Phobos Down is ready

The game has been in slow development for four years since the first prototype. Most of that time, there has a been playable alpha or beta version available, first on Itch.io only, later on Steam Early Access as well. I did not get as much feedback as I had hoped but the feedback I got was constructive and helped shape the game into what it is today.

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The original idea was to take all the features I liked in existing twin stick shooter games and leave out everything that I felt was unnecessary interruptions to the action. I tried to make an ideal twin stick shooter for myself, a middle-aged gamer with limited time, who enjoys twin stick shooters but can\'t keep up with the most hectic bullet hell games, and wants to enjoy more strategic shooting action without constant panic and struggle to survive.

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The arcade

During these four years I also upgraded my old DIY arcade cabinet to run Phobos Down. I\'m hoping to get this arcade cabinet publicly playable again somewhere in Tampere during December.

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What\'s new?

This update does more than just bumps the version number. Settings menu has been overhauled and some requested settings, like master volume control, has been added there. Some new enemy variants have been also added, including a new boss enemy that launches bombs in patterns around the player.

Here are all the changes since the last beta version:

• Fixed a bug in enemy obstacle avoidance that made them push too hard against obstacles.

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• Added evasive movement on hit to most smaller enemies.

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• Added medium sized crawler enemy variant.

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• Added smaller and larger variants of bomb launching crawler enemies.

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• Fixed logged errors on attempting to set achievements in non-Steam game version.

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• Split settings menu into gameplay and video+audio settings.

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• Added audio master volume control in settings.

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• Hide controller guides while mission info is shown.

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• Fixed crawler enemy walk animation speed not scaling with body size.

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• Added new bomb pattern launching boss enemy.

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• Adjusted boss enemy appearing probabilities.

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• Fixed duplicate vertices in some enemy models.

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• Added option to disable termination streak counter labels.

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What about the future?

I will continue to fix bugs and possibly even add some more content. After all, I still have quite a few ideas for new enemies and gear. I have done some testing with a mobile version for Android and it is technically feasible but I\'m not sure if it would be worth the trouble.

This update focuses mostly on improving in-game instructions and guides, especially regarding high scores.

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Message texts have been shortened and their timing adjusted so that player sees the instruction texts at the right time and has more time to read them. An additional direction indicator has been added that guides player toward the most important items like the extraction zone at the and of mission or to medical stations when badly hurt.

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There are also many minor visual improvements like added \"juice\" to score indicator, more plant variants, adjusted dynamic lights, animated extraction zone marker and added progress bar while compiling shaders.

And last but not least, this updated adds achievements!

Time for a quick progress report. After the last beta version, I\'ve been focusing on highlighting the high score aspect of the game and trying to improve the player instructions in general.

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The score label at the top of the screen has been juiced up with animation and improved sounds.Last completed game run score andresult is now visiblein the main menu and notifications are now shown when new high score ranks are reached during the mission.

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Score calculation for kill streak and multiple kill events is now based on increasing multiplier instead of fixed score rewards.This is now also visualized with kill score indicators that show the kill streak progression and the final score at the location of the event.

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Last but not least, I have finally implemented achievements for the Steam version of the game! There are currently 11 of them.

The change log is already quite long but I still have many improvements to do.I\'m planning to release the next beta update with all these improvements near the end of October.

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Phobos Down is participating in Finnish Games Week 2025 event and will be on sale for the duration of the event.

First of all, this update includes all the improvements shown in the last progress report like movable devices and these new spiky explosive plants:

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There are many small visual improvements like added variation for the vegetation, lightning arcs for stun effects, fixes to shadow issues and improved anti-aliasing in the UI. First version of the full intro sequence has also been created.

This update also adds three completely new enemies and a minefield creating device:

[img src=\"https://cdn.cloudflare.steamstatic.com/steamcommunity/public/images/clans/44820943/b822d1a6aad0b1f11e9c8269e5a370260d2a15e0.gif\"][/img]

One change worth a special mention is the target movement prediction for the auto-aiming. This makes hitting fast-moving enemies much easier, especially when they move up or down hills. This is something that should have been there from the start. Better late than never, I guess.

I have made some significant changes to scoring. The maximum amount of enemies per wave has been decreased which shortens the average mission duration and lowers the maximum possible score from direct enemy kills. Enemies now drop a bit more score items and all score rewards have been almost doubled to compensate with the lower number of enemies. This should lead to more variation in the final scores as lining upenemies for multi-kill and kill streak events is much better rewarded.

