We’re excited to finally bring Swimsanity! to Playstation 4 and the words “save the best for last” never rang truer! Swimsanity! is the first console release for Decoy Games, and one thing we have always heard from other developers, is that the real work starts after releasing the game. This has rung true to us as we have been hard at work since Swimsanity first hit the market. We have received amazing feedback from players during our other launches, and we have incorporated some great changes going into our Playstation 4 launch. Check out some of our improvements that will be launching with the PS4 on October 27th version below
Solo Play
One thing we heard from our previous releases is that Swimsanity! is better when you have someone to play with. While we built the game with multiplayer experiences in mind, we also want to make sure that single player experiences are fun as well. When we initially released, we didn’t scale our difficulty appropriately for solo experiences and the game was just too hard to enjoy alone. So, we decided to scale the difficulty accordingly for when you decide to play solo. We have also added the ability to respawn 3 times during Adventure when playing alone. We are excited to see people fairly compete in our boss battles solo.
Difficulty
We also noticed a lot of people struggling more than we intended with the difficulty of the Adventure modes. We watched a lot of streams and heard all the feedback and put a lot of work into easing the difficulty across the board. First and foremost, we lessened the health of most of our enemies. We noticed they took way too long to destroy, and the new quick to KO feel of the game is far more rewarding now. We also improved our checkpoint system. We want to make sure that when you play co-op online, that a KO’d player does not feel as if they are missing the exciting parts of the level. So, we increased the number of checkpoints throughout to make sure everyone stays involved as you progress. Also, we looked over the Survival levels and did some overall balancing there as well. We really think this will lead to a far more enjoyable and rewarding experience all around.
I should also mention, since Swimsanity! is new to PS4 players, we wanted to make your transitions smooth. So, for that reason we implanted an all new in game tutorial system. So, while playing our various modes you will be prompted with our best tips and advices to complete your objective. Also, if you are an experienced player, no worry because this is all optional and can be turned off from the main menu.
Online Experience
We are also doing a lot to improve our online experience. When we first launched, we had our game running on about 6 servers around the world. We realized this was doing a lot to separate our communities. We decided to merge those into 3 servers, and so far, the net code has handled distance matches extremely well. Our matchmaking will now automatically choose the best fit server for all matches instead of players having to find and choose the most populated server to play on. The other thing we added was the ability to browse custom rooms that have been created. We noticed a lot of players playing in custom rooms but outside of direct invites there was no clean way previously to see who is playing. So, a simple browse allows for this to be easier. We truly feel these steps will go a long way to strengthening our online community.
What’s next
Now that we have Swimsanity! on all major platforms with cross play our major focus will be further polishing the game, continuing to build our online community, and adding more content. As a first time indie, building an online community can be a challenge and it’s a challenge we are embracing. We can tell you we are doing a lot of work behind the scenes to build our community so that your online experience with Swimsanity! will always be active. Also feel free to join the Swimsanity! Discord where you can call out for interested Swimsanity! players to collect those precious orbs. Also, we are already hard at work on our first batch of DLC, and we plan on announcing details about that soon so keep an eye out for that.
Just as we said, we saved the best for last! It goes without saying that Swimsanity! on the PS4 will make the biggest splash yet. I must say on behalf of the entire dev team, that we would have it no other way. Be sure to pick up your copy October 27th