We're pleased to announce that after a little more than a year in Early Access and four major updates, the 1.0 version of Guntastic is now available! Make sure to check out the launch trailer below.
[previewyoutube="tuy79C0OTRQ;full"] Let's see what's new in this update.
New Stage: Fornost ⚔️
Most levels in Guntastic feature a single environmental trap that can be activated to spectacularly frag your foes. That's nice and fun. But what about having TWO traps in the same level?
Setting the level in a medieval castle felt as the natural next step. In Fornost – any LOTR fans out there? ;) – you can control the high ground by activating the big-spikey-ball-shaped-thing at the top.
Also watch out for the trapdoor at the bottom!
Make good use of the traps to unlock the new Game Of Traps achievement. As with all the levels in Guntastic, Fornost also features its own original music track.
Color Correctness
Guntastic heavily relies on colors to identify who's who during matches. In this update, the game gains a new accessibility setting that should hopefully make the experience more accessible for players suffering from color vision deficiencies.
Soundtrack Now Available!
The Guntastic original soundtrack is now available on Steam, Spotify and Bandcamp. Make sure to check out this post where Simone talks about music production for the game.
Additional Improvements
A lot of effort went into polishing the game up. In particular, a lot of nasty crashes related to low level systems – such as rendering and audio – were identified and fixed.
Fixed a crash during level load between rounds.
Fixed a crash during level load between rounds.
Fixed a crash when running in DX11/DX12.
Fixed various crashes related to the audio thread.
Steam: added support for playing offline.
Changed the way awards are assigned at the end of the match so they're easier to get and added a new Consolation Prize award.
Fixed Woodchuck Lumber Inc. music being played at a lower volume.
Fixed camera shake animations not being played sometimes.
Fixed level lights no longer affecting characters.
High Voltage: added screen shake animation when activating the dam generators.
Fixed screen shakes and controller vibration being disabled by default.
Fixed powerups being visible for a moment at round start.
Improved how controller disconnection dialogs are displayed.
Fixed being able to resize the game window below the native pixel art resolution.
Fixed various bugs in the server browser screen.
Minor UI fixes.
Last But Not Least...
...thanks to everyone who played Guntastic and shared his feedback during Early Access! The game wouldn't have been possible without your help. See you in-game!
Early Access Update 1.40: A.I. Opponents & Revamped Online Experience
One of the main issues with Guntastic was that it didn’t offer a single player mode. Since the game has unfortunately failed to attract a large online player base so far, this resulted in a lot of people being unable to play the game at all. To fix this issue we’re now introducing A.I. opponents.
[previewyoutube="EH7hTcawHTY;full"] Bots can fill-up vacant slots in both local and online games and offer four difficulty levels: Easy, Normal, Hard and Ludicrous. This feature is still a work-in-progress and we’re looking for feedback, just beware when playing at Ludicrous level as bots tend to become extremely cunning. ☠
Another problem that arises from having a small online player base is that finding a match can take way too much time. While this will always be an issue to a certain degree, we identified several flaws in the way we designed public matchmaking for Guntastic that made the problem sensibly worse:
In this version we introduced a handful of new features that should streamline the online multiplayer experience: from finding a game, to the lobby, to the game itself. When opening the Play Online section of the menu you’ll now be welcomed by a redesigned interface:
Here you can select a game to join directly, or ask the system to find the best one for you (just like it was already possible). In-progress games can now be joined as well, or you can explicitly decide to create a new one.
«From great power comes great responsibility.»
The lobby itself was updated to let you move back and forth between the character and level selection screens as you wish, reducing the number of steps required to start the game. Game Rules can now be customized in public multiplayer sessions and new rules are available to control CPU players and player count. Finally, the new player menu provides access to additional player information and moderation actions (kick).
Ruthless 1 vs. 1 competitions are now possible.
New Scoreboard
Due to some specific Xbox requirements we had rethink the overall design of the scoreboard screen. The new version should be much cleaner to read and also provides a quick way to find out more about your opponents and eventually add them as friends for future games.
Additional Improvements
That’s it for now! We hope you enjoy the new features. As always we look forward to hear your feedback here or on Discord!
Edit: 1.41 Hotfix now available (5 August 2020)
After releasing version 1.40 we discovered a number of high priority issues that should now be fixed.
Early Access Update 1.30: High Voltage Potatoes
Today we're releasing a new update for Guntastic, the third one since the game entered Early Access at the end of 2019. Work on this update took a bit more time than we originally anticipated, but we believe the new content will be worth the wait!
