Tuesday 17 October 2017

Weekly Development Progress Report, 16/10/17

Last week was a bit of a mixed bag, my hours worked were a bit below target but it was a pretty busy week. I've completed the Halloween update for Zombie Cannon Attack! (see below) and just released it today on the Google Play store, I have a few tweaks to make to versions for other platforms so I'll get on with that this week.

Super Screamy Halloweeny!
Zombies and pumpkins and witches, oh my!
So what's in the Halloween update? Well, after the zombie hordes invaded the towns and cities, some of the inhabitants fled to the apparent safety of the nearby Spooky Forest. Unfortunately the zombies have found them, and it seems the forest wasn't quite as empty as it seemed...
I wonder if the soldier had time to regret his choice of a large pumpkin as cover
Yes, the Spooky Forest is full of Witches. Literally, full of them, in their hundreds - leaving their bubbling cauldrons and pumpkin heads lying around everywhere too. Not to mention the haunted houses, which almost outnumber the trees. To be honest it's difficult to understand how no-one happened to notice them before.

Luckily for the fleeing citizens however, instead of turning on the terrified refugees in an orgy of frog-metamorphosising destruction, the Witches are actually helping. Witches must really hate zombies, either that or the whole idea of evil witches is some sort of nefarious patriarchal myth.

"Beryl, have you seen my skull lying around?" "Have you checked the attic?" "What would it be doing up there?"
So, 'plot' aside, what you actually get is some nice new Halloween themed scenery and obstacles. I've also added a bit of animation to the new scenery and obstacles to spruce things up a bit. More importantly though, there's a new enemy to face. Witches fire an ice beam that hits multiple targets, making them dangerous enemies for even the largest horde. Worse still though, the ice beam both damages and slows your zombies. As Zombie Cannon Attack! is at heart a race against time to pass on the infection before your zombies decompose this makes the Witch a really tough enemy. I've spent most of the week tuning the difficulty, it's much tougher than the default level 'Starter Town', and maybe a little tougher than the unlockable 'Brainsville' level too, but that difficulty is balanced by the extra data you can collect to upgrade your ravenous undead minions.

In other news...

The new game is progressing slowly, mainly thanks to the time I've taken out recently to update Zombie Cannon Attack! I've done some work on coding the equipment system, and when that's finished I'll move on to crafting. At that point the core of the game will be ready and I can start fleshing out the shoot 'em up section.

My latest game, Zombie Cannon Attack!, is available for FREE on web and android. Give it a try and let me know what you think.

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