After evaluating our initial release of BlastPoints, one thing that we at Pub Games feel didn't handle well was keeping the community up to date with progress of the game. Going forward, we want to engage our players and community, and with BlastPoints now released with an established player base, we feel an even stronger obligation to keep players up to date with what's coming next.
BlastPoints was always going to be a product that underwent large post-release updates. Our original vision for the game was far too large for any single release, and we made a commitment to building the game that we wanted to make, and that we believed players would enjoy. To do that would involve significant commitments after the original release - listening to what the community wanted and integrating that with the original vision.
We have already released a Holiday Season Update with a new player ship, new weapons and specials, new Achievements, bug fixes and player-requested improvements, such as the sensitivity slider.
We'd like to announce that we're working on a large update for BlastPoints - entitled BlastPoints V2 (although BlastPoints 2: Electric Boogaloo and BlastPoints 2: Blast Harder aren't off the table entirely). It will feature significant new features to match our original vision far more closely. Alongside these new features, we're also developing BlastPoints for Android, which will be released at the same time as the new version.
To that end, we've established three pillars for how we will be approaching V2.
Approachability
Making the game easier to approach for new players
Achievement
Giving players a better sense of achievement and how they are progressing through the game by introducing new goals to work towards
New Content
New maps, gametypes, objectives, specials and more. We want to provide players with more content to enjoy.
A vast majority of the features in V2 will aim to fulfil one or more of these pillars.
Every week, we'll be posting a new development blog not only to discuss the upcoming new features, but also to provide our community with some insight into how we operate as a studio and some of the individuals who make up Pub Games.
Over the coming weeks we'll be covering several topics, including
- Showcasing a new enemy, The Breaker
- Discussing our approach to developing an Android version of the game
- How we are overhauling the tutorial
- Showcasing some of our new maps and gameplay systems.
We ran a competition on our Facebook page to name the new player ship. We're happy to announce that the winner is Karl Sarsfield, with the suggestion Pincer. As our artists work on creating this ship, we'll be updating the blog with work in progress renders.
New player ship, Pincer
The new maps for BlastPoints V2 will be themed planetary style, and offer some varied environments and gameplay in comparison to the current maps. Today we'd like to show off some initial concepts and ideas for the visual style of the new map pack. These maps will be discussed in more depth in later posts.
BlastPoints V2 planetary map concepts
During release week, the team also made a video with a bit of history on Pub Games, BlastPoints and some advice to fellow independent developers. Check out the video below.
That’s all for this week! Make sure you follow BlastPoints and Pub Games on Twitter, and Like us on Facebook.
BlastPoints is still on sale for the Holiday season, so pick it up today from the App Store.
