Watching some videos of the more established players resulted in a conversation about how funny it would be to add kamikaze dynamics to Solaroids:

“Thank you! I like every single aspect of this game. It’s wonderful 🙂 One Suggestion: It would be very funny if I could use my spaceship for Kamikaze attacks. In higher Levels, when I loose a life and all my guns, but I do have left some spaceships, it would be very cool if my spaceship would do some serious damage to the enemies, if I hit them with full speed.” – Damnax 1985

I little thinking about how it could be incorporated without changing the “rules” of the game to drastically, and this was my response:

“Thank you for the compliments! That’s an interesting idea, kamikaze! I could incorporate speed into damage calculations as a multiplier of sorts. I could also possibly make player ships the only thing that can take out the core of a boss before all peripheral parts have been destroyed. So if the core is exposed you could ram it there and blow the whole thing up for the cost of a life. What do you think?” – Me

Soon I had found time to implement it and it worked pretty well. When moving fast enough, when your ship explodes by hitting some physical object, be it an asteroid, mine, other players when friendly collisions is turned on, or your formidable foes, it will cause your own core to detonate unleashing a shock-wave of molten plasma.

But when you have a hierarchical system of parts that the bosses are made up of, you can’t just “blow the whole thing up” and expect everything to be gone. You need to take that things apart!

Destructible Cores

Kamikaze Dynamics + Destructible Cores = fun times!

If you’ve played Solaroids before, I hope you enjoy the subtle “tricks” and random possibilities this adds during both single player and crazy local co-op sessions. I’ve tried to load up the game with little details and strategic secrets I’ve carefully balanced into the game for your discovery. If you haven’t tried Solaroids before, give the Free Demo available on the Steam store page a whirl by yourself or with your friends and family and don’t forget join the Community Hub. There are many more features on the way including mouse and twin-stick style controls on immediate horizon, and an alternate BETA Branch for both the full game and the demo, and I would love to hear your feedback and suggestions to make it the best Asteroids “clone” available.

Solaroids is available on Steam Early Access and is still being actively developed by Chad Yates as part-time Indie game developer.  Come try out the free Demo, join the Community HUB on steam, or join the ranks of brave fighter pilots defending the solar system and competing for high scores and prestige!