Hey everyone! We want to thank you all for the love and attention you’ve shown Beat Blast. It’s been an amazing journey for the team releasing our first game on Steam. A big part of that is the support we’ve gotten from our awesome community that’s been with us for nearly two years of public builds, QA and testing. For those of you that haven’t picked up the game since launch, we encourage you to come give it another try. You might be surprised just how much it’s changed from feedback from players like you!
Today, we are providing Beat Blast’s final feature update. If critical bugs appear, we will of course provide hotfixes and we will still be around on our discord to chat with players. After nearly two and a half years of updates, our team is really happy with the state of the game and excited about the next project we’ll be working on. We’re a ways away from an announcement, but keep an eye out for us! Without any further ado, let’s get to the update!
The MIDIverse has begun coming apart at the seams. Those of you who have found a certain golden portal may be familiar these sorts of rare occurrences. Keep your eyes peeled for anything unusual. You might just be able to use it to your advantage!
Aside from the glitches mentioned above, we are also introducing two new room types, a large collection of bug fixes and a visual update in level 1 to prevent it getting too stale. Chest rooms offer you a bunch of chests to choose from. One has amazing loot and one will explode...are you feeling lucky? The second room type is a Slot Machine room, which lets you spend your hard earned blops for some extra loot in your current run. Those of you that have already unlocked everything can finally put your extra blops to good use! Neither of these new rooms will appear in choice rooms, you will simply stumble on them from time to time.
There will now be a 10% chance upon entering an enemy room that you’ll get different variations of the original level 1 enemies. These newer versions behave in exactly the same way; they just provide some visual variety to the most commonly seen enemies.
Lastly, we want to let you know there will be a big 60% off winter holiday sale on Beat Blast, so if you are waiting on buying the game or you know a friend waiting, the holidays would be the best time to get Beat Blast. Happy holidays and new years! Patch notes below:
Visuals
Level 1 is getting some visual variety! Every now and then level 1 enemies will get a fresh new look
Features
The MIDIverse has begun coming apart at the seams. Those of you who have found a certain golden portal may be familiar these sorts of rare occurances. Keep a sharp eye out for anything unusual
Two new rooms types are in the game, Chest and Slot Machine!
Chest rooms will offer you a bunch of chests, but you can only choose one and not all have the same awesome loot hiding within
Slot Machine rooms allow you to spend excess blops for extra equipment, passive and power notes
Shrine room walls can no longer hurt you with the Operation modifier
Confirmation is now required before exiting to main menu or restarting a run
Balance
Loot rooms are slightly more common to stumble across (outside of choice rooms)
Bug Fixes
Fix for rare bug that could cause some enemies to be invulnerable
Security upgrade to prevent potential cheaters from utilizing dev commands
Heat Seeking Missiles now included in Wizzup, as intended
In rare cases, game text could disappear until a run was restarted
Repeater can no longer allow you to apply/remove purple notes in colourblind modes
Fixed rare bug where players could survive with 0 health
Balance, Bugs & Chips?
Thank you to everyone that supported us during 1.0 launch and Early Access! Seeing so many Beat Blast streams and videos come out has been amazing these last few weeks, but it also highlighted a few pesky bugs and difficulty valleys we wanted to address.
Most notably, we felt level 3 was a bit easy compared to level 2 and we've amped up the difficulty with one new enemy and tweaks to several existing enemies.
We've also made some minor tweaks to level 4, specifically the Seed, which was far less challenging than we had hoped. It is much sturdier now and will take more than a few hits from a legendary power note to take down.
Lastly we've made Meg a bit more predictable in her second phase and amped up the difficulty on the Giant Snake and Sentinel when enraged.
We've also already begun work on our next update! We don't want to say too much yet, but we're aiming to add some more rare events to the game to spice up your runs. Those of you that have found a certain golden portal will have a good idea of what we're talking about...
Enjoy the full patch notes below!
