Hello everyone! There hasn't been any news regarding the game for a while. Today I want to tell you what happened to the game, why I stopped the development, and what will happen next.
The game is being retired
I have made an official request to Steam to retire the game.
It means that the game won't be publicly listed on Steam, yet those with direct links and those who have it in their library will still have access to it (you will still be able to download it, uninstall it, and play it). All your progress (runes, skills, stats, etc.) will be saved. The Steam community page still should be available, but I am not going to monitor it anymore and I have deleted all the content that I posted there, including guides. Achievements and Leaderboards still should be available, but there won't be new leaderboard seasons, the current season 2 will be the last one.
Regarding DLCs, you will still be able to use all the DLCs that you purchased before and there will be the final sale with a huge discount for all of them for 7 days starting from tomorrow (October 10), so people who want to have them will have the opportunity to get them. Since some DLCs (premium heroes) are required to complete all the achievements, this might be the last opportunity to buy them and complete the game. After 30 days there is a big chance that all DLCs will be retired too and you won't be able to buy them anymore (but again, those DLCs that you already own will stay with you).
According to Steam rules, it's impossible to delete the game completely. Plus, deleting the game completely wouldn't be fair to people who had a lot of progress in it and/or purchased DLCs.
Why am I closing the game?
This game was made in a very dark period of my life. I felt like I have to express certain feelings and emotions in the form of art. I did enjoy working on the game and it took me more than a year of hard work to bring it to its current stage, but this process wasn't always enjoyable. Sometimes it felt like a hard fight with myself for no apparent reason. I don't think that a person who has never worked on an indie game for more than a year can relate to it, but I just wanted to say that making a game is not easy, despite the fact that the end product might look simple. The most difficult thing is not even the technical side of it, but the motivational and emotional one. I learned a lot from it and improved a number of my skills (programming, drawing, testing, design, marketing, and even some sound-production :-)) and I am forever grateful for the opportunity to create a game like that, but unfortunately, I can't just keep the game as is.
A lot of things happened in the real life that made me grow, mature, reevaluate things, and change, yet this game stays the same as the reminder of old dark times that I would like to leave behind. In order for me to move on with my life, I have to have closure and the way to do it is to retire the game, so I can focus on things that are actually important in life: health (both mental and physical), family, the actual job, helping the community, learning and just living my life in the reality, and not in an imaginary world full of random dangerous events, fictional heroes, weapons, and demons.
I also wanted to say that I am not quite sure what kind of message this game sends to the world. I was just making it and expressing my deep personal feelings, my past experience, etc. That is why the game is hard, it is very random, and it looks like many other older games, yet it's still something else. I didn't have an exact plan of what kind of game I was making, I was just adding things there that felt like they fit and just to fully use all my skills and the engine. I did try to make the game educational at some point because I was involved with some educational projects before and I am a strong believer in the value of education (yet, I wasn't the best student myself...). I wanted this game to be a place where a bad student could learn certain things about life (like the fact that life could be hard and unforgiving, etc.), a student that would play my game instead of going to classes, but I realized that it's not a proper way of educating people and it's not the main feature of the game. Plus, I am not a teacher myself, so teaching shouldn't be my job.
Another reason to close the game was purely technical. I have never studied programming or design officially (my real field of study is completely unrelated to all that), I learned it all as a hobby because I loved the process of making games (playing games is fun, but making your own games is FAR more fun). I made games from the age of 17 using GameMaker studio, a program with which I have a very strong love/hate relationship. I know only GameMaker, this is my only tool to make games and some time ago they (the company, YoYo games) went through a lot of changes. Most of those changes were positive and necessary, but some changed the way games are made and work, which just broke my spirit. To be specific, they changed the way Steam extension is working, and I just couldn't figure out the way to comply with these new changes. I am not that old, but learning another programming language is not easy, so I couldn't just go and re-write everything in Unity or something like that. And you know, you, as a little guy, can't really say much to big companies and affect the way they do business/work, you have to comply, and I couldn't. After all, I have to eat too and this game wasn't bringing me any serious money while taking 100% of my energy and time. I don't want to blame GameMaker for everything, they are still amazing people that help people like me to see their dreams become interactive reality, but this technical issue was, at the time, something that really stopped my work.
This has been a journey
The previous chapter sounds dark, but it's not all bad. Making this game has been an amazing experience for me. I learned a lot of things that I couldn't have learned otherwise. Sometimes you just have to try to do something like that, a serious project, and invest at least a year of life in it, in order to learn certain things and become wiser. I might never come back to programming, but my improved design and drawing skills are already in use. The way I organized my work on the game was great, so I took it for my future as well. I learned to read and respond to feedback, criticism, etc. After all, I am thankful for this learning opportunity.
Thank you all!
I am not sad to close the game, I feel like it's a necessary step forward in my life, but I am sad for people who will be badly affected by my decision. Let's be honest, it wasn't the best game ever. There were bugs, the graphic sucked, the balance wasn't perfect, etc. The game wasn't popular and successful. Yet, I think that some people really enjoyed it, got my message and my style just right, and they might miss the game.
As I said before, after the "retirement", those who have the game in their library still should be able to play it and have all their progress saved.
I wanted to say thank you to the people who helped me with the development, and especially to those who are mentioned in the game as testers. It might not mean a lot for a random player, to leave a like, or to write a short comment, but for a solo indie developer like me who put their sole into the project it really meant the world. And people who wrote long and detailed feedback on the game, those who really get it, I truly feel that you are like my real friends and that you might know me better than many of the real people that I know, despite the fact that we have never met in person. I don't have many friends, so making the game was a way of communicating with the world, and when I saw people play it a lot, do the achievements, like it, understand it, and comment on it, buy DLCs, leave good reviews, it made me really happy because I felt like I am not alone in this world and there are people who also going through something similar in life that I have been through and who are similar to me in some way.
Thank you all again! I am sad to retire the game, but it has to be done in order to move on. To be honest, those who liked the game a bit too much, in my opinion, should also consider distancing themselves from it because I believe that the game has some negative energy in it.
What happens next?
Very soon the game will be retired (see the beginning of this post to see what it means exactly), I will probably never come back to programming/coding because I realized that I have to move on from this part of me. Making games is actually not my thing, I can do much better things in the real life.
All the game's external resources were already deleted (Twitter, Reddit, Youtube, the website, etc.).
For at least 30 days, I will still keep this email address: flarelabs4info@gmail.com
So, if you just wanted to share something about the game, feel free to write me.
Thank you all for understanding.
Cheers!
Version 2.4 - Durability
Hello there! It's time for the new Red Algorithm update.
This version 2.4 brings not as many changes as before, however, they are still significant and they will affect the game quite a lot.
This is a quick summary of what is new:
New durability mechanic (weapon stats will go down as you use it)
New weapon generation algorithm (less random, more relevant to you)
New resistance to diseases mechanic (it'll be less likely to get sick again)
+50% bonus to skills gain speed when you play Waves game type (mode)
+1 new weapon
+1 new perk
-10% to experience given for mid-late game monsters
Minor changes, bug fixes, graphics improvements, etc.
As always, thank you to all who support the game in any way!
If you wrote a review on Steam, left a comment or a like, followed social media, bought a DLCs, recommended the game to a friend, or just enjoyed playing it, it's really appreciated and gives me the motivation to continue the work.
Alright, let's see what is new in this update and start with the durability mechanic.
Durability
This is something that should have been added to the game a long time ago, but I found time for it only now. Starting from this version, every weapon in the game will have durability. It's expressed as the number of times you can use it before it breaks. For instance, Veteran rifle has 1260 durability, and then in the brackets, you can see the approximate time when this weapon is going to break (lose all its durability). It's an approximate number based on the weapon's shooting speed (shooting speed for semi-auto weapons is assumed as 0.33) and it doesn't consider the time when you don't shoot or when you reload. The durability is somewhere around 7 minutes for this old rifle.
You can see your current weapon durability under the weapon image:
The habit bar was moved down a bit and there are small icons now too
Durability can be also seen as "drb" in Dev Stats (small grey text, you can turn it ON in settings), measured in %. In most cases, you don't need to know the actual maximum durability value, what matters is the current durability of the weapon that you use right now, which is shown as a grey bar.
When weapon's durability go down, its stats go down as well:
Damage: -25% with 0% durability
Accuracy: -25% with 0% durability
Range: -25% with 0% durability
Shooting speed: -25% with 0% durability (habit doesn't affect it, but durability does)
Reloading speed: -25% with 0% durability
Malfunction chance: +25% with 0% durability
It was possible to make weapons completely break with 0% durability so you wouldn't be able to use them at all, but after a few tests, this idea was rejected as too hardcore. Instead, your weapon will always work with any durability, but its stats are going to go down to as low as -25%, which is a counter to the possible bonus that weapon habit(purple line) can give you.
Weapon's maximum durability depends on its class:
Pistols: 12 min
Shotguns: 11 min
SMGs: 9 min
AR: 10 min
Rifles: 11 min
Plasma: 8 min
Gauss: 8 min
MGs: 10 min
Launchers: 12 min
Primitive: 7 min
There are quite a few exceptions from that list (especially for mixed-class weapons), every weapon is unique and a little bit different from its class. As you can see, the most reliable weapons are pistols, launchers, and to some extent shotguns and rifles. ARs are the benchmark. The less reliable weapons are SMGs, Plasma, Gauss, and Primitive.
Some weapons benefited from this new mechanic, and other weapons became even harder to handle.
What will be important is not only how durable a weapon is, but also what is its habit gain modifier. For instance, Primitive weapons, on average, had a great habit gain modifier around 3 (30% per minute), yet now they also will have low durability.
Factors that affect durability are:
Weapon habit increasing durability by 25% with 10 (100%) habit (+12.5% with 5, etc.)
-25 or less Wickedness increasing durability by 25% (good boys use things with care)
25 or more Wickedness reduces durability by 25% (bad boys use things carelessly)
The way this works is a little bit tricky from the technical point of view. Those factors don't actually affect the weapon's maximum durability, instead, they are modifiers of how much durability is lost with each shot. For example, a shot with a blessed weapon will decrease durability only by 0.75 points instead of 1 if all other factors aren't affecting it.
The main takeaway here is that now using weapons that level is higher than your hero level (when you have an active weapon penalty) becomes even more harmful. Also, your habit can considerably slow down the wear and tear process, which means gaining habit fast becomes more important, and therefore, getting 20 skill points for your favorite class to gain habit boost. Cursed or blessed weapons are very rare, so we won't talk about them. And regarding wickedness, you can try to pick "good" perks more often and try to choose weapons that have negative wickedness as well, but usually, the game goes in the way that you can't be too picky about your moral choices.
How to restore durability (repair your weapon):
Perk Mechanic allows you to repair the weapon while you standstill
Perk Soulmate makes the weapon durability infinite
You can just pick the same weapon from the weapon box and restore 100% durability like that
Whenever you upgrade your weapon you also restore 100% of its durability
As you can see, there aren't many ways to repair your weapon right now, but there might be a few more in the next game updates. If you switch your weapons in a timely manner as planned according to the game balance (at least every 10 minutes), you shouldn't have a lot of problems with durability.
