New and Updated Songs
The main options screen song is brand new (titled “Establishment”)! Also, improvements to a few other songs, including “Opposition”, “Portension”, “Mystery” and “Excursion”.
Celtreos
Updated to 1.87
The main options screen song is brand new (titled “Establishment”)! Also, improvements to a few other songs, including “Opposition”, “Portension”, “Mystery” and “Excursion”.
Updated to 1.86
New Story Artwork
The introduction to the game now shows a few background pictures while the story text scrolls by.
General Artwork and Animation Improvements
Several effects have been tweaked, such as explosions and power-ups. Certain enemies are now more animated. In many pieces of artwork (especially those with gradient colors) the quality has increased.
The XP display in-game has been slightly improved.
Updated “Alien Ocean” Stage
The “Navigation” song has been refined further. Also, background artwork for this stage has been enhanced in various places.
An enemy in this stage has been modified to emit “bouncing” projectiles in many directions, instead of its previous laser attack. These projectiles are now also emitted during certain boss fights!
Arrow Keys
The left, right, up and down arrow keys can now be used for keyboard input (with the same effects as the “A”, “D”, “W” and ”S” keys).
French Localization
Several cases of English-only text in the “trophy room” have been fixed, now available in French.
Updated to 1.85
New EXP Tiers
Each weapon slot now has 5 Tiers instead of 4, with a new set of updates possible for each slot! Look for the following:
- Enlarge (destroyer weapons): Always fire larger projectiles
- Expand (default and sideways weapons): Cover a larger area
- Power Up (opposer weapons): Do more damage
- Range Up (locator weapons): Detect enemies from further away
- Resilience (default weapons): Prevent reduction below a power level of 3
- Waves (multiway weapons): Periodically fire larger projectiles
New EXP UI
There is now a bar underneath the main Tier display that shows more granular EXP acquisition, split into two parts. The first part is static, aligned with any obtained Tiers, showing EXP that has already resulted in awards. The flashing range shows “pending” EXP that will turn into a Tier award at the start of a future stage. This should make it easier to understand when you are close to an upgrade, and you can adjust how much you invest in weapons accordingly.
Artwork and Animation Updates
Several weapons, icons, ships and other artwork have been slightly improved.
Updated to 1.84
Weapon Proficiency (EXP) System!
You can now improve weapons as you play! Each time you start a new game though, EXP resets to zero.
Every class of weapon has its own EXP value that accumulates over time. It does not matter which Series you use: all weapons of the same class will continue to build up EXP for the weapon slot they are in (each weapon array has exactly one weapon of each class). For example, if you started improving Seeker in one stage and switched to a Series that contained Phaser in another stage, both of these will improve the same weapon slot.
Weapon slots have tiers. indicated by a bar underneath the new XP display in-game. Each time you gain a new tier, you receive the associated bonus or weapon update. Although some effects can apply to several weapon slots, others are entirely unique; keep improving your weapons to see what they can do!
Tiers can only change at the start of a new stage (when bonuses are awarded), even though EXP accumulates continuously during gameplay. The EXP scale is also not linear; for example, it is much harder to go from Tier 3 to Tier 4 than it is to go from Tier 1 to Tier 2.
See the help function in-game to learn all about weapon classes, tier bonuses and more.
New Achievements
Several new Achievements have been added to the game, related to the weapon proficiency system.
Updated Music
The “Evacuation” and “Mystery” songs have been refined further.
Updated to 1.83
Artwork and Animation Updates
Minor tweaks have been made to a number of animations and effects, such as the impact animations for the Beam weapon, certain explosions, and player ship exhaust colors. The large asteroids in the “Planetary Approach” stage are now more varied.
Gameplay Updates
Weapon mounts now show their current positions and trajectories with new indicators on your ship. This is especially helpful with moving mounts such as Crossover and Circular, and when multipliers are temporarily in effect, as it is easier to see where shots will be fired from.
Also, several enemies are now tougher to destroy in “Hard Difficulty” mode.
Some minor display glitches have been corrected.
Updated to 1.82
“Hard Difficulty” Setting
Enabling this new setting makes the game significantly more challenging!
- “1UP” power-ups NEVER spawn
- Defensive items such as “Shield” are far less likely to spawn
- Achievements do not give invincibility (though the Achievement still counts)
- Small round bullets are invulnerable and must all be avoided!
- Most projectiles are stronger and harder to destroy
- Much longer cooldown after using a Charge (“Bomb”, “Lightning”, etc.)
- Negative items appear more frequently
- Several enemy attack patterns change, and many are also faster
- More enemies spawn, and some walls may also change
Updated Music
There have been significant soundtrack improvements, updating songs such as “Disposition”, “Assignment”, “Evasion”, “Excursion”, “Confrontation”, “Portension” and “Flow”.
Artwork, Animation and Effect Updates
There have been minor tweaks to a variety of effects, including explosions and shaking. Some of the UI has improvements, like certain icon artwork and text sizes. Background contrast has been tweaked in stages like “Alien Ocean”. The “Predator” weapon has also improved.
The “Colony Evacuation” and “Last Stand” stages now have water lines that cause splash effects when the water is hit by things like bombs, certain bullets and debris. This opens up a new line of evasion, as you can potentially avoid being hit by flying further down than the water impact point.
