0.17.0 - Multiple Biomes per Loop / Removed the Manual Selection of Biomes
Hello!
Now a single loop contains multiple biomes!
This is how I envisioned things originally, but now it's actually in the game.
I think having multiple biomes per loop adds a bit of mystery and variation to the runs, which has been one of the points of the feedback from the players during early access.
The biomes that appear during a loop are currently randomly selected from the unlocked biomes.
Now the first three biomes are automatically unlocked, instead of just one.
To unlock more biomes, a successful run must contain a biome that is listed before the biome you want to unlock in the biome unlocks list.
So if you are wondering why there are no more biomes listed on the "start run dialog": it's on purpose.
Currently the first biome is always the Snow biome, which I think is a nice way to start a run.
It might change how different biomes are unlocked and the way some of them are accessed, but currently things are as described.
Bug Fixes
Fixed a bug where some units (for example Assault Rifle Unit) targeted incorrectly some enemies.
Other
[Community Feedback] Now the units can dash by pressing the Space -key (in addition to the default "Left Shift" key.
- jounitus
0.16.6 - New Achievements!
Hello!
One of the requests during the early access has been to have more "skill-based" achievements, in addition to the achievements already in the game. I hope you all like these!
New Achievements:
Kill 1000 enemies on a single run
Kill 2000 enemies on a single run
Kill 5000 enemies in total
Kill 10000 enemies in total
Kill 20000 enemies in total
Have 10 God-Tier units during a single run (triggered when upgrading the units)
Finish loop 3 During a Run
Finish a Run without using a Crematorium (only works on runs started with the new versions)
Finish a Run without any casualties
Please give feedback if you think there are any issues with these.
See you in the next update!
- jounitus
0.16.4 - Fix for the Places/Lore/Juhani not working
Hello all!
This patch should fix the issue where the places or the story wasn't working in some cases.
Note: The places and the story sequences are all currently on the Snow -biome and they only appear on the first loop. You also need to visit the Juhani -place (the building with the Yellow cube) for the next places to appear on the next runs.
Please let me know if there are still are issues with the places or the story.
Fixed a bug affecting unlocks in the unlocks dialog
Updated the audio SDK to a newer version
Refactored how the game is built (should have no effect for the player)
[Community Feedback] Increased the Units' collect radius to compensate enemies now spawning XP and Unlock Points further
[Community Feedback] Show Units as green overlay behind the bigger enemies (Dragon / Air Ship / Boss) to help with the visibility of the units
- jounitus
0.16.0 - New Biomes / New Enemies / Difficulty Tweaks / Accessibilty Setting
Changed in 0.16.0
NEW BIOMES:
"Hell"
"Concrete"
NEW ENEMIES:
"Vulture" - Unlocks in Concrete Biome
"Dragon" - Unlocks in the old Lava Biome
NOTE: The "Roller" enemy was moved to unlock in the "Hell" biome, since it's more thematically fitting to it.
Difficulty Changes
A Large part of the feedback during the early access has been, that the game feels very easy until the final boss fight, which then can feel extra difficult. So the balance has been a bit off.
There have been a lot of changes to the boss fight during the early access, and I hope the boss fight is currently a pretty pleasant experience, compared to what it has been previously.
But, starting with this update, the goal is to slightly increase the difficulty of the later levels, so that the challenge would ramp up more nicely.
The current goal is that the runs would be slightly more challenging, but manageable within a few tries.
However, tweaking the difficulty is always a big challenge, since there are a lot of different types of players and because there are multiple factors that affect the difficulty.
The new "Extra Coffins" accessibility setting was introduced on this update, in case the difficulty got tweaked accidentally to too hard and also just to make the make the game a bit more enjoyable to the players who have found the game previously too difficult by default.
The boss fight difficulty wasn't changed in this version.
Please give feedback, about how you feel about the difficulty on the later levels.
Accessibility Settings
"Extra Coffins" Accessibility Setting was added to the settings dialog, so that the runs can be made easier, if needed.
Hopefully everyone tries the game without using the extra coffins settings, but it's great if the extra coffins settings will make the experience better for anyone.
Leaderboards Cleared
The leaderboards were cleared again on this update.