Practically speaking, the way durability will really badly affect you, is in the late (30+ min) game, and even in this case, there are a few ways to mitigate its impact.
The main reason to add this weapon was that the launchers line didn't really have a comfortable and versatile mid-tier weapon. The closest to it was Cleaner, but it's a very unique thing with the mechanic that no other weapon has (it basically just throws grenades). Nova is going to take this place and be a great choice as a mid-game weapon for someone who likes to use launchers. Its stats are actually quite similar to another plasma weapon, Icarus, but there are some differences too. When it comes to plasma weapons in the mid-game, you will be free to choose between Icarus or Nova and each choice with have its own benefits. These two weapons are quite similar in terms of the DPS, but Nova has a better splash size and durability, while Icarus has a slightly better range, faster reload, and it's a bit lighter.
New Weapons Generation Algorithm
This is a big change that requires a little bit of history and explanation.
Initially, the game had somewhere around 50 weapons, and the way any (perks, weapons, weapon upgrades, bionics, etc.) generation is made is based on a pure random (if there is such a thing...). This means that if we have 3 free weapon slots and 50 weapons, the chance to see a particular weapon that you want to get right now is 3 / 50 = 0.06 (6%).
We see a new weapon box every 2 minutes, so in like 10 minutes you would get a 60% chance to find the right weapon. This was my initial rough calculation.
However, as the game grew, the importance of a particular weapon and a weapon class grew as well. Now you might want to stay within the same weapon class because of the favorite hero skills, habit changes during weapon switches, etc. Also, now there are 70+ weapons and not 50, which means that chances of getting something you want are even lower with pure random.
I like random generation and I believe that this game still should be heavily based on RNG, yet when in every orange weapon box you see something completely irrelevant, it just kills all the fun. At some point you don't even feel like picking up a new weapon box because it might be, again, filled with "garbage", figuratively speaking. This is not good and this is a problem.
The solution to it is to give people more relevant choices instead of pure random.
The way weapon generation will work from now on is as follows:
1st weapon will be offered from the same 1st (primary) class of your current weapon
2nd weapon will be offered from the same 2nd (secondary) class of your current weapon if it exists (not 0). If it doesn't, the weapon will be generated randomly
3rd and all the rest weapons (if you have Variety perk) will be randomly generated as before
This system drastically increases the chances to find something that you would actually need.
A small side note here before we continue, this system was not easy to implement, this is something that I have never done before, thus, there might be some issues. I tested everything as much as I could and it seems that I finally fixed all the problems, but if you experience a glitch with the weapon generation, please don't hesitate to report a bug on Steam, or to write me an email.
Ok, let's look at an example here to see how the new system work.
I hope this picture can clarify everything a bit more
As you can see, with Eclipse, a basic starting plasma pistol, you might get Pulsar, a high-level plasma minigun, .50, a mid-tier pistol, and something random like Malleus. This is the case when your current weapon belonging to 2 classes, and for those weapons the new generation system is even more beneficial as you would have 2 relevant options.
Of course, there is still a level problem, the fact that level 30 Pulsar is offered to you doesn't really help if your hero is level 5 or so, yet I don't think that trying to offer the exact right weapon for your case will be the right solution right now. However, with the new system, you would at least see one weapon from your class, and there are about 7 weapons in every class. This means that the chances of getting the right next weapon for you are not 3 / 70 as before, but 1 / 7, which is about 14% per each weapon box (and double that for mixed-class weapons).
In any case, a casual player might now even notice this change, but it will affect the game in a significant way and you would finally be excited to see what is in the next weapon box, as you should :)
All other things that are randomly generated like perks, weapon upgrades, and bionic body parts, will still be randomly generated as before.
Skills and Waves
Now you can train your hero skills much faster (+50% training speed boost!) if you play in Waves game type (mode). Training skills is hard, especially if you don't have book DLC, don't play in Hard Mode, and use non-favorite weapons of your hero. This bonus can speed up the process for you.
Waves game type is not very popular among players, yet I had positive feedback about it and some people liked it. Waves can be incredibly hard and it's even more random, but it's the game mode that eliminates almost the only predictable element of the Classic, a pre-set order of monsters, so you can experience RNG in its pure form. The fact that achievements aren't available there also repels some people. I want to keep this game type in the game and I want to make it a bit more attractive, that is why this skills training bonus was added. Plus, if you take a high place in Waves leaderboards (casual and Hard Mode), you can get a bonus (free DLCs) when the next season starts.
This perk has a simple +10% experience positive effect, yet the way its negative effect works is very unique. The thing is that its negative effect of -10% experience applies to you when you don't take this perk, and it can even apply more than one time. This is not quite intuitive, but it'll have a few interesting implications. For example, you are offered Troll (regeneration+), Runner (speed+), and Smart. If you pick Smart, you will simply get +10% experience, which is nice. However, if you would have picked Troll or Runner at that time, you would get -10% experience (and whatever bonuses the perk that you picked gives). In other words, you have to pick the perk Smart in order to not lose 10% experience gain speed.
In most cases, seeing this perk offered to you would be annoying and you would angrily accept it, but there will be situations when another perk can save your life, and thus you will have to take this -10% negative experience penalty. In a way, this perk is reducing the value of all other perks that are offered with it by adding one more negative effect to whatever perk you pick instead of it.
Perk Wicked Reloader will be activated right after the reload and not when you start reloading as before. This is due to the new reloading code, but it also just works and feels better.
Perk Rage was significantly nerfed. It wasn't that strong before because to enjoy its effects your HP must be pretty low, yet in the late game when you have a lot of HP it could be too powerful (its positive effects are worth like 3 perks). 2 negative effects were added to this perk to balance it out. 1st is -25% experience penalty while you are in rage, which is quite logical (can you be smart and learn fast while in rage?), but the other one is trickier. Every time the rage is activated (when HP <40% or <50% with Samara), you are going to lose all your accumulated habit, which can be particularly unpleasant in the late game. You can still gain habit after that and even keep it, as long as you don't go into a rage again.
Perk Hermit got a small nerf. It was (and still will be) one of the most powerful perks in the game, but now it will also slow down the habit gain speed by 0.25 (a flat number, not a %). This won't matter much for many weapons as their basic habit gain speed is already good (1 and above), but it can be critical for the late game weapons with the minimum habit gain speed of 0.25. For those weapons, you might not even be able to gain any habit at all with the perk Hermit. However, you can still get 20 skill points in the weapon class, which will give you the exact same bonus of +0.25 habit per minute, and also you can get Specialist perk.
Diseases
There are quite a few changes regarding the way diseases work.
It has been rightfully pointed out that diseases could be very unfair if it's only based on random chance. You could be doing everything right and using your skills well, but the RNG can have a few horrible surprises for you anyway, one of which is a disease. Red Algorithm is a game that heavily relies on RNG, but practice shows that pure RNG is not that fun and can be extremely unfair. To tackle the issue, the formula for getting a disease was changed.
Now there are 2 additional factors:
The current minute (the chance to get a disease grows every minute)
The fact that you already have been sick (drastically reduces the chance to get sick again)
These changes will make it less random and take into account the fact that you already have been sick. With each disease you survived, the chance of getting the next one is divided by the number of diseases you survived. Here is a rough example, if you never have been sick, the chance would be 5% per minute, but if you have been sick and healed 1 time, the chance would be 5% / 2 = 2.5% (twice lower). If you get sick for the 3rd time, the chance would go even lower to 5% / 3 = 1.6%, etc. Yet, with the new formula, it will go up every minute anyway, but now it would be far less likely to get sick right after you already struggled with a disease.
Also, before this game update, the chance to get a disease every minute and the chance to get it from a melee-hitting monster was different (the 2nd one was always 1%), but from now on this chance is the same and you can actually see it if you turn on Dev Stats in settings (as "dss").
Monsters
Demons got a new teleport ability:
As if they weren't annoying already
The way it works is simple. When you shot at a demon, he will teleport to a random spot on the map, which sometimes can be behind your back. It won't be able to shoot right after that for a few seconds, so you have a little bit of time to react, but it can still be surprising. Every 30 seconds the CD is restored and the demon can teleport again.
The experience given for all monsters after Imps was reduced by 10% in casual and Hard Mode. A few tests showed that even with the low experience gain modifier of ~50% or so, it's still possible to maintain the right level for the minute in the mid/late game, which suggests that the hero gains too much experience for monsters. This was already adjusted at least 2 times before in the previous updates, but it appears that we need one more nerf to get closer to a better balance.
New weapon warning - good range. It'll be shown for weapons with a range of more than 250 (not including 250), which is mostly rifles and gauss weapons.
New weapon warning - not durable:
Often, if the weapon is not reliable, it’s also not durable. However, many other weapons are not durable, yet they are quite reliable (they don’t jam often).
The order of some other weapon warnings was changed, as well as some of the colors.
Demons were redrawn: As well as their animations, etc.
The durability grey bar will have a small icon before it. It will be grey in most cases, red when the durability is 0%, and green if you stand still and have Mechanic perk (your weapon is being repaired).
The habit bar will also have a small icon before it.
Durability was added to Dev Stats as "drb".
Habit in Dev Stats will be shown as a % (10 habit points means 100%).
Dev Stats font size was reduced even more to 9 pixels. it's getting ridiculously small, but I have to fit more and more things there with each new game update.
Sandbox
Durability was added there as the mechanic that you can disable if you want.
Bugs
Perk Execution did the wrong damage. Sometimes it would give a damage bonus even if the target has more than 25% HP. This is fixed now.
The bug with hero collision masks was fixed. There was a bug with the displaced collision masks for the hero sprites with some new weapons (like Rapier).
The bug with the wrong weapon warning in the tutorial was fixed (it showed Veteran > .50 switch as the clean one when it should be a dirty one).
Perks Demonic Possession and Holy Spirit won't launch projectiles while there are 0 monsters on the map. They did that before and the sound was played, which looked ridiculous.
Other
The weapon reloading code was completely rewritten and revised. It's a technical thing that shouldn't affect players. The old code caused problems with the new weapons generation system. I feel like I have to mention this because it actually took a few days to complete, yet it'll be completely invisible.
A few typos were fixed here and there.
A few new random advice were added regarding new features.
Welcome to yet another Red Algorithm game update newsletter!
Version 2.3 took a lot of time to complete, but it's here now and it offers quite a lot.
Here is a quick summary of what is new:
+2 new heroes; 1 free and 1 premium
+1 new weapon
+1 new perk
New music ːsteamhappyː
Significant rebalancing of weapons (range, pen & weight nerfs) and heroes (new system)
Weapon habit now reduces the malfunction chance (up to -25% with 10 habit)
New Steam Leaderboards season
Free DLCs for 1st season top players! Details are below, search "Free DLC" in this post
Minor visual improvements, bug fixes, small changes, etc.