New Level: High Voltage ⚡
Each level in Guntastic has a strong underlying theme and for this new level we wanted to play around with electricity.
Water and electricity, what can possibly go wrong?
High Voltage is set in a hydroelectric dam, where some mad scientist has been running secret experiments on teleportation. And guess what? He succeeded! The level introduces a main new gameplay element: teleporters.
«Beam me up, Scotty.»
These can be used to instantly travel across the map and should make for some nice gameplay opportunities. Projectiles are teleported as well, so look out for that! Also watch out for the big generators at the center of the level, you sure don't want to be caught in them while they're active.
«1.21 Gigawatts?!?»
Make sure to use generators to your advance to unlock the new Electrician achievement.
Another element that also makes its first appearance in this level is water. We're still experimenting with it and for now it simply slows character down while they're in it. High Voltage also features a new music track whose synths and sounds should bring '70s spy and alien movies to mind.
New Character: Meet Root 🥔
Please welcome our latest character, a mutant potato called Root!
«I am Root.»
As it was the case with our last character – the happy unicorn called Blue Magic – Root was also designed with feedback from our awesome community.
Bug Fixes & Improvements
Guntastic now uses the latest Unreal Engine version available, 4.24.3. This release brings quite a few improvements and fixes to character movement, rendering and more.
Fixed an issue that prevented lock-on on rockets to work correctly in some cases.
Network traffic is now encrypted for improved security.
That's it for the first Guntastic update of the decade. More content awaits in future updates. As always we look forward to your feedback here or on Discord!
Early Access Update 1.20: Unicorns And Accessibility
Ho-Ho-Ho! Happy holidays from the Ludicrous Games team! 🎁🎄 Today we’re releasing the second Early Access update for Guntastic, featuring a brand new character and several improvements.
New Character: Unicorn 🦄
With the festive season just around the corner, we could’ve played it safe with some holidays-themed character. But, really, with Santas, snowmen and reindeers popping up everywhere, how boring would’ve that been?
Giddy-up jingle unicorn, pick up your feet!
Expect even crazier characters as we enter 2020, designed in strict collaboration with our awesome community. 😉
New Accessibility Features
We deeply believe that games should be as inclusive as possible and, although we’re a very small indie studio, we want Guntastic to be enjoyable by anyone. That’s why for the second Early Access update we dedicated quite some time to improving accessibility features that were already in-game and adding new ones.
1. Upcoming Color Correctness Improvements
Guntastic heavily relies on colors to identify who's who during matches. We're now performing some tests to see how things can be improved for people with color vision deficiencies, leveraging UE4 built-in color simulation settings. More about this in a future update.
2. Gamepad Key Remapping
Ever wanted to fire using a trigger on your controller? Or maybe use the right analog stick for movement? That’s all possible now.
3. In-Game Hints
When this option is turned on, quick reminders of which keys need to be pressed to perform certain gameplay actions will be shown during gameplay (for both keyboard and controllers).
Now it's impossible to forget how to pick-up that weapon!
4. Camera Movement Can Now Be Disabled
If you ever experienced motion sickness while looking at Guntastic, then this option’s for you. You can also separately disable screen shake effects (i.e. during explosions) using the dedicated Screen Shakes setting.
5. Settings Now Roam With Your Profile
Setting up all the game’s options to your liking is tiring – and plain boring too. Most preferences are now persisted to the online player profile, so they’ll be automatically re-applied after reinstalling the game.
Other Notable Improvements
Invite Friends Directly From The Lobby
Listening to your feedback we added a Invite Friends button to the lobby so it’s now quicker to invite friends into a public or private game.
Major Lift Overhaul ⬆
Lifts were one of the first gameplay elements we experimented with while prototyping the game and, as a result, suffered from various issues (some of which were reported during the beta). For this release we reworked parts of the physics and network code, so lifts should look and feel a lot smoother both locally and online.
Things like this should no longer happen!
Homing Rockets Improvements 🚀
We fixed some situations where homing rockets didn’t correctly track their targets. Beware! ☠
Bug Fixes & Minor Improvements
Both keyboard and gamepad keys are now visible in the couch game lobby for available commands.
Fixed mouse cursor not being shown in the couch game lobby.
Fixed a long standing issue that could result in controller vibration continuing forever after a player was kicked in couch games.
Fixed some spelling errors in the Italian localization.
