also eliminates the possibility of damaging an enemy ship’s engines and then just boosting away, which we think is a really cool strategy that you don’t see in a lot of games.

 

 

So that said, what are we going to do with this feedback? Well, for starters, we’re making some adjustments to the default power distribution that you get when first taking off from Azedo and when you respawn in Voyager Mode. Before, it was a 2/2/2/2 set up (that’s 2 in weapons, 2 in shields, 2 in engines, and 2 in auxiliary). We had it set up like this because it just kinda felt right, even if that set up is actually a very sub-optimal way of playing. We’ve now set it up so that default power distribution is 0/3/3/2. We did this to reinforce a couple of key points, such as: you should be going somewhat fast at all times and that defense is more important than offense. We also believe this set up is the best to keep someone alive after they’ve just respawned.

 

We’re also going to  place in the tutorial (and maybe at the start of a new game, though in that case it will be toggleable) a message from Wolfe that will better explain that the faster you’re going, the faster your jump drive charges. That’s what this problem really is: players not understanding this mechanic. If we can get players to learn that, then we think they’ll have a lot more fun with the game.

 

• Mouse accessibility

We’ve heard, and always suspected that some players might just loose track of the mouse when playing with the mouse and keyboard. We hope that people more accustomed to gamepads can alleviate this problem by switching to gamepad controls once we release our gamepad update. For those who will be sticking with the mouse and keyboard, we’ve explored solutions like adding a trail or a small pulse that could come from the mouse to help players keep track of it. However, many of the style of fixes we’ve thought about are things that the Windows OS already has built in. For this reason, we’ve decided that, at least for now, we aren’t going to be adding any mouse accessibility options, since it just overlaps with the accessibility options that Windows already has. (We do already have the option to turn off our custom cursor though!)

 

• Speed lines

Playing The Chaser’s Voyage, you might have noticed these white lines that streak across the screen as you’re flying. They were originally suggested by our artist, Nate, as a way of conveying motion across the screen, as we were pretty adamant about not letting the space background scroll (as that is not how perspective works in space). Lines such as this seemed common enough in space games, but I suppose never in a bullet hell-esque game that The Chaser’s Voyage can be compared to. Due to some feedback, we’ll be adding an option that will turn off the speed lines for anyone who finds them distracting.

 

• Changing what buttons advance cutscene dialogue

When we first made the cutscenes, we set some of the controls for them, like clicking to progress and space to auto-advance because those made sense to us. Hearing some feedback, we think players have all sorts of preferences that would be easy to accommodate, such as pressing spacebar or enter to progress, while making the auto-advance toggle a less commonly used button.

 

 

• Better communication

Just like with the engines, we overall need to better communicate some core mechanics. For example, one player didn’t remember that the space jump drive was it’s own system and needed to be repaired on it’s own to function. One of the hardest things right now for us, is understanding how new players think without us being directly there to hold their hands. We’ve been developing this game for so long that a lot of the controls are second nature to us. We try our best, but sometimes we think something is clear when it isn’t. The challenging part is that we need to find that fine line between giving our players the opportunity to learn the game and constantly holding their hand, afraid that there might be some aspect they don’t understand. Games are suppose to be about learning to make, and experiment, with your own choices. The best we can do, as the developers, is give the player the tools they need to succeed. We cannot help it if someone just forgets something we already explained.

 

 

You can also follow us on Twitter and join our Discord for more news and to give feedback! If you wish to play The Chaser’s Voyage, you can buy it while we’re in Early Access on Steam:

 

 

Free The Chaser’s Voyage Summer 2022 Wallpaper!

Sometimes it’s really important to take a break and enjoy the summer sun… even when you have a mission to complete.

 

 

Here’s our little summer gift to all our fans: a summer 2022 The Chaser’s Voyage desktop wallpaper. Feel free to download it! Also be sure to check out The Chaser’s Voyage, currently in Early Access, on Steam. It’s on sale during Steam’s Summer Sale for 49% off!

 

Follow us on Twitter and join our Discord for more news and to give feedback!