Tiki Games

NOVASTRIKE - June 23, 2008 Update

Hi folks -

I know NOVASTRIKE has only been out for a short time now, but we've been steadily watching the comments in various forums and reviews and feel it's appropriate to provide you with an update. When we shipped the game we had three difficulty modes: RECRUIT, SOLDIER, and VETERAN. These modes were meant to be along the lines of casual, normal, and hard difficulty. Based on responses we've seen so far it looks like we ended up with something more like hard, harder, and hardest. Umm, oops?

Our goal is to provide a game where the difficulty scales from the very casual to hardcore - we didn't achieve this at launch so we're working to make this the case now. Those of you that like the challenge of the current difficulty - don't worry - you'll still have challenging modes awaiting you.

For those of you that feel the difficulty is too much then part of this update is to let you know that we're scaling the difficulty back in all three modes - so RECRUIT will be quite casual, SOLDIER will be easier than it currently is, and even VETERAN will be pulled back some. We'll also be adding a fourth mode - HARDCORE - and this will be the most challenging mode (similar to the current VETERAN).

While the difficulty is actually what's driving us to release this update as soon as possible, we're also including some other items. The following is a list of what's going to be in the update.

Difficulty tuned to be easier in existing modes while adding a HARDCORE mode for those that really want a challenge
Fully Customizable Controls - we're including a secondary control layout that has an alternate control mapping scheme, but you'll also be able to customize the controls to your liking. So you can map weapon selection to face buttons and/or the digital pad, put the afterburner on a trigger, etc
Trophies - yes, we're going to be adding trophies (15 total)
Player ship (the Scythe) will be larger in size
Fine-Aim mode - those of you having trouble lining up the Shredder and/or Trembler bomb will be able to hold a button down to slow down the Scythe's turning - this makes lining up on ground targets a lot easier
Megapacks and repair packs will replenish the capacitor bar for the afterburner (so if you burn up your capacitor trying to pick up a megapack or repair pack now you'll get a nice refill, at a fraction of today's gas costs!)
Slight performance increase (we'll always be looking to optimize the game over time as we support it)

Realistically we're going to spend the remainder of June and July to finish the above items (as well as other things we're working on for the update). This means the update will be targeting a release sometime in August. I know this is still a bit off, and I apologize to those of you that are currently frustrated by the difficulty. But I do want to make sure you're aware that we're not just releasing the game and moving on - we have every intention to support it, and this will be the first update.

The updated version of NOVASTRIKE will also be the version we're targeting to release in Europe later this summer. So while we weren't able to initially release the game at the same time in Europe, at least those of you waiting for NOVASTRIKE in Europe can look forward to getting an updated version of the game.

I'd also like to thank Sony for offering us some of their own resources to help playtest this update as we work on it to ensure the difficulty is scaled back quite a bit for more casual gamers. Particular thanks go to Chris and Ted here for making that possible.

When the update is submitted for testing I'll post another blog entry at Sony's official blog site.

Sincerely,
Kevin McCann
President / Creative Director
Tiki Games, Inc.