Hello Everyone!

It's been around three months since we released Update 2 for Autonomous Anarchy, so we would like to share our plans for the next update as well as the future of the game as we continue to work on it. At this current stage, we are planning to release all of these levels with the official release, which we hope would be sometime in winter 2021 or early next spring.

Here is a preliminary plan of the final parts of the game. These plans may change significantly in the final release, but this is what we are planning right now.

Area 3: Railway Rampage

The next area of Autonomous Anarchy will take place on the rails. You battle your way along train cars of various types as the tracks lead away from the forest and towards the snowy mountain pass. However, your progress has been noticed by the corrupt defense forces, and they have sent an airship to wipe you out. 

This area ends with a short mini boss fight since this area will be smaller than the others so far. After some slow progress, this area is finally starting to take shape and should come together pretty quickly once we finish up the art assets for it.

Area 4: Aerial Assault

In area 4, you take off to the sky for some shoot-'em-up action! This area will be a huge change of pace featuring newly designed versions of your powerups, and completely new enemies. The area starts in the sky and transitions into the open sea at dusk. You will fight floating and flying enemies alike as you weave through giant oil rigs and other structures. 

After this, you reach the shoreline of the city, and confront the airship from area 3 to take it down for good. We've started planning this area out and have designed your new ship and powerups, however we still need to work out the enemies and backgrounds.

Area 5: Starlight City

This is the final area of the game, and it will be rather large. You land on the rooftops of giant skyscrapers and switch back to tank form to clear out the elite ninja robots guarding the city. Eventually you find your way down the elevator and through a maze of streets and buildings until you locate the supercomputer that controls all of the corrupt forces. This area is still in the concept stages.

Final Boss: The Supercomputer

The final boss will be the giant supercomputer that is controlling your robotic foes. This will be a very in depth boss fight, so we will likely make it it's own area. This makes it so you don't have to beat the city again if you die and gives us more leeway in making the boss more challenging!

Gameplay Changes

We are planning on adding more gameplay features to the game, starting with power pods. These will be rewarded after you beat a boss, and can be changed at terminals found throughout the levels. You can only have one active at any time, but you can unlock them in the order you choose. 

Additionally, the bomb powerups we added in the forest update will be combined with the pods. Each pod will have one type of bomb that you can use while it's active, and there will be a generic bomb pickup to replace the specific ones currently in the levels. This is to streamline the controls as we didn't really like having to cycle between bombs. Here are the details about the three different power pods:

Dash Pod:

This pod gives your tank the ability to perform a short but powerful dash to aid you in running down enemies or escaping from their barrages. While in the dash you are immune to all damage, however as soon as it ends your immunity is over!

Shield Pod:

The shield pod gives you a rechargeable shield that acts as extra health. The amount of extra health you gain from the shield increases with your powerup levels.

Turret Pod:

Once fully charged, this pod lets you place down a friendly turret that helps you gun down enemies for 12 seconds before it self destructs. You can also destroy the turret before the 12 seconds are up to regain some of the pod charge.

Extra Game Modes

We are also planning to add more game modes in addition to the campaign/story mode. These are still just early concepts, but we might as well share them. These may change significantly in the final release:

• Turbo Mode: It's like the normal story mode, but turbo! Start with all powerups unlocked, some special stat bonuses, and all pods at your disposal. This might sound easy, but your enemies are even more relentless! All enemy spawners spawn nearly instantly, and have no spawn caps! Bosses are also enhanced for greater difficulty!
• Dungeon Mode: It's a classic dungeon crawl experience with randomly generated rooms that get more challenging the deeper you go. We might also include an upgrade shop.
• Challenge rooms: Individual rooms that are a challenge to beat. Start with full health and various stat bonuses to try and beat the room in the fastest time.
• Arena Mode: Battle waves of enemies as they assault you in an arena.

Multiplayer Co-op

We are hoping to add couch co-op to Autonomous Anarchy, although this will be a long way off. You can combine forces with a friend and battle through story mode, or team up and take on the hordes in the dungeons and arena.

Autonomous Anarchy August

This August, we are planning to get as much work done as we can on Autonomous Anarchy. Our goal is to finish up Area 3 and start work on Area 4 by the end of the month. We'll also be trying to post more on Reddit, our Twitter and a few devlogs on itch.io to gather more interest for the game. We are also planning on creating an Autonomous Anarchy discord server, however we'll post more when we know for sure what we want to do with it. Thanks for reading and stay tuned!