Cosmic Raze is a tower defense game with auto-battler drafting, and a dash of roguelike elements for endless replayability. Take control of advanced weapon systems, build powerful synergies, and then blast away as aliens attempt to conquer Earth.
Originally conceived as a spin-off from Gunlocked, Cosmic Raze has since become its own unique thing, but for fans of Gunlocked, there's a lot that you'll recognize as you upgrade your weapons, select unique augmentations, and unlock powerful synergy bonuses.
The controls are simple and intuitive, and the gameplay is perfect for playing on any device, from Desktop, to Laptop, and especially Steam Deck.
Cosmic Raze is the first game in what I'm calling my "Byte Size Initiative." Over the years, I have made dozens of prototypes for a huge variety of genres, from tower defense, to deckbuilders, to pinball, and more. But when individual games take 1-2 years to develop, it limits how many of these could ever be completed by a solo developer, and as a creative I hate thinking I'll never get to finish many of these ideas!
So now I want to make the best ones into small, but deep, and replayable experiences, for super affordable prices. With the benefit of years of experience, and months already put into developing many of these prototypes, I'll be able to release 4-5 of these games a year, and possibly more!
FromLefcourt on Patreon
If you like the cut of my jib, and want to support this initiative, you can subscribe to my new Patreon for just $2 a month, and as long as you're subscribed, you'll get every new Byte Size game I release, along with some other perks.
If you'd rather take a wait and see approach, then good news! You won't have to wait long for Cosmic Raze, because it's coming out very soon, and for the low price of $2.99! (regional pricing applies)
Holiday Hotfix 2023
I've managed to locate the old files and implemented a fix for the tutorial soft locking that was preventing new players from hopping into a fresh dungeon.
As a result of years of engine updates, the file structure is also a bit different so the update will change a bit more than just the quick fix, but my tests have everything running fine over here. This may reset options settings for veteran players, but should not reset progress.
Let me know if you have any further issues!
Known Issue and Simple Fix
Hey everyone! Long time no chat!
I haven't been around the putting green in many moons, but as many people are trying the game out for the first time, I have seen that there is an issue with the tutorial text not showing up.
Many of you know the fix: Turn off the "Easy Reading Mode" in the options menu and save. You can then turn it back on if you'd like.
I'm in the process of trying to dig up the old files, and issue a proper fix, but this should help all you new players that are inadvertently stuck.
Sorry for the inconvenience. As an indie dev, there's no team to look after the old games when I move on to the next. Happy holidays!
Quick Fix: "Mull Again"
This small patch should fix a reported issue with unlocking the "Mull Again" achievement.
Oh, and happy new year!
The Golf Labs Update
This update brings the brand new Golf Labs to Arcane Golf!
The Golf Lab was originally envisioned as a place for us to release periodic, experimental game updates not tied to the traditional dungeon structure (though it didn't quite work out that way, but more on that below). Today we're adding 50 1-shot levels spread across all 4 dungeons, remixed with different traps, and with some brand new features including:
Multi-directional wind
Slimes that ride moving platforms
The Anti-Gravity Gem
Unfortunately, this may prove to be the only content that makes it into the Golf Labs. We'd love to add more, and have appreciated the positive response across all platforms (especially to our huge 2.0 re-release), but ultimately we may have to move on to new projects for a variety of reasons.
If this is our last update though, we just want to say thank you to everyone that picked up our weird little indie game, and we hope you enjoy this last bit of new content. But hey, never say never.
Quick Fix 3/29/21
Just a quick fix (as the title says) for a bug that was causing stat-based achievements to unlock twice as fast as they should. Accidentally introduced with the level skipping feature.
Dank Dungeon Level 28 also received a small adjustment. The tee has been turned on, allowing you to take your time at the start.
The Accessibility Update (v.2.2)
3 years ago we released Arcane Golf on PC. Last year we took all of the feedback around the internet and rebuilt the game to be better in the free update, Arcane Golf 2.0. This year our new publishing partner, Clickteam, helped us bring our updated vision to mobile platforms, and it's been a great success so far, but we're not stopping!
The first in what will hopefully be many more content and feature updates of 2021, helps further smooth out difficulty, adds new features to help gamers of all types, brings a new in-game achievement viewer, and lets you skip levels and come back on your own terms.