Thank you all for your positive feedback, Steam reviews, comments, likes, YouTube videos that you made, recommending the game to a friend or for just playing it.
Your support gives great motivation to continue the work!
Let's look at the new features and start with the most exciting one, 2 new heroes.
Saanvi starts with Prototype gauss AR, a strange weapon with many flaws, but the only right weapon to enter the gauss weapons family. She has Meditation perk from the beginning, which has been reworked (now it only gives experience when your HP is > 90%, and its negative effect was removed). With this perk, she gains new levels passively (and even faster when you stand still), thus she will always be ahead of other heroes in terms of the level by 2-3 levels or even more. Unfortunately, Meditation is far less effective at high levels. Her consumables are 2 heals, which is unprecedented. This can help you to keep the HP high in order to keep the Meditation effect. Saanvi's favorite skills are gauss and SMGs.
Overall, she is a quite unique hero with great potential in the early game. However, playing well with her is not easy as you should stay in place as much as possible to gain 2x exp. from Meditation, and if you choose to stick to the starting weapon, you have to plan your movement and shots very carefully in order to keep the Kill Streak as the shooting and reloading speeds are bad.
Joy starts with Rebel, a nice MG with good stats, which, however, you should eventually switch to another MG or something else. His starting perk is Infinite Ammo, which gives you a chance to instantly reload the weapon after a kill, an ability that is extremely helpful for machine guns. His starting consumables are 5 grenades and 2 barricades. Joy's favorite skills are MGs and ARs.
This premium hero is fun to play and quite comfortable in the beginning, but later his success is highly dependent on the next weapon you can find and your build. If you stick to MGs, you need to work on your move speed and try to reduce their weight, but you might as well pick an AR at any point, which is a much more versatile class of weapons. Another problem of this hero is the lack of heal from the start, so you should get some perks that address that issue.
As Joy is a new DLC, there'll be a 25% starting discount on it. Plus, it will be added to the Collection bundle, so, if this is the only DLC that you don't own, you can get it with a 50%+ discount. When you buy DLCs like this you support this game and its solo developer, so I can continue the work and release of new free game updates. Thank you for your financial support in advance!
Old Heroes
After almost a year in development, as many new perks, weapons, and other things were added, and with a lot of more testing experience, it become evident that old heroes should be changed.
Starting from this version, a simple system of each hero has +25% to a stat (damage, range, etc.) was changed to a more deep and complex system. Every hero will have 3 strengths (+15% to a stat, +10% to a stat, and +5% to a stat), and 2 weaknesses (-10% to a stat, -5% to a stat). What we get in total is 15 + 10 + 5 - 10 - 5 = +15% in total instead of +25% in the previous versions, so 10 points were lost, but because of one of the recent updates that removed the cap for runes (Version 2.2 - Diseases), you can easily compensate hero's weaknesses with runes. Also, I have a very interesting update planned in the future that will allow you to get up to +15% to the stats, but I can't say when it is going to be released.
The reasoning behind this change is that instead of showing heroes as typical superheroes with just one superpower, I want to represent these "heroes" as people, and people have a more complex set of strengths, and they also have weaknesses.
As you will see, the new system actually doesn't make most heroes weaker overall, but rather provides much-needed stats in a similar direction. Also, the new system is just less boring ːsteamhappyː
John becomes much stronger with this update. He is getting a range boost and a crit, which will help him a lot with his second favorite skill - shotguns. If he stays with rifles, a small accuracy penalty won't be a big problem if you use aim and duck, and the hit speed penalty won't affect him at all as long as he is carrying a semi-auto weapon.
Sarah will have approximately the same power as before. She will be a bit more vulnerable, yet it will be fully compensated with nice reload and shooting speed bonuses.
Mr. Lee definitely became stronger with this update. His quite useless +25% accuracy was transferred to a nice dodge bonus and a small move speed boost. He lost a bit of dodge from Ninja perk because of the nerf in the previous update, but now it's partially compensated. The splash penalty for him will be not important at all in many cases (thought plasma is his favorite skill too), and a range penalty is not that big of a deal.
Instead of a simple +25% reload boost, Fernando gained a great hit speed bonus and a small range bonus as well. He will lose his dodge a bit, which won't be a problem if you won't try to improve it after that, and a small accuracy penalty is not that important. These changes will help him a lot when it comes to most of the shotguns and rifles.
In addition to that, now Fernando will start with Renaissance shotgun instead of Dunali, as "Dunali" is more of an Indian-sounding name, when Fernando is a Spanish/Portuguese/Latin leaning character.
Lucy will become a little bit faster and do more damage, yet her health and reload speed going to be reduced. She will still have the best experience bonus among all heroes.
Osiris now will not only have a damage bonus, but he will learn faster and get a small splash boost at the expense of a crit and movement speed penalty. As this hero mostly uses plasma weapons with splash, the crit penalty will rarely affect him.
Also, Osiris' starting perk was changed in this update. Instead of Reset, now he will start with Crowd Control. Reset was a decent perk that actually gave this hero a lot of value, but it didn't quite fit the hero's personality and its effect was still too random. Crowd Control addresses one of the biggest problems that this hero face in the mid-game, the fact that you are often overwhelmed because plasma weapons don't have enough DPS to deal with spawners.
Ivan's old +25% armor bonus got distributed around to Max HP and dodge. The new reload speed penalty isn't nice, but the crit reduction won't matter for his splash weapons in most cases.
Samara started with a +25% range before, which, based on a number of tests, was one of the best possible bonuses a hero can get. Now, she will still have a very decent range, but she will also get an additional crit and a bit more reload speed. The crit bonus is especially important as this +10% practically mean +30% for assault rifles (because they launch 3 bullets per shot). She will still be very powerful, but now she'll be a bit less of a sniper and a bit more of a range damage dealer. The native weakness that she got is one of the worst ones, but it can be compensated with runes and by keeping a good Kill Streak. It won't slow her down by a lot if the player is skilled.
It's an elegant-looking top-level (30) mixed-class (Assault rifle + Rifle) weapon. This is a good alternative to Shark when it comes to the end-game weapons. Dreamer has a good range, good DPS, and penetration, but its ammo is a bit lower than other ARs, and the malfunction chance is a little bit higher. Also, its habit gain speed is low, just 0.25. Before that, the only top-level rifle was Oasis, which is a quite decent thing, but its level is 28 and not 30. ARs are still the most versatile class of weapons that open many opportunities to perform a clean switch to/from another class.
Many weapon stats were changed in this update.
Wickedness now has more game applications than before, so a couple of old weapons will affect it now as well: Lotus: 0 > -25, Veteran: 0 > -25, Phobos: 25 > 50, Separator: 25 > 50, Patriot: 0 > -25, Renaissance: 0 > -25, Apocalypse: 25 > 75, Amigo: 0 > -25, Shaitan: 25 > 50, Fixer: 0 > 50, Splitter: -25 > 0, Icarus: 0 > 25.
In addition to that, many weapons in the game were weakened in terms of their range (-25), weight (+0.05 / +5%), range penalty, and penetration.
The reason for this change is that the initial range that was assigned to most of the weapons allowed the player to pretty much shoot across the map with almost anything, except for the pistols, shotguns, and SMGs. Also, many other bonuses were added to the game that potentially can increase the range from the time stats of many weapons were initially set. Once a player achieved a long-range and a high move speed, he would practically become invincible and even range shooters wouldn't make a difference. This range reduction is actually minor, it's just -25, however, it will make a difference because, considering many possible bonuses, this small change will force players to stay a bit closer to monsters, make them hit you a bit more often, and make the game more exciting to play.
Here are the weapons that have been affected by -25 range reduction: Shark, Dictator, Patriot, Fukuoka, Peacekeeper, Shenzhen, Sheol, Veteran, Guardian, Veles, .50, Frontier, Icarus, Amigo, Tsunami, Apocalypse, Pulsar, Minigun, Defender, Rebel. It's mostly ARs, MGs, Rifles, and some pistols.
Range penalty changes: Defender: 0.25 > 0.3, Minigun: 0.5 > 0.45, Amigo: 0.3 > 0.35, .50: 0.25 > 0.3, Veteran: 0.25 > 0.3, Peacekeeper: 0.25 > 0.3, Fukuoka: 0.25 > 0.35. This mostly affects ARs and MGs and the reason being that 0.25 (25%) range penalty should really only be applicable to the rifles and gauss type of weapons with some rare exceptions.
Weight changes (mostly a minor nerf of +0.05 (+5%)): Shark, Dictator, Patriot, Fukuoka, Peacekeeper, Shenzhen, Sheol, Vandal, Cleaner, Shaitan, Oasis, Guardian, Icarus, Weight, Rebel. This mostly affected ARs, some low-mid tier launchers, and a few starting MGs. You will move a little bit slower with these weapons now, so the running (while holding space) and smart consumables use planning becomes more important, as well as the perks that you choose. The weight of pistols, SMGs, shotguns, and primitive weapons wasn't affected, they are still very light.
Lastly, a few weapons got a penetration nerf. Penetration is one of those things that could work better in the game, and in one of the next updates I will try to improve the system. Right now, there is a HUGE difference between penetration 1 and 2, but the difference between 2 and 3 is not that significant. Penetration higher than 3 is not actually useful in most cases because of the way things currently work (you can't penetrate 2 targets that are close to each other, there has to be some distance, and right now this distance is too high, something around 50 pixels, and it will be later reduced). Because of that, weapons with a very high penetration of 5 - 10 or more weren't strong in this regard, they might as well have penetration of 3. This quite broken system made a few penetration upgrades not that useful. At this time, I am just reducing some of the penetration: .50: 8 > 4, Frontier: 4 > 2, Minigun: 4 > 3.
Habit
This is a small, yet important update. Starting from this version, your weapon habit will affect the malfunction rate, reducing it by 2.5% per 1 habit point (up to -25% with 10 habit). So, if the weapon like Veteran had a 3% jam chance, with 10 habit the jam chance will go down to 2.25% per shot.
Weapon Upgrades
Extended Barrel weapon upgrade was nerfed: range +25% > 15%.
If you take this perk, every monster and spawner in the game will have a chance to receive 666 pure damage every second, which in most cases will result in its death, unless it's a very high-level monster/spawner. Unfortunately, this ability doesn't come for free, your hero will also have a chance to receive 666 damage every second, which, in most cases, will kill you as well. Death from this perk is always sudden and unexpected, which probably will be quite frustrating for players.
This perk is very risky and isn't recommended for a long-term game, but in case you don't have enough DPS this could be a great help.
Perk Kevlar now has a bonus with Counsellor pistol, as there is a special achievement for that.
Perk Solider was nerfed: range +50 > +25. ARs range was too high before and that +50 could be turned to like +100 or more with bonuses later on.
Perk Plasma Boy was nerfed: splash +100% > +0.25. The splash bonus was too big before.
Perk Prospective was changed. Now, instead of the double effect for all female heroes, it gives +2 HP per level for all female heroes, and +3 HP per level for all pistols. There hasn't been a special perk with a bonus for all pistols before, so this should be a nice addition.