Here are all the changes since the last alpha version:

• Added a tip message on medical station usage.

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• Added circular equipment quality level progression indicator.

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• Improved anti-aliased line rendering.

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• Predict target movement in auto-aim with direct firing weapons too.

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• Added more confidential documents with backstory bits to destroy.

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• Added initial version of full intro sequence.

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• Show version on number in main menu only.

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• Fixed initial window size on first run too big for 1080p display.

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• Toggle full-screen mode with Alt+Enter and F11 too.

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• Improved controller guide layout.

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• Turned devices into movable rigid bodies.

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• Added lightning arcs for stun effect from explosions and devices.

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• Fixed shadow quality degradation when fragments/gibs fall outside of terrain.

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• Fixed hit streak tracking not counting reflected/pierced projectiles.

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• Added a plant variant that shoots spikes around when exploding.

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• Fixed obstacle placement not obeying set terrain height limits.

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• Added two more tree mesh variants.

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• Added visual wave effect to lure devices.

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• Re-show intro after 5 minutes without user input in menu when running in demo mode.

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• Added two new walker enemy types.

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• Implemented an alternative high score initials entry for the arcade cabinet.

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• Added new flying boss enemy type.

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• Play additional sounds when a boss enemy spawns or dies.

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• Destroyed enemy weak points now drop additional score items.

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• Fixed log spam and slowdown with more than 128 walker legs on screen.

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• Lowered maximum enemy wave length.

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• Increased some enemy score rewards slightly.

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• Doubled \"no damage to player/containers\" score rewards.

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• Increased termination streak detection time threshold a bit.

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• Increased all termination score bonuses significantly.

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• Mention protecting containers first in mission objective text.

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• Fixed generating bad triangles at terrain edges where height is zero.

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• Added one more clustered plant variant.

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• Made the first medical station device drop sooner at mission start.

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• Increased delay from wave reward drops to extraction zone appearing.

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• Fixed mouse control mode unintentionally activating at game start with gamepad.

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• Limit initial score item velocity to prevent them from flying too far from the source.

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• Shortened tip texts shown at mission start.

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• Fixed mission info animation not playing when running at low frame rate.

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• Added separate more visual control guide version for the arcade cabinet.

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• Handle WASD keys using physical key codes to support non-qwerty keyboards.

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• Added a mine field laying device.

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I decided that the game is now ready enough for beta testing phase. In practice, this does not change much but from now on I will be focusing more on balancing and issue fixes. There will be new content like more enemies, modifiers and devices, but I\'m not planning to make any big gameplay changes anymore.

Now is a good time to report all those issues and annoyances you\'ve encountered!

It's finally summer, so the development has sloweddown a bit as I expected. "Luckily" the summer in Finlandhas so far been very cold and rainy, so I have still made some progress.

A small change that has a big impact on the gameplay is the ability to pushdevices around. The possibility to choose the target position for orbital strikes,sentry guns, etc. has been requested many times but I haven't been able to make a simple enoughUI for that. I don't know why I didn't think of this before but the solution was pretty obvious:I simply made the devices movable before activation.No UI needed at all!

I have tried to add some visual variation by adding multiple mesh variants for the tree-like plants and one completely new explosive plant type that shoots spikes at nearby lifeforms.

Another visual improvement is the added lightning arcs for stun effect from explosions and devices.

Besides these visible changes, many minor bugs have been fixedand I have made improvements specific to thearcade cabinet.

I don't have an exact plan on when to release the next alpha update with all these improvements but I'll let you know when that time comes. There's quite a lot of things to do on my list and I'm planning to spend more time away from the computer during the summer months.

The input handling and weapon UI implementations have gone through major refactoring. This should not cause many visible changes but makes further development easier and enables touch input for a mobile version. The weapon wheel UI now uses more traditional point-and-click style interaction when playing with mouse.

A lot of the work since the last alpha update has gone into adding support for ballistic weapons and aim assist that makes hitting moving targets with them possible. The old "laser sight" weapon feature has been changed into a "trajectory display" that can visualize ballistic trajectories as well. The result of all this is a new "grenade launcher" modifier for the launcher weapon.


Another addition is a "fragmenting explosive" device. It is similar to the existing timed explosive device but shoots directed fragments at nearby enemies, dealing extra damage and extending the area of effect.


