Hi folks! We're here to give you some insights on what we've been doing. Sipho has been in development for a year and a half now and we feel like we're getting close to release. Currently we're working on sprinkling the top levels of polish and adding the few missing bits and pieces of content.
One of our major concerns was teaching all the game systems and controls to new players. To that extent we've been reworking and improving the game tutorial to feature step-by-step instructions that gradually familiarize new players to the game. We hope this will allow people to quickly jump into the game. We're also working on adding some new and unseen zooids into the mix. One of these is the grappling hook - it will allow attaching to enemies from afar or even navigating the world by grappling to nearby surfaces. Another new zooid that will be featured in the full game is the energy leech. While it does no damage, it saps the energy of foes while boosting it's own colony. The energy leech should combo very nicely with melee range skills and allow using expensive skills more often.
Lastly, we're working on improving and rethinking our level bosses. We want them to be a fun challenge - not too easy, but also beatable with a certain playstyle. We want to avoid forcing players to build in a specific way just to be able to beat the bosses, so this is a tough balancing act. We're also constantly iterating and adding new art assets to Sipho, trying to nail that creepy underwater aesthetic. One of the new sprites is the egg sack that replaces the previous art for our nutrition container. Now you're chewing up eggs for nutrition, yum!
We hope that this update has been informative. Keep an eye out for more updates! Yours, team Sipho.