Antidote development news – July 2017
This development update has been a long time coming. We have probably been more excited than you because.. well, we know what you’re missing. But today, we’re finally ready to share some screenshots of the Antidote loadout, which lets you choose how you play.
While the loadout will be subject to change, you should get a pretty good feel for what we’re aiming for from this article. We love Antidote, but right now, some of us want it harder, some want it easier, and all of us want more variety. By your messages, you all want the same – new levels is by far your most requested feature, followed closely by a chance to face infinite waves!
We decided early on in the design process that we would hand craft every level for the highest quality. That makes adding new levels a fairly slow and expensive process, so this update has no new levels. However, enemy waves are separate from level layout, and are easy to modify for higher variety. So, in this update, we are bringing you… more enemies! Replaying the same level against more (or less, or different) enemies can completely change your strategy. So how do you get to challenge these enemies?
The picture above shows this update’s main change – the loadout. Here you can see my backpack (top left) and my current loadout (bottom left). My backpack contains all the items I’ve collected, and my current loadout affects the level I’m about to play. The first item in my loadout (in orange) is a difficulty item. I have it powered up pretty well (ultra level!), so I can choose any difficulty. Right now, it’s set to “very hard” at +1094% difficulty. That means I’m going to face a ton more enemies! Boom!
Look how intense my late game on level 1 got with this loadout. While level 1 is still not too hard, that’s a whole lot more Salmonella to deal with! The observant among you might ask, how did I get such a great defense? Am I cheating?! No – the other items in my loadout power up my defenses, making them digest faster and generate sugar more efficiently. Neat!
Some of the loadout items we’re working on include (subject to change):
- Additional waves (and, yes, infinite waves)
- Golden enemies, pink enemies, and unicorn mode
- Power-ups for your units (e.g. increased digestion speed, cell regeneration)
- Apocalypse mode (!!!)
- Old age and young age mode
- Disease and disorder simulations
- Vaccinations – finally a way to fend off late game El Bolador surges!
- Superbacteria world – all bacteria start hardened ;_;
- Total unit replacement (fed up with Big Eater? maybe you’d like to meet pyrogens…)
- Theme boosts for different levels
The end result? I crushed my previous best score! That’s a combination of better defenses, more enemies killed, and score boosting loadout items. We’ll soon make the way points are calculated clearer, but the idea will stay the same – beating a harder set of more enemies will earn you more points, which will make the leaderboards much more interesting.
The most important thing, though, is that with the loadout, level 1 becomes a whole new experience. You get to experiment with new strategies and defenses, and I am already thoroughly enjoying the extra challenge – it keeps the game fresh and fun.
So, when can you get your hands on the loadout? For those of you in the early access beta (from Google Play), we can’t give a concrete date but it should be around September this year. If you can’t wait, send us an email with your google play address and we can add you to the alpha program, where infinite energy users will be able to play with this very early version of the loadout in the coming weeks! If you have any questions or ideas, send us an email or contact us on our social media pages – we’d love to hear from you!
