Welcome to the developer log for Friday the 13th of December, 2019! This week, we’re trying something new. Our developer log is now a video, instead of a written article with a gameplay video plonked in the middle.
If you’ve been following our developer logs, you know that we’ve been working on onboarding new players. This week, however, we’re looking at something we’ve done to make progression more satisfying for both new and returning players.
The current way of unlocking new parts to use in Mechanic Miner is based around gaining experience points. This can be achieved in two ways: By mining, and by combat. Every time you level up, you get points to use in a menu. This is not the most intuitive way of unlocking new parts, and doesn’t really feel as satisfying as we want it to. It also means that you might unlock a part early on that might not be super relevant to the challenges you’re about to face.
In the future, you will be able to unlock tech in Story Mode and in Survival Mode by doing certain actions. This includes killing certain mobs or farming certain materials. Once you do the action required, a tech card will drop. Once you pick up the Tech Card, you’ll unlock a new part to use in your game!
The difference in how you unlock tech in Story and Survival modes comes down to randomization. In Story Mode, we want to guide the player a bit more, which means that the unlocks won’t be quite as random as they are in Survival Mode.
The reason we made these changes to the unlock system is that we want you, the player, to do more fun stuff in-game instead of grinding for unlocks.
