Hello all you Electricians out there! What's shaking?

Please enjoy your new affectionate nickname.

Groove here, back at it again in the Steam news trenches to give you a pretty hefty Development Update Jumbo Deluxe.

I’ll be touching on what we have been doing, what's happening to the game based on your feedback and what brand-spanking-new content is coming as development continues into the year.

So let’s jump from the battle bus right into it, shall we?

• January Playtest Retrospective

As you may have seen, we held our first playtest as Heart Electric a few weeks ago.
Now that we're back to developing the next version of the game and digesting all your feedback, here's a little retrospective on the event.

To start with - It's no exaggeration to say that this was our biggest gathering of players so far.
We saw over 750 unique players in the game, with 143 peak concurrent players and over 60 matches run to completion.

We had quite a few livestreams covering the playtest from players and creators, like high-ranking Valorant player CaMbCaMb and FPS Vtuber group EVE.EXE!

Everyone had a blast learning how to navigate and what’s possible mechanically in the game. Twitch chats were on fire whenever someone got dunked, and sounded very intrigued about what we are making!

The most played hero was - to no one's surprise - Jazz, with Koji not far behind.
We received a lot of feedback on these two for how to balance power levels, so thank you for that.

All of which is to say, we’re super happy with the result and stability of the playtest!
Humble beginnings, as they say.
We're only just getting started but a good start doesn't hurt.

Moving on, I want to address the valid frustrations that arose around January 18th.

We’ve heard your feedback on playtest timing and communication, especially the challenges of balancing optimal play times between North American and EU regions, and we’re committed to improving with clearer playtest information and better solutions.
Your support and constructive feedback is invaluable to our game’s development, and we deeply appreciate you being part of this journey. Stay connected with us by following our socials, joining our Discord and signing up for emails to avoid missing future communications regarding playtests.

Now back to the exciting stuff!

• What are we changing/adding next?

Based on everyone's feedback and experience during the January playtest, allow me to talk about some of the changes that we are working on RIGHT👏THIS👏VERY👏SECOND!

• Gunplay:
  We are looking at more forgiving gunplay for players on the move, giving you better control while in motion and more opportunities to land those sweet drive-by and peek shots.
  
  We are also making changes to some guns (Sandman, Stingray, Ram) to bring them a bit closer to the others. So expect bullet speed and general effective ranges of weapons to change.
  
  
• Ultimate Abilities:
  We will do a pretty significant balancing pass on Hero ultimates, giving all characters the situations to shine that they deserve!
  
  
• Game HUD and UX:
  There's quite a lot of UI functionality and other objective information that we didn't get into the January playtest build.
  These will help players more clearly read the state of the match and make quick decisions.
  
  How we clearly communicate gameplay objective information will receive a lot of focus as we move forward, as it’s extremely core to our game mode.
  
  The Smart Ping used to mark enemies and see their status will be improved and be less finicky.
  The damage indicator will be made clearer, with some audio additions, to make it really obvious when you are TAKING or DEALING damage.
  
  The in-game compass at the top of the screen will be upgraded to display various information and objectives at a glance:
  
  
• Visuals and Performance:
  More placeholder environments are continuously being replaced with proper assets, and the arenas will just look nicer in general as development continues.
  
  We have started updating the character shading for every Hero. This does a bunch of technical stuff behind the scenes, but basically makes everyone look nicer in the game!
  
  Performance will also improve as we continue to optimize our assets, and we hope to see a steady improvement with every future playtest in terms of FPS.
  
  Our netcode is being improved (using dark programming witchcraft I don't understand), making the overall gameplay experience on normal and high ping better.
  
  
• Energy and Loot:
  We are also looking into changing Shield functionality, Energy economy, and how Loot works. Expect the flow of the game to feel much better when we’ve implemented all this!

You might not see all of these things present in the very next playtest, but all of this (and more!) is coming. We know what needs to get done, but it takes a lot of time.

We just want to be transparent and show you exactly what is being worked on, and that we take your feedback very seriously.

When we say that Heart Electric is all about community-driven development - we mean it.

There were of course topics of feedback from you all that are not mentioned in the above list.
We have digested these as well, and rest assured that more changes are in the works that will be introduced later in the year as development continues.

• Teasers of coming things

On that note, we have new stuff on the way that you can see and touch and it will have textures and AUUGHH CONTENT!!!

• A new center Pancake area, featuring some interesting-and-definitely-historically-accurate statues...

• Several heroes... (Silhouettes is all you're getting for now hoho~)

• More weapons...

• And we are giving characters new voice lines to bring them to life!⚡

That's about it for today!
Once again - we're super grateful to all of you for reading and supporting us in all your little ways.🩷

If you have any other questions about what we're working on, or just some cool feedback ideas then jump in our Discord and let us know!

I shall see you all on the flip side - peace out!

/Groove, Community