Here’s the first major update! The main novelty is the introduction of game modes, along with some balance changes. Overall, I think this makes the game more fun to play. I also did a lot of optimization, making the game now playable on mobile (although the controls are still bad).

New game modes

Thew new game modes are divided into 2 categories:

• Easier modes, selectable in the settings screen:
  • Easy mode: all incoming damage is halved, adrenaline lasts double.
  • God mode: no incoming damage, adrenaline doesn’t decay.
  • Easier modes disable score-saving.
• Advanced modes, unlocked through play and selectable in the main menu when available:
  • Advanced start: start with a certain wanted level and adrenaline. Unlocked by reaching the corresponding wanted level with extra lives or full hp.
  • Hardcore: you can’t gain extra lives. Unlocked by reaching wanted level 5 without dying.
  • Advanced modes can be unlocked manually in the settings screen.

Balance changes

• Dying was too unforgiving before, making you defenseless while facing powerful enemies. Now, when respawning after dying:
  • Adrenaline stage decreases by 1 instead of resetting to zero.
  • Wanted level decreases by one.
  • The goal with this changes is to have the dying-respawning flow much more fluid, by not having a so sudden decrease in your abilities while temporarily decreasing the difficulty at the same time.
• After watching most people struggle to eat, I slightly increased the eating range. Eating humans should now be easier.

Mobile Support

• I did a lot of optimization tasks so that the game could run well on mobile (at the end it was as easy as removing the shadows, but well…).
• The way to control the orca is, right now, by pressing towards where you want to swim. There are additional buttons to roll, boost, and pause.
• I’m not particularly happy with these controls, but the feedback I got is that they are easier to use than the normal keyboard ones, so they will remain as an option in the game. In the future, I would like to have some kind of touch joystick to control movement, but since this is not a very traditional type of movement, I’m not sure how to implement it yet.

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