Art
Sniper laser visuals refined to make it more clear when they're aiming vs shooting
Features
Chippers have been reworked. They are also sturdier and less common
Balance
Blasters' second set of shots are faster
Snipers shoot one beat sooner after finishing aiming
Level 3 and 4 background colours tweaked to make enemies more readable
Basic enemies will drop fewer bits than before
Machine Gunners fire a completely new attack
Mine explosion projectiles fly faster
Weaklings can no longer spawn above level 1
Snakes can no longer spawn above level 1 (Hive Worms still can)
Yellow elite bombs are more red so they don't look collectible
Meg's mines bounce off walls instead of exploding
Meg's second phase bullet ring attack fires slower and spaces out its gaps more
The seed health boosted 100%
The seed is more resistant to direct attacks and now takes more damage from its 'petals' being destroyed
The seed shoots out far more bouncing bullets than before
Enraged Sentinel fires more homing missile shots
Enraged Sentinel's bullets spread out after they travel, meaning the typical strategy of sitting back is less viable
Enraged Giant Snake now fires homing missiles from certain nodes
Enraged Giant Snake is now much longer
Ball and Chain speed malus reduced by 50%
Poison bomb explosion radius increased by 50%
Black Hole waits a half second before pulling in enemies
Accelerating shot max damage lowered
Shrines are much more common
Plagued modifier will no longer swap curses if you have every curse
Bug Fixes
Don't Touch the Sides should unlock as intended now
Sacred Geometry can only be unlocked by killing the seed, as intended
Plagued modifier will no longer swap curses after traveling through a portal
Fixed a rare bug that could break screen transitions between floors with certain antivirus software
Stack chests can no longer offer two of the same passive ability
Fix for some gamepads that were experiencing input loss after restarting/replaying a run
Hive Beetles could have stun graphics on them despite having 'unstunnable' abilities
Beat Blast 1.0 IS HERE!!!
1.0 is out now!
It's been a pleasure growing our fan base and listening to all your great suggestions and bug reports. We couldn't have made Beat Blast without you all. Shout out to our Discord, and thank you to all our players! The game has grown so much over our year in early access. With how crazy the world has been in the last year it was a dream come true to release our first Steam game.
We are pretty happy with where the game is now and are excited for you all to play it. This does not mean we’re done updating the game, but it does mean that we feel it has reached the level of quality we’re proud to present as a completed, fully-fledged game title.
If you like the game and want to help us succeed, please join our discord, tell your friends and favorite content creators about Beat Blast. Word of mouth really helps.
Here is a quick list of the major things added since early access last year.
Level 4 arena, boss and mini boss
Modifiers that completely change the game
Equipment, curses, passives and powernotes
Level 1 Giant Snake Boss
End game and score screen
Achievements
Mac version
Inventory system
More room types
Loot chests
New music tracks
Shrines
Modifiers
Mini Boss 4
Story
Enraged Mini Bosses
Translations
Russian, Chinese Simplified and Chinese Traditional translations have all been added to the game.
Achievements
Here is the full list of updates and changes to 1.0.
Audio
New blue, green, purple and yellow sound set!
New backing loops for boss fights
Smart bomb pickup volume lowered
New audio cues tied to menu navigation and interaction
New backing tracks for boss encounters
Visual
Yellow elite projectiles more red
Meg's mines have had their visuals adjusted to show when their hitboxes are active
Equipment now has a distinct colour to make it clear it's a separate category of item
New impact FX for Bazooka
VFX on pickups adjusted for icon clarity
Stinger projectiles come from their mouths
Barrier animation adjusted when gaining/losing a shield
Queen bee swarmling projectiles have more noticeable impact FX
Slight tweaks to pickup tooltip world anchoring
Binding Apply & Reset buttons coloured to draw attention
Screen fades adjusted to always center Spot
UI menu animations tweaked
Tutorial prompt for new players replaced with a graphic change on the Play menu
Coming soon panel replaced with a new welcome splash image
Remove notes icon was not updating for rebound gamepad controls
Cleaned up the highlight state on menus when using a gamepad
UI selection boxes visuals fixed during UI transitions
Features
First official Mac release!
Chill and Challenge modes replaced with single player challenge modifiers
9 new challenge modifiers, 6 of which are now available in Compete
50 Steam achievements added to the game
Added intro and game completion comic segments
Can now [successfully] end a game after the Seed boss if you choose
New yellow, green and blue track!
