New Force Shot mechanics! (Patreon)

Hey everybody! Finally here with the Force Shot mechanics post, two days late because I'm literally Hitler (my words, not yours!)

I've been receiving lots of feedback on Crisis Point in regards to its current mechanics recently. The general consensus is that everything works and feels good, but is too "same-y" and not interesting enough mechanically when compared to other Metroids. As part of The Great Rework™, I'm going to be reworking many of these things - both planned upgrades and currently existing ones. Today we'll talk about the Force Shot.

For those of you that haven't played the demo, the Force Shot previously worked much like an altered Missile system from your typical Metroid; once you find the weapon, it functions as an addition to your standard blaster that allows you to enter new areas and kill enemies more efficiently, all governed by a simple ammunition system. You start with extremely limited ammo, and finding more upgrades for it increases your max ammo count. These upgrades act as a sort of "filler" upgrade; they're an easy way to fill hidden places with low-cost upgrades (meaning as a designer, it takes almost no effort to implement them) to reward the player for exploration. In a typical Metroid game, you can expect to be hoarding a hundred plus missiles by the end of the game if you've done enough searching, and Crisis Point was going to use Force Shot upgrades for this exact purpose. At least, that's how it WAS going to be; now, we're doing something a little different.

Upon collecting the Force Shot, a new addition will be made to your HUD - a vertical column with 3 rectangular boxes. These boxes represent your current charges for the Force Shot, and firing the weapon will expend one charge. These charges will not come back over time; instead, they are refilled through various interaction with enemies. Attacking an enemy will release a small red orb that will fly towards Alicia. Each orb will give her 5 points (out of a maximum 100) towards a new charge. Defeated enemies will release 5 orbs, and allowing an enemy to climax when having sex with Alicia will release 10 - enough for half of a charge. In addition to these, there will be certain environmental objects that can be shot repeatedly to refill your Force Shot charges as needed. Gone are the days of ammo hoarding; as a player, when games offer me a limited supply of ammo I rarely use them. With this system, charges are readily available through active combat, and once Alicia's charges are maxed out the orbs will stop spawning, so deciding not to use them will not benefit the player in any way.

Here's a brief video with the new mechanic at work: https://vid.me/Hu4c (please ignore the incredibly WIP HUD design!)

Of course, that does leave the question of "filler" upgrades. With the old system, there were going to be over 20 Force Shot ammo upgrades scattered throughout the world. No Metroidvania would be complete without dozens and dozens of collectibles, so now that a large handful of them are gone, what will be replacing them..? I'm taking bets now, so expect to hear more about that soon!


EDIT: Almost forgot to mention this - as a final note, me and Orexius are going to be streaming again tomorrow, same time - 1pm-5pm EST! Hope some of you can make it!