I know many of you are eagerly awaiting 0.4.4, and let me tell you I am looking forward to being done with this update as well! As a solo developer (working part-time I might add), new features have a tendency to take longer than I would like. I really do appreciate everyone’s patience and encouragement!

An update on 0.4.4:

The key feature as I mentioned before in 0.4.4 is the ability to set the power of individual rockets. While on the surface, it sounds like a trivial addition, when you get down to implementing it there are a ton of things to consider.

The biggest thing when adding a feature to any game is to consider how the new feature will change the game. For Crashtastic, my goal has always been to give people the freedom to create whatever they wanted to solve a given challenge of a level. The secondary goal was to make even failure something that you could enjoy, hence the big crashes with pieces flying everywhere and the robot flopping around like a dead fish. Call me evil, but that just never gets old to me! One of my big fears with adding this has always been that it would trivialize some of the challenges, and as a consequence diminish the amount of destruction and chaos a player gets from failure. After playing around with the new feature, I’m feeling pretty confident that won’t be the case .

The other big challenge to adding a feature is figuring out how to present it to the player. This turned out to be the biggest challenge. I’ve spent a bunch of time on Crashtastic, trying to keep it as accessible as possible. My biggest fan and best UI tester is my 7 year old daughter. Hearing her feedback during the development of the game, has really opened my eyes to the importance of good UI design.

The UI isn’t quite there yet, but I know what needs fixing to get it there!

So when will it be done? Soon… how soon? Can’t say…. but it is getting close.

Mark