Trick Shot Devblog

You’re looking well fed, Pilot! Those pants are looking a little tight after eating all that tuna. Looks like somebody needs some extra PT this week!

Last update we saw the introduction of a new mission type, the tuna raid. This included a whole new mission type, with new objectives and challenges.

What changed

• A new “factory” mission environment with a Tuna Raid mission
• Removal of the mission timer, replacing it with mission objectives
• A new procedural generation system for creating random missions with different objectives and stages.

The Short Version

The new mission system has kept players engaged from mission start to mission completion, even with when they take longer to finish and have more complex objectives. We haven’t found the new missions give players enough of a reason to keep coming back, but it has made a better play experience.

Continue reading “Sky Squadron Mission Report #6 – Tuna Factory Raid” →

At ease, pilots! You’ve done an another amazing job keeping the enemy at bay. Don’t get too full of yourselves, because you never would have done it without the help of your wingman.

Make sure to shout them a beer at the officer’s club!

Last update we saw the introduction of the new wingman system, where AI allies join the mission, assisting where they can, and occasionally needing a helping hand themselves.

What’s changed

• Wingmen join the squad! Work together to fight back the enemy.
• Fly the brand new Wisp! Sleek and agile, they’ll never be able to hit you.
• New plane colours! Watermelon is so hot right now.
• New mission intro and outro sequence!

The Short Version

The wingman system has integrated well with the rest of the game, but hasn’t caused a significant change in player behaviour. While the wingman system is still early in development it,  will give us the opportunity to add more characters, story and aircraft to the world.

The Long Version

General Performance (and boring numbers)

Every update we have a look at our leading metrics. These values show the health and growth of the game based on real player usage. With a limited sample size we need to take everything with a grain of salt, but it does give some hints at how the game is resonating with players.

Continue reading “Sky Squadron Mission Report #5 – Wingmen” →

Great to see you alive, Pilots! Your efforts have help the boffins make excellent advances in adding rewards and progression to Sky Squadron.

As a reminder, here is what changed in the last build:

• A brand new mission system with new objectives
• XP rewards and levelling up
• Complete for infamy on the global leaderboard
• Variable mission difficulty
• A deadly new enemy attack – homing missiles
• Floaty numbers!

The short version:

Players have been completing missions and levelling up. While we didn’t see as many people reach max level as we would have liked there was still enough to show us that players will level up, unlock new items, and use them. While people were keen to engage with levelling up, very few people bothered investigating the “Infamy” global leaderboard.

We saw plenty of people playing the new missions and some very positive feedback. Most interestingly we saw that by simply changing the kind of objective for a mission type, we can drastically alter the difficulty.

The long version:

Continue reading “Sky Squadron Mission Report #4 – Player Progression” →

Listen up, Pilots!

The eggheads have finished running the analysis of the last mission, and we have some important details for you!

As a quick reminder, here are the features we added last update.

• New things to shoot at
• A new aiming system
• Environmental collisions to avoid
• Incoming damage feedback
• Character and name randomisation

The short version:

We’ve had positive feedback on the new combat system. While we haven’t seen an increase in play time, the overall rating has gone up. Players seem to be understanding the system quickly, and shooting down enemy targets. Incoming damage is not being communicated clearly enough.

Average session length dropped slightly since last build. This is most likely because people aren’t toying with the customisation options, which increase the total play time in the last tests.

Mission are still too simple, which we are addressing in the next update.

Continue reading “Sky Squadron Mission Report #3 – Core Combat” →

Listen up, Pilots!

Your first mission was a huge success. For those early few who have been brave enough to take control of our early gameplay prototypes, we salute you. Sky Squadron HQ is pleased to announce that we suffered no casualties during the first round of testing.

For those of you who are just joining us, we look forward to your daring contribution to future test missions!

The last mission had two objectives:
Test out the core third person control scheme
Gain important feedback on our character designs

Continue reading “Sky Squadron Mission Report #1 – Core Controls and Character Art” →