Perk Another One was changed. Now, instead of a single extra bonus for Shaitan launcher, it will have a double effect for all launchers.
Perk Meditation was changed. The negative effect of -10% hit speed was removed, however, now there is a requirement to have more than 90% of the maximum health in order for the main perk effect to work (you should stay healthy to gain experience).
Perk Thin Red Line was nerfed. Now it also has a negative effect of reducing your experience gain speed by 25% when you take it. Also, "The" was removed from the perk's name. This perk was too strong and could easily turn the game the other way around, and I don't think that just one perk should be able to do that easily.
There is a very small chance that a savage will decide to become "a climber". In that case, he will find a nearby tree and sit on it for a few minutes. When you get close to that tree, he will throw the spear at ya, the same spear they usually throw, but in that case, he will have an unlimited amount of them. Shooting at the tree won't help to take them down, but when you use your talk ability (by pressing the T button), they will get down. In any case, after a while, a savage will climb down and chase you as they usually do. This ability won't make the game much harder, but it will add a small fun element to it.
Runes
The rune that improves hero HP now gives you additional health as the % and not a fixed value. Every rune now gives you +1% to the maximum health instead of +3 HP. The new system will be more consistent, as almost all other runes improve the stat by a %, and not by a fixed value. This change means that perks like Healthy(that gives you +30 Max HP) will also have an improved effect; with 10 runes this perk will give you 33 Max HP instead of 30.
The rune that improves hero accuracy now gives +1% to it instead of +2% for consistency's sake.
The rune that improves hero splash now gives +1% to it instead of +3% for consistency's sake.
Steam Leaderboards, Season 2, and free DLCs
The time has come to start the next season and to add 4 new leaderboards:
Old leaderboards for season 1 will still stay there for the record, but from now on all your results will be uploaded to the new season 2 leaderboards. Leaderboards that store stats like runes, skills, achievements, damage, and hours won't be affected by this change.
The reason for introducing seasons is that this version has a lot of balance changes that will make the game different from what it used to be, plus, since the game release in June 2021, there have been many updates that changed the game a lot and some of the old top results wouldn't be possible in the current game state. Lastly, new players should also have some opportunities to enter the top.
Seasons won't be based on the time, it won't be like "+1 season every 10 months", but it will rather be based on the pace of the balance changes that are introduced in new game versions and based on the number of players and their activity. That being said, it's highly unlikely that a new season 3 will start in the next few months, most likely it will be after 4 - 6 months or even later.
As season 1 ends, players who did well there should be properly rewarded. That is why, if you took a high place in one of the season 1 leaderboards, you can get free DLCs.
So you can continue training your heroes in the new season fast and even try out a premium one if you didn't have it before.
if you already have all the DLCs in your collection you can still request the reward if you want (maybe you can share the Steam Keys with a friend or something).
To claim your reward, please write me (Eugene) a personal message on Steam from the Steam account which you used to get your place in one of the Leaderboards (so I can make sure that this is you) and let me know what hero you would like to get (you can choose the new hero Joy too), I will give you the Steam Keys for the DLCs.
There is no due date to claim the reward, but please don't wait forever to do so.
Graphics
Move speed, armor, and dodge are now color-coded:
Any negative values of armor and dodge will be displayed in red. When it comes to the move speed, it will be in red if it's less than 2.5 (and less than 2.875 in Hard Mode), which is the approximate speed that allows you to outrun Imps.
Now all shotguns will generate 6 times less blood particles (because there are 6 shots by default). The amount of blood particles with a shotgun caused FPS problems on some machines before.
New popup: "risen" (when Fallen rises after the death).
Additional blood particles will be generated added after a mob/spawner's death.
The message: "wait, more are coming" was redesigned:
A slight visual improvement
Kill Streak messages were redesigned:
Now there are lines (scars?) at both sides of the message, each line representing 1 Kill Streak level. So, 4 lines as on the image above means level 4 Kill Streak (out of 5).
The personal story / bio of each hero was fixed:
The line above the story was corrected
“One second ago” message’s background was updated (it's the one on the death screen).
Valkyrie’s and VAndal's projectiles will be visible again.
Sounds
Grenades explosion sound effects now won't "stuck up" (only 1 can be played at a time).
All monsters' projectiles now have a sound effect.
Music
A number of new soundtracks were added in this version. The music in the game wasn't the best before, it was just a simple free track and 9 other variations of it.
As it's an indie game with no budget, I can't afford to buy proper music on Fiverr or elsewhere as one decent 60-second track would cost approximately $100, and I need at least 10 of them (ideally, 15+). And I also can't record decent music. I do everything else for the game, but the music is just out of my range of competence. Later, if the game grows and brings a little bit of income, I might consider purchasing professionally made music.
Now, thanks to the good work of Eric Matyas and his website soundimage.org, the game got a bunch of new music tracks that fit much better than what we had before.
The game didn't just get a few new tracks, there is now a special track for the main menu (dark ambiance), a special track when you choose things (weapons, perks, etc.) that pauses the main track and resumes it when you are done, and there is also atmospheric music on the death screen.
When it comes to the main game background music, the game got 17 new tracks and, what is more important, now the track that is being played depends on the current game minute. Every 5 minutes you will hear a different set of tracks (2 or 3 in the playlist). The first minutes will start with a bit of quiet music, but then it will get darker and faster to reflect the game situation better.
The music might not be perfect at this time and could be changed/adjusted in the next versions, but I think that it's definitely better than what we had before.
Thank you Eric for your great work, vision, and for offering such music to indie game developers! I have mentioned you on the Credits page in the game as well as you require.
Settings
The default volume of the background music was changed from 10% to 30%, however, if you are not a new player, this won't be set for you automatically, so you'd better go to settings and set it to this value later. This change is made because all old background music was replaced.
Stats
New cause of death: From Hatred
Bugs
Antisocial perk description was fixed, some symbols there weren’t displayed properly.
Phantoms and their spawners were invisible when close to the hero, yet they should become more and more visible as the distance to the hero is getting closer. This should be fixed now.
It looked like the results and stats were uploaded to Steam after a game in Sandbox, which actually wasn't the case. Now it won't even be displayed as so as games in Sandbox shouldn't affect Steam.
Skill 6 (plasma) gain for Samara was shown incorrectly.
Skill 6 (plasma) gain for Ivan was shown incorrectly.
Other
The credits screen was updated and now there is a proper big button that leads to it from the main menu.
The weapon warning that "this weapon is heavy" will be shown with 0.35 weight (35%) or more, instead of 0.3 as in the previous versions.
Developer / Publisher name on Steam was changed. Now, instead of the business name, there is the actual developer's name, which is more appropriate for an indie game like this.
A few old random hero phrases were changed.
New random advice was added about Savages regarding their new hiding/climbing ability.
DLCs descriptions of premium heroes on Steam were updated.
Version 2.2 - Sandbox
Hello there! Eugene is here, the Red Algorithm developer.
Today I am happy to announce yet another game update that introduces a new game type (mode) called "Sandbox". It's something players have been asking for since the game release. The implementation might not be exactly what you have expected, but it does offer quite a lot of freedom, creativity, and fun.
But wait, there is more :)
Here are key changes and new features in version 2.2:
A new game type (mode) - Sandbox
+1 new weapon
+1 new weapon upgrade
+1 new perk
Habit mechanic was reworked; now it's fully passive and works after 30 level / minute
New small ability for Fallens (1st zombie-like monster) to rise up after death
New praying ability for Cultists that gives 100% armor and 10% reflection of hero's damage
14 new images for spawners' corpses were added (there used to be just one for all)
Important visual changes of the main game screen (weapon upgrades, current game type, etc.)
A horrible bug with splash damage was fixed
A few other bugs were fixed, some minor visual changes, and more...
Thank you guys for all your support; for reviews on Steam, for purchasing DLCs, etc. It wouldn't be possible to continue working on the game without your help and good feedback!
Ok, so let's look at what is new closely and start with the Sandbox.
Sandbox
Initially, we had only one game type in the game, the one that is now called "Classic". A little bit later "Waves" game type with random monsters was added and some players liked it, but it's still a quite hard and serious thing. Also, a Tutorial was added as well for those good folks who wanted to learn everything in a proper step-by-step way.
However, what people have been suggesting for a long time was something easy, relaxing, fun, and maybe even a little bit crazy. People wanted to have some freedom, some people wanted to see the Steamworks integration, and some people even wanted to just have some cheats. Well, for the past few weeks I have been working hard on the game type that should, at least partially, satisfy those needs.
Hello Sandbox!
This new button leads you to this new screen with a bunch of stuff:
So many sliders...
What can you do in Sandbox?
Hopefully, pretty much everything you want to create a game you would like to play.
Regarding the monsters creation, you can adjust (from 0 to 50):
The number of monsters that are created at the start of the minute
The number of spawners that are created at the start of the minute
The timing (at what minute they should be created)
And, you can loop it (it will be created every minute and not just once)
Mechanics (you can turn on and off diseases, injuries, etc.)
And, to help players navigate all of that and give a few ideas there are also scenarios (7 + 1 that just cleans up everything). A scenario is a pre-set of the parameters that I just mentioned, each of them is kind of like a new game mode on its own. You can just fight millions of zombies (Fallen), or you can try to do something a bit more complicated and face some stronger dudes.
If you create a new interesting scenario, don't hesitate to share it (its screenshot, for example) on Steam, and if it's a really good and challenging one, I might include it in the game.
This game type is also amazing for game testing, for trying out different builds, weapons, etc.
This is a lot of new stuff to play with and it was not easy to implement (the whole game is not easy to develop and every update is hard, but this one was particularly hard), so I hope people will find a good use for it or at least try out a few pre-set scenarios.
I realize that the current implementation is actually not good enough if we are talking about proper game modifications, the editor, etc. I am also considering allowing to change the spawn direction (not only the top, but also bottom, left, and right), adding a "clean hero" option (a generic hero without runes and skills), and a few more things there later. Some people suggested an option to start with any hero level and to be able to pick weapons or perks from the list that contains all of them, but this was too hard to implement at this point. If you have any other cheap-to-implement ideas for this game type, please let me know.
Note that Sandbox is a testing ground, a simulation, therefore everything you do in the sandbox should stay in the sandbox, which means that stats can't be affected by those games. Also, you can't improve a hero's skills or get runes there, and, obviously, you can't do achievements there as well.
The idea of this perk is simple, yet interesting. It gives +1% damage every minute to the hero, which means that you must take it as early as possible to enjoy its effect fully. This is a very greedy perk for the late game, and in most cases, it'll pay off only if you survive at least 15 - 20 minutes (and if you took it very early). However, it does address one important issue of dealing with the last monster, Machina, which HP depends on the current game minute. So, in the super-later game, it is quite helpful.
Perk Athlete was changed. Now, instead of giving the immunity from injuries for 10 levels and reducing speed each hero level, it does so every minute. Before it was possible to take this perk after level 20 and get the immunity from injuries forever, which was clearly an OP (overpowered) thing.
