Voidborne : TopDown Shooter / Battlecruiser Simulation

Voidborne has now a dedicated page on itch.io :

forever-a-clam.itch.io/voidborne

Feel free to follow the devlogs in order to see the updates an get more informations about the game.

here is also a new gameplay video :

In Voidborne, many spaceships are built around a "destructible system" feature. Those ships are made up of different sections, each one being dedicated to a specific role: thruster, weapon, defense, sensors, etc.

For example, this frigate has three sections: Weapon, Shield and Thruster.

If a ship is taking damage, the section that takes the hit will also be damaged. If the section is destroyed, then the ship will lose the abilities associated with it.

This rule is also true for the player's battlecruiser.

Wrecks

When a ship is destroyed, the section that takes the killing blow gets annihilated. The rest of the ship will turn into a wreck and stays on the battlefield.

Wrecks are harmless but can resist a few hits, making them a temporary cover for a wise pilot.

New devlog available : Feature focus - Tags & Missiles

The battleship is equipped with two missile bays. In the current prototype of the game, only one type of missile is fully functional. Thus, the ship is always shown with two identical bays in videos and screenshots. These bays are composed of six tubes, each containing a heavy homing warhead.

This type of missile must be locked on an enemy section before being launched. Locking a target is performed with the turrets projectiles: each projectile that hits a section will progressively stack "tags" on it. Every turret will add tags with different efficiency, depending on its base damage value, range, or rate of fire. An enemy ship's section can have a maximum of five tags at the same time.

The "Tag" feature

Homing missiles can be launched by pressing a key on the keyboard if an enemy section has at least two tags. The warhead will lock any enemy section that fulfills this condition and consumes the two tags. If more than one section is available for targeting, it will prioritize its target by selecting the last section hit by a turret.

Heavy missiles and heavy turrets are designed to work in tandem: while turrets are your main damage dealers, missiles act more like ship killers. They are also very efficient at intercepting fleeing or hiding targets, thanks to their ability to navigate over every obstacle and bypass energy shields.

We will add other types of missiles in the future, allowing the player to simultaneously select two different launch bays for his ship. Every kind of missile will have a specific role on the battlefield, using the tag system in its own way.

New devlog available : Pixel Art : The Cruiser

Back in 2020, I was sketching many sci-fi stuff without any real purpose. At some point, I realized that I had created many little spaceship pieces. These modular parts can be arranged in many ways, allowing various iterations of the same spaceship.

I repurposed this system and decided to use it as a basis for Voidborne's visual identity.

Every section between the thruster and the nose can be placed in any order. Also, each section's "upper" and "side" parts are separate sprites and can be shuffled at will. You can flip every sprite horizontally or vertically to get even more variations.

Experimentations went a bit further in 2021 as I sketched new ship designs. Here's a sneak peek of them:

This feature will probably stay purely aesthetic. The battlecruiser will have a dedicated upgrade system to improve its combat abilities, but it will be a different feature. I do not want the player to feel compelled to choose between the "coolest ship" and the "best stats."