Made the bosses bigger.





Now you can actually see the chainguns spin when they shoot:

A new build is up, it's wave 5 (first boss) to unlock the next level now. Completing all of them will give the level gold text on the campaign menu.

There's also hitsounds and a whole lot of bugfixes in this build.



The locking system got some more improvement too.

Yeah, think I will make it wave 5 next build. There's a fair few items you can only get by doing wave 10 (particularly if you want to get things to level 5), so there's plenty of reason to get there.

It's currently done by beating wave 10, might change it to wave 5 depending on feedback.

 
 



New build is up, Download Here.

Changelog:
-Less overheating
-More enemies
-Player is faster
-Enemies are better at flanking
-Rebalanced some weapons and enemies
-Locking on for bear teleporter/homing missiles works much better
-You now have to finish levels to progress through the game (or just type 'warp' as a cheat, I delete my save all the time to test stuff with a fresh one and didn't want to have to replay all the levels every time)
-You can now detonate the crystals on radioactive asteroids.
-You can no longer teleport inside the final boss and kill it from inside (Although you can still send cyborg attack bears to do that for you).

Honored to be on there, thanks.

The grainy cloud filter you have going on constantly makes me not want to play this. It just looks like it shouldn't be there. I mean this is in space right? How do you have clouds or fog in space? Maybe make it an option to have it off at least.  

Need something like it to convey movement, otherwise it feels like you're staying still no matter how fast your ship goes. Would be open to suggestions for a better way of doing it.

Also, it can already be turned off (Background Particles in graphics options).

Top work, really enjoyed the pace of it. I found myself just boosting away and shooting back at the enemies, seemed to be the safest strat but wasn't as fun as getting in the thick of it. 

The idea was to use the powerup drops (they don't last all that long) as incentive to get stuck in. If you pick up coolant at the right times, you can keep firing most weapons forever. Not really sure how well it's working, it usually takes players a fair while to see that it's possible, but on the other hand it feels great when you figure out there's a whole new layer of tactics you didn't see at first.

This map has had a visual overhaul, plus you can now detonate the radioactive crystals by shooting them:

One small criticism... The small skull chainsaw guys can sometimes seem a bit phallic.

Sorry! 

Well, they are kind of dicks. :D

Yup.

Voted, looks fun.

Just found out that no weapon runs are possible except for bosses.

Dodging its attacks looks fun, although trying to hit a small, fast flying enemy with a mallet would be pretty annoying. Hopefully there's some other weapons or you're just meant to evade the bombers.

New Demo/Build is up, download here. This one adds the new beam/charge effects, gives some bosses more HP and fixes some scoreboard glitches.

Fun game.

I have plans to make the camera a little smarter than simply glue to the player and never let go. But the movement needs to be quantized to the apple's pixel grid, otherwise it completely mangles the sprite. Not on my priority list though, is it game breaking in your opinion?

Did you play the whole thing?

I think so (Does it go back to the first level at the end? I stopped after getting to a level that looked pretty familiar)

The jerky camera isn't gamebreaking or anything like that, but smoothing it out seems like a way to make the game more fun with very little effort.

The demo was pretty promising, but the camera movement felt a bit jerky. Maybe interpolate its position + rotation to smooth it out a bit?

Thanks for the suggestions on the UI, will start working on it soonish (I want to do the objectives first).

Also, I just added some tangent velocity to the chargeup particles to get a spiral vortex effect:

Scripted particle motion to get a vortex effect while charging weapons.

As for menu ideas, that GIF got me thinking. How about for a title screen, you have the cyberdragon on the side, and it "blasts" the title onto the screen? (Like laser blast, and as the effect fades away, the title remains or something like that)

That'd be something I'd do pretty late, more interested in making stuff you use often like the hangar look nice at the moment.

Progress: Lasers are now sparkly.

Hope this gets Greenlit soon. What would your plan be, if you've thought about that yet? Release on Steam when finished, or go the Early Access route?

I'll probably do early access since the current build is fun.

Anyway, on the update:
Don't know what subtle tweaks you did for more agility, but I've found I can evade more easily and dodge better. The hordes of enemies are great, makes the rail gun even more satisfying. The new mini-map/health/energy display is much sleeker and easier to keep track of, really like the look of it. Haven't tried the new weapons yet

And, well I hope this doesn't sound too negative, but the menus seem kind of..bland, I guess? They're perfectly functional, but it would be cool if the finished game had a more stylish menu structure rather than everything kind of crammed onto one screen.

I'm not really happy with the menus either, not sure how to improve them yet unfortunately.

Edit: Here's a better link to my impressions for the presskit:
http://indiegameenthusiast.blogspot.com/2014/02/pc-spotlight-74-xenoraptor.html

Thanks, will update it now.

Finally, a top down shooter with enough tomato sauce