Visibility/"Feel" Related Changes
Make the lightning visual effect last a shorter time
Make the floating damage numbers slightly bigger
Make smaller enemies spawn more green xp blocks when they die
Make enemies' blue damage area borders visible like they were before the early access release
Make enemy hit flashes more prominent again
Make Bullet Projectiles slightly bigger
Make big enemies spawn slightly more XP blocks to the ground and to the wider area
Made the XP fly a little bit slower to the UI, to make it feel nicer
Swap the colors of the enemy "damage areas" on the ground, to make them more noticeable
Fix so that the chest and bombs are shown above the "damage areas" instead of behind them
Simplified the spark effect when projectiles hit the enemy
Made the particles darker that emit from the body parts of the enemies, so they are less distracting
Made the Flying XP points slightly larger and a bit less glowy
Increased the size of the homing missile projectile
Made the small round "basic enemy" slightly bigger.
Other Changes
There is now more enemy waves at the end of the loop.
Enemy spawning got changed so that now each wave can only contain "small" or "big" enemies, but not both, hopefully this will make the smaller enemies stand up more from the crowd.
The camera movement can feel a bit "janky" when there are only a few units on the screen during the start of a new run. There is now a fix to that the camera makes less sudden movements, but now it can maybe feel a bit "laggy" with only a few units on screen.
Remove the beeping sound and don't filter the music when there is only one empty coffin left
Fixed an issue where in some cases the Rod unit was not making enough damage.
See you again in the next update! Please remember to give feedback!
- jounitus
0.15.0 - New Biomes / New Enemies / New Units / Leaderboards Cleared
Changed in 0.15.0
NEW BIOMES:
RINGS BIOME: A distant planet with overgrown vegetation with mysterious giant well rings.
CAVES BIOME: A giant cave system under the town where the action takes place in the original biome. Major "plot point" of the game that includes the "incubators".
NEW ENEMIES:
"DRILLER ENEMY" (unlocks in CAVES BIOME)
"AIRSHIP ENEMY" (unlocks in RINGS BIOME)
NEW UNITS:
LIGHTNING BALL UNIT
TESLA COIL UNIT
AIR STRIKE UNIT - A unit version of the Air Strike Item that is already in the game. Now shows the actual aircraft too.
CLEARED LEADERBOARDS:
The leaderboards are still a bit "experimental", so let's see what will happen with them in the long run.
Hopefully clearing the leaderboards for this update will make it more fun to try to get the new high scores for those who enjoy it!
OTHER CHANGES:
Other Biomes got slight tweaks on the appearance
Terrain objects like mountains now have a small color change depending on the height, hopefully this helps with the visibility and adds a little bit of variation to the general appearance.
The "Air Strike" item now shows the actual aircraft that drops the bombs (used together with the new Air Strike unit)
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Hope you all like this more content focused update! There were no big changes to the game systems in this update, except some internal refactorings which make working on the code/game a bit nicer.
Biomes are something new introduced in this update.
The town in the two new biomes is the same as in the original one, but due to the mysterious events in the alternate history timelines they are in, the town in these other biomes is more transformed.
New Biome: "Desert"
New Biome: "Lava"
Added Biome selection to the "Start Run" dialog
Made the "Start Run" dialog slightly darker
Make some buildings and props look like they are partly swallowed by snow/sand to better integrate them visually into the levels
CHANGES TO SNOW BIOME
The classic/default snow biome got a small facelift along with new biomes being added.
New trees!
Tweaked the snow on the level
Other small visual tweaks
UNLOCK CHANGES
The small "unlock points" box in the level HUD doesn't have the progress bar anymore and it doesn't show popups about new unlocks anymore. While this was helpful information, the downside was that it made players quit the runs mid-way. You can still exit the run and unlock mid-way if you want, but the game doesn't advertise it.
Fixed an issue where the unlocked icons would stay grayscale after unlocking
Fixed the issue with the "New Unlock Points" dialog, where the sounds would still be audible even if the dialog was closed mid-way through the points animation.