That’s it for the second Early Access update. More content awaits in the next update, which is set to be released sometimes in January 2020. We can’t wait to tell you more! In the meantime, we look forward to your feedback here or on Discord. Have a great holiday season!
Early Access Update 1.10: Heavy Boots, Stage Cycle, Bug Fixes
Guntastic was released to Steam Early Access one week and two days ago today! To celebrate what might seem is a totally random amount of time since the initial release, we’re glad to announce that the very first Early Access update is now live, bringing two community-suggested features and obligatory bug fixes.
The idea for this powerup came from our awesome community on Discord. This is a first iteration of the powerup, so use it, break it and share your feedback!
Stage Cycle
Being able to select a stage to play is great. But what if you can’t get your friends to agree on which one? Luckily this will no longer be a problem thanks to the second user-suggested feature that found its way into this update.
Simply select “Cycle” and you’ll play all levels at once. Well, not really at once. One per-round. But they’ll change between rounds. See? Problem solved.
Bugs Fixes & Improvements
For this first Early Access update we mainly focused on fixing gameplay-related bugs and improving the behavior of the Flash powerup.
That’s it for now. Exciting things awaits in the upcoming weeks, starting with a new character! We look forward to your feedback here or on Discord.
Devlog #6 - Early Access Release, Game Rules, Xbox One, Bug Fixes And More!
We’re nearly there! Guntastic will unlock later today (at 6PM CET) on Steam Early Access. In this post I’d like to go over what we worked on in the past few weeks in preparation for the game’s release.
Customizable Game Rules
Being able to customize how a match is played was one of the most popular request we got during the beta. So coming in the first Early Access release is the ability to change the Kill Goal players need to reach to win the game and the Round Time Limit after which players are forcibly eliminated.
Five kills matches are good for unforgiving duels between two players, while 20+ kills matches will likely last a lot!
Since changing these two simple values can already have a drastic effect on the game’s pace, we decided to limit the feature (at least for now!) to local couch games and online private games and to a limited set of options.
More options will be considered and eventually added as we iterate on the feature. As always, we look forward to your feedback!
Discord Notifications
For last month’s beta we got basic integration with Discord into the game so that you could see who was playing Guntastic by looking at his status. In the Early Access release of the game we added a feature that leverages Discord Webhooks to post a message into a dedicated #matchmaking channel whenever someone is looking to play online.
All hail the Guntastic bot!
We hope this will give players a chance to find opponents more easily. For a future update we’d like to make join requests work seamlessly through Discord, so that you could then simply click on a player’s avatar to join the match on Steam.
Platform Support: Windows 32-bit and Xbox One
For the Early Access release we expanded the line-up of supported platforms to include Windows 32-bit (in addition to Windows 64-bit and macOS). We’re also excited to announce that Guntastic will come to Xbox One in 2020!
(We received a few questions regarding Linux support, but I’m afraid we don’t have any definite plans for it at the moment. Each port brings several challenges – from development to testing – that we need to carefully evaluate before committing to it. Remember: we’re a very small studio! With Linux, what bothers me the most is testing due to how fragmented the ecosystem is.)
Bugs Fixes & Improvements
During last month’s open beta we received several bug reports related to the UI and the game itself. For this first Early Access release we decided to focus on the UI:
Keep those bug reports coming during Early Access! 😄 That’s it for now. We look forward to your feedback here on Steam or on Discord. See you soon in Early Access!
Guntastic Early Access coming 21st November
It’s official! Guntastic will be released in Early Access later this month, on November 21st. Read on for all the juicy details, but not before having seen our brand new trailer (seriously, Simone worked hard on it, go watch it! 😄).
[previewyoutube="JkO9utTe2tA;full"]
Why Early Access?
The experience we had with last month's open beta weekend was simply amazing: support from players was overwhelming and feedback great. We feel Early Access is the natural next step to continue working on the game with your help.
When and where?
On November 21st at 6PM CET, here on Steam. We even have an official countdown, how cool is that?
The game will also be available on Green Man Gaming and hopefully on additional stores as well later this year.
How much will Guntastic cost?
$11.99 during Early Access.
What about discounts?
We’re planning to run a 10% discount at launch.
Unfortunately we won’t be able to participate in the Steam Christmas Holidays sale event due to Valve’s restrictions on discounts for newly launched products. As such, buying the game at launch will be most affordable option until next year.
Will you offer 4-packs or similar promotions?
