In Germany, we have a saying that goes along the lines of "jetzt wird nicht um den heißen Brei geredet", which means let's stop talking around the hot porridge, which means let's not beat around the bush. Let me introduce you to...

Alpha 1.6. 

DARKNESS FAVOURS THE MASSACRE.

New Mission: The Cave Town.

Lore: 

Underground, where the sun can't shine, small towns have been constructed by companies to serve as housing for workers of the local industries. Each of these cave towns is completely cut off from the rest of the civilisation; only rarely do trains arrive at the train station. 

The cave town you will operate in has fallen prey to the custodians, the planetary government's police force. They have been dispatched to this cave town in particular to calm the civil unrest caused by poor living conditions due to companies refusing to invest in better infrastructure and quality of life. 

Fortunately for you, the custodians are not patrolling the streets when you are there. In fact, we don't know where they went, they seemingly just left all their expensive equipment behind. We theorise they have been consumed by he anomalies, speaking of which...

You have been dispatched to the cave town to cleanse its streets of anomalies and to help out the local residents to repair their electricity generator. It's a short mission, but you can sleep well knowing the residents will have electricity to watch trash tv all night long!

Now to the gameplay............

You start off by crawling out of a tunnel. From there, you go through a short alleyway. 

You enter the gloomy and damp streets, fighting your way through until you reach the town centre.

Once you arrive at the town centre, find the energy facility.

Velvet and the HUD will explain to you what resources you require, gather these resources and bring them to the generator. After each repair phase is over, a Packwark will spawn (as a placeholder, in the next build he will be replaced by a small boss enemy)

Now, I don't want to include too many screenshots because I want this level to be explored. This map is the small beginning of the Eradicators' lore narrative. I wanna heavily rely on environmental storytelling, I'm a huge fan of show, don't tell.

Good luck and keep on killing it.

OH WAIT ALSO!!!

I placed construction signs around areas that have not been finished in this build of the game.

One of the areas is fenced off by...the custodians for now...

Introducing Velvet.

You are not so alone after all, the agency decided to assign a mission control operative to help you guide through levels or to be a little bit of grumpy company to occasionally chit chat with.

Lore:

Velvet is the personification of what countless hours of overseeing bumbling idiots' paperwork and consuming unhealthy doses of caffeine beverages do to a young soul. Velvet was introverted her whole life, not because she is anxious or anything like that; she was always very focused on striving for a successful career, she viewed friends and other relationships as unnecessary and it would only stop her. Velvet got recruited to the Sentinel Agency right after she finished university when she was 23 years old. She wanted to become one with the corporations and strive for a prestigious position, but the agency was able to appear more attractive as a career path. She worked her ranks up, starting off from the Domestic Pax Subordinatum(Domestic Well-being Subordinate) all the way to the legendary Anti-Corruption Department. So far, the reason for her punishment to be part of the Eradicators department is unclear. Hey, maybe she will tell you if she starts to like you. 

Usually, just like every other agent, she has a high resentment towards the eradicators. You may be an exception, though. She knows she is forced to learn how to work with you. Don't abuse her trust and do as she tells you to, and you will go along fine.

Mission Selection Changes:

To enhance the replayability, I have removed the gamemode system. Maps are no longer separated by gamemodes, each map is selectable on its own. I want every map to tell its own story. Players should take their time and explore it, every map has no time limit. You kill kill kill and explore explore explore. I'm also working on a concept of making a little campaign system, where you traverse through multiple maps in one go, yes, it is inspired by Left 4 Dead 2.

Anomaly Behaviour Change.

That's right, I reworked the way anomalies work. Before the alpha 1.6 build, anomalies just ran at you and attacked you without even stopping. That has been changed; while they still run at you, they also have received cooldowns. After they attack, they won't be able to move for a second. Also, anomalies now have better swarming behaviour and act more like a hive mind. Anomalies also received foot step sounds, so you can roughly figure out where they are coming from. Anomalies also deal more damage now. 

Also, they received ambient sounds. Apart from that, since I reworked their attack behaviour, I fixed two crucial bugs

• Anomalies are no longer able to deal damage to you when you are out of their reach.
• Anomalies are no longer able to deal damage to you when they are dead.

Same behaviour changes and bug fixes apply to the Packwark too.

With the rework of their behaviour, I'm afraid that I made the anomalies way too easy to dodge and kill. I'm looking forward to receiving feedback on their new behaviour and how it affects the gameplay.

Miscellaneous, Changes, Optimisation and Bug Fixes

Changes

• Anomalies eyes dont glow anymore when they die.
• Changed the reload animation and reload logic of the Steampump. It now reloads all of the fired shells at once instead of one bullet at a time.
• Increased the cost of the ammo station to 2000 points
• Added unique interaction prompts to every interactable object in the game.
• Removed the kill streak system, for now.
• Improved the feeling of the weapons. 

Fixes

• Fixed being able to equip the already equipped weapon, spamming the equip animation. You have take your medication.
• Fixed alive anomalies being affected by radgolls of dead anomalies. Their flight ticket has been cancelled.
• Fixed the interaction ui prompt being stuck on screen.

Optimisation

I reworked the draw distance of almost every light source in the game. I also reworked every LOD of every model in the game, overall the game should run much better now, and I'm actively working on improving the optimisation just enough so the alpha builds are playable. Once I hit the beta phase of the game I will work more serious on the optimisation.

Coop Multiplayer.

The agency requires you to consult this Bluesky post to see the current progress of the coop.

I honestly enjoy working on the coop aspects of the game, but unfortunately, I gotta keep the development of the coop as a side gig. As the only person working on this game, I have a hard time juggling every aspect of the development, the coding, the modelling, the textures, the animations, the particles, etc. I have a strict priority list for every aspect of development so I don't overestimate the scope of the project, and the Coop barely fits into this list.

What's next?

None of your business, go away.

Okay, finally, now that this guy is gone, I can tell you what will happen in the next build, Alpha 1.7. (Btw, have you noticed that I changed how I numberise each version? I'll explain in another devblog.)

In Alpha 1.7, I will add the new boss enemy for the cave town map. I will add a small tutorial level to teach the very basics of the game. I will add a new crowd-clearing weapon. I wanna expand the weapon roster with each weapon having it's own unique use.

Be badass, have courage and keep on killing it.