Other tidbits
Contents
Saving & loading
Too many games promote “save-scumming” — constantly reloading older saved games to avoid something or get something. So in Spacebumfuzzle I’ve opted for a friendly, linear approach to saving. The game is saved frequently & automatically… when you die, it’ll reload the most recent save and place you at the last ‘safe’ sector you were in (either a friendly space station, or jumpgate sector). This means you can re-try the fight you died in, or go to a station and gear up a little more, or go do something else entirely.
Villains
Once you reach a star system with a level of 3 or higher, you’ll find certain enemies that are tougher than the rest. These are villains, and they’ll have mods or abilities that may require different approaches. For now, there are only a handful of mods but the list is going to grow:
- Tough (increased hull durability)
- Calls for backup (up to a specific number of ‘groupie’ ships)
- Reflects Bullets (but not beams?!)
- Rotary Bombs (stay FAAAR away from these guys!)
- Rapid-regen shields (gotta punch them hard to get through their shields!)
- Any ideas you’d love to see? Hit me up on discord!
Calling Reinforcements
You can call in reinforcements by hitting the ‘G’ key on keyboard, or clicking the “Call for Backup” button in the top-left of the screen. Each reinforcement costs support points (indicated by the bar in the top-right of the screen), which are accumulated by completing events.
Environmental hazards
There are various hazards you may find scattered through sectors. For the time being, these are limited to various ‘explosive’ barrels:
- Fire burst
- Explosion burst
- Freeze burst
- EMP burst
The barrels have low hitpoints and can be hit by any ship — be careful though, because the resulting explosion affects everything caught in it! And if you have any great ideas for status effects, hit me up on discord!
Missile auto-targetting
Most missiles are auto-targetting, and will race after the nearest enemy it can find. This is intended simply for ease-of-use, so you don’t have to constantly be juggling targets like in most space sims. I do intend to put in a “select target” feature that will pause the game and let you select a specific target (mostly for use with certain abilities), but for now I don’t think it’s necessary.
Status effects
There are currently three different status effects that can affect any ship:
On Fire
When on fire, the hull may take a damage-over-time, and any damage to the dull is magnified.
EMPed
When EMPed, there is an instant damage done to shields, and the ship’s weapons are disabled for the effect duration. The duration is randomised, between 50-100% of the indicated duration.
Frozen
When frozen, a ship is disabled for the duration. All damage taken is reduced — which introduces a cost element to simply spamming freeze abilities and attacking frozen enemies. The freeze effect is intended to take enemies out of the fight for some moments, while you focus in on others.
More?
If you have any great ideas for status effects, you guessed it – hit me up on discord!
Using consumables
Consumables can be used in combat by pressing the Quick Consumable key, bound to ‘A’ on the keyboard or pushing down the Left Stick on the gamepad. It’s a standard radial menu that will show all the consumables you currently have in your inventory. As with your inventory icons, it will also show the consumable level and quantity in the icons’ corners. Use the mouse or left gamepad stick to select an item, and press the mouse button or gamepad ‘A’ button to use it. To cancel out of it, either hit the Quick Consumable button again or point to the ‘Cancel’ item at the top and select that.