While we’d love to offer these kind of promotions they’re unfortunately no longer supported by Steam for new games. So that’s a no. Sorry.
How will the game differ from what I played during the beta?
We have already integrated some of your feedback into the game and fixed some issues you reported. However, since the beta ended only a couple of weeks ago we didn’t have time to work on larger features as we needed to go through the approval process on Steam and prepare for the launch itself. Expect more features to land in post-launch updates – that’s what Early Access is for, right? 😉
How do you plan to handle development?
Our plan is to stick to a tight release schedule where new content is released approximately every month, with minor features and bug fixes possibly released at a higher frequency. Please note, however, that this might change as we learn what works best in order to create the conditions for an healthy collaboration between you and us.
Please remember: this is our first Early Access! 😃 The idea is to gradually increase community-involvement throughout development starting with smaller features and bug fixes before tackling larger tasks such as new stages or game modes.
I’m a Streamer/Youtuber/Blogger…
We’re always happy to work with Content Creators! Please send us a request on either here on Steam through Curator Connect, Keymailer, Do Distribute, or Indieboost and we’ll provide you with a review key. Also make sure to check out our press kit.
I’m a Journalist…
Wonderful! Make sure to get in touch at press@weareludicrous.com.
Anything else?
Not for now! We look forward to your feedback. Make sure to talk to us either here on Steam or on Discord!
Devlog #5 - Beta Improvements
Welcome to a new dev-log! With the Guntastic open beta weekend (make sure to register if you haven’t already!) just around the corner, our attention – as you can imagine! – has been mostly focused on fixing bugs and improving existing features.
Map Voting Screen
This is something we had lying around as a prototype for some time, but over the past week we worked on bringing it up-to-date with the rest of the UI, so that we could include it in the beta and gather your feedback.
You'll be able to select a map to play. How futuristic is that?
Ping Visualization
Player ping is now shown across the UI, including the lobby, map voting and game HUD screens.
It's now possible to blame the ping!
Discord Integration
Coming in the beta is also basic integration with Discord. You can now see whether someone is playing Guntastic just by looking at his status.
Unfortunately I didn’t have enough time in my hands to also add support for showing details about ongoing matches and provide invite/joining functionality, but I have plans to work on those feature for the final release.
Audio Remaster
Simone has been busy doing a final mastering pass on music and sound effects. Sound mixing, attenuation and concurrency have been improved in order to better support gameplay. With the new system, some sounds (such as footsteps) now have lower priorities than other ones (i.e. player deaths) and will be faded – or cut altogether – if there are too many sounds playing at once.
Other Notable Bug Fixes And Improvements
A recurring feedback while showcasing the game at Milan Games Week in September was that the intermission between rounds was too long, so we reduced it from five to three seconds.
During playtests we noticed that awards weren’t assigned correctly to players in certain cases. Some players ended up having too many awards, while others had none. This should no longer happen.
We made some additional net optimizations to certain projectiles (such as the bolt) with extreme speeds or radial damage, so perceived lag on those projectiles should now be lower.
That’s it for the pre-beta development sprint! We’re extremely excited for you to get your hands on Guntastic. Don’t forget to register for the beta, share your feedback and join us on Discord. 😃
Join the Beta
We're extremely excited (and a little bit scared! :D) to announce that Guntastic will be in open beta from Thursday, 24th October to Sunday, 27th October!
[previewyoutube="FvQS6y0OpM0;full"]
The goal of the beta is to make sure online multiplayer works in preparation for the game's release which, if the everything goes smoothly, should be in late November. Make sure to sign-up now to secure your Steam key and don't miss the chance to explode your friends - tell them to sign-up too!
Another Guntastic development sprint has ended! Let's see what's new.
Say "Benvenuto!" to the Italian Localization
Localization support finally found its way into the game as part of the ongoing user interface work. We decided to start with an easy language to test things out: Italian.
More languages coming soon! ;)
New Character Portraits
The character portraits we had in game until now served us well during development, but were really just placeholders. As part of our ongoing effort to polish things up in preparation for releasing the game, all characters now feature updated portraits in the lobby and ladder screens.
The lobby screen itself got a small layout update to better handle the new portraits and now only lacks a couple of features before it can be considered "gold".
See You at Milan Games Week 2019!
Guntastic will be playable at the Milan Games Week 2019 exhibition later this month. Feel free to stop by the indie booth to explode your friends and say hi!
That's it for today! Don't forget to share your feedback, wishlist the game and join us on Discord. :)
