In the last two weeks, I have made some substantial changes to RKR - Rush Kill Repeat, and I'd love to share them with you! (by the way, the game is only a dollar right now, and I'd love to let you guys try out the new changes! I'll share the beta code to anyone who owns the game and asks me for one 😊🥺🙏)

(OH and if you also think you're good enough to knock me off the leaderboards in endless mode 😈)

Last week, I outlined a couple of things that I wanted to get done. However, the week after posting the last devlog, I happened to show my build to a friend of mine that absolutely changed the way I thought about the game.

So, I made a new list of things I wanted to get done these past couple weeks! And while I don't want to show you the new list in its entirety YET, I want to show off what I've done in the game (note that all of these are playable if you get the game and ask me for a beta code!!)

NEW STUFF

Last time, I mentioned how I wanted to change the way dying and Milo works to balance risk and reward. My thoughts were that there should be a limit to how many kills you can store in Milo per round, and that you could only keep 1/3 of the kills you acquire in a round, OR every enemy you DON'T kill in a level is summed and subtracted from the kills you keep outside of the round.

However, after watching a couple people play the game (and after getting a lecture about game design principles) I was compelled to step away from this idea completely. Now, instead of trading kills in-game for meta kills to unlock items to use, I've completely separated them into two currencies. I've introduced new enemy variants (glow-y green and glow-y red) that award you with 5 and 15 meta-kills respectively, as well as one soul to be used in-game.

They each have extra OOMPH for extra punch when you kill them! Check it out:

I figure I should also show you the exclusive TANKMEN enemy variants (for the Newgrounds-exclusive level in the demo that I have yet to release!) I really liked the hue-shifted goggles on the red variants, so I kept them.

It's also worth mentioning that I added little soul particles to enemies when you kill them! It's a small detail that adds a lot to the experience. I spent a lot of time prototyping this.

Enemy variants help incentivize players to keep playing, even when they are given the option to move on. Sure, there may only be four enemies left in the level, but what if one of them is red? That's basically 15 kills right there! You should search them out.

One last big, non-boring change I made to the game is gun crates! I thought it would be cool if you could stumble upon a crate in-game that grants you free access to a gun for the rest of your run (if you wish to take it). There are three types of crates, common (grey), rare (green), and legendary (gold).

If you find a gold crate (0.5% chance) you're pretty much set for the rest of the game.

With this addition came the change of the existing couch menu. Now, as long as you have the gun unlocked, you will have a chance to find it in between rounds, for a price. Before, you'd have to have cleared a certain number of rooms before encountering any specific weapon. This lets the player play the game how THEY want to play the game.

Anyways, take a look at how the gun crate menu looks!

For this whole menu to work, I had to implement a pausing system into the game. (No, before this point you were not able to pause the game. Matter of fact- you STILL can't pause the game. But it's one of the next things on my list!)

That's all of the cool stuff I've been working on as of late!

SQUASHING BUGS / SMALLER PATCHES

Oh boy were there bugs.

• Steam wouldn't open the new project files because I didn't have an old, outdated SDK. I do now.
• Lowercase Letter R would just cease to work at some points, crashing the game
• Sniper and Bazooka wouldn't work in one of the environments, with the Bazooka straight-up crashing the game
• Achievements for beating the game didn't work before. They work now.
• Camera shake is now smoother and more modular
• Increased contrast of enemy sprites
• Made levels slightly smaller

UP NEXT

Here are some things that I'm looking into doing next:

• Adding an on-screen indicator to show the locations of enemies so players aren't left wandering (and eventually dying)
• I still haven't added environment details to places like the cardboard fort
• A "Try Again" button to the game over screen so you don't have to go through the main menu to start a new round, which breaks up gameplay
• Add an actual pause menu to the game

THANK YOU FOR READING!

If you want to find me anywhere else, I have a Discord server, and you can find the Steam game here!

And seriously, it would mean a lot if you wanted to give the game a try. It's on sale for a little over a day, so get it while it's cheap- A DOLLAR!

Thank you for your support. I might not be able to write a new post until after Christmas (finals and work), but I'll see what I can do if there's enough demand for it :)