Here we are another week guys with another post! So WOODPUNK launches the 22nd of November! We can’t wait to receive feedback from the players, we’ve been working on this project for 2 and a half years now and we’re so close to release! This week we’ve been working on balancing issues (we’ve found out the game was too hard…) and bug corrections. So here while I drink a coffee during my break, let’s explain the decisions involved in creating WOODPUNK’s achievements.
All the achievements explained here are subject to change! As we get closer to release we will be giving out more info on these achievements. As tracer once said…let’s get to it alreadeeey!
During the achievement design process, we divided the achievements into 5 different categories: Player Reward, Easter Eggs, Promoting different Playstyles, Replayability through Game Modes, and Replayability for Completionist.
Player Reward
Firstly we designed achievements to rewards the player just for playing! We want to make WOODPUNK a difficult game, so from time to time the player will feel frustrated due to the grind. These achievements will be implemented to help the players through the grind. The rewarding pop up will appear once the player has killed a set amount of enemies, or a certain amount of a type of enemy. We’ve even included achievements for unskilled players, such as die a $VALUE$ amount of times for them to rejoice in their misadventures!
Easter Eggs
We all know what Easter Eggs are, and we don’t want to spoil future players if they’re reading this (HI! WE LOVE YOU!) So you will have to achieve these to see in what they consist!
Promoting different Play-styles
The main reason behind implementing a skill tree is to promote replayability and allow the player to succeed in WOODPUNK with different game styles. Also if the player is tired of always attacking head first, sacrificing a lot of his health points, they can change their play-style and feel refreshed. The tech tree is composed of 3 different branches each with one specialization.
If the players spend scrap (the material enemies drop when killed) into the top branch, or “Tank” branch, they will increase Aquinas health bar and increase the damage dealt by most melee weapons. By developing this branch the player can recreate the early 90s beat’em up game we all love! Special synergies can be created with this branch as you develop Ice ammunition to freeze enemies, and break their now fragile bodies with the Warhammer!
The other two branches are called the Tinkerer and the Experimental branch. The tinkerer branch will better Theo’s (Aquinas’ robot companion) abilities. Thanks to this branch Theo’s abilities will protect or damage enemies for more time. Aquinas is an excellent, but crazy inventor. The Experimental branch will feed into Aquinas’ inventors instincts and allow him to produce new weapons and ammunition to fight with. The player thanks to this branch of the tech tree will be able to fight with a chainblade (woodpunk version of a chainsaw) as well as shooting an automatic laser gun!
If you want to know more about how we developed our tech tree go read out our previous post!
The achievements designed for the tech tree are related to completing different branches of the tech tree. We have also designed achievements for using the Jetpack X value times, which are more achievable if the player has developed all the technology related to the jetpack.
Replayability through different Game Modes
WOODPUNK currently has 2 main game modes, the story/arcade mode, and the survival mode. Different achievements are included to attract the player into playing the different game modes for them to have a complete experience. When the player completes one of the stages in the story/arcade mode, they will receive an achievement, as well as for defeating one of the final bosses in each stage. Other achievements are related to the survival mode and multiplayer online leaderboards, where the player has to reach top positions in the boards in order to unlock the achievement. By including these achievements we also attract the player to WOODPUNK’s online assets.
Replayability for completionist
The last sector of achievements are directly related to promoting game replayability and for those players who really love the game (don’t they all?). These players will need to put several hours into WOODPUNK to receive all the achievements there are. Many of these achievements are simultaneously linked with the suits available to play with. The clearest example of this idea is that once the player completes the story/arcade mode once (with any of the suits available) he will receive the Underpunk suit (fancy way of saying “Hey! We have NEW GAME+” which will increase the game difficulty. Once these crazy players are able to complete the game with the Underpunk suit they will receive a new suit which makes the game even harder! The Glasspunk suit kills everything with one hit, but dies once he receives damage (no matter how little)
Well guys that's it for this week! We hope you have enjoyed the article, and if you have any comments or questions please ask us!
See you next week!
P.S I'm definetly not watching The Office for the nth time….
