NOVA: Last Watch
NOVA: Last Watch is an incremental bullet hell where survival, movement and long-term build decisions matter as much as raw firepower.
Destroy the endless swarm, harvest the data shards it leaves behind and choose from randomized upgrades to shape your vessel as the battle escalates. Every choice slightly nudges future upgrade rolls toward the paths you invest in, while keeping other possibilities open — letting you plan a build without ever knowing exactly what comes next.
Commit far enough to a weapon or system and its final level unlocks a powerful Ultimate, transforming how it works and pushing your vessel one step closer to becoming an unstoppable war machine.
Build for the next minute, gamble on the next ten — and survive long enough to see what your ship can become.
TL;DR
You automatically shoot priority targets.
Collect green data shards they leave behind.
Avoid everything else.
Get levels and improve your vessel.
Survive as long as you can.
AND BE BRAVE! There's a metric you should be aware of:
The odds for Emergency Repairs increases the lower your hull points get, and if you get below 40% hull points the chance increases by 27 percentage points after each miss until it is guaranteed on the third level-up.
So - if you just killed a boss and a bunch of mobs, but your hull dropped too low for comfort - well, it's time for a leap of faith. Boss-data usually gives a level or two (or three). You might actually survive. ;)
Just remember: if Emergency Repair appears and you choose something more... interesting instead, the pity counter resets. You're gambling again. ;)
Experiencing slowdowns or low FPS?
If the game runs poorly in a Chromium-based browser, enabling Skia Graphite may improve Canvas rendering performance on some systems.
Here's how you enable this:
Google Chrome (Chrome may have this enabled by default):
- Type chrome://flags/#skia-graphite into the address bar and press Enter.
- Find Skia Graphite.
- Change the setting from Default/Disabled to Enabled.
- Click Relaunch at the bottom of the browser window.
- Start the game again.
Edge (May need enabling)
- Type edge://flags/#skia-graphite into the address bar and press Enter.
- Find Skia Graphite.
- Change the setting from Default/Disabled to Enabled.
- Click Relaunch at the bottom of the browser window.
- Start the game again.
Brave (May need enabling)
- Type brave://flags/#skia-graphite into the address bar and press Enter.
- Find Skia Graphite.
- Change the setting from Default/Disabled to Enabled.
- Click Relaunch at the bottom of the browser window.
- Start the game again.
Optional: verify that Graphite is active
- Chrome: open
chrome://gpu - Brave: open
brave://gpu - Edge: open
edge://gpu
Under Graphics Feature Status, look for:
Skia Graphite: Enabled
If the Skia Graphite option is not available in your browser, leave your browser settings unchanged. Browser flags are experimental and their availability may vary between browser versions and systems.
About NOVA: Last Watch
This game is a prototype/MVP and I'm wondering if it's worth moving to Unity. All feedback is welcome! Commenting is open.
I like where the balance is at this point — I can usually survive around 10 minutes myself (record: just over 15min), and even that still leaves a couple of new enemies to reveal themselves and bucketloads of ultimates to build. There are iterations of this game where you just kill everything, but I found that to be very boring very quickly.
This 10-20 minute run feels to be in some sort of sweet spot that you want to try again and maybe finally get that elusive "maxed out full build", without being frustrated to get into the grind again.
It gets quite addictive when you get into the builds and start to understand the enemies better.
Picking any upgrade nudges the probability of this particular module coming again by 2,5% per upgraded level. It's not so high a nudge that it locks your choices from the get go, but the more you pick the one and the same, the more likely you get the one and the same. Not much, but almost noticeably.
Hint: in all the longest games I've played, I've been lucky and managed to upgrade the Data Amplifier early on to very high levels. You play against time, so getting big as quickly as you can is your best bet. Data Amplifier helps with that - with the Tractor Beam and Collector Field, of course.
Focusing on these Data Pickup-modules makes the early midgame a bit harder, so obviously some heavy duty weapons of mass destruction tend to help a lot. Unstable Core seems to be my comfort go-to with Point Defense Array. - Not to say that I haven't done well with pure random upgrades either - it's just harder.
Comments
Log in with itch.io to leave a comment.
upgrade pop-up is most detrimental than any bullet. there should be an option to turn pop-up into manual invocation.
Hmm! This could be done I think. You mean that you could set in menu / options if you'd want to level up manually or if it's automatic pop-up? Hmm. If manual, I guess you should be allowed to choose your own hotkey to level up, too. I'll ponder how to best make this happen.