Perk "Drone T-69" was renamed to "Drone Master" as it's a more appropriate name.
All perks that give or improve your health regeneration now have a warning. In the case when you are sick and attempting to pick such a perk, there will be a red message that the health regeneration won't work while you are sick, which should be useful for new players.
Perk Mechanic has got a new additional bonus, now it improves Renaissance's damage by 5 because there is already an achievement in the game that uses this combo (Virtuvian).
Perk Healthy is now considered a good thing, it reduces Wickedness by 10. Choosing to be healthy is a morally right choice, isn't it? Better than to be sick...
Perk Legend is now considered a bad thing, it adds 50 to your Wickedness. This perk is something that you generally should avoid.
The extra bonus that Specialist perk has (always getting 10 habit after 30 minutes) was removed. This bonus addressed the problem of not being able to get any habit points after you reach the maximum hero level, but now, with the reworked habit mechanic, everybody can get Habit at any level and any minute as long as they keep using the same weapon.
Perk Berserk was changed. Now it also gives you 25 more HP, however, it will have a negative effect on your dodge, subtracting 25% from it (because it's quite hard to dodge when you are berserk in rage).
Perk Ninja was nerfed. Now it gives +15% to dodge instead of +25% before, and +30% with Primitive weapons, instead of +50% before. Dodge is one of those things that is quite sensitive to high numbers, it can be an OP, and +50% dodge from just one perk was really too much. Plus, this old perk was created before runes were added and therefore the ability to get an additional 10% to dodge.
This is a top (30) level weapon in the primitive category. It's a fixed-range weapon, which is a rare thing. Rapier has a very high damage per hit (and 50% crit chance), but its hit speed is very slow; 2.5 seconds. Also, it has a very slow (0.25) habit gain speed, and it's considered a "good" weapon (Wickedness -50).
The hero with rapier has a unique elegant sprite:
Fencing roleplay xD
This weapon is very special and in many cases not that practical. It does kill almost any monster or spawner with just 1-2 hits, but the cost of a miss is incredibly high, plus, armed with that, you can't really deal with the crowd. In the late game, however, it can do quite a lot of work against mobs with high HP and "fat" spawners if you plan everything correctly.
There is already a more conventional and versatile primitive weapon at this stage, Omega, so rapier is just an alternative for someone who wants to try out a different game style.
This upgrade simply gives you a +1 HP Reg while you are carrying the weapon. In some cases, it's better than Life Recycling, and in other cases, it's worst. Also, this is a "good" upgrade, it reduces your Wickedness by 25.
Weapon upgrade Overclocked Mechanism was nerfed: it now improves your shooting speed by 15% instead of 25% like before.
Habit
This version changes the way weapon habit works in the game. Before that, you would get Habit every time your hero level up, but this created a problem of not being able to get any habit after the maximum level (30 or 33). So, there were situations when you waited a long time to get a nice level 30 weapon at the end, but when you got it you would realize that you won't get any new levels and the habit will be 0 (or 50% of the previous value if it was a clean switch). Before, getting a higher habit, in that case, was possible only with the perk Specialist.
However, because of great feedback from testers (all of whom are mentioned in the game, you can find it if you click on the small plus at the bottom-right corner near "a game by..." in the main menu), and another special shout-out to Two-Nuhh who suggested this and many other great ideas, now it will be possible to gain habit after the maximum hero level and after 30 minutes.
Starting from this version, your weapon habit will grow every minute and not every level(the perk Specialist will still double that speed), which is a much better way for this mechanic to work.
Monsters
Cultists have got a new praying ability, it looks like that:
They also have a new special simple animation, kind of like a rotating shield
The way it works is as follows. When a cultist loses 50% of its HP, it starts to pray. While at it, his all resistance (armor) is equal to 99%, which means that it's almost impossible to do any damage to him. Praying lasts for 15 seconds. If you attempt to damage them while they pray, 10% of the damage you do will be returned to you, and it can even kill you. This includes splash-type damage, which in some cases when you deal with multiple cultists can be devastating to you. After 15 seconds they stop praying and with full speed chase you, all slowing down that you cased is reset. On the bright side, after praying their armor drops down to 0, so it will be a bit easier to kill them (their starting resistance is quite high, 25% physical, 50% fire, and 75% energo).
The reason to add this ability was not only because it can be interesting and create a few fun game moments, but it's also because of the game balance. All melee monsters are quite weak against a skilled player, you can easily keep a safe distance, run around and shoot them. Cultists with all their decent HP, high DPS, bash, and good resistance, weren't powerful enough for the game stage when they appear. This new ability will make a life of a player (especially with all splash-type builds, both plasma and explosions) a bit harder in the mid-late game, and the fact that they return 10% of your damage and not a fixed value means that this reflection ability will always be relevant.
Machina's spawner has got 120 basic HP + 60 per minute, so it wouldn't die at 0 minute in Sandbox.
Fallens have got a new rising up ability. There will be a 1% chance that after you kill one it will just imminently rise up with a full HP (technically speaking, it will be a new monster...) and attack you again, so you need to kill it one more time. This won't make your life much harder, but it can occasionally create a few fun moments.
Grenades
Now, in addition to the regular grenades throwing by pressing 3 one by one, you can just throw all of them at once in all directions when you press the G key.
No matter how many grenades you have, 10 or 100, all of them will be thrown!
This new feature is intended to solve a number of problems first of which is that sometimes you just don't need grenades and you are looking for some other type of consumables in the grey box. In that case, you would want to get rid of these stupid grenades asap, but you can't because when you press 3 there is a CD (cooldown) that prevents you from throwing them out quickly. This can happen in the Sandbox, in the late game when they are just less effective, or even in the regular game when you picked them up by accident and their weight slows you down by too much. Now these problems can be solved with just one button. Also, sometimes you just want to create a lot of damage around you, but there is no Nuke, so now you can create your own Nuke.
Note that all unique ways to throw grenades (to a short range while holding Shift and to a long range while holding Space) also work with this new ability.
Settings
Now you can change the way the experience gain modifier is shown in settings.
It's the orange text with "(x1.25)", which means 125% experience growth speed
Here are your options:
always off
always on
show on hover (the only option that existed before, now it's the default)
This was not quite evident that you should hover the mouse to the top of the screen to see how fast you gain your experience, and it wasn't always comfortable to do so during a hot action in the game, so now you can just set it to "always", or even turn it off completely.
Graphics
Corpses for all spawners were added:
For instance, here is a dead Imps' spawner
Before that, I just used one image for all spawners' corpses, and the Demons' spawner didn't have any corpse at all. Now they are all different and unique, yeah?...
The way the active weapon upgrade is displayed on the screen was changed:
Now it's a separate small icon on the left side of your weapon. This is a much clearer, cleaner and nicer way to show them compared to what it used to be (just a lazy frame around the weapon with different colors). And, it's symmetrical to another new element on that screen...
Starting from this version, the current Game Type will be always shown during the game:
This means that you play in Classic, and the red frame here means Hard Mode
It's shown on the right side of the hero's avatar. I feel like someone who looks at the screen or the game screenshot should imminently be able to tell what Game Type that is.
Now the legend (the explanation of the events, symbols on graphs) is hidden by default:
Hover the mouse over the question mark in the left-bottom corner in order to reveal it
Declarations were added to the Game Type screen (that they are available or not available).
The “Hard Mode” button colour on the Game Types screen was changed. Now it's grey if not active, and red (maroon) when active. This option will be less visible when inactive.
The description of the perk Outnumbered was corrected in the game and on the website. It used to say that it gives +25% damage per every 50 monsters (and double that for John), yet the actual effect was +15% damage per 50 monsters. I was meant to nerf this perk a while ago, but I found out that I already did, yet I forgot to update the description. This perk was too strong in some cases, that is why +15% per 50 is the better number.
The blood particles that are created by perks Spikes and Mortal Spon were reduced because there could be too many of them during games in Sandbox.
Perk Ninja was redrawn (a small compensation for its nerf):
The image there used to be really old and unpleasant
Game Type buttons were rearranged and slightly redesigned to fit the Sandbox button there.
Bugs
A huge bug with splash damage was finally fixed. In short, this bug caused 20% splash (explosions and plasma) damage reduction, which is a big deal, but it was incredibly hard to pinpoint and it was not reported by players. This is understandable because testing damage is not an easy task, especially when it comes to splash-type weapons, and I was able to find this bug only by accident (I knew that a certain weapon with splash should one-shot a spawner, but it didn't). My apologies to all who were affected by this bug, players who liked to use various launchers and plasma weapons, and players who played as heroes that prefer such weapons (Ivan or Osiris). This bug was incredibly hard to notice and the reason for it was completely not intuitive. To put it simply, it's all because of the weird and complicated way splash damage works in this game. That is why in the past like 5 updates there was always something about splash and bugs... Now, finally, all splash weapons in the game will deal the damage they are supposed to do. Hooray!
Omega's range penalty was changed from 50% to 0%. It shouldn't have any range penalty in the first place (and it didn't work anyway) at all because it's a splash-type weapon.
There was a small bug that you would get +1 habit point every time you pick perk Specialist. This was because a while ago you would get +1 habit with any weapon, thus to get a double bonus at the level you pick this perk, you would also receive +1 (the same logic still works for the perk Prospective, the level at which you pick this perk also counts and you get additional health). Now, with the new passive habit mechanic, this +1 bonus is not relevant at all.
Now it's not possible to skip tutorial missions by doing something that is supposed to be done later. In this game version and later you have to do all tutorial missions in the right order one by one.
In the previous version, it was possible to enter the tutorial with an active mission, which shouldn't be possible. The tutorial is there to learn the game and not to do missions.
Monsters (every second) and spawners (every minute) were not generated during the freeze before, which is not the way it should be. Freeze should not stop the monsters generation, however, it still stops all monsters' activities and spawners' production.
The warning “X weapon range won’t be affected” was drawn a little bit below from the point where it should be displayed (a lint was skipped). Now it’s fixed.
Other
There is a new Weapon Warning that says: "This is a weapon with slow attack speed". It appears for weapons with a hit speed higher than 1 (mostly rifles, and some melee weapons).
The "language flag" was removed from the main menu, now it's just a red button. The reason is that a language isn't necessarily associated with one country. For example, English is spoken in the US, the UK, multiple other Commonwealth realms, and by people in almost any country. The same goes for other languages. This issue was already addressed before as there was a setting that allowed you to change “the flag of the English” language (US, UK, Canada, Australia, etc.), which is now removed.
It's time for yet another Red Algorithm update and it's a big one! This new game version has many changes, the most important of which is an introduction of a new mechanic of diseases that will make the life of the hero a little bit more challenging. In addition to that, there is a new weapon, a new perk, many visual improvements, important changes in balance, and much more!
Here is a short summary of what is new:
New mechanic - diseases
Runes limit of 70 per hero was removed, now you can get all of them, but there's a trick...
