The purpose one the ‘v1.1’ patch was mainly to respond to feedback from players and judges, fix bugs and polish things that may negatively impact a person’s overall experience with the game.

At its core Acquisition is still the same game it has always been. But hopefully, now it is a bit more enjoyable to play and closer to the initial vision of the game. Be aware that this is the first public release of the game so please report any bugs so they can be ironed out in hotfixes.

New Features:

• Boss Buffs.
  • When a Boss is defeated and the player is able to power up. Now, so do the remaining bosses.
    
  • They acquire one of the defeated bosses’ unique traits and apply them to one of their abilities
  • Example ‘The Elder's Homing arrow ability is transferred to the remaining bosses. In the case of the ‘Sword-King,’ his basic slash attacks projectile now homes towards the player.
  • This was one of the USPs of the game since its conceptualising, but we never managed to add it due to time restrictions.
  • Instead, we have added a much more scaled-back version of it.

• Tutorial
  • When you now play the game for the first time you are guided in how to play it.
  • We focused on making this as non-intrusive as possible and flow together with the existing game feel and fit the themes.

• Save Data
  • Simply stores the tutorial data
  • Stops the same tutorial from repeating
  • I.E if sword tutorial is complete do not show it again, but do show the bow tutorial
• Refactored gamepad Aiming
  • The Player now rotates towards the vector direction of the joystick.
  • Before a gamepad simply moved the pointer around using the stick and players noted that this just didn’t feel very great, and it was hard to aim. Even increasing the difficulty curve of the game.
• Pointer when using a gamepad with bow
  • To help aim with the bow when using a gamepad an in-game world arrow pops up as a guide.
    

• Cooldown Sliders
  • When Abilities with a cool down (not reset at the end of animation), finish a slider inspired by ‘Enter the Gungeon’ pops up and shows remaining time before the ability is ready
  • This was added players complained they were unable to tell when their attacks were ready to be used again (especially with the staff.)
• Ability Pick Up Description
  • Now when an ability is gained a description page is shown to the player (Similar to how it is handled in ‘Hollow Knight’ )
  • Some players felt the power-ups were meaningless as they were often unsure of what they did.
  • We personally believed that it added to the experimenting nature of the game. But we see the point and yielded to the players and testers.

• Ability Orb Labels
  • Before picking up an ability orb when a player is in range the name or a short description of the ability will pop up.
  • This is to better indicate to the player which ability is what so they can make a slightly more informed guess. Even on the first run.

Tweaks

• Staff Weapon Nerfed
  • Reduced damage rate
  • Reduced Damage
  • Can no longer shoot through obstacles
    
  • Many people noted that it was simply too OP before and made the game much easier
• Staff Feel Improved
  • Reduced Cooldown
    
  • Much shorter delay (near-instant) between button presses and attack execution
    
  • Animation is more responsive to input too.
    
• Sword Buffed
  • Close Range damage increased (Primary & secondary)
    
  • Projectile damage increased (Primary & secondary)
  • Slightly increased projectile range (primary)
• Bow Buffed
  • Attack rate increased (Primary Animation sped up)
    
  • Damage increased (Primary & secondary)
• All Obstacles Nerfed
  • Hitpoints significantly reduced
    
• Credit Scene Cleaned up
  • Credit content is now separated between 2 pages
  • Page one contains all the core and extended team member 
  •  Page two attributes assets used.

• Sword King Behaviour Change
  • Before executing transition ability, he will walk towards centre of the room.
  • Can still use the ability out of the transition stage at any location.

This is it for now, as we all are returning back to University in a weeks’ time we plan on leaving Acquisition like this as its final stage. Maybe I (Esso), Will pop by sometimes to fix reported bugs. Other than that, the game is complete, and we are proud of what we managed to produce.

If we do find the time to work On Acquisition again, it will probably be in a new form…