Elsie Relaunch (Preview)!

Hey everyone!

Sorry for the very late update but we have been grinding on redesigning all of Elsie's art, animation and code base. Everything should feel a lot more streamlined and polished than before. The game format has gone through big changes because of how limited we felt with the initial design of the game. Hopefully you guys like it. This is still just a preview build of the new redesign. 

We will be at PAX West 2019 to showcase the newest version of Elsie there.
Also follow us on Twitter for frequent updates on our development!
https://twitter.com/KnightShiftTeam

Changelog

Stages

• Stages are no longer just simple rooms that spawn waves of enemies. Levels are now structured as a procedurally generated series of handcrafted rooms.
• Stages consists of these node types
  • Level
    • A section of the level where the player is free to traverse and will contain almost anything. 
    • The player is not locked in in this node.
  • Arena
    • This node locks the player in and starts a set of enemy waves and will unlock once the player defeats all enemy waves. 
    • A reward is given on completion. 
    • This was the original Elsie experience from PAX.
  •  Shop
    • Where the player can spend their earned bits to purchase items, weapons or unlocks
  • Challenge
    • A special node where the player is giving a special challenge with rules associated with it. 
    • These rooms are optional and provide the player with special rewards
  • Bonfire
    • Contains an interactable vending machine that allows the player to select one action to perform, like restoring health or enhancing your stats. 
    • Certain items will allow the player to perform more actions if collected.
  • Boss
    • The boss encounter. Shocking. 

Mechanics

• Energy has been reworked to give greater incentive for Energy management during combat and to give Energy restoring Augments and Parts a bigger role in your builds.
• Successful parries now grant Energy.
• Dashing now costs Energy to use.
• Critical attacks have become a greater part of gameplay. 
• Ranged weapons now deal critical damage on every 5th bullet fired. Some weapons are an exception to this rule.
• Critical attacks deal 300% of the original damage to it's target.
• Parry window has been dropped from 0.65 seconds to 0.25 seconds to increase risk while in combat.
• Parrying attacks now empowers you briefly, giving you access to a new ability, Counterattack.
• Counterattack - You can now unleash your stored energy from parrying to create a shockwave that deals 30 damage to all nearby enemies and destroys nearby bullets.
• Dash plus - Every third dash attack on an enemy, deals 3x damage of a normal dash attack. 
• Dive plus - Deals 3x damage of a normal dive attack. (Rework pending)
• Dive Attacks now stun nearby enemies for a second on impact.
• Guard breaking is a new mechanic introduced to deal with those hardy enemies that block your attacks. Moves that guard break, stop enemies from blocking attacks and stun them for a second.
• Orbitals are a new addition to your arsenal. These are floating objects that circle around your person.
• Drones is an Orbital that fires bullets whenever you attack. Their provide a little bit of extra firepower but their damage is increased drastically when equipped with specific weaponry.
• Elemental Orbs are another Orbital that provide extra bonus to your weapon ultimates.
• More orbitals are coming!
• What are weapon ultimates? Each weapon and their elemental variants have a unique powerful attack that be used at the cost of SP. This can be from flooding the screen with bullets to summoning a giant laser from the sky. Not yet available in this build but will be usable in the next build!
• A new resource that can be found under your Energy bar is the Special bar. Your Special or "sp" is a resource used by your skills and ultimates. This resource doesn't regenerate over time but specific augments/parts can aid in recovering your sp.
• Overdrive is an experimental ability that we are still testing. This is a special ability that enhances your movement speed and damage for brief period of time.

Enemies

• All enemies have been completely reworked and redesigned.

Augments

• Augments have been changed so they are no longer separated into two sections of "General" and "Class-Specific".
• Now all augments are completely unique to the class you are playing. No more cross-class augments.

Items

• Items also got a rework in the new format. What were formally known as "General" augments are now becoming "Parts".
• Parts are now moveset modifiers like Augments but available to all classes.
• Parts can be purchased in shops located in levels, obtained by defeating special enemies or even found inside rare chests.
• Weapons and Skills are also now classified as Items but will be discussed in their own sections.

Weapons

All weapons available are for the Marksman class and each one has elemental variants

• Sidearm
  • Starting weapon
  • Semi-Automatic weapon
  • Energy efficient
• Mega Blaster
  • Charged weapon
  • Basic attack cannot deal critical damage
  • Charged attacks 
• Impaler
  • Semi-Automatic weapon
  • Each element has a unique firing style
• Swarmer
  • Semi-Automatic weapon
  • Increases Drone damage by 300%

Skills

All skills available are for the Marksman class and each one has elemental variants

• Reload
  • Restores all Energy
• Spark
  • Deals damage to nearby enemies
• Deploy
  • Summon a drone