Every hero has got 2nd favorite skill (which you can train twice faster)
New weapon reloading animations
+1 new weapon
+1 new weapon upgrade
+1 new perk
Various balance changes
The issue of multiple sounds playing all together in a messy and loud way was fixed
A few other bugs were fixed
Other minor changes and improvements
As always, thank you all who support the game in any way! Thank you all who wrote a review on Steam, made a YouTube video, purchased a DLC, left a comment or like, followed the game on Twitter or Reddit, recommended it to a friend, or just enjoyed playing it. New free updates like this one are possible only because of your support, it gives a lot of motivation to continue this work.
Alright, let's look at the changes closer and start with diseases.
Diseases
Introducing yet another annoying thing that can weaken, damage, or kill you, as if there weren't enough of them already. Now you can also catch diseases during the game.
There were multiple possible ways of implementing diseases, but after all, it was decided to add this mechanic in a simplified, yet clear and practical way. You can think of disease in the game as something bad in a broad sense. It reduces almost all your stats (but not by much), damages you, and blocks some healing. In a way, diseases are quite similar to injuries. The disease is like one weak injury for all your body parts, but there are differences too. Healing a disease is easier than healing an injury, and also diseases aren't permanent, you always know when it will pass.
Now during the game at precisely the 13th second of every minute, you have a chance to get a disease (if you already have it, this is when it will do damage to you and the timer will go forward). You will hear the "disease" sound, see a popup, and then there will be this thing in the top-left part of the interface.
A thermometer with a timer
This means that you have caught a disease and are now sick.
Here is how the chance to get a disease is currently calculated:
3% every minute in the casual mode, -50% if you have perk Healthy
6% every minute in the Hard Mode, -50% if you have perk Healthy
1% per every melee hit of a monster (range hits can't spread it), perk Healthy doesn't help here
So, you either get it randomly every minute (you can't do much about it, it's purely random), or you can get it from a monster (you can try to avoid hits and get it less often).
The duration of the disease is also random, it can be from 5 to 15 minutes. However, here is an interesting detail. Your Wickedness affects the possible duration, each 33 points of it reduce or increase the duration by 1 minute. So, if you have 100 Wickedness (you are an evil bad boi), you will get a 3 minutes longer disease from 8 to 18 minutes. Righteous players with low Wickedness will get diseases that don't last long, but the fact that you are good or bad can't protect you from getting it in the first place and it doesn't reduce its effects.
Ok, now let's talk about disease's effects, here they are:
Damages 10% of the Max HP (not a fixed damage, but a % of the max hp like with overwhelming, to be relevant in the late game) per minute (applies at 13th second every minute)
Blocks your HP regeneration (but it doesn't block other ways of healing)
-10% to damage
-10% to hit speed
-10% to move speed
-10% reload speed
-10% range
-10% accuracy
-10% experience
-10% armor
-10% splash size
-10% dodge
-10% crit
So, it reduces almost all important stats by 10%, damages you every minute, and blocks basic HP regeneration. It's all bad, but you can live with it, and in many cases just wait until the disease is gone. The disease blocks all basic HP regeneration, but it doesn't block other things that can heal you like: Vampirism, Paladin's heal, heal from Go Green perk, Life Recycling weapon upgrade, healing from rain, etc. What it does block is regeneration given from: Troll perk, Alteration, Passive Heal, Antisocial(although, the disease will also cancel the HP loss caused by that perk), Entrenching, regeneration bonus, etc. The way it works might not always be intuitive, but generally speaking, the disease blocks most of the passive heals or HP Reg, but it doesn't block most of the direct heals.
The last thing to talk about here is how to heal a disease?
Just wait until the timer runs out and it'll be gone
Use simple heal [1] (first aid kit), it doesn't heal injuries, but it does heal diseases
Perk Cup Of Tea heals it. It doesn't heal injuries, but it does heal diseases
As you can see, diseases are not as bad as injuries, yet they are also annoying and can make the game harder, especially in the beginning and in the Hard Mode.
The interesting part about this mechanic is that, unlike with injuries, you always know when the disease will end, thus it makes you think and make hard choices. Should you use your heal now when just 3 minutes of the disease left and you still have 70% of HP? Maybe it's better to just wait and save the heal? Choices and decisions like that will force you to think and will create some interesting game moments.
Lastly, note that as with all newly added mechanics, there might be changes in the future updates after some additional testing and players' feedback.
It's a level 20 primitive weapon with a number of unique features. First of all, there are 2 blades, so it works just like Gemini pistols, launching two projectiles simultaneously and spending just 1 ammo to do so (1 ammo here represents 2 blades...). This rare feature already means that things that improve crit, for example, will have a double effect here. Another fun feature of Blades is that they are poisonous, they have a rare "type 4" toxic damage type and will do 1 toxic damage per second even without perk Venom(and much more with it). This is the first primitive weapon with this type of damage. As with many other primitive weapons, it has its limitations: a huge (50%) range penalty, low ammo, a quite limited range, and wind interference. In addition to that, unlike many primitive weapons with a great (around 3) habit gain speed, Blades have a reduced habit speed, which means that it’s hard to get used to and to master them. Lastly, Blades can fully benefit from the special Primal perk (which will work together with poison) and from Athlete. It's a very special and nice alternative to another primitive weapon level 20, Malleus.
Mr. Lee now starts the game with it, so this low-level weapon should be well-balanced. It's still strong even with all these changes, it's just before it actually was too OP.
3 weapons with fixed and close range (Katana, Fuego, and Malleus) were buffed. Their dispersion was reduced from 25 and 30 to 5, so now it will be much easier to hit the target with them.
Many assault rifles (ARs) in this version were slightly nerfed. Dictator, Patriot, Fukuoka, and Peacekeeper range was reduced by 25, reload speed was increased by 0.25 second (which is a bad thing), and the slow-down effect was weakened by 0.05. This is not a significant nerf, but it's an unpleasant one. After a number of tests, ARs still performed above many other weapon classes, and the 3 stats that are being reduced (range, reload, and slow) are the main reason for it.
Liberty AR was nerfed too: reload speed +0.25 second, but its range and slow weren't affected.
A few SMGs were slightly nerfed, their slow-down effect was reduced. Zion: 0.15 > 0.05, Wallon: 0.3 > 0.1, Shark: 0.25 > 0.15, Sheol: 0.25 > 0.15, Horangi: 0.15 > 0.1. The slow-down effect in general proved to be a bit too powerful in dealing with most of the melee monsters, that's why it's being reduced.
Weapon Upgrades
We didn't have new weapon upgrades for a while, so here is another one.
It will increase the critical hit chance by 10% for those weapons that can have it (non-splash type). This upgrade is generally weaker than simple +25% damage or +25% shooting speed, yet considering the fact that some weapons like assault rifles shot 3 bullets at a time, this +10% to crit can actually be turned to +30%. Plus, any critical hit not only deals double damage but also fully ignores the armor (resistance). As with the perk Headhunter, this weapon upgrade is particularly good with weapons that had no crit at all initially or a very low one, like SMGs, MGs, and especially shotguns.
With this perk, your hero will shoot a powerful bullet with 1000 fire-based damage every 20 seconds. This perk is triggered at 0, 20, and 40 second marks every minute, so you can predict when the next bullet will be shot, aim, and hit a particular target. Also, 1 second before the shot, there will be a simple animation signifying that the next fire bullet is coming out soon. It'll help you to aim.
Here is a screenshot from one of the internal tests to demonstrate it:
You can see that the Fire Bullet is being prepared near the hero at 20:19, it'll be launched after 1 second
This perk has its strengths and weakness. As with many other fixed-damage things, this perk is much more effective in the early game and it losses its power later, yet it can still be very helpful if you learn to aim with it properly. Fire Bullet is particularly good against spawners, most of which can be killed with just 1 Fire Bullet (or even more than 1 per shot, if they are positioned on the same line). If you learn to aim with this perk well, you can pretty much kill most of the spawners with it in the early and mid-game, which is a huge help for builds that have low DPS early on (pistols, SMGs, etc.).
Perk Collector received a small additional bonus, now it will have a combo with Mafioso. There is already an achievement in the game (Al Capone) that uses this combination.
Perk Soulmate is now considered to be a good thing (from the moral point of view, it's something like marriage and commitment xD), so it will reduce hero Wickedness by 50 when taken.
Perk Genius now has a combo with Tesla; it reduces its reloading speed by 2.5 seconds.
Perk Alteration was nerfed: HP Reg 1 > 0.5. This perk already was strong and super helpful in many cases, but as now it also heals diseases, its main effects should be weakened.
A new warning will be shown for Phoenix perk that all your bionic body parts will be removed after death if you have at least 1 body part installed.
When you take perk Virus you will be punished for an attempt to spread it by getting disease yourself. To compensate for that, the main perk's damage was improved from 0.5 to 0.75 per second.
Heroes
Mr. Lee will now start with the Crossbow and not the Bow. Bow proved to be a too complicated weapon for new players with its unusual shooting mechanic (you have to hold the button...) and strong wind influence. Also, the Bow level is quite high (6), when the Crossbow level is just 3, so you can get rid of the penalty much faster. Because of this change, some of the Crossbow stats were reduced, but not by much, it's still a very decent starting weapon.
Monsters
Phantoms behavior was changed. In one of the previous versions, they started to chase the hero only if there are 50 or more monsters (of any kind) on the map. With fewer monsters, they would just stay away from the hero. Such behavior resulted in a situation when you could "catch" a phantom and push it to the rock, and then quite safely kill after that, if there were less than 50 monsters it won't do anything to you. Now, however, if a phantom is damaged by a hero even a little bit, it will attack the hero anyway instead of sticking to its main strategy of waiting while 50 monsters will be created. This slight AI improvement will make their behavior more reasonable.
Runes
The maximum number of runes a hero can have was changed from 70 to 130, so now you can improve all the stats and keep improving your favorite hero much longer. This change wasn't easy to make as I had a strong opinion about limiting the total number of runes to 70 and argued about it in the Steam discussions. I believed that it would be better in terms of the overall balance and game-design as such limitation would result in different end hero builds. However, after some serious thinking, I came to the conclusion that allowing to get all possible runes and removing the cap could be fine with certain limitations (it will be much harder to get runes after 65, half of the maximum number) and with some additional game balancing (the new diseases mechanic will partially compensate for this removed cap).
A new "perfection modifier" was added to the total rune drop formula. It applies when you have more than 50% of the total number of runes (more than 65 of them). This modifier will reduce rune drop rate by a factor of 5, so if you had the drop rate of 30% with 50 runes, if you have 70 runes the same drop rate will be 30 / 5 = 6%. So, it's still possible to get runes, and in a long game in Hard Mode (and if you completed many achievements, etc.) it's still will be possible to get a few runes in just one game, but in general, pushing your hero to the level of perfection will be tough.
The rune that improves HP now gives +3 per rune instead of +2 before (up to +30).
The rune that improves HP Regeneration now gives 0.05 per rune instead of 0.025 before (up to +0.5).
