Project Genesis Pre-Alpha Reaches Milestone Two

The Enceladus build of Project Genesis was built with two goals in mind:

1. increase gameplay
2. expand the player base

To do a better job of distinguishing ourselves against other titles in the Steam Store we performed a complete overhaul on our branding in parallel with our Project Genesis Enceladus release.

Branding Reboot

We wanted to better integrate the look and feel of the in-game experience with how we were representing the game on the Steam store, as well as provide a more consistent look across all of our social media channels and websites. Mark Nicolino, our Art Director, felt it was important to move away from the more “painterly” style and remove the noise that came with our textured-paper look (a misbegotten direction by yours truly to play with the concept of duality with a water-color double exposure look). Mario Duarte did a ton of heavy lifting with our core engineer Anatoliy G. to ensure the rebranding pass hit all of our social media, website, Steam page, an other promotional materials.

The result is a cleaner and punchier composition that contrasts against other titles in the Steam Store.

Twitch Drops

One of the new opportunities for content creators is the implementation of Twitch Steam key drops for Project Genesis. Leading up to and through the release of the Dorado milestone, we worked with streamers, publications, and other partners to allocate thousands of Steam keys. We quickly exhausted the keys we could give out, and it left many people asking if we were ever going to offer free Steam keys? We also wanted to support the community members who stream by joining forces: stream Project Genesis on Twitch with your Steam and Twitch accounts linked and your audience can earn a chance to receive a free Steam key.

We were very excited to announce that on Friday July 17th we turned on our Twitch drop system to give those watching drop-enabled streams of Project Genesis a chance to earn a free Steam key. If you’re a streamer, you’ll have an opportunity to grow with us using this program as well. We will be dropping a free Steam key every hour to the population of viewers of streamers playing Project Genesis until August 31st.

To find out how you can participate, check out our Steam Guide page located here.

Servers for our Friends in Europe

The morning community is lively and friendly. If you’re in Europe and want to play Project Genesis, now is a great time to join us. Jump into our Discord as the European community often rallies to play outside of the Dev Daily times.

In the Dev Dailies at 11AM PDT, where the community joins us in some good-natured space combat Monday through Friday, we have a solid population of intrepid Europeans who regularly join the fray. We thought we’d try to make life a little better for them by building a system that allows us to employ regional servers.

Like most things we build, this system is designed to be extensible. In the future, as regions in the world begin to heat up with lots of new Project Genesis players, we can easily deploy servers to accommodate.

New Weapons

40+ additional weapons have been added. While the artwork is still placeholder, players should now begin to get an early feel of the personality and character of the additional firepower.

…there was some candid feedback both on Steam and in Discord about progressive unlocks. It was great feedback…

Perhaps more importantly, we’ve removed the constraints around allocations as there was some candid feedback both on Steam and in Discord about progressive unlocks. It was great feedback, and was very timely as we wanted to significantly expand the arsenal available to the players.

New Deployables

Deployables are the first major step in developing non-assault class roles. We chose three for each type of unit (both the battle craft and the avatars):

• place-able turrets
• repair drops
• personal shields.

Even with just these early systems, the Test Pilots are demonstrating huge advances in teamwork based play. If you’re a fan of support roles, we’re starting the first steps in adding variety to the games.

Asymmetrical play has been one of the most requested types of modes by the community

Expanded Environments

The biggest news in the land of environments is that there is an entirely new map that accompanies the much sought after asymmetrical mode: Attack / Defend (working title). Asymmetrical play has been one of the most requested types of modes by the community, and it has also been at the top of the priority list for the team to begin developing. Onslaught (AKA Attack /Defend) is well on its way to become rated one of the communities favorite maps and modes.

The environments in Project Genesis received a dramatic expansion in scale and in scope. In almost every aspect of the play space changes have been implemented to increase the flow of maps, take into account high traffic areas, and add additional cover. This counts in both interior spaces and exterior spaces for Carbonaceous, Enceladus, Solar Storm, The Ring, and Outpost.

Up-scaled capital ships have almost doubled in size with the added bonus of additional breach locations as well as turret emplacements. This allows for a much more dynamic play space, especially with the addition of what the community is calling “tactical asteroids”. These asteroids have been hollowed by industrial drones, and provide great hiding places for players who prefer to use brains over brawn. While requiring great skill to navigate the cavernous interiors gracefully and with speed, the new asteroids ensure that slogs are less likely to emerge.

Steam Achievements

We’ve also incorporated Steam Achievements into Project Genesis. We wanted to challenge our community of Pilots to tackle some gameplay accomplishments that are not only fun, but also show off the skills of the talented. Here is the current list for players to test themselves with:

• Double Frag: Kill 2 Enemies at once with a Frag Grenade
• No Seatbelt: Kill an enemy by crashing into them
• Smite: Blind 3 Enemies at once with the EMP
• King of Kong: Get 5 barrel kills
• Mr. Wick: Kill 4 enemies in a row with headshots
• Systempunkt: Complete all Detonation objectives by yourself
• Territorialist: Capture all hard points on dominion 1st
• Snow Crash: Break all screens on the enemy ship
• Pentakill: Kill 5 enemies without dying
• Decadence: Achieve level 10

We plan on many more achievements (we’re still working on the details) and look forward to hearing who is able to acquire all 10 before the next update.

Making it Easier for New Players

There’s no doubt about how hard core our early community members are. Add to that switching between game modes, new map configurations, and the merging of two types of gameplay (third person space combat and first person shooter) and new players can find their first experience a little…overwhelming.

There are no silver bullets here. In these early days, with Project Genesis only about 58% complete, there’s going to be a steep learning curve. Luckily we’ve got a very helpful contingent within our community to help ease players into the game.

That said, there are a number of steps that we could take to reduce some of the rough edges for new players. To start, we’ve added a radar indicator that displays friends and foes. The standard conventions are followed for readability (relative height indications, and color coding for friend or foe).

The HUD has undergone a layout change to conform to other FPS titles players might be used to and we’ve added key binding iconography for quick reference for deployables, grenades, and ship-to-avatar transfers (also know in the lore as: transference. We’ve also brought back the ability for players to see which weapon they currently have selected.

We’re looking forward to watching and hearing from players to determine if these new elements help reduce the cognitive overload.

And More…

The features listed above are the most significant, but over 300 fixes and features have been implemented since the inaugural Steam Early Access build was released on May 22, 2020.

If you’re a new player, or if you’ve not played in a while, the progress the Project Genesis team has made might be worth checking out in-game. We hope you’ll come visit and we look forward to seeing you online.

Next Stop: Fornax

The next build to keep your eyes on is Fornax in about six to eight weeks (around mid to late October). We’re currently in the planning phase as we determine what features to implement next.

tl;dr

Did you make it to the end only to finally get a tl;dr? Terribly sorry — but here is a video that briefly covers all of the above, with vocals by C. P. O'Neill and editing by Oscar 8CS, that hopefully makes up for it:

Until next time!

-James

About the Author: James Mayo is the Founder and Navigator at 8 Circuit Studios. He’s a self-purported veteran of the games industry — starting his career at Nintendo way back in 1990. You can find him occasionally blabbing about blockchain games and indie game development on Twitter.

About 8 Circuit Studios: 8 Circuit Studios is a small independent game company made up of game developers and crypto-enthusiasts with big aspirations. They are working hard to develop rich gaming experiences on the Ethereum blockchain and whose vision is to contribute to the metaverse one game at a time. For more on 8 Circuit Studios, be sure to follow them on Twitter,YouTube, Facebook, or join the conversation on Discord.