Hello Mineral Defenders!

I hope you have all been well.

"Mineralistic Mondays" is a news announcement talking about progress on Mineral Defense, and also possibly discussing ideas and suggestions when needed.

Thanks to ETG from the MD Discord Server for the suggestion to do such a format!

A new Mineralistic Monday update will be posted on a weekly or bi-weekly occasion.

The main focus of the upcoming update is a complete overhaul and improvement of the game's UI, new end game balancing and features, and new endless research possibilities, among other small adjustments and changes.

The idea is to cap the world generation at 200 total tiles - but allow the player to continue playing the game beyond wave 200. This will be done though having enemy "Rifts", portals through which they arrive to attack your base. Rifts will appear at the end of paths and spawn enemies in the standard Mineral Defense fashion, but additionally to this they will appear at end tiles, continuing to spawn enemies until the player disables the rift through the use of a "Rift Breaker" structure!

A mockup (not final version) of the new in-game UI:

The entire game's UI is being remade in this style. Hope everyone enjoys the new style!

After this update is ready, focus will move on to creating the assets for the next world players can embark to - a currently unnamed (taking suggestions!) jungle planet scattered with ancient ruins from an old primitive civilization. Tiles will already exist on the planet, and be uncovered through the removal of tree clusters, rather than rising through the liquid under-bottom of the map.

A major goal of the Jungle Planet update is to prepare and release variations of all existing turrets, allowing players to unlock and customize them after upgrading the base turrets to level 5, transforming them into new, powerful variations with potential elemental effects and synergies.

I have been experimenting with different types of structures, most notably being the "Carrier Drone".

The Carrier Drone is a 3x3 drone that allows the player to place structures in a 2x2 zone atop the drone, then select the drone and give it move orders RTS style! The idea behind the drone is to allow the player to quickly move around parts of their base without sacrificing minerals to the cost of selling and rebuilding. Carrier Drones will also provide structures with a height bonus, rivaling that of a full stack of platforms.

The Drone idea is interesting to explore, and I've thought about adding a combat drone, which will be configurable between 3 different damage modes and will automatically attack targets within its landing pad's range using its landing pad's target preference. The combat drones could also have the same RTS order system, allowing the players to manually target specific targets such as bosses or enemies that have leaked through your main defenses.

If you got this far, thank you for taking the time to read the news. If you have ideas, suggestions or questions, please feel free to post them in the comments here in Steam, or join the discussions in the Mineral Defense Discord server.
Thanks, happy drilling!