This hotfix focuses primarily on stability and introduces multiple bug fixes.
đź’¬ Dev comment: The last update changed the default rendering API to DirectX 12. While it improved performance, it also introduced some instability in specific hardware configurations. This hotfix reverts the default rendering API to DirectX 11 and adds the option to change it back to DirectX 12 in the settings menu.
We heard your thoughts on a new combat shell, and know that we will take action based on your feedback soon, so stay tuned!
General Changes
DirectX version selector added
Implants linguistic descriptions pass
Gauss Rifle animation pass
Other fixes
Fixed infinite slow motion caused by removing Aviator Stimulant from the Implant Matrix
Fixed some instances of damage done by bosses not respecting player damage immunity
Fixed Neuralboosts, not rolling any upgrades after using the Reroll option
Fixed damage dealt to weak points not registering as weak point damage
There’s still time to be the best gifter with Super Gift Granter!
Holidays caught you off guard without a gift for somebody? Found a present in your inbox and have nothing to gift back? We know that feeling! And we know how to help you out!
Enter the Super Gift Granter This pack is chock full of our games!
Just think, you could:
Study alchemy
Explore ancient India
Fight in the trenches of an alternate WWII
Embrace retrofuturism on a quest to help a robot find humanity
Survive a post-apocalypse
Be a vengeful spirit in a war-torn Korea
Be a cyberpunk agent challenging powerful megacorporations
Explore a petri dish of viruses, deflecting and dodging their attacks
Remember! The Super Gift Granter packs even more of a bargain during the ongoing Christmas deals. Don’t miss your chance! The Super Gift Granter bundle is available until January 13th, 2023.
Warning! This is not a Complete the Set bundle. If you already own any of the games on the list, you will not be able to make a purchase for yourself. But you might still make a friend happy!
If you would like to complete your Super collection with a Complete the Set bundle, let us know in the comments to this announcement!
Happy holidays!
Super Roguelite Bundle
Do you like sci-fi? Do you like roguelites? You’re in luck cause each of these two has its own kind of glowing high-octane mayhem for you! Megacorps or Microcosm? Why not pick on both?
Deadlink uploads you into a state-of-the-art combat shell as you infiltrate the property of megacorps to make some mayhem and damage some profits on behalf of a secret agency!
Meanwhile the Deflector experiment is all about fighting viral foes. Get up close and personal on their own microscopic turf in a series of bullet hell arena encounters to outlive, outdodge and outmutate your opposition.
So hop right in, strike and dodge to the wild soundtrack and have fun!
To keep up with the corpos, the good guys have got to innovate too. And with this latest update to Deadlink you too can link into the latest combat shell in the hands of the CSA.
Meet the Engineer:
If you heard “Engineer” and thought about wrenches and welding torches then you’re behind the times. Proposed then put together by CSA’s very own wizard-class hacker, Engineer is the shell that maximizes computing power to be your very own field hacker.
Select it on upload to gain access to…
Gauss Rifle
For when you absolutely want to eat through a whole mag of metal flechettes in record time
“Tarball” Revolving Grenade Launcher
For when you really want to show the corpos where to stick it
Wormlink Breach
Even more concealable than a taser. Link up to hostile electronics and flood them with malware. It’ll take them precious seconds to snap out of that!
“Lawbringer” Sentry Turret
Because we heard you talk about how you could use some force multiplication in the field!
Update Deadlink now, and if you don’t own it yet - why not grab it for 15% off while it’s part of the Winter Sale? The offer stands from Dec 22, 2022 to Jan 5, 2023 10 AM Pacific
Here’s the full list of changes and fixes this update
What’s new?
Engineer combat shell
Gauss Rifle weapon, with 7 mods and an unlockable skin for beating the game on every Crisis Level;
“Tarball” Revolving Grenade Launcher, with 3 elemental mods; ○ NOTE: Elemental mods for grenade launcher are in “work in progress” state; we will add new meshes and sounds in future updates
Wormlink Breach ability allowing the player to forcefully connect to enemies, with 3 shell upgrades;
Lawbringer Sentry ability allowing the player to summon an autonomous turret, with 5 shell upgrades;
8 class specific HUB upgrades
Engineer combat shell won't be available to you right away, you’ll have to find its blueprints somewhere in Watts-Rucker Biolab
New implants
17 new, passive-effect-only implants
Those implants also won't be available to you right away; they are scattered between combat arenas so keep your eyes (and ears) peeled!
