Oh boy the Alpha has arrived. It was a bit delayed but we’re happy to see it finally making it’s way out to the public. We’ve got a lot to talk about to let’s go through some of the fun new things we’re putting into Stellarsaurus.

Stellarsaurus is still in early development, and player feedback is the biggest thing which drives changes to our game. We wish to acknowledge your help and let you know that you’ve been heard, so any changes based off of your feedback will have a 📣 next to it. Drop some comments on our itch page or fill in one of our feedback forms, it all helps <3

New Enemies - Meet the Dinos

We’ve finally got some ‘saurus to go with our Stellar’; introducing our Raptor and Pterodactyl enemies! Our general goal with these enemies is to introduce a way to help speed up rounds if they’re taking too long. We don’t want them to be too overwhelming initially, but if you and your buddies are taking too long, then we’ll start mounting some additional pressure on you.

New Gamemode - Extraction

Extraction will look very similar to our Free-For-All gamemode, but contains a “G.O.H” (Get Outta Here). Pick up and start charging this device to escape the chaos of space dinosaurs and any other people who may want to escape alive. The lucky people to escape alive will get a lot of points, and whoever has the most points after 10 rounds wins. Bonus points are rewarded for killing dinos, players, and generally staying alive.

New Maps

For the Alpha we have two new maps to add to the map rotation pool, but expect this number to grow vastly as behind the scenes we have a number of our map creation tools finished up. We have 7 maps being used for both gamemodes right now, but we’re going to be able to create lots more for the future. Stay tuned!

New Weapons and Balancing

Introducing the Rocket Launcher and Moletov Cocktail! These new fiery weapons should add some nice variety to our current selection of weapons. Be careful to not hurt yourself in the process.

With some pre-Alpha playtesting we got LOTS of feedback on our weapons. We wish we could say that it was all positive, but much of it was valid criticism. A large overarching theme was that fast weapons were good, and slow ones were bad. We’re trying to follow a general philosophy of “buffs are cooler than nerfs”, so for now we’re buffing many of the slow weapons:

📣 Shotgun bullet distance increased

📣 Shotgun bullet spread increased

📣 Gauss Rifle charge time halved

📣 Gauss Rifle now shoots through walls

📣 Grenades now explode sooner

Grenades can now be cooked by holding down the ‘shoot’ button

New Power Ups

We added a new environmental object to the game, a crate! Exciting we know, but what’s inside them is even more exciting. Introducing 3 new power ups: a double jump, slow-motion, and speed boost. Each of these effects only last for a short while, so make use of them whilst you can!

Graphical Updates

Stellarsaurus has had some placeholder art for a while now, and we’ve just about worked our way through it all and replaced them with our own work. We’re still using animus’ space background, but that’s also going to be replaced when the time comes. We updated our blood splatter particles, changed some of the bullet sprites to better suit their corresponding weapons, and tweaked elements of our tilemap sprites for the spaceship theme. For those with a sharp eye you will also notice that our Raptor friend from our banner art now has a toothy smile.

Final Thoughts

There’s probably some more little changes that we’ve missed, but that’s all the main fun stuff that’s getting included. As always we’re super thankful for everyone who’s been a part of our testing to help get us to this point, and we’re looking forward to seeing you in future updates! Next big milestone is the Beta, but expect a couple of small version updates and tweaks before then.

If you’ve made it this far, then I’d like to thank you personally for putting in the time to read through what is a long devlog post for what is a random indie student game. Making posts like this to show off our work has been a lot of fun and we’re grateful for each and every one of you who are spending the time to keep up with our development :-D

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