Reworked the death and restart cycle
Single player scores and high score
Each miniboss now has an enraged form when encountered in level 5 or later!
Options menu dropdowns can be 'clicked off'
Double note pickups will be grabbed automatically if they're free (just like single notes)
Balance
New players will start with 100 blops
Heat seeking missiles passive rarity changed from Rare to Legendary
Queen bee health increased by 30%
Meg's second phase mines are shot out much slower
Meg's mines take longer to detonate in both phases
Byte's second phase has had a minor rework to present more of a challenge
Power note drop rarities adjusted in boss rooms
Bit and blop chest rewards have been made larger
Bazooka now has a large impact radius by default and increases more with yellow notes
Laser now deals less damage to each opponent it hits
Fortify only blocks shots after a dodge is completed, as originally intended
Speed shrine duration increased from 30 to 90 seconds
Loot shrine duration increased from 30 to 90 seconds
Damage shrine buff lowered from 1000% to 200%
Damage shrine duration increased from 20 to 90 seconds
Shrines are more common to randomly come across but don't show up in choice rooms
Kilo has had the max range reduced on its projectile attack
Small O shaped room removed from the game
"Remove all notes" input only needs to be held down for 1 second instead of 2
The Plagued challenge modifier will now grant a curse at the start of a run
Sprinkler damage per 'sprinkle' reduced by roughly 80%
Mine damage reduced by 17%
Circle burst damage increased by 25%
Echo now reduces projectile damage with each bounce instead of increasing bullet durations
Echo is now limited to a single stack
Green projectile duration pickups max stack lowered from 30 to 15
Blue elite health bonus dropped by 50%
Purple elite minions are invulnerable for one beat after spawning
Curse drop rates lowered in boss loot rooms
Treasure rooms will no longer offer sound pickups
Bug Fixes
Mouse hover effects disabled in menus when using a gamepad
A gamepad disconnecting during a run will now trigger the pause menu
Cannot open the pause menu or inventory screen too soon after starting or restarting a run
Various optimizations to improve late game frame rates
"Remove all notes" input no longer allows you to reshuffle notes with the Automelodic challenge modifier
Power saw behaved unexpectedly with only a yellow note assigned in the column
In some cases, Meg's mines could damage players while flying through the air
Backing out of a confirmation modal via hotkey should work more predictably
Equipment and challenge modifiers are no longer listed as "common" rarity in the Inventory screen
Challenge modifiers are now tinted their standard colours in the Inventory screen
Curses removed through the Plagued modifier will no longer show up in the Inventory screen
Inventory screen stability and visual improvements
Chest lighting fades away with the chest visuals
Challenge modifiers can no longer affect the tutorial
Shrine buffs were showing the wrong tooltips if equipment was picked up while a shrine buff was active
Laser was frequently applying double damage
The Giant Snake head will flash when taking direct damage in phase 2
"Change Your Tune" tooltip will no longer pop up once a gamepad has used the track cycling feature
Track changing tooltip now shows rebound gamepad controls
Fixed gamepad navigation for new audio controls
Backing out of a dropdown menu on gamepad returns the UI selection to where it was before the dropdown was opened
Binding options in the menu reset when the menu is closed and reopened if bindings weren't applied
Gamepad binding visuals could occasionally be tinted incorrectly
Pausing or accessing the inventory during the first second of a started run could cause a soft lock
Submitting a compete score will show the correct arrow depending on whether the score is better or worse than your best previous score
Flocks and snakes have a lower detailed death effect particle to ease late game performance with lots of explosions onscreen
Max FPS should display the correct amount when the menu is opened
Rare late game soft lock fixed
The level 1 miniboss no longer rotates its eye (or eye laser when enraged) while stunned
Instant kill bonuses on power mods were higher than intended
Comet visuals were not visible through some chained dodges
Smartbombs clear when combat rooms are cleared
Credits no longer have the clickable mouse icon when hovered over
Stack and passive chests were not dropping the correct selections of passives
Boss loot rooms will now offer stack chests consistently if you don't have 3 unacquired passives to choose from
Enemy shield attacks can no longer push Spot while dodging
Enemy shield attacks can no longer push black holes
Beat Blast on Windows can now utilize 64 bit hardware
