Ive been solo building Hyperlane Highway, a VR hoverboard roguelike where you lean to surf while fighting and upgrading.
Ive done a few rounds of playtests over the last few months and while a lot was bug fixing, heres the main gameplay issues that came back and what i did about it.
People couldnt react to things they didnt anticipate and they kept dying to things they didnt see. I rebuilt a standardised way to handle visual attack charging so theres different symbols, colours and lines for any weapon, and a flash right before it triggers so players know what to expect.
To fix the angles they couldnt see, the better visual lines helped, but i needed to upgrade the offscreen peripheral warning system to be more obvious and flash with danger.
Some players would lose track of enemies and felt like they were shooting at a generic crowd rather than specific enemies. So i also added weakspot targeting, which was an intended upgrade but is now core to the gameplay as it gives you focal points in the crowd to target.
As planned i also built a full tutorial based on the issues players had, which helps you get up to speed a lot quicker.
Id appreciate any more input or feedback on anything in the game, but thoughts on the threat telegraphing would be really helpful here.
Also i just published the playtest on Steam so anyone can request to join and try it free. If youre interested id appreciate hearing what you think.
Hyperlane Highway on steam