Tweaked the "New Unlock Points" dialog appearance
Group unlocks so that there is only one unlock type on each page in the Unlocks dialog
DIFFICULTY CHANGES
Enemy Health Multiplier can now increase multiple steps at once, if the multiplier has increased consequently on previous levels
After the first loop, start spawning waves faster in the Invasion level type
After the first loop, start having elite enemy waves also on Normal difficulty
ENEMY TWEAKS
Back in the day when the new enemies were added, there was no good unlock system yet in the game, so all four big enemies were made so that you can see them in the first playthrough, which was not optimal.
Enemies are now unlocked gradually, to hopefully have the feeling of discovering something new gradually.
"SwordEnemy" now unlocks on Desert Biome and "Roller Enemy" unlocks on Lava Biome
VISIBILITY TWEAKS
The units don't show anymore the wobbly outline on the ground, but you still see the red/pink "danger area" when the units are on top of a dangerous area.
Enemies now always show an outline, for better visibility
Made the enemies damage area slightly darker blue, so that it's better visible on new biomes
Make Turrets cast shadows on the ground
OTHER CHANGES
Only show topics and places on the first loop of the snow biome, not on other biomes
Minimap now renders the ground as a simple constant color, instead of rendering the actual ground
Fixed the issue of unit-bar not making the unit icons smaller if the list gets too big. There is now a minimum size for the icons (very small), so the bar will get bigger, but only if you have a huge amount of units. This was already fixed once before, but got broken again at some point.
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That's it for this release. I'm really happy about the biomes being added to the game, as it was one of the biggest "missing pieces". I hope you all like the biomes too!
This version didn't have the leaderboard scores cleared, but the leaderboard reset might happen on the next release.
As always remember to give feedback!
See you in the next update!
- jounitus
Changed in 0.13.2 - Lowered Boss Enemy Health
Changed in 0.13.2
Changed: The boss health is now lowered by 50% from 10k to 5k.
On the previous 0.13.0 update, the unscaled/non-multiplied boss health was already lowered from 18k to 10k. But probably due to the changes in how the fire units deal damage, the boss fight actually felt harder.
Hopefully this update makes the boss feel less bullet spongy.
The next regular update will also have changes to difficulty, but hopefully this patch will help those who found the boss too difficult, before the next update is released.
Thanks to everyone who gave feedback!
- jounitus
Changed in 0.13.0 - Show Run Stats / Leaderboards / Units Give Stat-boosts / etc
Changed in 0.13.0
NEW FEATURE: Some units now also increase the "shared" stats
Non-rare/regular units now also increase the "shared" stats, for example "Xp Multiplier", "Speed" and "Fire Rate".
Hopefully, this will make non-rare units more interesting and valuable, since usually they do less damage than the rare unit types.
Also, hopefully, this will make transforming the units a bit more interesting, since this might have an impact also on the stats.
NEW FEATURE: Increase enemy health based on player performance
Previously it was "hard coded" how much the enemies health increased during the run, so always on the level 5 for example the health multiplier was the same for everyone and on the level 10 the health multiplier was the same for everyone.
This worked pretty well, but the issue was that once you get powerful enough, the hard-coded enemy health multiplier could never catch you and you are basically overpowered for the rest of the run. This could make things boring, since the enemies could never "catch up" to become challenging again.
So now the enemy health multiplier grows automatically, when you start to go thru enemies at a faster pace.
Hopefully this will still provide moments where you can feel the increase in damage you make, but still make the game able to balance itself within a few levels.
Even though in the game it's called "enemy health multiplier" the health grows exponentially with every step.
There has been always a "fine line" in balancing how much enemies should have health compared to the amount of damage you do. This balance has probably one of the biggest impact on if the game feels good or not, so hopefully this change will have a positive impact on that.
NEW FEATURE: Stats Screen
During a run, you can now see various statistics and charts of your current run in the "Stats" screen.
NEW FEATURE: Show the amount of damage the Units have done in the current level
One of the long-running requests has been the be able to see how much the units have done damage.
Now when you open the new stats screen, you can see the amount of damage done in the current level as bars and numbers above the unit icons.
These numbers will persist until you start doing damage on the next level. So you can see the stats from the previous level still at the start of a new level.
NEW FEATURE: Ability to Finish the Run
Another of the other long-running requests has been the ability to finish the run.
Now on the last level of each loop, you can end the run after you have finished the boss fight.
There is also a new "Teleporter Spawner" building which you can use to spawn a teleporter, if you want to start a new loop.
