Given crafting and looting are a large part of the Sublevel Zero ExperienceTM, you might imagine we’ll be including quite a large variety of weapons. Turns out you’re very perceptive, because that’s absolutely correct.
We’ve planned carefully for this, so a lot of care has gone into making sure it’s easy for us to prototype and add new weapons. One of the best parts of developing this game is playing with new weapons, particle effects and sounds for them. And we’ve been doing a lot of it this week!
Crafting and Upgrades
Players can combine weapons and items together to move up the tech tree. We’ll reveal more about the specifics of the crafting system at a later date, but in simple terms the tech tree has multiple tiers. Combining weapons from a lower tier will usually result in a higher tier weapon. As players progress through the tiers, the weapons get both more powerful and more bizarre! Rather than just increasing fire rate or damage, crafted weapons have different mechanics and effects.
For example, one way of crafting using the Shredder (a shotgun-type weapon) results in the Flak Cannon. This still fires multiple projectiles in a burst, but now those shards bounce everywhere for a chaotic, unpredictable cloud of hot death. This doesn’t just improve the Shredder, it changes your options for using it. It also endangers you and the projectiles are slower, so additionally it takes more skill to use.
The Shredder
Its big brother, the Flak Cannon
This is a running theme. As weapons in Sublevel Zero get more powerful, they also tend to get harder to use. So your skills need to improve as fast as your weapons do…
Players can also craft upgrades to their existing weapons. Upgrades at their simplest can just be stat boosts, but in other cases add functionality such as secondary fire modes. So if you’ve got a weapon you really like and you’d rather keep it than craft it into something else, you can usually upgrade it instead to maximise its potential.
Variety
We’re playing around with a lot of different weapon ideas. We want to make sure that we’re not just offering loads of the same guns just with different fire rates. We want each weapon to give you different ways to play, different options in combat, and different trade-offs to make. Loosely connected to that, here are some more gifs.
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