Nectar for Two

For the entire lifetime of Nectar Vector, I was pretty thoroughly convinced that the game only really worked as a 2v2 game. I had been planning on technically supporting head-to-head matches, but not recommending it as a play experience. My thought (and, until recently, experience) was that without a teammate to cover you, the game typically devolves into a sort of tit-for-tat style pattern of "you score some flowers and while you're doing that, I'll grab some flowers for myself and fly them back to my flower as you're coming back into the center of the arena".

Well, egg on my face! I made some tuning changes (namely, increasing the freeze shot speed and making it so the burst power also dislodged flowers from other players' chains) and started playing more 1v1 matches (both because I wanted to find a way to make it work and because I can't always find 3 other people to help me playtest). And it's totally rad! It works, it's fun. It's a very different game, but I like it and will absolutely be fully supporting it. I have some ideas for map layouts that will be more interesting for 2 players, especially now that laid the foundation for doing real level design by adding support for arbitrary-size goal areas (home flowers) and obstacles (uh... obstacles). It'll take some further testing to hone in on what the best levels for 2 players are, but I'm really excited: viable support for 1v1 matches will make it a way easier for people to play. That's great!

SIR