NEW FEATURE: Leaderboards
Now after you successfully finish a run, your score is saved to the leaderboards (if your new score is better than your older one).
Currently there are different leaderboards for Normal and Hard difficulty.
The score is only saved if you successfully finish the run, so the score is not saved if you get game over during a run.
The leaderboards are a bit experimental at this point and the leaderboards might get cleared on each update, or there might be a specific mode for it in the future, but for now, let's go with this.
NOTE: If you continue a run started with the previous version of the game, the score won't be saved, since the existing run doesn't have all the up-to-date data. So it's recommended to start a new run with the new version.
FEATURE CHANGE: Sidebar stat changes
Some of the stats on the right sidebar now have tooltips that describe the stat. The tooltips also show which items and units affect the stats.
Some of the stats also have a "progress bar" to show an indication of how big the number is.
FEATURE CHANGE: Total Enemy Health Bar Updates
The big "Total Enemy Health Bar" on top of the screen got a few visual tweaks. Now it's a bit clearer about how much damage per second is made.
FEATURE CHANGE: Remove the changelog button from Main Menu
The changelog button is now removed from the game and the changelog is no longer inside the game.
This speeds up the release process a little bit, since the potential release build can done and tested even if the changelog is not finished.
NOTE: If you see that there is a new release, but you don't see the release notes yet on the library, the release notes should be visible on the store page. It takes a few hours for the Steam library to show the release notes, even though the store pages show them immediately.
FEATURE CHANGE: Fire Damage Changes
One of the challenges in the game has been that the units that cause fire damage are really overpowered during the boss fight. This is because previously the fire caused damage every second until the enemy was dead.
This has caused the boss fight to feel very bullet-spongy if there are no fire damage units.
Now the fire damage does damage for 5 seconds. The fire damage units are still great during the boss fight, but hopefully now the boss fight doesn't feel too bullet -spongy, if you don't have any units that do fire damage.
FEATURE CHANGE: Boss Fight Changes
Due to the changes to the fire damage units the boss health got lowered, to make the boss fight nicer with non-fire damage units.
Add/Fix objectives for Boss Fight
Lowered boss enemy health from 18k to 10k
FEATURE CHANGE: Projectile Fly Curve
Previously the flight path for the projectiles was more physically realistic in that it took the speed of the projectile into consideration when calculating the curve/path for the projectile, but this caused an issue where it was hard to calculate the correct curve for the projectile when the projectile speed was insanely fast.
Now the projectile speed is still taken into consideration, but it doesn't affect the curve, which might the curve look more unnatural, but it is now more predictable / works correctly.
FEATURE CHANGE: Item Stat Changes
Previously some items that had linear stacking have been changed to use "hyperbolic" stacking (or as internally called Risk of Rain 2 stacking, which was a huge inspiration for this game). This means that instead linearly growing stats by 15% for example each, the increase is largest for the first item added to the stack then the increase grows slightly smaller with each next item added to the stack.
This change is since now Units also increase these values too (units increase these values linearly).
The numbers still end up being big, but hopefully this brings a bit of balance to the game.
Items affected:
Projectile Speed Up
Speed Up
XP Up
Agility
Fire Rate Up
FEATURE CHANGE: Unit Stat Changes
Kinetic Rod Unit: Damage 20 -> 200
Kinetic Rod Unit: The rods now move twice as fast to the target
Mine Unit: Damage 20 -> 15
Mine Unit: There are slightly fewer active mines concurrently
Flamethrower Unit: Damage 2 -> 10
Sticky Bomb Unit: Damage 2 -> 20
OTHER CHANGES
[Community Feedback] Make it more likely that Ale-Pub always has at least one hireable unit type even if the "unit type list" is full.
[Community Feedback] Clamp unit positions inside the play area (and boss ring), to prevent the glitch of units moving outside of them
Updated Unity from 2020 LTS to 2021 LTS
Added sound effects for Teleporter Appearing
Fix so that the "back" / esc button closes the last opened dialog.
After the Game Over, show the stats screen, instead of going to the main screen
Show levels numbers in full again, without modding them (for example the sixth level on the second loop is now shown as 16/10)
Added a system where some background UI elements are hidden based on what's in front of the UI
