---Red---Tether--> will come to Steam Next Fest in Oktober and the plan is to have a nice little Demo build ready by then. The game made some nice progress in the last weeks and might even be ready for release by the time of the festival, but I want to give it another couple weeks after the demo is out to implement feedback. Heres a breakdown of what Ive been working on recently and what is still to come.
Mid Game Opposition About 10 new enemy classes got added, focusing on mid game challenge. New asteroid variant come armed, or filled with coolant. Hazard tugs and refinery ships carry dangerous cargo, ripe for being spilled on their escorts. Minelayers deny areas with seeker mines. Stealth ships are hard to identify until you rip their H-heatsinks off. Late game combat ships might carry antimatter auto cannons or heavy railguns, allowing them to fire at you from mid and long range. The new ships also come with new defensive attachments that interfere with your tether attempts. Shock spires electrify ship hulls when harpooned, giving you a narrow window to remain tethered to ships that carry them. Shield generators block tethers altogether, the generator itself remains vulnerable, but is anchored heavily into the ship and requires multiple tethers to be ripped off.
These defenses arent just detriments though, you can turn them against other ship too. Using electrified hulls to shock and disable other attachments is the obvious options. But the increases HP of shielded ships also makes them ideal anvils you can use to crash weaker ships against, if you find creative ways to get them there. These are just a few of the systemic interactions I intend for the game, more enemy and hazard mechanics are still on the way.
Options Menu Other than that I also threw in a basic options menu, wanting to get that done way before the demo. As with my previous game, the glitch and feedback stuff will be freely customizable. And Im considering some accessibility options like a hight contrast mode for later.
Hangar Base And Ship Unlocks And lastly I started working on hangar base and unlockable player ships, with some parallels to Hyperspace Dogfights in that regard. Ships all come with signature items that can be unlocked for other ships to find on their run. The second ship you'll get will most likely be again one that grants random upgrades on launch. Your starter ship is carrying Chainsaw Field as its signature item, offering an easy fallback method of dealing damage with high powered speed-collisions. Overall I'm leaning towards ship concepts with more distinct signature items this time. 7 ships are planned for the initial release.
After that I still want add a few more things. Therell be a black box system that gives you some unlockable lore to collect and slowly reveals context on the game world. Late game enemies and bosses are still in the pipe. And to wrap it all up I want to implement an endless mode that features randomized waves instead of the pre-made ones the game is currently using. Stay tuned for the demo in October, allowing you to explore some of this first hand! Cheers and stay tethered! Stefan Sleeper Games