Official Website and Mailing List
What's Been Going On?
Currently the game is still in a state of design flux. On a week to week basis I'm still changing systems and mechanics, ripping stuff out, and prototyping stuff in. Sound effects and art assets are still flowing as the game universe is hashed out.
The core game is in there, namely obtaining missions and executing them on a grid-based tactical battlefield. You can move marines around, shoot stuff, use special abilities, and fog of war is fully functioning.
Currently In-Game
- Squads of up to six marines with arms and armor, ranks, promotions, stats, and relationships with other marines.
- More fully formed enemy faction distinctions. Robots and aliens have their own ships, unit types, and specific tactics they employ.
- Procedurally generated maps/levels.
Future Development Goals
- Get the user interface up to snuff.
- Reconsidering massive procedural galaxies/planets. It doesn't quite seem to jive with shorter, mission based gameplay. Steam Marines 2 was not originally conceived as a sandbox game, but it's not set in stone one way or another.
- Tactical space combat? Possibly! Fleet/empire building much less likely.
- Gear mods like scopes, suppressors, energy cells, alien tech, et cetera. The script code to swap the objects is in, but the game logic to hook it all up and the art assets are not. Complexity call from a game design point of view whether this makes the cut.
- Terminals, lockers, and chests make a return, but portholes probably will not. There will be more tactical options with these interactive environment elements this time around.
- Focusing on building up the player's Commander (in-game avatar) RPG style and focusing more on inter-marine relationships both on and off the battlefield.
So When Can We Play This?
Probably Q4 2017. The price will most likely be around $25-30 with the price increasing throughout development, similar to Steam Marines 1.
I'd like to stress that this will absolutely be an alpha launch, so if you're uncomfortable paying what I'm charging, don't. You can always adopt a wait and see approach, and if you followed me during the Steam Marines 1 development on Steam Greenlight you'll know that I'm very open to suggestions and what I'm currently doing.
Monthly updates seemed to work best then and I will most likely adopt that same release schedule this time around.
When Is Full Release Planned?
End of 2018. It's gonna be a long ride!
Thanks for reading, and please feel free to leave any comments or feedback here, on my Twitter, or via email at yjseow@worthlessbums.com!