Bytesize Adventures
Crafting bite-sized digital worlds

Star Fusion 1.1: what's in the update


Despite this blog being a little quiet for the last few weeks, there’s actually lots going on at the moment. Star Fusion patch 1.1 was submitted to Apple for approval on 21st August so I’m expecting it to be approved in the next week or so. I’m also completely re-designing the Bytesize Adventures website with a brand new look and feel as well as HTML5/CSS3 compliance. Last but not least, i’m creating a new Star Fusion trailer.

I’ll talk some more about the site redesign and trailer in a future post. For now I want to focus on the new features in Star Fusion 1.1.

Tweaks to the gameplay and interface

The main change here is with the temperature gauge. I’ve moved the number representing the liquid to the top of the gauge so it’s not obscured by your thumb during play. The liquid in the gauge now jumps in increments of 5 which makes selecting the appropriate temperature allot more forgiving.

I’ve also overhauled the star generator so that the probability of seeing higher scoring stars is much more likely. This means that you’re likely to obtain higher scores than in version 1.0 and it adds more variation to each game.

Graphics

I’ve improved the graphics in most areas of the game. The temperature gauge gets a new look, the stars and power-ups are improved, the iPhone status bar has gone, there’s a new title for the Menu screen, i’ve redone the buttons on the Menu, and i’ve added a basic loading screen.

New score multiplier power-up

To compliment the clock power-up, which awarded you with additional time in version 1.0, i’ve added a score multiplier power-up. Collecting this will double the score of any stars you collect for a period of 10 seconds. Collecting additional clocks or score multipliers, before the existing one has run out, will have the effect of increasing the duration of the multiplier. I’ll be adding more power-ups in future updates.

Environment manipulation

A brand new feature for version 1.1 is the ability to drag the clouds around the environment. This adds an extra layer of gameplay since when a star is obscured by a cloud, you can drag that cloud out of the way. Its an additional level of difficulty that you can choose to ignore if you wish but it adds allot to the game – especially if you want the big scores. I’ve also made the clouds position dynamic to enhance this new gameplay feature.

Pause

I’ve added the ability to pause the game via a small pause icon in the top left of the screen. Tapping this will pause the game and the icon will change to a play icon. Clicking the play icon will resume the game. This is a pretty basic feature but it’s essential to complement the new options which i’ll move onto now.

Options screen

I’ve added a basic options screen to the main menu. This allows you to select the game length. In version 1.0 each game lasted for 2 minutes and could only be extended with the clock power-up. In version 1.1 you can choose between 2 minutes, 3 minutes, and 5 minutes.

New Stars

A real no-brainer was the addition of more stars. I’ve added 6 more bringing the total up to 10. This coincides with the new changes to the temperature gauge increments and means that you will be using every position on the gauge. It also adds some higher scoring stars to the mix.

So there you have it, version 1.1 in a nutshell. I have loads more features planned for future updates but for now I hope people enjoy Star Fusion 1.1 which should be arriving very shortly.