We have been working hard to formally add controller support and Steam Deck support for Bowmen. This game update includes many major changes to the game and UI that adds controller and Steam Deck support, however, there are still a few game bugs and kinks that need to be ironed out over the next few weeks. If you run into issues with this build, please let us know on the official Bowmen forums or here on Steam. Bugs will continue to be removed through minor patches as we find them. Once we feel we have ironed out all the bugs on the Deck, we will have the game reviewed by Valve so it can be Deck verified and provide another update. Until then, note that you may run into issues while playing on a Steam Deck.
What's New?:Release Candidate (RC) 0.2.0 from 0.1.6.5
Major Game/Gameplay Changes
Game versions have been simplified to indicate that the game is still in early access, starting with a 0 instead of a 1. References to old patches have been updated accordingly.
The base damage reduction for magic guarding when hit by a projectile is increased from 50% to 60%.
Charging an arrow shot now has a bit of resistance to it. Shots with more power will require you to hold down the mouse (or A button) for longer.
Rumble effects have been added to the game when the player uses the melee slash or or charges their arrow shot.
The camera now has a depth of field effect added to it.
GUI Changes
Menu buttons have been modified, and the menu screens have been redesigned.
Bug Fixes
Fixed an issue where the game would not close properly upon exit on the Steam Deck.
Fixed an issue where the Skeleton Mage would not call his death animation when killed.
Fixed an issue where you couldn't add stat points using the controller.
Fixed an issue moving from stat points to items on the hero information screen with the controller.
Fixed an issue where they bear cub would move positions under certain circumstances.
Patch 1.06.5
We have been working hard to formally add controller support and Steam Deck support for Bowmen. This game update includes many major changes to the game and UI that adds controller and Steam Deck support, however, there are still a few game bugs and kinks that need to be ironed out over the next few weeks. If you run into issues with this build, please let us know on the official Bowmen forums or here on Steam. Bugs will continue to be removed through minor patches as we find them. Once we feel we have ironed out all the bugs on the Deck, we will have the game reviewed by Valve so it can be Deck verified and provide another update. Until then, note that you may run into issues while playing on a Steam Deck.
What's New?:Release Candidate (RC) v1.06.5 from v1.06.4
Major Game/Gameplay Changes
Controller support has been added to the game! In the coming months we will be testing various different controller types and Bowmen on the Steam Deck. Steam Deck support is currently limited, but we hope to iron out any remaining bugs before the winter quarter 2022/2023.
Critical hits and melee attacks will now display damage numbers with a little sparkle animation to give it more flair.
A magic guard ability has been added to the game, which can be activated with the D key or the left bumper. Magic guarding will reduce damage you receive from projectiles and is dependent upon how much fortitude your character has.
A woodlands bear has been added to the game, which will periodically jump out of the forest to help you and attack enemies.
The loading bar now has an outline design to make it pop a little more.
Bombs from Skeleton Knight enemies now substantially increase their damage to the player if not detonated at a safe distance. This damage increase is more substantial on higher difficulties. In addition, other enemies receive less damage from bombs on higher difficulties.
The Skeleton Mage now spawns on earlier waves if the player is playing on Hell or Inferno difficulty. Spawns are the same for lower difficulties.
Projectile damage from the Fel Bats has been increased as a function of difficulty. Their accuracy is reduced on lower difficulties, and increased on higher difficulties.
Gold has been added to the game, which can be used to purchase skins. Players accumulate gold for each minion they kill.
A "low health" animation has been added to the game that plays when your character is below 10% of their maximum health.
A few new sound effects have been added to the game, such as an equip sound effect when the player's skin is changed in the menu.
Item Changes
The Battleaxe of Kings has been added to the game, which gives your melee slashes life steal.
GUI Changes
Equip and activation icons have been added to items that drop or are visible within your toolbar.
Game icons will automatically swap from keyboard to gamepad if a controller is detected by the game engine.