Test Stage Updates
Wide-area-effect cooldowns have been removed when “Test…” is used, allowing more rapid experimentation with those abilities.
Updated to 1.81
Gameplay Updates
A number of stages have been adjusted for smoother gameplay, and there are even some new sections!
Updated Soundtrack
Several songs have been tweaked, including “Decoration”, “Evacuation”, “Mystery”, “Navigation”, and “Perfection”.
Artwork and Animation Updates
Backgrounds have been significantly upgraded in certain stages, such as “Jungle Cave”, “Sharp Descent” and more. Many enemies have improved artwork as well. A few player ships are now more detailed too, such as “Mini” and “Beryl Blade”! Minor updates to artwork have been made in other areas of the game.
Updated to 1.80
It’s been a while since the last update but this one is worth the wait.
New “Bumper” Defense
The “Plasma Series” now has a unique defensive ability, “Bumper”. This item makes it extremely unlikely that your ship will be destroyed by walls, and it will also push your ship out of the way of such obstacles (be careful though as it provides no protection against enemy attacks). Note that you can also select this item when defining one of your 5 custom weapon arrays.
Artwork, Animation and Effect Updates
Several stage backgrounds are more detailed, some significantly (such as “Orbital Defense” and “Refinery Raid”). There are improvements to explosion effects. Tweaks have been made to artwork and animation in a number of other places.
Also, when certain objects and enemies are impacted by your weapons, they react in more obvious ways (such as gently shaking).
Gameplay Updates
Certain stages have been tweaked for better gameplay, such as “Dark Nebula” (where it is now a bit easier to see through clouds).
A few weapons have been modified to work better, such as beam-based attacks (Beam, Phaser, Ray Burst, Column, etc.), the Predator weapon, and the Magnet Mine weapon.
The in-game weapon display now shows the icons for every weapon currently available to you, not just the name of the active weapon. In addition, the selected weapon’s icon is slightly larger. When you have all weapons, these appear in the same ascending order as their key bindings (1-6).
The Achievement display now makes it more obvious that your ship is invincible while this award is on the screen.
Weapon Mount Items
Although you can still set preferred weapon mounts to start the game, there are now in-game items that let you switch to a different kind of mount (currently 5 types). These options sometimes spawn together at major transition points in a stage but they may also spawn in different ways, even randomly from one play to the next. The icons for these items are now also shown in the Ship Editor when selecting default mounts.
Updated Soundtrack with New Song
When you browse achievements (via the trophy button on the main options screen), a brand new song is now played!
Several tracks have been enhanced further, including “Disposition”, “Acquisition”, “Evacuation”, “Mystery”, “Portension”, “Fabrication” and “Flow”.
Sound Effects
There are a few new sound effects, including additional explosions. Some weapons now have new sounds, such as “Tail Whip” and “Weaver”.
Test Stage Updates
There are now more types of targets in the test stage, including some that are much larger (and take more hits to destroy) and more that move. The new weapon mount items now also periodically spawn here to make it easier to see how other mounts affect your weapons.
Major artwork and effect updates. New in-game weapon display shows the icons for all picked-up weapons.
Updated to 1.79
New Progress Tracking Mode
There’s a lot in this game, and you don’t want to miss anything. Now you can be sure you haven’t, using a new mode that keeps track of the major things you have done! Use the new “trophy” button on the main options screen to reach this mode.
In the top-left corner of this screen is a basic percentage of overall game progress (this is also displayed on the trophy button itself from the options screen, as a quick reference).
Although Achievements can be triggered any time you play the game, this mode will now keep track of the unique kinds of Achievements that you have ever been awarded. The conditions for activating them are secret…can you find them all?
There is also a section on general stage-by-stage progress. Most of these will be gradually awarded through normal gameplay but there are still some interesting ones to unveil!
Finally, there is a 3rd section to cover other aspects of the game. Initially these are focused on abilities…try to explore all the weapons, defenses and other features of your ship!
If you are having trouble triggering some of these, turn on the “Hints” button to show extra information when selecting each goal, that may help you to understand how to get it.
Try your best to reach 100% but this mode will probably expand over time with even more new secret goals to achieve!!!
Gameplay Tweaks
As usual, a few minor improvements to artwork, animation and stage design.
Now you won’t miss a thing, the game keeps track of all your major progress.
Updated to 1.78
Dynamic Enemy Spawns
The game now automatically spawns new enemies when there are few remaining on the screen. The type of auto-spawn varies by stage, and depends on how well you “clear” an area. This means you can potentially rack up even more score by quickly defeating enemies, since that will lead to more targets overall.
General Gameplay Updates
Certain stages have improved spawn patterns and layout, such as “Alien Ocean”. A new plasma-ball projectile has been added, and it is now used by a number of enemies and bosses!
New Weapon Mount
The Ship Editor now has a 5th type of weapon mount, “Crossover”. This is essentially an X pattern but for single projectiles it travels in an animated way along alternate crossover paths, whereas for 2- and 3-multipliers it will cause each copy of a weapon to follow its own X path.
Updated Boss Soundtrack
A new boss theme “Portension” has been added to the soundtrack, and plays during the “Dark Nebula” and “Refinery Raid” boss fights.
Artwork and Animation Updates
Certain user interface elements have improved. Minor tweaks have been made to explosions and other effects. Some enemy ships have updated artwork and animation.