Blood splatters on weapons
"📢" marks the changes suggested by the Deadlink community
Balance & gameplay
Healing doors on Deep Dive difficulty will now heal 50% of HP
Healing doors on Neuromancy difficulty will now heal 35% of HP
Damage taken from barrels is limited to 50% of players max HP
Players shield will block single instance of damage when it drops to 0 Previously if you had 1 shield and took 10 damage, we would deal 9 damage to HP. To prevent some random deaths and damage spikes, shields will now block the remaining damage. So if you have 1 shield and take 10 damage, we will just reduce your shield to 0 and ignore the remaining 9 points of damage.
Each weapon and weapon mod has its own homing rocket spawn chance. Implants that said “Everytime you fire there's a 20% chance to spawn homing projectiles” were easy to abuse on weapons with high fire rate (ARC Electrolaser or Gauss Rifle). Now, when this implant is equipped, each weapon has different chance to trigger this effect: ○ Soldier - Shotgun - 20% - Rocket Launcher and all its mods - 25% ○ Hunter - Handcannon - 15% - ARC - 20% - Electrolaser - 4% ○ Engineer - Assault Rifle - 8% - Grenade Launcher - 20%
Fixed damage processing pipeline to handle the player's Defence Power properly Defence Power stat was broken and locked at 100% despite the number of defensive HUB upgrades you unlocked
Damage dealt by skills, class perks or implants will generate purple combat numbers
📢 Last enemy in combat arena will become visible through walls
Improvements & Bugfixes
📢 Added notifications about new Combat Shells becoming available
Added handling for the Intel XeSS enhanced upscaling system
📢 Added HUD resize for the ultrawide resolutions
📢 Added display of abilities and all installed primary weapon mods at the inventory screen
Added new targeting marker widget (toggleable in settings)
Fixed VFX presentation on lower video quality settings
Fixed cutscenes' visual, sound and timing issues
📢 Fixed run timer bugs
📢 Fixed Codex unlocking issues
Corrupted anchors will properly register all type of damage
Properly register grenade kills stat on summary screen
📢Fix highest damage not being displayed properly on summary screen
Implant swapping is no longer available during combat
Linguistic passes for game text standardization
UI reworks, including; player's loadout, shop, and run summary
General tweaks and fixes to AI behavior
General tweaks to the game settings panel
General optimization passes on levels and gameplay systems
General collision passes on levels
General audio passes on levels
📢 General post-processing, bloom, and exposure passes aimed for better performance and mitigation of motion sickness
Various bug fixes and quality-of-life improvements
Early Access Bundle in out now!
Wanted: Action fans!
The Prize: A delectable selection of games to fill your veins with high-octane action.
If you find yourself in need of some mayhem in your gaming life, you’ve come to the right place. Looking for a beautifully stylized 3D platformer to delight your senses with wanton physics destruction and a twisted sense of humor? We’ve got you covered. Got a hankering for a thick combo of atmospheric sci-fi adventuring and alien horror? It’s here. Felt the urge to become larger than life and wreak havoc as a giant to smite your enemies? Look no further.
Between the games in this bundle, you’ll find an overwhelming amount of content that spans a whole spectrum of tastes, all at a wild price, and it’s yours for the taking!
Bang-On Balls: Chronicles is an oddball of a 3D platforming game with collect-a-thon spin! Become a reckless hero as you do missions, collect items and search for secrets rolling through various (inaccurate) historical events!
Hidden Deep is an atmospheric sci-fi action game heavily inspired by Aliens, The Thing, and Half-Life. Explore, climb, swim, scan, blast and shoot your way through dangerous missions in a huge sub oceanic mining and research facility. Fear the horrors that lurk below…
Lumencraft is a top-down, rogue-like shooter with base building and tower defense elements. Enter procedurally generated levels with fully destructible environment, to build your base, dig some tunnels and find the precious Lumen - humanity's only chance for survival.
Get ready to put a sizable dent in the profits of megacorporations in Deadlink, a guns-blazing cyberpunk FPS with roguelite elements. Your mission is to conduct covert ops while piloting a humanoid combat shell. And no, "covert" doesn’t mean "quiet."
Giants Uprising is a medieval fantasy action adventure game full of Giants and unlimited destruction! Take on the role of a powerful Giant who finally breaks free from enslavement to seek revenge on the ruthless human race.
Nominate Deadlink in Steam Awards'22!
Steam Awards 2022 protocol initiating…
Nomination stage access… granted…
User vote required. Proposed nomination: “Outstanding Visual Style”
Procedure:
Access Deadlink Store page
Click “NOMINATE THIS GAME FOR AN AWARD”
Select award to nominate Deadlink for!
WARNING: Nomination window limited. Nominate Deadlink until November 29th 10:00 AM Pacific
Autumn Sale began!
