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[fafafrei]

Midnight at the Disco

Annihilate massive hordes of evil alien eyeball monsters as you struggle to survive a full day on the dance floor.  Choose from a diverse set of character traits, weapons and upgrades to create unique builds on each run to blast the baddies into oblivion. Midnight at the Disco is a top down rouge-like shooter with heavy influence from the Bullet Heaven and Bullet Hell genres. Oh, and there's poop.

Devlog #0

Gameplay
Each run starts with selecting a primary weapon card from 3 randomly generated choices. Then the player selects a secondary weapon from 3 new randomly generated choices. Some of these weapons have a primary and secondary fire mode, others do not. All of them use the players regenerating eyeballs as ammunition.

Please keep in mind much of the art seen in these images are works in progress and/or placeholder and will be changed and improved in the future.

From there the player selects two starting items in a similar fashion. Items do things like increase critical hit chance or movement speed.

Finally, they select a special ability card such as bullet-time, dash, or a deadly spinning dance move.
  
With the starting character build chosen, the player can now travel to one of 3 discos (assuming they are all unlocked) or the armory (see meta progression below for more on the armory).

Now the fun starts. The player is tasked with surviving from midnight to midnight the following day in the chosen disco. Each minute equates to 1 hour so a run will last no longer than 24 total minutes. That is if the player can survive that long...

The basic combat consists of using your weapons and abilities to mow down hordes of progressively difficult enemies. Unlike most games in the bullet heaven or survivors-like genre, the player fires their primary and secondary weapons manually, and the enemies are a bit more complicated than just mindless drones who do nothing more than move towards the player. Think something similar to a top-down 2d version of Risk of Rain 2. This makes for a much more engaging combat system than other games in the genre.

Don't worry though, there will be plenty of upgrades to live out that power fantasy. Every killed enemy has a chance to drop xp and the player will level up several times per minute.

Each time the player levels up they are immediately presented with a minimum of 3 upgrade choices. These upgrade choices are not limited to boring auto-fire weapons or simple stat increases (though there are some of those too).  They include things like giving explosions a chance to launch a fireball which inflicts burn on enemies or freezing all nearby enemies when poop is destroyed. The player can than use their intellect to select the best synergies from the available upgrades. For example, if the player has the aforementioned upgrade which gives explosions a chance to launch fireballs, a good synergy would be the upgrade which causes burning enemies to explode. When these burning enemies explode they launch fireballs which in turn cause enemies to burn, thereby causing a never ending cycle of death and destruction.

Synergy of exploding burning enemies and explosions that launch fireballs

When you pause the game you can totally nerd out on stats too.

Meta Progression

In between runs you can purchase permanent buffs at the armory with currency gained during runs.

There are also several unlockables such as weapons, items and new discos that can be unlocked by completing certain tasks.

Biggest Influences

• Risk of Rain 2
• Vampire Survivors
• 20 Minutes Till Dawn
• Binding of Isaac

Credits

I am a solo developer living in Montana USA. I plan to contract out the killer disco soundtrack, but other than that this is a one man team.

Game Engine

Godot 3.5.1

Platforms

PC (Windows, Mac, Linux)

Roadmap

December/January-ish early alpha gameplay demo. Message me here or on Discord to get a copy.
Publish Steam page February-ish 2023
Release demo/prologue March-ish 2023
Release game in EA May-ish 2023  

Join the discord: https://discord.gg/MGYVncM5eJ
Twitter: https://twitter.com/games_taphouse
Email: [email protected]

Anyway, that's my game in its current very unfinished state. I'll update my progress and highlight other mechanics of the game here every once in a while. Thanks for reading.
 

[fafafrei]

Reserved

[fafafrei]

Midnight at the Disco

Devlog #1

Despite the holidays I’ve had a pretty productive 5 weeks since the last devlog. Since then I have:

added:

• a new weapon (sniper)
• lootable chests
• some placeholder icons for items and weapons
• weapon knockback/feedback
• two new enemies, including the first boss
• New items

Improved:

• enemy knockback
• the level up skill system
• Player hit effects/juice
• various other enemy tweaks

Also:

• Took the first steps to get the steam page up

This devlog will focus on the 4 weapons implemented so far and the lootable chests.

Weapons

Rifle
Damage: ***
Fire rate: ***
Range: ***
knockback: ***

Choosing the fire mode which shoots one eye at a time means a faster fire rate

The most versatile and beginner friendly weapon in the game.
Has 2 fire modes which can be switched using the weapon modifier button (q or e by default):

• Shoot all eyes at once for more damage
• Shoot eyes one at a time for higher rate of fire

Shotgun
Damage: ****
Fire rate: **
Range: *
knockback: ****

The shotgun can damage many enemies at once

Each eye breaks up into smaller pieces to deal high damage in a small area. Great for when you are surrounded by many enemies that are close to you. The camera zooms in a little bit when fired for effect.


Bomb
Damage: *****
Fire rate: N/A
Range: N/A
knockback: N/A

Eye bombs placed one the ground can still be fired using your other weapon. They eyes regrow back on the player after exploding

Lay an eyeball on the ground which explodes after 3 seconds. Other weapon can still be fired from the eyeball while it is on the ground. One of the harder weapons to master, but can be very deadly for a skilled player. Choosing explosion upgrades can make it even more powerful.


Sniper
Damage: *****
Fire rate: *
Range: *****
knockback: ****

A well aimed sniper shot can kill multiple enemies at once

Extremely accurate, long range and deadly. Starts with +1 bullet piercing (bullet will travel through first enemy rather than being destroyed). Must be reloaded manually using the weapon modifier buttons (q or e by default). Reload can be timed to reload faster. Perfect reload has additional perks if upgraded.

