It’s been a few months since the last update. I spent the months working on interesting prototypes and experimental installations, but now I finally have time again to come back to Catcher!

I also visited the AMAZE Indie Festival in Berlin and got lots of great feedback that I used to improve this build.

Here is the changelist:

• New procedural background

• Made level transitions more fluid

• Tweaked movement and net opening/closing

• Replaced A-F rating with stars

• Added a score malus for death

• Added a particle mouse cursor ingame

• Capped player ships at screen border

• Improved “Sector Clear” screen

• Improved rocket visibility

• Improved level progression

• Improved tutorial

• Improved feedback

• Fixed several bugs, including net collision problems with fast-moving enemies

Since the last time, I picked up generative art to make interesting backgrounds. After a lot of experiments, I finally settled for a background that looks similar to the old one, but more interesting and with more dashes of color - and because it’s procedural, it will always look different. A few examples of the new background:

Another thing that changed is that enemies now have appearing animations! Instead of just suddenly being there, they are now generated out of particles:

Next up:

• Prototyping and testing of two new game modes

• Experiments with limited net count

• Improved sound effects

• Rework the whole ingame and menu UI