Phobos Down 0.1.1 beta released
This update to Phobos Down focuses mostly on improving in-game instructions and guides, especially regarding high scores.
Score calculation from kill events (multiple termination, termination streaks) has been changed. Now each additional kill will always increase the score bonus. Together with some other tweaks, this makes earning score slightly easier than before. Kill streak progression and final score bonus is now visualized with an indicator at the location of the kill.
Message texts have been shortened and their timing adjusted so that player sees the instruction texts at the right time and has more time to read them. An additional direction indicator has been added that guides player toward the most important items like the extraction zone at the and of mission or to medical stations when badly hurt.
There are also many minor visual improvements like added "juice" to score indicator, new plant variants, adjusted dynamic lights, animated extraction zone marker and added progress bar while compiling shaders.
And last but not least, this update adds Steam achievements.
Here are all the changes since the last alpha version:
- Added instruction texts for indicators in control guide overlay.
- Added blinking animation to extraction zone marker.
- Adjusted mission end message timings.
- Show "enter extraction zone" message for a much longer time.
- Only apply 50% of the damage from weapons/devices to containers and the player itself.
- Improved minefield device description and shortened the activation delay.
- Calculate kill score bonuses as multiples of kill count instead of fixed numbers.
- Added visual kill streak progress indicator.
- Fixed two simultaneous kills at the start of a kill streak resetting the streak.
- Improved score related sound effects.
- Added animations to score and equipment level indicators.
- Added weapon UI opening sound.
- Added delay effect to space ship interior sounds in the intro.
- Show notification when reaching new high score ranks during mission.
- Increased the score penalty for destroyed containers.
- Show additional score bonus indication at the location of kill streak and multikill events.
- Added option to show website link in main menu in arcade mode.
- Fixed splash screen logo clipping on Steam Deck's 16:10 screen.
- Added Steam achievements.
- Increased visual explosion size and terrain cut radius a bit.
- Made explosion sound pitch and volume change based on explosion size.
- Made list selection menu items wrap around.
- Show last failed or completed game score in main menu until starting a new game.
- Increased light flash intensity from hit crystal structures.
- Added a large mushroom-like plant variant.
- Fixed explosion particles not getting cleared at mission end.
- Added direction indicator guiding towards extraction zone or nearest medical station.
- Removed medical station screen edge indicator blinking.
- Added a progress bar during shader compiling at main state transitions.
- Don't play camera zoom in animation or update messages while compiling shaders.
- Log performance statistics from terrain generation.
This update is now available on Itch.io and Steam.
Posted on 2025-10-27