It’s been a busy month working on Crab Champions- lots of great progress has been made. I’ve been mainly focusing on getting Survival mode finished as it is the main mode of the game with the most content to add. Here are a few things I worked on this month:
Perks
Perks are passive upgrades found around each Survival map in chests that can be opened in exchange for crystals (enemies drop crystals when they are eliminated). Perks only last for the current Survival run- when you are eliminated, you start the next run fresh with no perks. If you get a duplicate perk, it levels up and makes the effect stronger.
Here are the “basic” perks that are in the game so far. I have a long list of more creative and interesting perks that’ll require more work to implement and will be added with future updates.
Common Perks
- Fortitude: Max health increased
- Efficiency: Shots that hit enemies return ammo to the clip
- Time Is Money: Earn crystals over time
- Scavenger: Heal when collecting crystals
- Vitality: Damage increased when at full health
- Shield Siphon: Damage blocked by your shield heals you
- Haste: Ability cooldown time reduced
- Endurance: Heal after completing each wave
Rare Perks
- Adrenaline: Health regeneration speed increased
- Souped Up: Ability leveled up
- Second Wind: Damage increased when at low health
- Speed Demon: Move faster and jump higher
- Personal Space: Max health increased for each enemy eliminated at close range
- Stunner: Enemies are stunned for a short time when hit
- All You Can Eat: No ammo is used for 2 seconds after eliminating an enemy
- Grim Reaper: Heal after eliminating enemies
Epic Perks
- Claws Of Fury: Increased weapon damage
- Sharpshooter: Increased weapon critical damage
- Supercharged: Increased weapon fire rate
- Grave Dodger: Invincible for 3 seconds when at 1 health
- Rare Treasure: Enemies have a small chance to drop a random perk when eliminated
- Bonus Crystals: All crystal drops contain bonus crystals
- Bulletproof: Chance to completely block incoming damage
- Strength In Numbers: Gain an extra use of your ability
Legendary Perks
- Exploding Enemies: Enemies explode when eliminated
- Splash Damage: Bullets deal splash damage to nearby enemies
- Storm Cloud: A lightning bolt strikes low health enemies, dealing AOE shock damage
- Piercing Rounds: Bullets pierce through enemies
- Firepower: Shoot 2 extra bullets per shot with higher spread
- Powerslide: Sliding surrounds you with fire that burns nearby enemies
- Ice Flip: Flipping freezes and knocks back nearby enemies
- Care Package: An asteroid containing perks and weapons drops in a random location at the start of each island
Survival Gameplay Loop
I’ve been looking at switching up the gameplay to avoid the repetition that many wave based survival games suffer from. One way of doing this is introducing different types of islands which dramatically change the pace of the game, keeping players on their toes. While one strategy may work great for standard islands, a challenge island may require something very different, forcing players to adapt.
The goal of Survival mode is to reach Crab Island and complete each of the 4 (more will be added later) biomes on the way there. Players can choose to keep going endlessly after Crab Island and loop back over the biomes with tougher enemies. Each map starts with a random time of day, randomized enemies, randomized loot locations and more. Currently to complete a biome, 5 islands must be survived and they follow this structure:
Island 1 + 2
Standard Waves: Mixed enemy spawns at a normal pace.
Island 3
Challenge Island: The island has a specific gameplay modifier that switches up gameplay in a challenging way, here are a few examples:
- Low Gravity: You and enemies can fly meaning you can reach certain areas of the map more easily but can be left vulnerable floating in the air
- High Gravity: It’s harder for you to jump and your projectiles are more affected by gravity
- Speed: Everything moves faster (including enemies and their projectiles!)
- Instagib: All enemies are eliminated in one shot, but so are you
- No Shield: All shields are disabled, so certain enemies become a much larger threat
- No Health Regeneration: All health regeneration is disabled- playing carefully here is a must
- Lethal Liquids: Watch your step- touching water, acid pools, lava or other liquids results in an instant elimination!
- Invisible Enemies: Enemies are almost invisible so it’s much easier for them to sneak up on you
- Tiny Enemies: Enemies are much smaller than usual which makes them harder to hit
Here’s a look at the Low Gravity modifier in action:
Island 4
Horde Island: Enemies come at a much faster pace in one long intense wave. This is a great island to get a lot of crystals to loot up before the boss.
Island 5
Boss Island: Beat the boss to complete the biome and move on to the next one with a legendary perk and weapon dropped as a reward.
New Weapons
The weapon selection is starting to feel nicely varied- check out the newly added flamethrower, complete with fire propagation!
I’m also currently working on a Gravity Cannon, a Boomerang Gun and a bunch of other fun weapons- more on those next time!
Other Stuff
Here are a few things that aren’t quite ready yet but will be explored in future updates:
New Survival Lobby
The Survival lobby used to be a boring menu- now it’s a fun map where you can practice shooting, choose your abilities for the run, find secret areas and even listen to a crab band while you wait for more players to join!
Abilities
These are chosen in the lobby before the Survival run begins and more can be unlocked by leveling up- I’ll be diving more in depth on the progression and rewards system in a future update. Abilities are intended to allow the player to choose a certain playstyle- the Sentry Gun works for players that like to set up a defensive position and hold it down while the Dab Of Death is for those that like to get up close and personal. There are also defensive abilities such as Burrow- this allows you to hide in the sand and not take damage for a short period of time- more on these in the next update!
Soundtrack
Work on the soundtrack continues, I keep adding new songs! Currently there are at least 15 tracks with a few more that I’d like to add before release.
Bugs
As always I’m also spending a decent amount of time fixing bugs as well as cleaning up and refactoring the codebase as it shapes up for release- I figure it’s better to spend extra time doing this work now than having a mess to deal with later. This way I can add new features and content much faster in the future, building on a solid foundation.
Thanks for reading, see you next month for another update!
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