The GUI Icons on Onslaught have been increased in size so that they are more easily visible on the Steam Deck.
Bug Fixes
Fixed an issue whereby the text showing the remaining time on the Mark of the Barbarian would not be positioned properly if the player also had a Spirit Golem and Piece of Balrog Heart active.
Fixed an issue where damage would affect the player but sometimes not display the damage text if the player's health was low.
Fixed an issue where Akash would sometimes not spawn the Wizard under very rare circumstances.
Fixed a bug where the player could pause during the death animation.
Patch 0.1.6.5
We have been working hard to formally add controller support and Steam Deck support for Bowmen. This game update includes many major changes to the game and UI that adds controller and Steam Deck support, however, there are still a few game bugs and kinks that need to be ironed out over the next few weeks. If you run into issues with this build, please let us know on the official Bowmen forums or here on Steam. Bugs will continue to be removed through minor patches as we find them. Once we feel we have ironed out all the bugs on the Deck, we will have the game reviewed by Valve so it can be Deck verified and provide another update. Until then, note that you may run into issues while playing on a Steam Deck.
What's New?:Release Candidate (RC) v0.1.6.5 from v0.1.6.4
Major Game/Gameplay Changes
Controller support has been added to the game! In the coming months we will be testing various different controller types and Bowmen on the Steam Deck. Steam Deck support is currently limited, but we hope to iron out any remaining bugs before the winter quarter 2022/2023.
Critical hits and melee attacks will now display damage numbers with a little sparkle animation to give it more flair.
A magic guard ability has been added to the game, which can be activated with the D key or the left bumper. Magic guarding will reduce damage you receive from projectiles and is dependent upon how much fortitude your character has.
A woodlands bear has been added to the game, which will periodically jump out of the forest to help you and attack enemies.
The loading bar now has an outline design to make it pop a little more.
Bombs from Skeleton Knight enemies now substantially increase their damage to the player if not detonated at a safe distance. This damage increase is more substantial on higher difficulties. In addition, other enemies receive less damage from bombs on higher difficulties.
The Skeleton Mage now spawns on earlier waves if the player is playing on Hell or Inferno difficulty. Spawns are the same for lower difficulties.
Projectile damage from the Fel Bats has been increased as a function of difficulty. Their accuracy is reduced on lower difficulties, and increased on higher difficulties.
Gold has been added to the game, which can be used to purchase skins. Players accumulate gold for each minion they kill.
A "low health" animation has been added to the game that plays when your character is below 10% of their maximum health.
A few new sound effects have been added to the game, such as an equip sound effect when the player's skin is changed in the menu.
Item Changes
The Battleaxe of Kings has been added to the game, which gives your melee slashes life steal.
GUI Changes
Equip and activation icons have been added to items that drop or are visible within your toolbar.
Game icons will automatically swap from keyboard to gamepad if a controller is detected by the game engine.
The GUI Icons on Onslaught have been increased in size so that they are more easily visible on the Steam Deck.
Bug Fixes
Fixed an issue whereby the text showing the remaining time on the Mark of the Barbarian would not be positioned properly if the player also had a Spirit Golem and Piece of Balrog Heart active.
Fixed an issue where damage would affect the player but sometimes not display the damage text if the player's health was low.
Fixed an issue where Akash would sometimes not spawn the Wizard under very rare circumstances.
Fixed a bug where the player could pause during the death animation.
Bowmen Steam Deck / Controller Support
Since the earliest days of Bowmen's development and consistently throughout its existence, I've largely gotten two major pieces of feedback from players:
1. The game would probably succeed best on a mobile device platform (such as iOS). 2. The game would greatly benefit from full controller support, in addition to support for a mouse and keyboard.