This just in!
Deadlink is taking part in the Steam Autumn Sale with a shiny 10% discount for all agents. This offer is live November 22 – 29. Don’t miss it!
Hotfix - November 2022
In this hotfix we introduce starting packs feature, balance changes to difficulty tiers and multiple bugfixes and QoL improvements.
"📢" marks the changes suggested by the Deadlink community
📢 Starting pack selection
đź’¬ Dev comment: When it comes to starting item selection, we noticed that most players would just go for weapon mod and/or class perk in some cases, leaving implants as the worst option and essentialy a HUB upgrade that is not worth taking. To make starting item vendor more impactful and interesting, we've changed how items are presented to players. Assuming you have all starting item options unlocked in a HUB, you will be able to pick one of three starting packs that consists of one implant, one class perk and one weapon mod. We hope that seeing all three items at once will generate some cool synergies from the start and make the HUB upgrades more impactful.
📢 Neuromancy crisis level tweaks
Enemy bonus HP reduced to 10% (was 20%)
Increase enemy move and attack speed by 25% (does not apply to bosses)
Reduce boss HP multiplier to 175% (was 200%)
đź’¬ Dev comment: Playing on Neuromancy was a bit of a chore due to spongy enemies and increased TTK. We gathered your feedback and increased enemy move/attack speed rather than their HP. We believe this creates much smoother experience and keeps the challenge at appropriate level ; )
Elemental damage stacking
Stacking elemental damage mods on primary weapons works properly now and instead of being multiplicative its additive.
Cord Nanoconstructor (Hook cooldown reset on kill)
Cooldown reset window reduced to 0.75s (was 1.5s) đź’¬ Dev comment: Cooldown reset window was just too generous and is now in much better place. If you time your attacks correctly you will be rewarded with refreshed cooldown.
Other Fixes
Fixed a bug where run timer would resume after closing inventory when boss was defeated
Fixed a bug where enemies wouldnt stop coming on regular arena
Fixed lore typos
Fixed a bug with FOV not being reset after boss cinematic
Fixed multiple level collision bugs
Improved AI pathing
UI tweaks and improvements
We love to read all of your feedback so please keep it coming! 🔥 In our next update, we will introduce new combat shell and new implants! Stay tuned!
“Show us your power”!
It’s been more than a week since Deadlink launched in Early Access and our community is on fire!🔥
That includes streamers, whose guns-blazing romps across private corporation-owned territory we watched with our optics focused. You can see a small part of them under the Videos section of our Community Hub
📍If your video still isn’t there, don’t forget to upload it!
If you're enjoying Deadlink, share this enjoyment with everyone! Talk about what you like, maybe provide ideas for what you're looking for in future updates and just have fun! We want to see what you’re like in Deadlink, whether you’re a professional streamer or an aspiring caster. That’s what our new “Show us your power” contest is all about!
Rules overview
The rules are simple:
Launch your stream and dive right into Deadlink! Show everyone what you’ve got!
Don’t forget to record it and save it on your channel.
Comments, raw emotion and the look on your face - all are welcome additions to the video!
As for us, we’ll carefully examine every video and pick the best broadcaster in action and expression. Their prize? You'll be broadcasting on our Steam page of the game during weekend!*
“Show us your power” will run from November 9 to November 20. From November 21 to November 24 we will thoroughly examine all the Videos we find in our Community Hub. The results will be announced in an individual publication on our Steam Hub!
The winner will have his video running on Deadlink’s main page for an entire weekend! The video will include a link to your channel. Stay sharp, have fun and best of luck in the contest!
* the details of the stream will be discussed with the winner.
Detailed rules and instructions
It’s easier than chipping in an upgrade - play Deadlink, react, and record the experience! Don’t be shy - let your emotions shine! You’ll find a helpful step-by-step guide below:
1. Pick your way to record the video
You can pick one of the recorders recommended here
Or you can use your graphics card’s built-in features (such as NVidia’s GeForce Experience overlay - activate it with Alt+Z and start the recording)
2. Set up your video display
Make sure the game’s on the main screen
Feel free to add a corner window showing your face to the viewers
You can feel free to add the titles of your Twitch, YouTube or other socials, but don’t cover up TOO much of the video (let’s say take up no more than 10%)
3. When you’re done setting up, hit Record and start playing!
Be happy, be angry, be it all! Your feelings and emotions are all welcome
That said, remember your video’s contents still have to follow Steam’s ToS
Make your recording fun and engaging! Shoot some corporate goons, bust some metal, level up and show everyone your best Deadlink gameplay!