In the meanwhile, there's now leaderboard available (refresh your browser tab if it doesn't show). On the leaderboard there is a link to a "black box" which tells you details of that particular run - what modules were chosen in which order and so on.
In the main menu it shows top3 runs on the difficulty setting you have currently selected. You can check top-10 in different difficulties, and all time bests (old versions) by clicking the leaderboard menu button.
BTW! Do you happen to use mouse to choose the upgrades, or keyboard (numbers 1-3)? With keyboard you can hold your movement key down while choosing the upgrade, and it's hugely easier.
I use keyboard more, but I think it matter less when user invoke the upgrade during less dangerous time.
Good point. :) I'll ponder on this. There's a slight chance it makes the game a bit too easy, as you could then wait with your level ups to get that emergency repair. Then again it makes the game harder as well, as you're hoarding levels and missing out on upgrades in the meanwhile. This could even it out in the end. But I hear you! Thank you for excellent feedback.
Anyways. I'm trying to refrain from patching this weekend, as I got the telemetry working just yesterday and now I gather some data on the runs. Already I found and fixed some issues. For example I noticed that there were surprising amount of people leaving in under 10 seconds into the game. Figured it was because the game screen didn't focus back when you clicked the Itch iframe to fullscreen - and people couldn't move anymore. Now the game forces you to click back and activate the window, or choose full screen mode inside the game. Under 10 second games dropped significantly.
So I hope the next patches will be meaningful ones. :) Now I try to just watch for couple of days and not tinker at all. ;)
In case you didn't notice, that's on nightmare. I maxed the weapons/gear at about 13-15 minutes or so, at which point I haven't moved since.
My rough order of acquiring was to try and max missile(it feels like the best weapon), get at least a few/max unstable cores, at least 1 railgun(best bossing weapon), 1-3 nanothrusters and tractor beams, max capacitors, max shield generators, and take data amplifiers and collection fields whenever the other choices aren't those(or sometimes when they are, use best judgement). Doing this, the couple runs before tended to last to 5 minutes, and died to either bad luck(not enough firepower and/or shields) or bad play(mostly due to lasers or greed). At about that point you may need to start taking armor plating(and emergency healing) for healing more often then before, ideally don't have to take it too much before then.
Whenever you're not offered any of the above, amplifier and coolant are nice, extra nanothrusters are never bad, flak screens and (maxed)orbital shields are good(ring accelerators also ok), I like photon beam, singularity and chain lightning, pulse cannons are ok(mostly since you start with it and the first few being decent), the rest I don't like to take.
Overall, fun game.
HOOOOOLY SHIT! <3 So it IS still possible to get this monster! :D Well done mate! My best runs have been when I've got an early unstable core, point defense array, collection field + tractor beam, and had good luck with early data amplifiers. But dayumn! You're officially first one to beat this game. Hats off! :))
And thank you so much for playing! What you think, is this Unity worthy game? What would you add / remove? Is balance overall in that sweet spot I feel it to be (without managing to beat it yet, mind you!) ?
Thanks partly to your insane run and feedback, I decided to put some telemetry into the game. I wanted to know if something is completely broken and borked.
But that also lead to a leaderboard! The three longest runs are now shown in main menu with the setup and build order it was achieved with, and top 10 can be found from the leaderboard menu - also with the black box data.
Alas, you're not on the list as it gets the data straight from the telemetry and that came after your run. So want to go again ? ;)
Eexcept.. Hmm. At the moment the leaderboard doesn't count runs that are abandoned - which is a problem when you create an immortal killing machine and can't die even if you wanted to.
I'll have to add some "Unfallen" -category to the leaderboard. Sooo, if it was you who made this another monster run today, rest assured, this will be added to the category. If not, then you're not the only one who managed to do this. :)
Anyway, sorry for the inconvenience. :( Live and learn.
Fixed. Leadeboard is now divided into 2 categories. The Fallen, and the Unfallen. The Unfallen is not ranked by the length of the run, but it's just an ever-expanding list of the Unfallen heroes in order of appearance.
OH! Yea, to be categorized as an Unfallen, you have to survive at least 25 minutes and after that you can quit the game and it will be counted as being unkillable monster. Some anonymous took the first place on standard difficulty. Three more honorable mentions available (cadet, veteran and nightmare).