Space Salvage Blog #5 : Demo Update – Testing
A few days late to the party, but here is our ~February update on the development of Space Salvage!
First off we would like to thank you and celebrate with you for reaching the milestone of 10k downloads on Sidequest this month! We are deeply grateful for all your support and hope our update of the Free Demo will express just that.
We will be submitting our update for review to Oculus in the first week or march so keep an eye out on sidequest and applabs for a notification of new content. Of course, we will also give you a heads up as soon as it gets approved!
If you haven’t checked out our demo yet, here are the links where you can find us:
Have you joined our discord server? it’s the best way to get updates before anyone else and be in direct communication with fruity devs to exchange feedback or simply talk Space salvage! You can join here:
Testing
As mentioned previously we have been working hard on updating our Free Demo. Our goal is for it to be a better representation of what Space Salvage will have to offer for its players. To do that we followed up on the plethora of changes added since the last month with some rigorous quality assurance. We wouldn’t want to thank you with a buggy update, now would we? Here’s how we approached this task:
External QA :
We teamed up with Indium Play, and had them hack and smash at our demo in two separate sessions. Getting professional external QA hired for this FREE update was essential for us to prove our commitment to making a fantastic game and we really hope you feel so too when you give it a go! We also did lots of internal QA and went to York St. John University to hold a player testing session with some of their students which was a blast.
New content
Player Hands
Last month, we almost got entirely rid of our robot friend which was a placeholder for the player’s suit. The only missing piece were the hands. Well, they are no longer missing and have been custom rigged and animated by one of our awesome fruity dev, Amy. We are so excited for you to be all geared up in your SSC uniform!
Scav Combat
As devs, we love to give you players a challenge so we have included S tier, top of the range pickups hidden in places you’ll (hopefully) never find. We’ve scattered them in new infrastructures and in new environments! So keep your eyes peeled for those high quality pickups to grab those juicy credits.
Motel
Ever since going to EGX we have been asked if there will be opportunities to fly your pod through structure and various enclosed environments. Although our demo as it stands is quite small, we wanted to deliver, so we have an awesome building in the level now.
The “Fast n’ Loose” Motel chain will be sure to make re-appearances throughout Space Salvage. We are planning on adding more complex interior flying spaces for our official release, but have a bare bones taste of it for now. I must say I personally find it very fun to fly through the pipe structures under the building!
Achievements
Alongside all the above we really wanted to include some way of earning achievements in the end game, so the demo had to reflect that. The update will come along with 3 achievements for the demo level: one for completing the level, one for completing our in-game feedback form and another if you manage to collect all the hidden pickup by the time your fuel supply is depleted. We hope our casuals and completion-ists out there will enjoy these fun badges and are excited to see how many of you will get all 3 achievements!
What’s to come!
Our next step in development will be working on our early access build. Simultaneously we are also updating our home website and impatiently waiting for our Oculus stamp of approval on the Demo Update. In the coming month after the release, feedback from players will be most crucial for it to be appropriately implemented into the initial release build. However, if you have a brilliant bit of feedback for us in may, do not fret, we will always do our best to implement it, even if it might need to come along in a future patch or update. Thank you for being on board with us on this journey so far!