The second piece of advice I also received from Valve, since a large portion of PC gamers also own a controller and use it regularly for playing games. However, initially I wanted to stick to a mouse and keyboard for a few reasons: First, the original game concept design was to be that of old school PC games like the ones I played back in the day, such as Gunbound, Warcraft, and Diablo. For a lot of these games, they had a chat feature upon the initial game menu that allowed you to talk with other players that were currently in game, which I greatly enjoyed. This was implemented for Bowmen after months of development, but I wasn't quite sure how to morph this function to be useable on a controller (which, to be honest, I am still working on). Second, these types of games often utilize "mouse over" tooltips, which was also problematic for a controller (I could make a "gamepad" version of the menus, where the tooltips are stationary, but it would take a lot of code rewriting and a UI overhaul). Lastly, all of these features would need to be reworked [I]again for iOS touch controls, and porting the game to something like the Nintendo Switch or an iPad would cause me to lose all access to the Steam platform for those ports, which my ranking system for Bowmen heavily depended on.
Cue the Steam Deck
Then recently, I learned through a friend about the Steam Deck, which simultaneously appeared to answer all these problems (how the Steam Deck managed to slip passed my radar is either a testament to how much I've been working these days, or a testament to the metaphorical rock I've been living under). Regardless, the Steam Deck was a godsend, because it allowed me to add functional support for a controller to Bowmen while also simultaneously preparing the game for a "mobile" release. Not only that, unlike the Nintendo Switch, iOS, or other potential port options I was considering for the game, the Steam Deck would allow me to keep using all of the Steam APIs for things like a friend's list, ranking systems, leaderboards, usernames, and everything else that Bowmen relied on. It has been a daunting task to make all of these changes to the game over the last few months to say the least (and that definitely is NOT and understatement), but I am finally closing in on completing controller and Steam Deck support for Bowmen. It will likely take a few more weeks for me to conclude play testing of the game to ensure a bug free end user experience on the device, but we're finally in the home stretch to where I feel confident I can formally announce it and start prepping everything to be pushed to players.
Therefore, I am pleased to announce that soon we will be pushing an update for Bowmen that will formally add support for the Steam Deck as well as controller support on the PC. We will be focusing on Xbox 360 / Xbox One controller support initially (which appear to be the major ones used by PC gamers), as well as the Steam controller, but we are open to suggestions for more controllers to support as time goes on. There is not a currently scheduled official release date for this major game update, but you should expect it to drop roughly within the next few weeks to a month. Until then, stay tuned!
Thank you for playing Bowmen!
Ethereal Gem Development Team
Patch v1.06.04
What's New?:Release Candidate (RC) v1.06.04 from v1.05.40
Major Game/Gameplay Changes
The Unity Engine has been updated and the game library rebuilt. As a whole, this has led to a huge increase in game performance. We also made several changes to game art assets, which should further improve game performance and reduce hard disk size.
The character creation screen has been removed from the game. This was for the most part a relic from when the game did not use Steam IDs or Steamworks. New characters will automatically be assigned your Steam ID as their name, and you will only be prompted to view and accept the EULA via the Steam client in the future.
In the options menu, a checkbox has been added for voices, rather than it being mixed with the SFX slider. In game voices will now be togglable.
The player level cap has been raised from 40 to 50.
Ranged enemy health and projectile damage have been buffed on every difficulty, while other minion healths and damage have remained the same. This is to make gameplay a little more challenging without making every enemy more difficult.
Critical hit damage text now has additional effects associated with it (both visually and acoustically), to give it a bit more flair.
The camera now has a rain effect on the lens. Rain effects in the onslaught scene have also been increased.
A slight depth of field effect has been added to the camera.
Hell and Inferno difficulties are now no longer locked by default. At the start of the game, you may select any difficulty you like.
The chat client no longer reports when players join/leave the channel, or scores when returning. The chat client will, however, still report high scores achieved to the chat channel.
A few of the game's audio tracks have changed.
The "orb" that allows you to adjust and angle your shots has slightly changed. It is now a little more transparent.
The arrow placeholder and arrows fired by the player now match the skin chosen, rather than the default "red steel" arrow.
