Video Game / Nova Drift

Survive. Evolve. Dominate.

Nova Drift is a Roguelite Shoot 'Em Up game developed by Chimeric. The game takes its inspirations from Asteroids and combines it with RPG elements. Set in outer space, the player takes control of an ever-evolving spaceship and fights against waves of enemy ships, trying to survive as long as possible. The game has been released on Early Access on PC through Steam and GOG.com on March 27, 2019.

As the player progresses through the game, they gain levels from collecting experience orbs from fallen foes. Each time the player levels up, they can choose from a selection of mods that can be combined in different ways to create unique and powerful combinations, allowing the player to customize their ship to fit their playstyle.

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Tropes present in Nova Drift:

• Action Bomb:
  • Terminal Directive enables destroyed Drones to accelerate toward the closest enemy and detonate upon collision, causing damage equivalent to their maximum hull and speed.
  • The Self Destruction mod enables your destroyed constructs to create explosive shockwaves that inflict damage proportional to their max hull. By obtaining Burnout Reactors, the shockwaves also set enemies on fire, dealing continuous burn damage, while your constructs also take damage over time.
• Attack Reflector: Reflect Shield can reflect enemy projectiles at 1.5 times their initial velocity, dealing 11 times more damage.
• Auto Doc: The Medicharge mod gives Guardians the ability to produce Medi-Charge power-ups that can restore the player's health upon collection.
• Beehive Barrier:
  • The mod "Aegis" creates grants +15% hull and shield damage resistance while not thrusting.
  • Cherubs surround the most powerful enemy on the battlefield in an indestructible "Hard Shield" which lasts for several seconds.
  • Tracers take it a step further and spawn protected by a Hard Shield, giving them a guaranteed attack.
• Cast From Life Span:
  • Antimatter Rounds enhance your weapons, increasing their projectile size, velocity, and base damage. However, you take significant self-damage to your hull when firing. The self-damage is slightly increased for each additional projectile you fire.
  • Dying Star sets ablaze all within its massive radius. The burning damage escalates as you get closer to your targets and as your hull and shields deplete. The burn inflicts constant damage to your ship, but your shields are affected first.
  • Mortar and Subsumption allow for the instant creation of Mines and Drones in return for a portion of your hull and shields being removed.
  • Siege Weaponry enhances your rate of fire, increasing with each consecutive shot or while charging your weapon. However, firing successively causes ramping hull self-damage.
• Counter-Attack:
  • When the shield is damaged, Reflexive Shield releases a damaging flare as a defensive response. If the player triggers Discharge, the flares will be discharged from the muzzles.
  • When the shield is struck, Galvanic Outburst releases retaliatory lightning towards the assailant. The mod can be stacked multiple times to increase the intensity of the shocks.
  • If the ship's hull experiences instant damage that surpasses 15%, Retribution and Outrage Module will be activated, causing a mine to drop or a critical hit empowered shot to be fired respectively.
• Damage-Increasing Debuff: The Shockwave Shield and Swarm Constructs have the ability to apply vulnerability to enemies, which increases the amount of damage they receive from any source.
• Destructible Projectiles: Counter Artillery, the final mod in the Turret mod tree, grants the Turret the power to use its machine guns to demolish enemy bullets.
• Draw Aggro: Decoy Signal allows Guardians to confuse enemies in close proximity and draws their attention away from you, causing them to attack the Guardian instead. It's important to maintain a safe distance from enemies, as they may not be fooled if you get too close.
• Dual Boss: Cursed Waves occur every 100 waves starting from wave 200, during which two enemies, either formidable foes or bosses, will spawn with double the usual strength.
• The Engineer:
  • The Engineer body has a greater number of extra construct spawn limits than other ship types, and it also benefits from an increased construct assembly speed for each unassembled construct.
  • The Architect body has a distinct approach to construct spawning, emphasizing quality rather than quantity. It is limited to spawning a single construct, and any additional constructs produced will destroy the previous one. Despite this limitation, the Architect's construct has exceptional damage, rate of fire, and assembly speed.
  • The Carrier body may not be as construct-focused as the two aforementioned ship bodies. It does produce Swarm Constructs that can repair shields or apply Damage-Increasing Debuff to enemies. The maximum number of constructs that can be spawned increases with each level.
• Essence Drop: Experience points are dropped as shimmering orbs when enemies are defeated. These orbs have a limited lifespan and can expire if left untouched for too long, but their longevity can be extended by attracting them towards the player.
