The moment is finally here! Garden gnomes have been assembled, and aliens have become extra grumpy. Treefender is in Early access now!
What to expect from the current version (v0.4944)
Players can host a room with an unique code and share this with others to invite them. We’ll replace this with player typed names which will be remembered by the game, so you don’t have to copy/paste codes all the time.
Right now, there’s one level: “Neighbourhood" which gives us a good testing ground for new and improved features and stress testing the game.
There’s some secrets hidden in the neigbourhood. Aside from “shrooms" which you can grab to get a koinz boost, there’s also some red and blue ammo pouches hidden with unique slingshot pebble ammo types:
Exploding pebble
Devastating explosion on impact. Very good for destroying multiple enemies at once, or demolishing your treefort..
Ultra pebble
Shoots very far, and fast. One shots enemies.
Enemies
The rustic neighbourhood is soon disturbed by UFO’s dropping of their grumpy passengers. They come in waves, and each wave has a duration. Didn’t kill all enemies in time? Tough luck! New wave incoming!
Right now we have two enemy types:
Grunt
Basic allround unit. They have a medium move and attack speed, and can be killed with 4 or 5 shots.
Artillery
These green squids might look funny, but beware: they shoot a devastating artillery shell which shatters treefort and treefender.. Not to worry though: aim well with you slingshot and the shell will explode mid air!
Research
We’ve implemented a research system which allows you to research new buildobjects, stations and gameplay features. For now, now there’s not a lot to research still, and the researchtree is messy, but this will soon change when we introduce new buildobjects!
Gameplay
Will you research and invest in gardengnomes for an explosive experience? Be more of a hunter/gatherer and search for all the special ammo? Or are you more of a pacifist and build a ladder to heaven to completely avoid combat? We’re curious to see all the scenarios you think of!
Let’s see if you can make it till the end of the third set of enemies!
Known issues
The ultra pebble trajectory preview when aiming the slingshot doesn’t match up, so aiming is a bit difficult. It shoots pretty straight over quite a distance, so just try to ignore the trajectory preview atm.
We’ve done a lot of coding and testing for the enemies. As you might expect, synchronizing a lot of enemies and their individual health and orders in a multiplayer game, is quite a challenge. Though we think they already work quite well, expect more optimizations for them in the future. Enemies don’t make sound when shooting, so bullets are difficult to spot. Also we’ve seen healthbars not synching correctly.
Falling damage works sometimes. And sometimes you suddenly die when hitting a branch. We’ve reduced the amount of branch deaths, but they are not zero yet. Be careful out there..
Buildobjects might turn red and not yellow anymore. Workaround is selecting a different one from the menu, and then selecting it again.
Buildobjects might say they intersect and won’t place while that’s actually not true. Climbable rung has a bad habit of doing this.
Steam player names don’t update yet. Everybody is now called Playername.
“Hello Playername!”
Where to next?
For now, after a long period of getting things ready for early access, we’re going to sit back and watch for a bit. I’ll do my best to respond to questions and remarks though. There’s also some holidays planned.
Expect new updates starting September, where we’ll focus more on decorations to build and enemy behaviour. We’ll also start sketching out level 2, which will swap the cozy neighbourhood for a rocky pine forest!
See the roadmap for details: https://trello.com/b/FLNjSYdD/treefender-roadmap
Closing words
We hope you enjoy and have as much fun as we did developing and testing out Treefender so far. The adventure is really starting now, and I’m super excited to see what you’ll do with Treefender and how it will grow!
Cheers!
Bob