Alpha

Alpha stage reached!

For a long time I have been working on the "under the hood" features most of the time, but now I can finally say the main core of the Enfora Star is finally done. Player movement, shooting, power-ups, the shop, turrets, enemies, and main visual elements are now in place.

I can now focus more on adding new enemies, abilities, or weapons to the game. Which are very needed for keeping the gameplay exciting and enjoyable.

New ability: Link with turret

The player can now link with turrets and take control of them. This also boosts the turret to level 3, so the player has an additional way to get level 3 (red) weapons in use. After walls are added to the build system, this ability is more efficient.

Enemies got some new features too!

Red robot now has a "big brother," which will spawn mines when they are attacking the player. In numbers these might cause a problem.

Blue robot has a special ability to block bullets and shock the player. Shock ability is not yet fully functional, but it is building up nicely.

Social media

I once said that I'm not a social media expert, and I somewhat don't even like to post things on social media platforms. But I have posted some development content on X and Reddit and got some good feedback there too. And yes, it still feels a bit overwhelming. I do not know how someone has so much time to post tweets or videos; I struggle even with simple GIFs.

I know it is kind of necessary to do self-marketing on social media platforms for indie developers to get any attention, but still, I'm not a big fan of it. A couple of times, I have even managed to get zero response from Reddit. I do not know how it is possible, but yes, I have done it. Or... this is a very common case on Reddit(?).

If you want to check my posts, you can find the links to my accounts from this page footer!

What's next, a playable demo?

I have plans to get a playable demo out somewhere (probably on Itch.io) and gather more feedback with it. I do not know when this is going to happen, but I'll inform you when it is available.

Now the main focus is to get a playable alpha for anyone who wants to try it and get more feedback from it.

Let's get this happening! Thanks for reading!

Teemu, TheAspen