• Fixed Forward-Facing Weapon: As a contemporary twist on the classic Asteroids game, players shoot their weapons in the direction they are facing, but the firing style by selecting specific ship bodies like Battery and Courser or supermods like Strafing Strikes, which cause weapons to fire from the sides.
• Fuuma Shuriken: The Blade weapon takes the form of a shuriken-like drone, slightly smaller than an average player ship, with the ability to shred through targets upon impact. It possesses a unique boomerang-like return mechanism after reaching a specific distance, and is classified as both a weapon and a construct, featuring a built-in screen wrap effect.
• God Mode: Debug Mode can be turned on or off by pressing the Delete or F7 keys. Once enabled, players can use cheats and tools to manipulate different aspects of the game. Activating cheats in the game involves pressing specific keys that trigger particular effects. These effects can include instant level ups, the spawning of celestial hazards, and instant recovery of hull and shield, among others. On the other hand, players can use tools to access predefined builds, advance to a particular wave, and spawn specified enemies in the game field. If players activate Debug Mode at least once during their game session, the game will disable certain progressions, such as achievements and scores, and label them as cheaters by obscuring the score numbers with the text.
• Intangibility: Apotheosis is a supermod that removes collision on the player, allowing them to pass through any physical obstacles, including enemies and comets. However, the player is not immune to enemy projectiles.
• Heal It With Fire: Purification restores the player's hull and shield proportional to the number of enemies that are currently on fire.
• Life Drain: Essence Sap heals the player's hull over time based on the Essence collected from any source of damage dealt by the player. However, taking this mod will remove Regenerating Health from the player.
• Luckily, My Shield Will Protect Me: Distinct from other Deflector Shields in the game, Bastion is a physical arc-shaped shield that only defends the ship in the front. The shield can't protect the sides and rear of the ship from damage, but it can regenerate naturally and give the ship hull resistance when it absorbs enemy attack. Furthermore, the shield can produce a powerful shockwave whenever the ship takes damage.
• Luck Manipulation Mechanic:
  • At the start of the game, you're given a fixed number of rerolls, which increase with each rank you unlock. However, if you choose to play in Wild Metamorphosis mode, the number of starting rerolls is halved. You may also obtain rerolls by destroying cargo trains.
  • The Research body can use rerolls to eliminate mods from the mod pool, which will result in an increase in the ship's maximum hull and shields for every reroll expended.
• Macross Missile Massacre: Salvo deploys a swarm of wild, heat-seeking missiles that explode in a small blast radius. While not firing, missiles are stockpiled every 0.5 seconds, and are all released at once when you fire.
• Mechanical Lifeforms: Apart from asteroids and singularities, all entities in the game are biomechanical life forms, including the player's ship.
• More Dakka:
  • The Blaster, Split Shot, and Torrent are automatic weapons that you can access from your arsenal, each with a fast-firing capability. Of the three, the Torrent is the fastest-firing option, with a firing rate that surpasses the other weapons by a significant margin.
  • With Siege Weaponry, firing successive shots in quick succession can enhance your weapon's firing rate to achieve rapid-fire capabilities. However, this skill comes with a trade-off - you also take ramping self-damage as you continue to fire your weapon, which can lead to your demise if not managed properly.
  • Barrage allows your weapon to unleash a continuous stream of bullets instead of burst fire or spread, firing one projectile at a time. While firing, your shield cooldown and recovery will be slowed down.
• No Plot? No Problem!: Nova Drift currently lacks a storyline, as it only has endless since its release on early access.Although a campaign mode is scheduled for full release, it has not been added to the game as of now.
• One-Hit Polykill: When Railgun or Dart kill on hit, their projectiles will travel through the destroyed enemy.
• Orbiting Particle Shield:
  • The Orbital Shield in the game comes with three energy orbs that revolve around it. Whenever the shield receives damage, the orbs enlarge in size. they can become large enough to block enemy bullets.
  • As constructs, Drones possess the capability to intercept enemy projectiles while they orbit around the ship. Upon learning Shielded Constructs, they become more like "shields" with your previous shield now protecting them.
• Percent Damage Attack: Terminate instantly kills any enemy with health currently below 12% of their maximum hull.
• Pinball Projectile: The Ultra Rare Wild Mod, Ricochet allows projectiles to bounce around targets at the cost of reducing projectile count. However, some weapons have unique interactions with the mod.
