I am currently working on the first big update for Fracture Hell. There will be some significant changes to certain parts of the game but I try to keep the original feel and style of the game intact.

Take a look at what's already implemented ;)

First of all, I completely removed the arena game mode and hardcore/ ironman modifiers. The arena mode was pretty complicated to maintain and balancing it was tough. It didn´t feel right for me to keep it around, especially with the changes I had in mind for the rest of the game. The same goes for the ironman and hardcore modifiers.

Alongside the classic endless game mode, I implemented 5 new game modes that are all endless game modes:

• Tag it - Each enemy drops tags on death and you have to collect them to open the upgrade screen. Tags disappear after a few seconds.
• King of the Ring - Stay in the designated area to charge the ring. Once fully charged the upgrade screen can be opened. If you leave the area the charge will dissipate slowly.
• Parkour - A lot of obstacles are placed in the arena. Obstacles reappear after a certain time after destroying them.
• Reaper - After a certain amount of waves a reaper is spawned. Kill it to gain access to the upgrade screen. A single touch of the reaper can kill you though!
• Madness - All waves a completely random.

The hardcore and ironman modifiers will be replaced with an artifact system. You can activate up to 5 artifacts to make the game easier or harder and get a score bonus accordingly. For instance, an artifact could increase the spawn rate of enemies by 25% and give you a 10% score bonus. I will try to add basic artifacts in many variations for a lot of different aspects of the game and also some quite unique ones. I am not sure how artifacts will be collected/ unlocked right now but I will try to make it fun!

The next big change is the damage system of the game. Previously fracturing the enemies meant to keep the collider/physics in sync with the visual fractures. Because of that, the collider had to be updated each time an enemy got damaged and fractured. This is not really performant and it also meant that I had to use big damage numbers. Now the visual fracturing works and looks exactly the same with the only difference being that the colliders are not updated anymore. This simple change should save a lot of performance and makes it way easier to design new weapons, enemies, and skills. 

Alongside the new damage system, I also added an armor system. The player and enemies can have a certain amount of armor stacks. For each stack, the player/ enemy has to be completely fractured once. The armor is indicated with a yellow outline and dots to show the number of stacks.

Most of the colors were reworked and are now using a color palette.

I added 2 new unique enemies with 2 variations each:

• Voider - Spawns a void on death. Voids block visibility and can be destroyed.
• Hinderer - Spawns an obstacle on death. Obstacles block the player and can be destroyed.
• Duplicator - Duplicates itself at a random interval. This enemy can spread fast if you are not careful.
• Duplicator Gun - Same as Duplicator but shoots homing bullets.

I replaced the Ammo System of the player with a Heat System. Each shot of your weapons produces heat and your weapon cools down at a certain rate. If your weapon overheats you can´t use it for a few seconds. You can pick up cool packs for your guns to cool them down and even freeze them so you can shoot for a long time without overheating. This system should fix the problems of running out of ammo, while also making you think about the heat of the weapon.

Bug Fixes.

Improvements.

Balancing.

I am thinking about a progression system for the player and an overhaul of the upgrade system. I am not sure what it will be and if it's ready for the "1.2.0 Update" but I will keep you updated. 

Thank you for reading and hopefully, the next announcement will be the release of the update!

I hope you enjoy the game. :)

Best Regards,

SoloByteGames