5.6.2018 - YOUR VIEWERS WANT YOU DEAD
Gone Viral is all about trying to win the attention of as many psychotic viewers as possible since it's the best way to get Phat Loot and win your freedom from the arena. There's one minor issue - those same viewers are amused by bloodshed... and they are more than happy to shed YOURS.
Every time you gain a bunch of new viewers, they vote for what will happen to you. Sometimes that's airdrops filled with cool goodies, but often they vote to change up the arena and cause havoc! When the viewers vote to add some chaos, we call these Viewer Events. These change the gameplay (sometimes massively) of the next combat room, so watch out!
Viewer Events keeping gladiators on their toes
The NPC viewers you earn in the game are happily voting away to mess with you, complete with their own opinions on events and loot. But if you stream fo' realz, your real life Twitch viewers can join in the voting fun for your events and rewards!
That reminds me - thanks very much to those who have helped us test the real-time voting system during the last few dev streams! This week we're hoping to get even more more testing and feedback. We'll be streaming at www.twitch.tv/skullbotgames Tuesday and Thursday, 3 - 6 PM PST. If you have spare time around then, please join in and vote for some chaos! We're beating on the system weekly right now and really appreciate the testing help.
So what are some specific Viewer Events? Each one tends to mess with you and the enemies in the room by changing up different aspects of combat. Here are just a few we have working in game already:
Arms Race - Everyone gets giant arms and increased melee range.
Nuked - Nukes rain from the sky, destroying the floor piece by piece over time. (kill quickly!)
Spin Doctor - All shots and walloped enemies fly in circles.
Multiplication - Everyone shoots multiple shots!
Our goal with these is to give the player some strategic choices along with random craziness. Knowing a Bombed event (where bombs rain from the sky) is coming up means it's a great time to fight the Bombadier boss since he's vulnerable to explosions.
An event that increases melee range might be great or horrible depending on what weapon you're wielding and what enemies you are facing. It's up to you to try to use the events as strategically as you can - or when the dice are stacked against you, just survive!
That's all for this week! There have been a ton of bug fixes, new rooms added, and new enemies set up with lots more to come. Check out our streams for the latest and greatest additions, and thanks for lending us your eyeballs.
-Gaffer