Item Changes
Stonehammer
The damage of the Spirit Golem that this item summons has been increased to 102-145.
GUI Changes
The GUI system has been restructured, using Unity 2021's latest system. This has led to massive improvements to performance.
The wind arrow now has a little rotation animation associated with it.
The chat window is now scrollable on the difficulty selection screen.
Achievement Changes
The Hell achievement is now unlocked after receiving a high score on hell difficulty, rather than a high score on hard.
The Inferno achievement is now unlocked after receiving a high score on inferno difficulty, rather than a high score on hard.
Bug Fixes
Fixed an issue where players could deal damage to themselves twice if they hit themselves with an arrow.
Fixed an issue where the reported "angle" of the player's shot was rounding incorrectly. It now should properly report 0 to 90, or 0 to -90 (depending upon the direction).
Fixed a display issue with word bubbles from the summonable wizard and barbarian. They should now spawn with the word bubbles the correct size.
Fixed a lighting issue that would occur on low graphics settings in certain scenes.
Fixed an issue where vsync would automatically disable on lower graphical settings, even if it was enabled in the game options.
Fixed a fading issue between scenes.
Patch v1.06.4
What's New?:Release Candidate (RC) v1.06.4 from v1.05.40
Major Game/Gameplay Changes
The Unity Engine has been updated and the game library rebuilt. As a whole, this has led to a huge increase in game performance. We also made several changes to game art assets, which should further improve game performance and reduce hard disk size.
The character creation screen has been removed from the game. This was for the most part a relic from when the game did not use Steam IDs or Steamworks. New characters will automatically be assigned your Steam ID as their name, and you will only be prompted to view and accept the EULA via the Steam client in the future.
In the options menu, a checkbox has been added for voices, rather than it being mixed with the SFX slider. In game voices will now be togglable.
The player level cap has been raised from 40 to 50.
Ranged enemy health and projectile damage have been buffed on every difficulty, while other minion healths and damage have remained the same. This is to make gameplay a little more challenging without making every enemy more difficult.
Critical hit damage text now has additional effects associated with it (both visually and acoustically), to give it a bit more flair.
The camera now has a rain effect on the lens. Rain effects in the onslaught scene have also been increased.
A slight depth of field effect has been added to the camera.
Hell and Inferno difficulties are now no longer locked by default. At the start of the game, you may select any difficulty you like.
The chat client no longer reports when players join/leave the channel, or scores when returning. The chat client will, however, still report high scores achieved to the chat channel.
A few of the game's audio tracks have changed.
The "orb" that allows you to adjust and angle your shots has slightly changed. It is now a little more transparent.
The arrow placeholder and arrows fired by the player now match the skin chosen, rather than the default "red steel" arrow.
Item Changes
Stonehammer
The damage of the Spirit Golem that this item summons has been increased to 102-145.
GUI Changes
The GUI system has been restructured, using Unity 2021's latest system. This has led to massive improvements to performance.
The wind arrow now has a little rotation animation associated with it.
The chat window is now scrollable on the difficulty selection screen.
Achievement Changes
The Hell achievement is now unlocked after receiving a high score on hell difficulty, rather than a high score on hard.
The Inferno achievement is now unlocked after receiving a high score on inferno difficulty, rather than a high score on hard.
Bug Fixes
Fixed an issue where players could deal damage to themselves twice if they hit themselves with an arrow.
Fixed an issue where the reported "angle" of the player's shot was rounding incorrectly. It now should properly report 0 to 90, or 0 to -90 (depending upon the direction).
Fixed a display issue with word bubbles from the summonable wizard and barbarian. They should now spawn with the word bubbles the correct size.
Fixed a lighting issue that would occur on low graphics settings in certain scenes.
Fixed an issue where vsync would automatically disable on lower graphical settings, even if it was enabled in the game options.
Fixed a fading issue between scenes.
Development Updates: October
Hello everyone, Brokenshield here.
