Welcome to the first edition of the Happy Robot Games dev blog. No-Stick Shooter has been a one man show, one day a week for about 18 months, making progress slow and steady. However it's time the project went into the next gear, so we've been joined by a designer (Dan), an artist (Mike) and an audio designer (Ed) to help polish it off to a high quality bar. And seeing as we'll be making lots of progress, it seems only fitting to update the world on that progress right here from our web site!

This week primarily saw the start of proper design work on No-Stick shooter, and it already shows hugely. We started off by focussing on a mechanic in which both the weapons and enemies are specific colours, with enemies vulnerable to weapons of the same colour. Dan also pointed out that feedback in response to game events is really key, so we introduced a really nice, visual combo system based around killing multiple enemies at once, rather than trying to avoid being hit.

With these factors in place, the game already feels much more responsive and deep, but we also wanted to address the weapons. The blaster cannon and lightning are cool, but the missiles never felt quite right. As such, we've ditched missiles (which may make a comback as some sort of powerup) and replaced them with a death beam!

On top of those key factors Dan has spent the week making all the effects beautiful, so everything from explosions to weapon fires to enemy spawns all just look and feel nicer.

This week we'll hopefully getting in the first hints of the final UI, along with a fine tuned and well communicated health/shield mechanic. Watch this space!