Skills
Good news! Every hero in the game has got an additional favorite skill (favorite weapon class) that will be trained twice faster than others, so now there are 2 favorite skills out of 8 in total.
Only 1 favorite skill imposed too many limitations on weapon choices for those players who were too concerned with skill improvements. So, two of them will widen the arsenal. Honestly speaking, improving skills (and even getting runes) wasn't meant to be the main focus of the game, and if you just allow yourself to be more flexible with weapon choices and not only choose weapons that hero "likes" in order to improve skills faster, the game will be much more fun and you'll survive longer.
Note that hero favorite skills, the native bonus, and the inherited perk doesn't always fit the way it would be perfect in terms of the gameplay. Each hero, including all premium ones, has its weaknesses and weird parts, nobody is perfect. And the fact that a skill is hero's favorite doesn't always mean that it's the best type of weapon for this hero in any situation.
Graphics
A few simple reloading animations for the most common weapon types (pistols, SMGs, launchers, most of the rifles, and assault rifles) were added:
Hopefully, it looks better than no animations at all
The animation speed (how fast frames are moving forward) depends on the actual reload speed. So, with fast-reloading weapons, the animation will go fast, but slow-reloading weapons will have a slow animation. Perks, runes, and other things that affect the reloading speed also affect the animation speed.
There are still a bunch of less common weapons without reloading animations; heavy machine guns, most primitive weapons (although, I added it for the Crossbow and Blades), Tesla, Diablo, Crusher, and many more. They will be slowly added in the next game updates.
Any other animation that is happening during the reloading one will break it (for example, when the hero runs), and then the reloading animation will start over, but the reloading process itself won't be broken, the animation will just end sooner in a bit broken way. You'll see what I mean in the game.
Runes button was adjusted to fit numbers with triple digits.
99+ numbers will fit better there now
There is a new hero sprite with Crossbow and it also has its own reloading animation:
Because Mr. Lee now starts with it...
There is a new hero sprite for all pistols:
It fits better to the new hero reloading animation
The fire explosion animation was changed. It was significantly speeded up to reflect the actual lifetime of the explosion, so now it lasts only a few milliseconds (ticks), but this way all such splash-type attacks will look much sharper than before.
The plasma explosion animation was changed. It was significantly speeded up to reflect the actual lifetime of the explosion, the same way as it was done with the fire-based explosions.
Declaration icon and number were moved, so the background now takes less space:
It's a minor correction
Blood particles now behave in a bit different way, they will now fly against the hero if you have a weapon without a splash (which looks better), and they will fly randomly (as before in any case) if you have a weapon with splash.
New popup: "disease".
The main menu buttons font was reduced from 30 to 28.
A few standard GMS 2 (GameMaker Studio 2, the engine this game uses) effects were removed. The smoke effect (it was used as blood when a hero is hit and on a few other occasions), the explosion effect (when a drone or a turret self-destroy), and the cloud effect (which was used as a pool of blood after you kill a monster) is not in the game anymore. The game effects are being slowly replaced with the custom ones (like blood particles, etc.) that you can customize in settings better and that, presumably, are less CPU demanding. However, there are still many standard GMS effects left in the game and they probably will stay there for a while or even forever.
The link to the guide about achievements was removed from the achievements screen.
The "Go Hard" button was redesigned. Now it just says "Hard Mode: on / off" without a checkmark, but it's written as text now, rather than being an image, thus it finally can be translated properly.
Graphs & Events
A new event icon was added when you get a disease.
All small event symbols on graphs were redesigned. Also, now their location won't be exactly on the time point, but above or below it instead, see the screenshot below as reference:
These small symbols now look a bit better and cleaner
In addition to that, a small legend (clarification of meaning) was added there:
It includes new disease events
Understanding these graphs wasn't an easy task for many players, so now it should be a bit more clear.
Sounds
An issue when multiple sounds (when many monsters are killed simultaneously, for example from a splash attack, a nuke, or something like that) are playing together was fixed. The sound system was made in such a way that if the same sound was triggered more than once, its loudness just increases, and these increases could go up to a very critical level (my apologies to the people who experienced that...). Now there is a check for all monster death sound if the same sound is playing already, and if so, the new sound won't be played, which overall sounds much better and smoother. There are still some sounds in the game that can be "stackable", for example when the hero gets hit, but practice proves that it's much less of an issue with these sounds compared to the monsters' death sounds and some of them better leave "stackable".
The "Miss" sound was removed from the game. In some cases, for example, when you attack a bunch of Imps or Spiders, this "miss" sound was too loud and didn't fit well. There were some experiments with "crit" and other similar sounds before, but after all, they proved to be unnecessary and too annoying.
A new sound "disease" was added, it's played when you get it.
Stats
A new cause of death was added: "from the diseases".
A new stat: "total number of all caught diseases". It's near the total number of injuries.
Bugs
"Random" background in settings wasn't actually random. Even with the "seed" generation mechanic that is there in order to achieve real randomness, the background was often generated in the exact same way if you started the game in a particular manner (for example if you quickly picked Sarah). Now, no matter how you start the game, if the background is set to random in settings (which is the case by default), it'll actually be random.
A bug with John and Genius perk was fixed. This perk with this hero caused 4x skill training speed instead of 2x. This was caused by a typo.
The bug with Smokey perk was fixed. The smoking triggered only 1 time at the 30-second mark every minute before, but it should have triggered twice per minute (at 0 seconds as well). Now the hero will smoke at 5 and 35 seconds for 10 seconds (until 15th and 45th second), and it will work twice per minute, as it should.
The heal that you have with the Paladin perk was activated only if hero HP is below 100%, which means that if your Wickedness was very high, like 150, and this heal supposed to damage you by 150 HP instead of healing, in case your health was full the paladin heal wasn't triggered. This heal is meant to damage an evil person even if the current HP = 100%, so now the heal of this perk will be activated even if your health is full.
Other
The chance of harmful acid rain is now 5% instead of 1% before. It'll be more common, but still rare.
The Trust formula was updated.
The healing mechanic was optimized, now it's all executed from a single script (technical detail).
Random advice now will be shown until you played 10 hours by default (it used to be just a few hours). This way, hopefully, more people will learn something new from them.
The "Vive La Revolution" achievement name was fixed. The French "e" (é) wasn’t displayed properly.
More random advice was added, they are mostly about new features.
Hello there Red Algorithm fans, happy holidays to you all!
This is yet another game update (we made it to 2.0!) that introduces a new interesting mechanic, traditionally adds some new content, and fixes a few bugs.
Here is a quick summary of what is new:
New Declaration mechanic
+1 new weapon
+1 new perk
+5 new achievements
Monsters' HP in Hard Mode is now higher to compensate for the Declaration bonus
Wicked monster will pretend to be a bonus less often and have a lower chance to bash
You can train your skills faster if you completed achievements (the same mechanic as with Runes)
A few important bug fixes
Other changes
As always, this update is free and hopefully, with your support and feedback, there will be more updates in 2022, so the game can grow and gradually become even better.
Declarations
What are declarations and how do they work?
Declarations allow you to make a promise of how long you think you will survive in the next game.
You can declare 3 things:
That you will survive 10 minutes
That you will survive 20 minutes
That you will survive 30 minutes
Also, you don't have to declare anything and can play as you did before.
You can declare how long you will survive on the heroes screen. Note that declarations are shown only to players who spent at least 5 hours in the game, but you can always go to settings, find "Declaration" there and set it "always" if you want to access them earlier.
If you have an active declaration (you promised to survive X minutes), you get a penalty until you fulfill your promise: -10% damage, -10% rune drop rate, -10% skill training speed.
However, the minute you fulfill your declaration (at 10, 20, or 30 minutes), you get a bonus:
10 minutes declaration: +10% damage, rune drop rate, and skill training speed
20 minutes declaration: +20% damage, rune drop rate, and skill training speed
30 minutes declaration: +30% damage, rune drop rate, and skill training speed
This is kind of a risk / reward system that allows you to get significant bonuses if you complete the declaration, yet that punishes those who don't. To put it simply, it will be harder to play with the declaration until you survive the time that you said you will, but after that, it will be easier to play and you will also get great long-term bonuses; more runes and skill points.
You can see what kind of declaration a player has in the bottom left corner of the interface while in game. It will be red when unfulfilled and green when fulfilled.
Another thing to keep in mind here is that it's not enough to just reach that time mark that you set and get those bonuses, you have to keep playing and try to survive as long as you can after that to fully enjoy the benefits of the fulfilled declaration.
Here is a small chart that might help to understand how this mechanic works:
30 minutes declaration is a high-risk / high-reward type thing
Declarations are available with casual difficulty and in Hard Mode in both Classic and Waves game types.
The last note here is that declarations don't work with active missions (when you do achievements). So, you either play a 10-minute game and go for achievement without any declarations, or you play a regular game in casual mode or in Hard Mode with a declaration.
It's a level 30 pistol with decent stats. The pistols line had no 30-level weapon before, the best weapon there was Gemini(two pistols level 25). Fixer is a strong weapon in the late game with the right perks, it's very light, it has a good DPS and a much smaller experience penalty compared to other level 30 weapons.
Gemini pistols were nerfed. Their penetration was reduced from 2 to 1, and the range penalty was increased from 0.25 to 0.35, which means that they will do less damage at a long-range. There was really no good reason why these two pistols had an improved penetration (there is a big difference between penetration 1 and 2, far greater than between 3 and 6 for example), as most other pistols have the penetration of 1 with just a few exceptions of, particularly powerful weapons. The same goes for the range penalty as well, it should not be 0.25, a value that is more common for rifles. Even after these nerfs Gemini still will be a strong and versatile weapon.
Piercer(spear / javelin) was buffed: reload 1.5 > 1.25. The change is based on the internal tests.
Level 30 > 33, so you can carry it without penalty only if you have Deal With The Devil perk
It won’t shoot 2 bullets at a time anymore, now it works like most of the weapons
It won’t have the unique splash effect anymore
Now it has a splash damage
Critical chance was reduced from 0.66 to 0, as it’s a splash-type weapon now
Hit speed: 0.66 > 0.4 (so the basic DPS with 100 Wickedness will be 250)
Its primary class was changed from 0 (unspecified) to 9 launchers, which means that the special perk Explosives will work with it as well
Its maximum ammo was changed from 22 to 6
This strange and unique weapon wasn't quite useful in its previous form.
Cassini plasma minigun was renamed to Pulsar and Kepler plasma shotgun was renamed to Splitter. Weapons' stats weren't affected. The names were changed because it felt wrong to use the names of real people (Astronomers) for these weapons in the game as those people had nothing to do with them.
This is a perk with an interesting mechanic that is highly dependent on your Wickedness. With Holy Spirit, a yellow energy spirit will follow you and attack monsters every 5 seconds with the damage that directly depends on the Wickedness. The way it works is very similar to Demonic Possession, but this perk is a good thing from the moral point of view. In addition to attacking monsters, it will also reduce your Wickedness by 5 every minute, which means that the damage that this perk does will grow. Also, this perk would be amazing if you have other "good" things, like perk Paladin, and weapon Malleus.