We've been hard at work on Bowmen this summer/fall, but most of that work has been largely invisible. We had noticed at the start of the summer the game's cheat detection system was lacking in a lot of areas, and so we decided to overhaul that system and implement a new one. With the most recent update this October, this system is now live. The game will scan itself for changes and attempts at hacking / manipulating the leaderboards, and will send a report to us (as well as close the game) if there is any detection of cheating (note: the game does not monitor the rest of your system, nor does it collect any data whatsoever about anything outside of the game itself). We implemented this to hopefully maintain the integrity of the leaderboards, and keep your hard earned scores where they should be: at the top! If you notice any issues with the latest version of the game while you are playing, please let us know in the support forum on our main website or here on Steam.
Because a lot of this work was on the back end focusing on game integrity, we haven't made too many changes to Bowmen's gameplay itself. Over the next few months, we are going to shift gears back to gameplay tweaks, focusing on marketing and getting the game's name out there, while also listening to feedback as it rolls in. While you play the game, consider how the game feels and plays and provide us with feedback on our forums or here on Steam. We appreciate any and all feedback you can give us: even if you think it is a minor tweak or game suggestion, as this feedback makes the game more fun and enjoyable for all players.
Anyways, I look forward to what we will be doing and bringing to you in the coming months. Perhaps even a Christmas event is in order! Stay tuned!
Thanks, The Ethereal Gem Bowmen Team
Patch v1.05.4
What's New?:Release Candidate (RC) v1.05.4 from v1.05.3
Major Game/Gameplay Changes
We've added a more extensive cheat detection system to prevent hacking and leaderboard manipulation.
A text warning and error sound effect will now trigger if you attempt to use the Melee Slash ability, but do not have enough strength or mana to do so.
The level cap has been reduced to 40 (down from 60).
Patch v1.05.3
What's New?:Release Candidate (RC) v1.05.3 from v1.05
Major Game/Gameplay Changes
The window for which the Melee Slash ability can hit targets has been tightened. This was to avoid some enemies appearing to get hit by the slash after the animation has finished.
The window for which the summoned Sword of Justice can hurt enemies has been tightened. This was to avoid some enemies appearing to get hit by the sword after it despawned.
A "death animation" sequence has been added, where the camera will rotate around the player during death before fading to the summary screen.
The usable item Akash now drops more frequently than other items.
Some audio has been reworked to be more clear.
Early waves will no longer drop epic/legendary quality items. These will drop later on during the encounter to match the wave difficulty.
The damage from bombs and the summonable Wizard's "Genesis" attack have been reduced.
Lord Pain is now immune to certain effects, like the bleed effect associated with Bloodlust.
Item Changes
Angelsbane
This item now costs 120 HP to activate instead of mana per second. In addition, this item will remain active for 45 seconds as long as it is equipped.
This item now has camera shake and other effects that play upon its activation.
Bloodlust
The proc chance has been increased to 33% (up from 30%).
Masfury
The damage of the fire summoned by this item has been reduced to 15-35.
The fire summoned by this item now has a sound effect associated with it.
Skin Changes
Forgotten
This skin now requires the rank of Ranger or better during season of the phoenix to unlock.
Bug Fixes
Fixed an issue where the effect of Bloodlust was not occurring as often as indicated on the tooltip.
Fixed various GUI issues that were known to occur on the Mac version of the game when keys were pressed or held down.
Fixed an issue where the GUI elements would be improperly aligned on Mac clients, when the game did not save your resolution of choice properly from the last play session.
Fixed an issue where some of the buff icons were improperly aligning to the top left of the screen under certain circumstances.
Fixed an issue where enemy projectiles could, on occasion, "double" hit.
Fixed an issue where the ghost ship from the Captain's Mace could be summoned while the 2 second pickup cooldown was in effect.
Fixed an issue where sometimes the power of your shot would not reset to 0 after using the Multishot ability.
Fixed an issue where you could sometimes "double shoot" by holding down both the left mouse button and the space bar, and releasing them at the same time.