To add more ways to earn extra score, I have added hit streak bonuses. Extra score is rewarded for continuously shooting enemies with the rifle or shotgun without missing any shots. This can be combined with the usual termination streak score bonuses.

A couple of weeks ago I took my Phobos Down arcade cabinet to a local IGDA gathering and got a lot of useful feedback. Some minor issues were also found and most of them have already been fixed in this update.


Here are the changes since version 0.0.13:

• Major input handling refactoring to allow touch input later on.
• Always capture mouse cursor while in-game.
• Use traditional point & click mouse interaction with weapon UI.
• Re-implemented "constrained" mouse control mode with adjustable range.
• Improved modifier info box scaling.
• Added constant screen edge indicators showing off-screen container locations.
• Fixed auto-aim lock reticle not dimming when line of fire is blocked.
• Replaced laser sights with new trajectory display that supports ballistic trajectories.
• Properly hide all message texts in photo mode.
• Added grenade launcher modifier.
• Renamed "missile guidance" modifier to "target homing" now that it applies to grenades too.
• Default to gamepad controller mode on Steam Deck.
• Spawn all three medical station devices already at mission start.
• Blink medical device lights and screen edge indicators while player is badly hurt.
• Apply pending kill streak score bonus when player dies.
• Give score rewards for hit streaks without missed shots using projectile weapons.
  

It has been silent here but Phobos Down project is still very much alive.

I have done a major input system and weapon UI refactoring. This should not cause many visible changes but makes further development easier and enables touch input for a mobile version.

Mouse aiming has changed a bit. Now the mouse cursor is always captured in-game, so you don't accidentally click outside of the window. The "constrained mouse aim" toggle has been replaced with three-level "mouse aim range" setting that controls how far the mouse cursor is allowed to move from the player. The end results is the same but a bit more customizable.

Although the weapon wheel UI looks the same, it is now scalable and supports more traditional point-and-click style interaction with mouse (or touch):


It was pointed out in the feedback here that the player needs to be aware of the containers outside of the camera's view. To help with that, I added constant screen edge indicators that show the positions of all containers beyond screen edges (the grey bars in the gif above).

I started testing a new weapon modifier that goes by the name of "ballistic modifier" for now. In practice it turns the rocket launcher into a grenade launcher. This is going to need a lot of work before it is usable but I see great potential in it.


The auto-aiming works so that it uses the lower and more direct arc if target is close and the line of fire is not blocked. Otherwise the higher arc is used. This allows shooting in high arcs over obstacles while still shooting nearby enemies directly in the face. Currently the aiming does not account for targets velocity so hitting moving enemies is very hard. That is something I'm going to work on next.

The next game update with these changes is still [u]at least[/u] some weeks away.

This time the change log is a little shorter than usual but I wanted to get this update out sooner to fix some minor issues found in Steam review. There is a good amount of other improvements and additions too.

Two new weapon modifiers have been added. Gliding projectiles modifier makes projectiles glide along the ground instead of hitting it, making it possible to shoot enemies while hiding behind hills:


Directed explosion fragments modifier makes missile explosions launch a number of projectiles aimed towards nearby enemies and cause extra damage:


Weapon modifier stats display logic has been changed to handle additive properties better. Previously the change percentages felt too random. Now 100% always means the value added by one maximum quality modifier for that property:


Here are the changes since version 0.0.12:

• Smooth enemy burrowing sound loop pitch and volume changes.
• Added additional enemy unburrowing sound.
• Prevent the player and the crawling enemies from climbing too steep slopes.
• Fixed planet mesh not always rotating behind mission menu.
• Added gliding projectiles weapon modifier.
• Improved weapon property change display when installing a modifier.
• Added new splash screen at start.
• Fixed spawner enemy children not inherting their parent's target.
• Open menu to pause the game when a controller is disconnected while playing.
• Pause game if Steam overlay is activated.
• Properly handle possible weapon modifier removal in version upgrade.
• Added directed explosion fragments modifier for the launcher weapon.
  

The time has come. Phobos Down is now available on Steam Early Access.

Phobos Down has been in development for about three years and now has all major gameplay mechanics implemented. I have already done a lot of fixes and improvements based on player feedback on Itch.io and I'm planning to continue doing that with the help of wider audience here on Steam.

The game has been designed with Steam Deck in mind from the start so it's really good to finally have a version officially installable through Steam.

The initial game build for Steam is identical to the 12th public alpha version of the game. From here on, I'm planning to release updates simultaneously to all platform versions.