4. Make sure your recording is at least an hour long. Don’t want to leave us or your audience starved for your content, do you?
5. Stop the recording once you’ve made some progress (or when you need a break)
6. Post the resulting video on your YouTube channel
Don’t forget to set up the Details. Set the Category to “Gaming” and fill “Deadlink” under Game Title to make your work easy to find
7. Once the video is on YouTube, place it under Videos in our Community Hub. You can find out how to do it here
8. You can leave a link to your video right here in the comments below to make sure we don’t miss it! Example here
Enjoy!
Crisis Levels Update + Patch Notes
Done blowing up everything in your sight on your run? Good! Now, do you have what it takes to do it on a higher tier?
With the introduction of Crisis Levels you get to up the difficulty of your run. Provided you've already cleared the preceding Crisis Level of course. On each run you will have three levels to choose from, each progressively giving your Combat Shell more of a stress test.
More enemies will be called in to stand in your way. They'll be able to take more punishment while dishing out more to you as well. Your own shield capacity, mark duration and ammo received from drops will suffer on higher Crisis Level.
Of course all this high risk comes with high rewards back at HQ! Besting the corps at a higher Crisis Level will allow you to unlock more powerful HUB upgrades. Clearing both levels, including defeating both bosses, at maximum Crisis Level will earn you a special weapon skin to flaunt your victory! Shotgun skin for the Soldier and Peacekeeper skin for the Hunter.
Think you've had enough practice on the default difficulty? Then raise that Crisis Level and prove you've mastered the use of your Combat Shell!
Deadlink Patch Notes
2022-11-07
"📢" marks the changes suggested by the Deadlink community
New Features
Crisis Levels with three difficulty tiers (described in the next section)
📢 Fall animations and fall damage added to enemies
📢 Added option to display run info on HUD (Crisis Level and the number of areas completed)
New VO was added to the Phoenix Apex boss
New Soldier’s Shell Upgrade: If an enemy is killed within 2 seconds of being hooked, the cooldown for the GripWire Rappel is reset.
Bugfixes
HUB was heavily optimized in case of CPU and GPU consumption
Fixed a bug that prevented launching the game while the VR headset was connected to the PC
Fixed the aspect ratio issue after watching cutscenes on ultrawide resolutions
Fixed the highest damage telemetry stat that often was equal to 0
Fixed the sometimes-invisible container on the Torantula boss arena
Fixed annoying laser sound on one of the Watts-Rucker arenas
Fixed Mothership and Hound data displayed in Codex and after being killed by these units
Fix the issue with incorrect ammo stacking when using Electrolaser
Fixed the wrong name of the Combat Shell during the tutorial
Fixed a bug that resulted in detaching the camera from the FPS view
Fixed the gamepad usage in HUB
Fixed the footstep sounds that sometimes persisted after killing an enemy
Fixed the bug that could cause a player to kill himself with a shock damage
Lots of arenas’ collision and minor fixes
Tweaks
General
📢 Added max grenades HUD notification
📢 Changed tutorial popups to be closed with the ESC button
Tank enemy; weak spots added, HP increase x2
Rikishi enemy; weak spot added, HP increase x1.5
Reduce teleport frequency of Geisha enemy
Hound enemy; projectile explosion improvements - no longer obscures player vision
Neuralboosts: â—‹ Weapon Damage removed â—‹ Headshot Damage removed â—‹ Primary Weapon Damage lowered to 10% from 20% â—‹ Secondary Weapon Damage lowered to 10% from 20%
Tweaks to enemies’ movement and path selection. Many collision issues were resolved
Soldier
Shotgun
📢 Improved initial pellet distribution. Targets very close to the player will be easier to hit
Improved shotgun pellet collision logic. This should provide better consistency at close to mid-range shots
Hunter
Peacekeeper
Lowered recoil recovery speed, recoil halftime decay increased from 0.14 to 0.24
Base damage reduced to 50
The headshot damage multiplier lowered from 1.75 to 1.5
📢 Headshot mod: headshot bonus damage increased from 50% to 300%
ARC
📢 Decreased charge-up time for all ARC mods
Increased fire rate of Matter Converter
ARC mod Particle Accelerator will zoom in and slightly slow down time while charging
ARC mod Particle Accelerator damage increased from 120 to 150
Translocator
📢 Improved post-swap enemy positioning (enemies will be placed at the exact player’s location instead of slightly above)
Decoy
Explosion now marks enemies and penetrates armor
Lifetime reduced from 10s to 5s
Enemy melee damage instantly activates the decoy explosion
Explosive Decoy mod:
The Skill Power multiplier increased from 1 to 3
Crisis Levels
🗨️ Dev comment: First of all, please keep in mind that this is the first iteration of the difficulty tiers system, and we plan to build upon it based on your feedback.