Full Patch Notes:
New Feature: Level Skip! Players can now skip any level after trying it once. Feeling stuck? Move on and come back to it on your own time.
New Feature: Achievement Viewer: You can now select the trophy from the main menu to view all of the possible achievements and see which you've unlocked already. This includes the hidden achievements.
New Feature: Easy Reading Mode: A new toggle to the options menu will allow you to reduce tutorial length, and double the text size on screen
New Feature: Visual Assist Mode: A new toggle to the options menu will allow you to disable all unnecessary background art and add a brighter highlight around the ball itself.
New Content: In addition to the visual assist, we've added a couple more ball colors in the options menu to give you greater flexibility (and choice) with what your game looks like. The new bright white ball can further help you stay focused on the action.
Quality of Life: Additional text has been added to Dank Dungeon Tutorial on level 5. Some players still think they need to click directly on the ball to aim and shoot, and this should act as a gentle reminder if they don't read the first tutorial...unless they don't read this either.
Quality of Life: A number of levels have had their layouts tweaked, most notably Forest Ruins Levels 34 and 37. If you have feedback on other problematic levels that don't feel fun or fair, let us know in the comments!
Pricing: We've updated our PC pricing to more closely match the mobile game. The PC version has additional quality of life features and flexibility and is our primary development platform, but we think $2.99 is an amazing price for 200 levels of physics goodness!
Level Unlock "Bug" Fix
Report: A number of players have indicated that levels and dungeons are unlocking before they've earned them, causing achievements to prematurely trigger for completing dungeons.
The Problem: We discovered that a save file from the testing phase was accidentally bundled with the update files, and is overwriting player save files.
The Solution: There is a fix, but it comes at a possible cost. Current progress may be reset due to this issue.
If you've already unlocked levels and do not want to again, you can use the konami code at the dungeon select screen for each individual dungeon to unlock the levels in that dungeon. The code, if you aren't familiar is: Up, Up, Down, Down, Left, Right, Left, Right, B, A (use the arrow keys for directional inputs). If you have cloud saves enabled already, this issue may not affect you.
To fix your save file and start fresh without issues going forward take the following steps:
Step 1: Go to your Steam Library and right click on Arcane Golf
Step 2: Select "properties" from the drop down menu
Step 3: Uncheck the "Cloud Save" option from the menu that pops up
Step 4: Go to your Steam folder for Arcane Golf and then double click the Data folder. It should look something like this: C:\\Program Files (x86)\\Steam\\steamapps\\common\\Arcane Golf\\Data (note: depending on where you view these patch notes, you may see two slashes due to formatting inconsistencies on Steam. There should only be one slash between folders as usual.)
Step 5: Delete the file called "Progress.arr"
Step 6: Launch Arcane Golf
Step 7: Once you complete one level of the game and then exit you should be able to re-enable cloud saves and progress through the game as you normally would.
Because we're constantly resetting game progress while testing, we don't always have Cloud saves enabled, and weren't immediately able to replicate the problem. Sorry for the inconvenience!
Level Adjustments
Just a small update to fix a few minor build inconsistencies between levels. Most of the changes are so small that players won't be able to immediately notice them, but they have a tangible effect on the gameplay. Level 20 of the Dank Dungeon is the most notable, and should now be a much more satisfying level to play.
More news soon!
Arcane Golf 2.0
Settle in! Arcane Golf just got a major upgrade, and there is a lot to talk about!
For the past several months we've been working with select testers to reshape Arcane Golf into a better looking, better playing gameplay experience. We've taken feedback from the gaming community, from our testers, and from our harshest critics (ourselves) and worked to create a much more polished and enjoyable experience than we could have when we first began this game dev journey years ago.
TLDR;
Updated and new levels: More fun, more forgiving, more creative. Smoother difficulty curve. More than 75% of the levels received updates!
No more time-limited shots. Take as long as you want! Levels have been redesigned with this in mind.
New aiming and user interface elements offer more information, better accuracy
Remastered pixel art: 3 times as many colors, updated textures, animations, and special FX!
New tutorials: A much friendlier (sillier) wizard imparts his wisdom this time around. Improved text legibility, with multi-color font to highlight important parts of the text.
A host of additional quality of life updates from optimization to object "collision boxes" and more!
Gameplay:
There is no longer a shot timer. The "casual aim mode" added post-launch has become the only mode, and the option to enable or disable it has been removed from the options menu.
