Hello everyone and welcome to our first news blast of 2020! With our last update — the Rise of the Crystal Titan sitting well in the server, and now that the Christmas and New Year celebrations have come to an end, it’s time for us to look to the future and introduce the next step for Hash Rush!
Before anything, we want to wish you all a Happy New Year!
Overview of 2019
2019 was an interesting year for us! It started rather slowly as we had to work on numerous things behind the scenes, but it also meant that we were able to add in a powerful event system, test how it works in the game, and learn what was good and what needed improving.
In the second half of 2019 our attention turned to the game’s core features and we improved many aspects of what already existed (such as the combat system), and then completed the important enemy AI feature, ticking points from our beta readiness checklist!
2019 Game Updates
Our first major update in 2019 was our summer update, the combat system enhancement. This update was actually our third iteration on the game’s combat system and we are pleased to say that we are much happier with this version and will be sticking with it from now on! What’s more, the summer update introduced new enemy monsters, a basic AI for the opponent, behavior presets for your troops, and movement formations for all units.
If you want to learn more about what we did, check out our original announcement.
The second update continued on the theme of improving combat in the game. We called this update ‘The Rise of the Crystal Titan’ and looking back, it is currently the largest update that we have pushed to the game so far!
We added in multiple new enemy monsters, enemy bosses (including the end of planet boss, the Crystal Titan), an enhanced AI for the opponent, and finally, the first new planet based on the Desert biome.
As before, if you want to learn more about the Rise of the Crystal Titan update, check out the announcement.
Looking to 2020
After releasing the Rise of the Crystal Titan update we intentionally took a step back to see how our alpha players would respond to the game. However our Chief Creative Officer, Rob did not sit around quietly for long and quickly returned to the planning board to put together our next steps — something that we will share with you now!
Focus: Crafting
That’s right, the next major goal for Hash Rush is to fully develop and implement the crafting system.
This is one of our biggest tasks so far as for the most part, we are going to have to develop the entire system from the ground up. Previous updates usually iterated on a feature that we already had in the game. Secondly (and much more fun) the crafting system that we have planned out is huge.
Check out this short list of what it involves:
- A new type of resource
- A new unit — the Prospector (though we may end up adding even more!)
- Blueprints that allow the player to craft items
- An improved resource storage system
- The crafted items themselves
- The heroes (as these are the units that can use the items)
- New buildings
- Player level system
- And more!
So, how will this work?
The plan right now is to have 10 different crafting materials that can only be collected by the new unit, The Prospector, what’s more, each of these crafting materials will have a quality level attached to it. The idea behind this is to make the items created as diverse as possible, encouraging players to trade their resources and to save their best resources for the ultimate items.
Furthermore, the crafting system will eventually tie to the planet hopping mechanic. Though at first (during the alpha at least) all of the crafting resources available be found on every planet, our ultimate goal is to have specific resources appear only on specific planets. For example, a snow themed resource will not appear on the desert planet.
Once you have collected the resources it will be time to craft the times. However, before you will be able to combine the resources into a new item you will need to acquire the item Blueprints; think of a Blueprint as a plan/schematic for the item. Basic/common Blueprints will be obtained every time you level up, while the rarer, more advanced versions, will be obtained via the Bounty Campaign or special Events.
The items that you can craft will vary from enhancements, boosts, to equippable items such as swords, shields, and so on. It is with the equippable items that the hero units get their connection to the crafting system as they are the only units that will be able to make use of these items.
So, there you have it, a very basic overview of the crafting system and how it connects to the rest of the game.
Do keep in mind two important points about this overview. Firstly, this is a very simplified version. For the sake of this article, we’ve tried to only focus on what is more likely to make it to the game (as we don’t like building hype just to crush it later), and secondly, this design will certainly evolve and change as we begin to add it to the game.
Teaser: The Prospector
Let’s end this article with a look at the concept art of the Ernack Prospector!
As with all concept arts, our art team started with several designs:
We think picked what we thought was best and developed it further:
The next stage (that we are currently in) is to create the 3D model of this unit and properly animate it. We’ll have some screenshots and videos of this process for you in the near future!
And this brings us to the end of this update — we’ve got some really big things in the works that we cannot wait to share with you, so keep checking back for more Hash Rush news!