In the current state, the difficulty comes from higher enemy stats (HP, attack power) and higher enemy numbers and composition (fights will last longer), and also lowering player stats (mark duration, shields dropped from enemies, and ammo dropped by anchors). We know it doesn't really sound exciting, but we have to do this so that the game can keep up with your HUB upgrades (flat dmg/hp/shield boosts).
To incorporate difficulty tiers more into the game, we've connected them with HUB upgrade tiers, so you will have to beat the game on the higher difficulty in order to unlock more powerful HUB upgrades.
Higher difficulty tiers also offer better rewards (XP and Tokens) to make it worth your time. You'll also get something special for beating the game on (currently) the highest difficulty.
As we move forward, we will experiment with adding more variety to the difficulty tiers by implementing new abilities for enemies, handcrafting encounters for maximum pressure, and adjusting HUB upgrades.
Hunter, Neuralboosts, and Bonus Damage calculation
🗨️ Dev comment: Hunter is still very much overpowered; to be more precise - Peacekeeper is still very much overpowered. It has high ammo capacity, no fire rate (shoots as fast as you can click), very low recoil, extremely low reload speed, and is good at both close and mid-range. No cons. It's just too good to be a primary weapon, really. Most of you (and us) don't even use ARC at all in order to beat the game. So we've looked closely into Peacekeeper progression, and we've made some changes based on our findings:
Identity Crisis
Peacekeeper was supposed to be a precision-based weapon, but it turns out it can be even more effective by unloading the whole clip into the enemy body. At the same time, we'd like to keep the feeling of fanning the hammer into tankier enemies.
So we've decided to keep Peacekeeper as a "ratatat machine" by default, with an option to turn it into slow firing, head-popping cannon using weapon mods.
3 Neuralboosts is All It Takes
We noticed that it took very little effort to turn the Peacekeeper into the best weapon in the game.
When choosing a Neuralboost, you had too many options to buff Peacekeeper damage, and it could get out of control quickly. Primary Weapon Damage, Weapon Damage, Crit Damage, Headshot Damage + Elemental Damage boost (if you had elemental weapon mod). You would start the game and deal 150 headshot damage during the first two arenas. In some scenarios, just after 3 arenas, you bring this damage up to 600. Combine that with an unlimited fire rate, and you've no reason to pick any other upgrade for the rest of your run. That's why we’ve removed the Headshot damage boost and decreased primary/secondary weapon boosts.
Multiplication Goes Brrrrrrrrrrrr
The other thing connected to Neuralboosts is the overall damage calculation. All damage boosts were multiplicative; for example, you have a fire damage mod on your Peacekeeper, and you're about to deal 100 damage to a marked target. You have a 20% damage boost to marked enemies and a 50% fire damage boost. The system would multiply everything like: 100 * 1.2 * 1.5 = 180. Because you had multiple sources of damage boosts, this would cause your damage to skyrocket later during the run when you would gather dozens of different multipliers.
We've decided to make all damage boosts additive, so in the same scenario, you would do 100 * (1 + 0.2 + 0.5) = 170 damage. This will help keep player damage in line with increasing game difficulty and eliminate the issue of one-shotting everything deeper into the run. You can still create a pretty OP build by combining Shell Upgrades, Implants, and Neuralboosts.
All in all, Hunter's weapons are now more balanced, and while you can still stick to the Peacekeeper on most occasions, it will be more difficult to get it to the state of a godlike weapon and maybe convince you to use ARC more often.
Fall Damage
🗨️ Dev comment: This was an interesting suggestion from the community and turned out to be a fun little gimmick. Falling enemies will take damage based on traveled distance and their max HP.
Community Q&A
"Where co-op?"
Deadlink is a single-player experience, and it will stay that way. We have no plans to add any form of multiplayer.
"Where melee class?"
Deadlink is a first-person shooter - not a first-person slasher. Gunplay is at its core, and we've put a lot of effort into making shooting a great experience. While we probably could make a pure melee class, we don't think we could bring it to the level of polish that guns have. At least not in a reasonable timeframe.
Having a melee class would also mean that we have to redesign some of the game's core mechanics - for example, the Torantula boss fight. Good luck slicing this bad boy up with a katana.
While we have planned a class that will be encouraged to stay close to the enemies, it will not be a pure melee class.
There's still a lot we can and want to do regarding gunplay, and we can't wait to share more details when the time is right.
