For a long time, Inversus only featured a single pickup type, the red fast bullet. Let’s talk about some new additions to the team!

Smash

Picking up the smash item turns your ship red. You have a few seconds of speed boost and the ability to smash through cells on contact without spending any ammo.

Feedback wise, I’ve added some subtle controller rumble on each block break. The acquisition sound is still the same as for the fast shots and might need to change. The biggest issue, however is that you don’t get any audiovisual feedback regarding how much longer the power lasts. At minimum, it needs some sort of accelerated blink over the last couple seconds.

Shield

The shield pickup puts a red border around your ship. It lets you take an extra hit before losing the match.

Currently the shield lasts until the rounds ends or until it breaks from being shot. This is proving to drag matches out and it also makes it less exciting for the pickup to respawn while you are still shielded. The next step is likely going to be turning it into a timed mechanic (similar to the smash pickup but longer). Hopefully, this will force some aggressive risk taking during this period of safety.