I was surprised this week after I’d gotten through my tasks just how much a little bit of art can make such a huge difference to a game. To be clear surprise is maybe not the right word, as much as maybe… taken back? This happens every time I make a game. It’ll go from looking like absolute rubbish, to looking kinda ok if you squint and look at the phone from the other side of the room, to having the rough colour pallet and then boom, looks like a full game, and every time this last stage happens is exactly when I know I’m onto something.

Initial Prototype April 2023

First proper combat prototypes: September 2023

Today (March 2024)

Overall I’m super happy with the way the game’s looking. It’s got depth, it’s got atmosphere, its visually hectic. Gifs don’t do the texture justice, but it has texture. Most importantly it feels like you’re stomping around in a giant robot, partially because you can level city blocks with your feet, partially because I think I’m getting the scale right, and partially because the sound, even in it’s prototype phase really sells the idea.

It’s coming up on a year of work on this game, and its feeling really mature. The gameplay systems and tooling’s in a good spot, balance is easy to modify where needed, new content is not too difficult to add. I can see building out content for new Campaigns should be relatively straightforward.

Most importantly though it’s achieving all of this whilst getting a consistent 60fps on the iPhone 8, a now seven year old phone. CPU usage and battery drain seem to be below the levels I saw with Interloper too, so the game also feels relatively well optimised.

The next phase is getting ensuring that all the games encounter levels aren’t too badly shuffled by the new art, and then getting the remaining art assets sorted for the Industrial Campaign.

Exoloper Tasks completed:

  • Assets: Pipes: Walls (1x1)

  • Assets: Pipes: Roadway (1x1)

  • Assets: Pipes: Highway (1x1)

  • Assets: Vehicle: smaller cars x4

  • Assets: Vehicle: Road Trucks

  • Assets: Building: Containers with crane (1x1)

  • Assets: Building: Small building collection (1x1)

  • Assets: Building: Warehouse A (2x3)

  • Assets: Trim Sheet: Industrial vehicles & small details

  • Assets: Trim Sheet: Industrial Concrete buildings a

  • Assets: Implement Drop Sequence

  • Assets: Building: Small Silo (1x1)

  • Assets: Distant terrain editor

  • Animation: Limp effects.

  • Animation: FP hand + pilot animations

  • Balance: Slow down all combat speeds

  • Balance: Player dies too easily

  • Bug: Combat: can’t reverse anymore?

  • Bug: Extracting from a campaign and returning to menu doesn’t nullify campaign data.

  • Bug: Extracting from a campaign causes nullref

  • Bug - Combat: objective “Destroy forces” doesn’t update to say “Complete” when all enemy units are dead.

  • Bug - Combat: Radar ping circle is offset to top left

  • Bug: Campaign interaction buttons don’t update after player moves.

  • Bug: Campaign: Pressing “back” after seeing difficult decisions re-opens difficult decision

  • Bug: Localisable text fields use String.ToLower for string compare, causing huge slowdowns.

  • Bug: Ai exos don’t move… not sure any ai move.

  • Bug: Infantry in combat are both invisible and invulerable.

  • Bug: Deleting data while a campaign is running keeps campaign in memory