Chests

Chests appear randomly throughout the disco and are dropped by certain enemies when killed. 

When the player walks over the chest they are presented with a screen where they must furiously bash the chest until it explodes open. From there, the player is presented with 3 random items of which they can only choose 1.


Join the discord: https://discord.gg/MGYVncM5eJ
Twitter: https://twitter.com/games_taphouse
Email: [email protected]

[mobilelast]

Interesting. Does the game feature dance-battles in the style of Breakin’?

[fafafrei]

Interesting. Does the game feature dance-battles in the style of Breakin’?

Haha. I might be able to squeeze a dance battle in there somewhere.

[fafafrei]

Eye of the storm

So it's been about 10 months since my last devlog. Since then the following has happened:

• Published a Steam page
• Released a friggin demo!
• Didn’t work on the game at all between Mar 27, 2023 - Jul 6, 2023
• Sent the game to some friends and got some very valuable feedback
• Released a friggin demo!

In this devlog I’m gonna talk about a couple of those bullet points as well as what comes next for Midnight at the Disco.


Demo

On November 1, 2023, I proudly published the first demo build of Midnight at the Disco for public consumption. While there's still work to be done on the game as a whole, I'm truly proud of how the demo has turned out. It feels like a dream come true.


Check out the demo release trailer here:

Download the demo here


Early Feedback

In early January 2023 I sent an early build of the game to some friends to get some feedback. It was a bit nerve-wracking because the game was in its infancy, but I knew the sooner I did this the better. And boy am I glad I didn't wait longer, as most of the issues it uncovered would have been much harder to fix as time went on.


As it turns out my growing eyeballs as ammo mechanic was dumb AF. While it made perfect sense to me as the developer, all of the early play-testers (around six people) reported "bugs" related to the ammo system, which were actually inherent design choices. Even after making adjustments to the system and adding UI elements, players continued to find it unintuitive and perplexing. When all play-testers identify an intended mechanic as a bug, it's clear that there's an issue with the mechanic itself. In the end I opted to transform the shooting system into something more akin to traditional top-down shooters. This change has made the game significantly more intuitive, easier to learn, and overall just more fun.


There are dozens of other examples in this same vein, but you get the idea.


Yet, what truly stood out as the most vital aspect of putting myself and the game out there during this period, was the fact that people were playing, engaged, and seemed like they were having fun. The enthusiasm and encouragement from those who genuinely wanted to keep playing over and over again was an enormous boost of motivation. I'm not entirely sure if I would have ever reached the stage of releasing a Steam demo without that support.


Big ups to the numerous individuals who played the early builds of the game, with a special shout-out to the following bad ass MF-ers: Kelli Webb, Woodie Tatz-Morey, Brandon Theisen, and Sean Kelly.

Many new enemy types

What's Next

While I don't have a release date for the full version of the game, here's what you can anticipate in the near future:

• Implementing Quality of Life improvements to the demo. Specifically, this will involve adding controller support, language localization, and improving the skill tree.
• Utilizing the demo as a kind of free pre-Early Access experience; I'll keep updating and enhancing the game based on community input.
• It's highly likely that the full version of the game will enter Early Access sometime in the first half of 2024.

I've already recognized the value of a community-driven development process, and I want to keep that going. Ultimately, the release date and the shape the game takes will depend significantly on player feedback and where that leads me and the game itself. With that in mind, please do go try out the demo if you haven't already and join the Discord linked below to share your thoughts.


Now stop reading this and go play the demo ya jabroni.


Join the Discord
Follow me on Twitter

[fafafrei]

This reddit post is pretty much Devlog #3:

https://www.reddit.com/r/survivorslikes/comments/1avomcm/midnight_at_the_disco_major_update_and_lessons/

[nathy after dark]

This looks cool!

[fafafrei]

This looks cool!

'

Thanks! There is a demo on Steam as well, and I currently plan on a full EA release this July, but we'll see how that goes.

[fafafrei]

I recently added gamepad support to Midnight at the Disco, and it made me realize that this game was always meant to be a twin-stick shooter. Playing with a gamepad highlighted how slow the game felt, so along with gamepad support, I sped up almost every aspect of the game. This includes enemy speeds, projectile speeds, fire rates, and especially player movement speed. Now, the game plays much faster and feels better and more fun to play.

While I’ve always considered MATD a bullet heaven/survivor-like game, and still do really, it’s truly more of an old-school arcade twin-stick shooter with bullet heaven elements. I feel that MATD never quite connected with the bullet heaven community because it requires higher dexterity and reflexes, with no auto-aiming for the player's main weapon. The audience for MATD is more likely to be fans of games like Smash TV, Robotron, and traditional roguelites like The Binding of Isaac.

I also added an online leaderboard and scoring system, which is not typical for survivor-like games. In addition to the more traditional roguelike elements, this feature keeps players wanting to play just one more run, constantly striving to beat their high scores. It gives them a compelling reason to keep coming back, tapping into that addictive, just-one-more-game mentality. This, again, leans more into the old-school arcade twin-stick shooter vibe.

I’m really enjoying how MATD is playing lately, and I hope to find the right audience for it because I’m very proud of this game. MATD has a free demo on Steam and will enter Early Access on July 24th.

I would love some demo feedback, particularly on the controller support, before June’s Next Fest.

Check it out here: https://store.steampowered.com/app/2320890/Midnight_at_the_Disco/

[fafafrei]

Also here is the new trailer with all the updated graphics:

[fafafrei]

Quick update: The game is out now in Early Access on Steam and it is completely free!!! It's come a long way!