DevLog #6 – The free alpha update is now available!
Hello everyone!
I’m very glad to announce that Destroy The Monoliths got an update on itch.io! You can now play the free alpha version of the game! So please head to my itch.io page and give it a try! I’m looking forward to hearing your feedback and suggestions 😉
New artwork and screenshots!
Discover the open alpha
This alpha version offers to experience a whole roguelike campaign, i.e. a set of 16 missions. During a mission, the player spawns in a randomly generated map and must destroy all the corrupted monoliths scattered around the map in order to win. If the player dies and cannot re-spawn anymore because their base core was destroyed, the mission is then lost and must be restarted. Through fighting, the player collects XP. Levels-up offer either temporary upgrades (better stats until the end of the mission), or new technologies (building blueprints, weapons, relics – acquired for the remainder of the campaign).
As the campaign progresses, maps get bigger, while enemies get stronger and more numerous, so missions get more challenging. But the player keeps all the technologies acquired in previous missions. You are thus better equipped to face the increased danger!
The following content is currently available:
- 36 possible map configurations (6 types x 6 biomes)
- 6 types of enemies
- 8 different weapons to mine and fight
- 21 different buildings (divided in 4 categories: attack turrets, status effect turrets, support buildings, and biome-specific buildings)
- 24 relics with unique effects
The game also offers:
- Controller support and fully remappable inputs
- Localization into English and French
- Autosave
What is next?
Lately, I worked a lot on adding content for the alpha. I now have a clear process and efficient tools to easily create more content in the future like new buildings, enemies, relics and weapons.
I also spent some time fixing issues and improving performances to make sure the game keeps running smoothly with a lot of action going on everywhere on the map. [Would you like to read a more technical devlog that explains the tricks I used to drastically increase the frame rate of the game? Tell me in the comments!]
My immediate plan for the next couple of weeks is to mainly promote this open alpha and collect player feedback. So please tell me what you think and what you like or don’t like in the game! It helps me a lot to refine the mechanics and make the game more fun to play.
Next, I plan to resume development and work on the following aspects:
- Add more weapons, more buildings and relics
- Add more enemies and refine the difficulty balance
- Enrich the exploration aspect with biome-specific traps, abandoned structures, events or modifiers
- Maybe add a final boss to complete the last mission of the campaign
- Add a journal with game stats, achievements and lore entries
Closing words
Thanks for reading this devlog and your interest in my game Destroy The Monoliths! I hope you will enjoy this new alpha and see you next time for another devlog 😉
This game is definitely coming together! I gave feedback on Reddit when you released your last alpha as well. Here’s my feedback after doing a run of about 5 levels in a row (I’m running the Linux build, thanks for providing that and allowing key remapping):
– Mouse left click seems a little bugged between the build menus and attacking. Sometimes I can’t attack at all for many seconds at a time, despite clicking the left mouse button. Remapping attack/build to spacebar pretty much resolved this issue, but it’s not as intuitive as left click.
– The build menus are a little janky, sometimes there’s a long delay after clicking my selection before the menu is dismissed and I get the option to build the object. Also, movement keys seem to change the selection in the menu as well as moving the character.
– The difficulty curve can be kinda weird, where the initial 30 seconds in my first 6 monolith run were a bit overwhelming with all the enemies swarming. However, once you get some turrets down, the difficulty evaporates for the most part – you can farm orbs by letting enemies rush your defenses and get as many artifacts as you like. Glad you’re planning to work on it.
– Alt-tabbing out of the game and back in completely broke input – it became totally unresponsive. I had to abandon a level after this happened.
– “Retarder”, while not the wrong use of the word, has some less-than-ideal associations. “Slower” would work instead, or “Cooler”, to complement “Freezer”.
I’ll play some more and give more feedback if I have it. Thanks for making the game and putting it out there!
Hello, thanks for playing and taking the time to write such detailed feedback, I appreciate it!
I will investigate the input issues and try to improve this aspect.
I agree with you that the difficulty balance is not there yet. I have a few ideas to work on this and tweak the spawn rate, so I will try them and see if it feels any better!
Thanks for pointing out the issue with the word “Retarder”. I’m not a native English speaker so I was not aware it was not really appropriate. I will change the translation in the next version.
If you have any more feedback, I’ll be glad to read it. Thanks again for playing 😉