  • Grenades can cause explosions upon collision while also preserving the bombs, which can bounce off surfaces based on the number of Ricochet mods equipped before they eventually expire and blow up by themselves.
  • Darts have an adhesive property that prevents them from bouncing off surfaces unless the enemy they are embedded in perishes, which causes them to rebound and attach to other objects.
• Planar Shockwave:
  • The Pulse weapon creates a powerful electromagnetic blast centered around your ship. It hits in two radial waves, with the smaller wave dealing double the damage of the larger one.
  • The Shockwave Shield emanates fluctuating waves that jostle targets and projectiles in every direction. Upon the shield resets after breaking, a powerful wave is released, dealing damage and imposing a vulnerability debuff.
• Quad Damage: The Amp Shield increases thrust and damage by 20% by default when activated. Additionally, the damage boost scales up based on the number of threats located within the shield effect radius.
• Recoiled Across the Room: Taking too much Heavy Calibur will cause your ship to fly uncontrollably from recoil.
• Segmented Serpent: The Leviathan possesses a body reminiscent of a segmented snake, which expands as it attains higher levels. By coiling, it can inflict even more damage upon its enemies.
• Shock and Awe:
  • After being released by the player,the Vortex weapon will start zapping enemies with lightning bolts.
  • Discharge enables the discharge of lightning bolts while using your weapon, utilizing a portion of your shield each time. Slower-firing weapons generate stronger bolts with increased reach. The ability still works even if your weapons are disabled. When combined with Magnitude to learn the Infuse supermod, your weapons zap enemies on hit.
• Space Mines: The Mine Construct looks like a standard landmine, and when it detonates via proximity, it unleashes bomblets over a considerable area. With the Loaded Mine mod, it can also launch your weapon projectiles.
• Spawn Broodling: When an enemy is destroyed, Spontaneous Generation can create one or more Swarm Constructs from the wreckage. The probability of generating constructs is greater when the destroyed enemy has a larger maximum hull, so bosses generally spawn a large number of constructs upon defeat. However, the Swarm Constructs are affected by continuous self-damage, which also carries over to those deployed by the Carrier body. The drawback of self-damage can be eliminated by taking Vital Bond, which offers additional regeneration to compensate.
• Spread Shot:
  • Volley, Fussilade, and Convergence can increase your projectile at the cost of reducing your other weapon's stats such as damage, projectile velocity, rate of fire, and total projectile size. Alternatively, you can choose Twin Strike to expand projectile count, but the wild mod is scarce, and taking too much of it will impede your recovery.
  • Splinter mod is of the explosive shot variant, making projectiles split when after hitting enemies. However, some weapons have unique reactions with the mod. For instance, grenades produce smaller bombs upon detonation, irrespective of whether they hit a target. Darts split upon the death of the target they're embedded in. Railguns only splinter when fired at enemies that can withstand their shots.
• Stealth in Space: The Spectre body will cloak itself automatically when it stays still or moves slowly. The longer the ship stays cloaked, the more weapon damage it can deliver. Firing your weapon, moving at full thrust, and deploying constructs will remove your invisibility.
• Time Master: Temporal Shield slows down everything within its shield radius. Sometimes enemy bullets will dissipate before they reach the player.
• Unrealistic Black Hole: Singularities will travel through the screen as space hazards, destroying everything sucked into it, barring the player. When the player gets caught in one, their shield and hull are drained to a small slither after the singularity vanishes.
• Weaponized Exhaust:
  • Firefly's thrusters generate forked flames that have the ability to incinerate targets from the back.
  • Deadly Wake allows your thruster to produce a continuous trail of flames as you move.
  • When you use the thruster, Scorching Wake will cause blazing fireballs to be thrown behind the ship. This recursive wild mod will provide you with extra fireballs if you take it multiple times.
  • Propulsive Munitions allows you to shoot your weapon from behind, propelling you forward as a result of the reversed weapon recoil.
• Weaponized Teleportation:
  • When the Warp Shield breaks, it teleports the player to the direction they're facing before releasing a devastating shockwave around the reappearing player.
  • If your ship is durable enough to use ramming into enemies as an offensive strategy, using Blink to teleport on them is always an option. Learning Displacement will deal 5 times damage from Blink with more knockback and allows the user to teleport in 4 different directions.
  • Ramming into an enemy who doesn't die from the initial crash with Phantom Strike will cause the player to teleport behind them and blast them with an empowered shot.

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