New aim indicator
A new power meter helps players fine tune their shots to the exact %
A new direction indicator will better help players see the initial direction of their shots
Nearly every level has been rebalanced or replaced. The deeper into the game you get the more dramatic the changes are.
Levels designed around precise shot timing have been removed or updated to account for the new timer-free shot style
Levels designed around pixel perfect reaction times have been removed or rebalanced to give players much more time to react
Levels built around only timed inputs (and not shooting at all) have been removed or altered to include interesting shots
A handful of levels include additional shots so players can solve them in multiple ways or simply have an extra shot for simple mistakes
Many brand new levels have been introduced that play more like mini golf, with much lighter maze and puzzle-like qualities. This is still a puzzle game, albeit a much more relaxing, and forgiving puzzle game than before.
Switches now have a more forgiving hit box that favors the player and does not require pixel perfect accuracy
Quality of Life:
The Quick Restart function has been updated
Players can now quick restart when paused
Quick restart now works during penalty animations
Quick restart can be bound to the middle mouse button in the options menu. Note: A number of special powers have been hardcoded to use the right mouse button already.
There is also a tutorial text on level 3 of the first dungeon that will explain that the quick restart function exists (but you already know if you're reading this).
Added a pause button that can be clicked on. Combined with the quick restart changes, the entire game can now be played with only a mouse.
Added a "current level" number to the UI when in-game
You can now also change the ball color by clicking around the ball/tee on the main menu (also still in the options menu).
Tutorials and flavor text have been completely rewritten
Like with the rest of the game, the tone of the tutorials is one that is more welcoming and friendly (and completely silly)
The text system has also been given a small overhaul that should make reading tutorials and flavor text easier
Tutorial text now supports highlighting, so if you want to skip the flavor text you can see the most important bits in orange
Optimization: While Arcane Golf should already run on just about any PC, we've made a number of changes throughout that should further optimize the game.
Art:
Every dungeon tileset has been remastered. Very little has been left untouched.
Expanded the color palette from 32 colors to 80+. Added additional contrast to the overall look. Arcane Golf was originally going to be part of a collection of retro-styled games that shared a limited color palette, but when it became a full stand-alone game the palette remained.
Creature and trap animations have been given more frames of animation and detail
The fairy power has been completely redesigned
Water/waves have been completely redesign
All generic particle effects have been replaced with hand animated effects. Everything from the the tee, to the ball bouncing, to splashes and explosions have been replaced
A new shot "charging" effect triggers when aiming your shot
Updated shot indicator art for a more dynamic, interesting look
Gold5Games no longer exists, but the two of us that made Arcane Golf do (for now, lol). We may collaborate in the future, but sometimes we'll be doing our own things so we've rebranded to make it much clearer who is working on what projects. You'll see the new logos at startup.
FromLefcourt is Steven Lefcourt , the artist and coder.
thatgregperkins is Greg Perkins, the musician.
We both worked on level design, game mechanics, and tutorials together.
We couldn't have made these changes without those of you that left honest feedback in your reviews, and members of the gaming community that made videos, guides, articles, and podcasts talking about our little game.
Special thank you to our beta testers, and Clickteam for all their help and support! Without them, this new version would not have been possible.
We have a few more surprises and announcements coming in the near-ish future, so stay tuned! If you enjoy these updates, please share! We think it's a great game for all kinds of gamers, and it's especially fun to play together with younger family members. This year has been trying for all of us, so we hope this update brings a little joy to even a few of you. Happy holidays!
Sincerely, FromLefcourt and thatgregperkins
P.S. Want to see what we're currently up to? FromLefcourt will be the easiest way to contact us or follow us on social media. FromLefcourt@gmail.com FromLefcourt.com @FromLefcourt (on Twitter) https://fromlefcourt.itch.io/
Important Note:
A recent update to anti-virus definitions has caused Arcane Golf and other games made with the Fusion engine to trigger false positives. Clickteam (makers of the Fusion engine) are working to get this fixed, and most anti-virus should be fine now, but you may need to whitelist Arcane Golf with your anti-virus and redownload the files if you have a problem.
Also, in rare instances you may find certain levels have been locked again. We hope this isn't a problem since most of the levels are new or adjusted, but a certain famous cheat code might help at level select if you'd rather not unlock every level again.
