v0.1 - What's new?

We were delighted with the positive feedback we received for Neon Shift during the GMTK Game Jam. The submission period and following week were pretty hectic but we decided fairly early on that we would like to develop Neon Shift further. After taking a bit of time off following the Jam, we wanted to get stuck into tackling our immediate player feedback before adding new content and features, as building a solid foundation was our first priority.

Movement and momentum

Player movement was the most common area of criticism in our jam feedback, and it was clear that this should be the first thing to improve. We unfortunately didn't have enough time to tune the movement as much as we would have liked during the jam, and it's likely that having been caught up in the excitement of seeing our game come together, we overlooked the issues when testing it just hours before the deadline. Later, watching streamers play our game for the first time (and reading comments left on the jam page) made it all too obvious that the Runner was pretty awkward to control. Obviously things like this take time but we think this update is a huge step in the right direction. Movement flows a lot better, jumping feels less rigid and although we've tried to maintain the momentum-focused gameplay, it doesn't feel quite as slow to get up to speed again after a mistake. The player also now has a clearer advantage in the chasing phase, gaining a gradual increase to their maximum speed over the course of the second run, allowing them to inch closer and closer to their target in a prolonged chase. Finally, the level itself has also seen some changes, which were made with two goals in mind: Firstly, to better accommodate the newly varying speeds of the running and chasing phases, and secondly to facilitate some of the fun strategies that emerged from the jam version's fastest times, such as jumping onto slopes to gain temporary bursts of speed.

Animation and sprites

We've also started reworking the animations and sprites for the Runner. These were passable for a game jam entry but the run and jump animations particularly didn't feel like they really fit the flowing nature of the game. The new run animation in v0.1 is smoother and more expressive than the previous version, and all sprites have received a general cleanup to improve readability when viewed from the game's distant perspective. The jump animation is currently being worked on and will be added along with a few other nice 'polish' elements in a minor update we hope to release soon.

Leaderboards and UI (+ backend stuff)

The leaderboard was a great feature and I am super glad we were abe to add it in time for the game jam. It made the game much more interesting by adding a competitive aspect, and we even spoke to a handful of players that spent hours competing for the top spot (which is a huge compliment for our relatively short and simple game). In order to better support future plans, we have switched out our backend to integrate Unity's Services. This enables us to more easily handle things like auth and leaderboards, all using one set of packages. They also include a few features which will make our lives a lot easier in future updates. The game jam entry's UI was also quite clunky, especially the submit button, which was separate from the leaderboard tab and didn't provide feedback to confirm that scores were actually being submitted. Instead, we now automatically submit player scores upon completing the level (only updating the leaderboard if they did better than their previous time, naturally) and have a single post-game screen for displaying this info.

What's next and taking Neon Shift further

Over the next couple of weeks we will be focusing on improving what we have here. There are a few bugs we'd like to squash, as well as some general quality of life additions to be made (like a faster restart option to skip the intro cutscene). Once we have a more solid base, we'd like to work on expanding Neon Shift with more content and features. The plan is to target a more full-bodied release later this year. We'll be adding more official levels and a level editor that will allow players to compete for the best times in both their own and others' creations.

Stay informed

Thanks for playing Neon Shift! If you are interested in following our development, be sure to follow us or join the discord using the info below:

• Follow me here, on itch
• Follow me on Twitter
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• Join our Keydoo Software community Discord server