Perk Demonic Possession was slightly improved. The fireballs created by it won't be destroyed on the collision with rocks (they will fly over them). Also, if your Wickedness is less than 0 (you are a good guy), the fireballs won't be created at all as they would have 0 or less damage anyway.
Perk Bet On Red received a small additional bonus. When you play as Mr. Lee and take that perk, if you won the lottery, in addition to doubling your Max HP, you will also get +5% to Dodge. This is made to reflect an existing achievement / combo.
Perk Doctor will now reduce your Wickedness by 20, as it's a "good" thing.
Perk Variety now has a combo with Liberte assault rifle (partially because of the new Vive La Révolution achievement). It reduces the weapon level by 5, from 14 to 9, allowing you to use this weapon earlier without penalties. It might not be that useful when you going for the achievement, as you are not likely to reach even level 9 anyway, but it can be quite helpful in regular games.
Monsters, Hard Mode, and Difficulty
All monsters in Hard Mode will now have more health (HP). They used to have a 25% HP bonus there, but now the bonus will be 40%, 15% higher. This is done because of the implementation of the declaration mechanic, assuming that an experienced player would play a game in Hard Mode with one of the declarations (10, 20, or 30 minutes), and end up getting an average damage bonus of 15% (most likely 10 min., or 20 min. declarations will be chosen with an average damage bonus of +15%). This change will be painful to players who won't do declarations in Hard Mode, and a little bit painful to those who will just go for the 10 minutes one (they'll end up with a -5% damage bonus in total if we subtract the newly added monsters' HP from the damage bonus, which is technically wrong). But if you go for 20 minutes declaration, or even for the 30 minutes one for the late game, you will still end up with a damage boost that will fully cover this new monsters' HP. This change won't affect new players who don't play in Hard Mode, but it will make active missions (that you do to get achievements, all of which must be in Hard Mode) harder if you don't have at least some runes and skills.
The logic behind this and other previous changes to the Hard Mode is that it's assumed that a regular player will enjoy the game in the casual mode, get some skills and runes, become stronger, and then perform better, have fun, survive longer, etc. You don't need to know the game perfectly and have a developed hero in order to enjoy the casual mode. However, at some point, you would need to start playing the real game in Hard Mode, where it's assumed that you utilize and understand all of the game mechanics(Kill Streak, Range Penalty, Declarations, etc.) and that you already have a very developed or even a maxed out hero. Achievements and active missions are kind of an entry-level of the Hard Mode and the real game, where you can slowly get used to the real difficulty and learn more.
Wicked became a little bit weaker and less annoying. A few players complained that too many bonuses at a certain early game stage are fake (Wicked pretending to be them, and then attacking you when you come closer), so after this update you should see fake bonuses less often. That chance that this monster will hide and pretend to be a bonus was reduced from 5% to 4%. Also, Wicked's chance to bash was reduced from 6% to 3%. These changes should make this monster a bit easier to deal with.
Machnina(robots) became a little bit stronger. Their HP formula was changed to: "HP = 50 + ( TIME * 25 )", instead of "HP = 50 + ( TIME * 22 )", so they will get +3 HP per minute.
Heroes
Premium hero Amira was renamed to Samara. Samara is a different Arabic / Jewish name that fits this hero better. Such renaming of heroes won’t happen often (probably won’t happen at all in the future) and it shouldn’t affect those who purchased the DLC. If you have any technical problems with this premium hero, please contact the developer.
This shotgun's image was redesigned 3 times already, but now it finally reflects its nature in the right way. It should have an old and mechanical look as it does now.
The Wickedness value and its icon during the game will have a white background:
So it'll be more visible and a bit cleaner.
A new popup "declaration" at 10, 20, or 30 minutes (when you successfully fulfill it).
Skills
Starting from this version the number of completed achievements will improve your skill training speed, +1% per each completed achievement. This is a similar principle to how it works with runes. As there are currently 70 achievements in the game (+5 were added in this update), it's possible to get a +70% bonus to the skill training speed if you complete all the achievements, which is very nice. This is another good reason to do active missions and get achievements.
Achievements
Eventually, it's planned to have 100 total achievements in the game, as it's the limit that Steam allows most of the games to have. As we see new weapons and perks being added, new achievements will be added to the game as well. This update includes 5 of them:
Vive La Révolution: Liberte + Variety
Bladestorm: Katana + Mortal Spin
Hellish Breath: Inferno + Smokey
Safe Distance: Solo + Antisocial
Saint: Omega + Holy Spirit
Most of the achievements have a working weapon + perk combo that usually improves some of the weapon stats.
Settings
New setting: declaration. It's set to ">5 h" (play at least 5 hours in total) by default, but you can activate the declarations feature at any time and set it to "always".
Wickedness > when important (the default option) now includes new perk Holy Spirit as well.
Stats
The new declaration mechanic brought up some new stats too:
All declarations stats will be tracked! Yeah!?
6 kinds of declarations will be recorded in stats: 3 for the casual games and 3 for games in Hard Mode (both Classic in Waves game types are saved together). The first number there is the type of the declaration (10, 20, or 30, how long you declared you'll survive), the second number is how many declarations you fulfilled successfully, after that the total number of declarations (including failed attempts), and lastly, in brackets, you can see the success rate.
Sounds
A sound of the fallen meteor was added, which will be the same as the sound of an explosion.
A new sound "Declaration" at 10, 20, or 30 minutes (when you successfully fulfill it).
Many sounds used to be executed from the popup objects, which created a problem if the player turned off the popups, but wanted to keep the sounds that were supposed to be there, like the sound when you pick a bonus, etc. This was a rare case, but it could potentially be a problem. Now if you turn off all popups in settings, sounds won’t be canceled, and if you want to cancel the narrator’s comments as well, you can still do it separately.
Bugs
The bug with perk Antisocial was fixed. It caused the game to crash when there are 0 monsters on the map if you had this perk.
A bug with perk Smokey and an active mission were fixed. When you complete a mission while having this perk, the cause of death was recorded as "Smoking", and not as “Mission Completed”, which is wrong because smoking actually didn’t kill you at 10 min., the fact that you completed a mission did. Now Smokey perk effect will be processed in another way, so the bug shouldn’t appear.
Things that you have done in the tutorial (kills, damage received, etc.) won't be recorded in stats unless you fully completed the tutorial and passed all the tasks.
Canceling an active mission now will remove the green frame around it.
A couple of new random advice were added, mainly about the new features.
A few old random advice were fixed / updated (the one about Cultists' bash, etc.).
The mature content rating for the game was updated. The fact that it now includes rare references to smoking and drinking was added.
The official website was updated with a few new pages (new perks, weapons, etc.).
Version 1.9 - Tutorial
This game update focuses on new players by adding a step-by-step tutorial to the game. In addition to that, there is a new weapon, a new perk, some important visual and cosmetic changes, bug fixes, and more. Let's look at these changes in detail and start with the tutorial.
Tutorial
A number of people requested a step-by-step in-game tutorial and here it's.
Most experienced players probably won't find this tutorial very useful, but for a new player, this can be a great way to get familiar with all key game elements.
Tutorial is a new game type/mode, in addition to Classic and Waves
There you will have a number of missions, 19 at this moment, which you have to complete. Every mission would require you to do a certain action, like throwing a grenade, going to a place, or killing some monsters. The tutorial is generally simple and easy, but the last mission could be a bit challenging and fun to try out even for an old player.
One of the missions where we learn about the manual reload
The tutorial covers the most problematic elements of the game, those that new players (based on YouTube videos, reviews, the feedback, etc.) find complicated, but it was not possible to include everything there. For instance, the tutorial doesn't explain the Kill Streak mechanic, there is nothing about Range Penalty, Overwhelming, Wickedness, Skills, Runes, and many other game elements. Those things you can learn later by playing the game, reading Random Advice, and from guides on Steam.
This is a heavy (but not crazy heavy...) high-level (30) shotgun. It has a slow rate of fire, but quite a lot of damage and unlike almost all other shotguns it has a basic penetration of 2. Also, for a weapon of the top-level, its experience gain speed is not as bad, only -45%, while many other weapons have -55%. This is a fun weapon to try out and it can be really strong with the right perks. The shotguns line already had a high-level weapon before called Lotus(27), which is also a gauss weapon and from a recent update a weapon with bio-type damage, but it felt like the shotguns class can benefit from something new and different as well. It might not be as effective with Vampirism as other shotguns, but with some damage and critical damage improvements and with Hunter perk it can show a very high DPS and be effective against top-level monsters and spawners.
Apocalypse's stats were adjusted: damage 85 > 43, hit speed 0.3 > 0.15. It will have pretty much the same DPS as before, but it just would shoot faster and feel more like a machine gun.
With this perk, your hero will smoke every 30 seconds and get +25% shooting and moving speed bonus for 10 seconds but lose 5 Maximum and current HP. Eventually, smoking will kill you, as in real life. This perk is not very strong, but it could be used on rare occasions (like when you are doing an achievement/mission, or in the late game when you have a lot of HP). The perk has a small additional effect of reducing the weight of Inferno by 50%, so you can finally carry that huge weapon for a bit.
Perk Genius became stronger. This is one of the oldest perks that wasn't useful in most cases because of its severe negative effects (-50 Max HP and -25% damage), so now in addition to +50% experience bonus it will also speed up skills training speed by the factor of 2! This is actually a big deal that can allow a player to gain much more skill points after the game, and another good news is that it doesn't matter at what stage of the game you take this perk, as long as you have it taken at the end of the game, the amount of skill points you get will be doubled. This effect is somewhat similar to how perk Collector increases the rune drop rate allowing you to get a long-term advantage and carry some of the benefits to the next game.
Perk Unstoppable now has a small additional bonus for the .50 pistol, +33% shooting speed (1.5 > 1). This pistol had the hit speed of 1 before, but was nerfed to 1.5, yet there is still a special achievement "Bullet Tooth Tony" that uses the combo of this weapon and this perk.
Perk Rage received a small bonus. It will be activated at 50% of the maximum HP instead of 40% if you play as Amira, allowing you to benefit from perk's great effects earlier. This change reflects the emotional nature and history (story/bio) of the hero.
Graphics
Weapon's name will be written in red (maroon) if you have an active weapon penalty:
Its background is already red
Random Advice (ex. Scrolls of Wisdom) alignment was changed to a centered one:
Stats screen was slightly improved (lines were corrected), so it looks a bit better now:
The "Dirt particles" were added. They are created when a bullet hits a rock, and also at the moment of every fire-based explosion (not plasma/energy-based). These small grey particles are very similar to blood particles, their amount and lifetime can be adjusted in settings.
The skills button on the heroes screen was slightly changed to fit bigger numbers with decimals.
A new updated hero sprite with Apocalypse:
The Dev Stats background was adjusted by 1 pixel, so it looks nicer :)
Instead of 1x and 2x the real number of skill points (0.05 for the casual game and 0.1 in Hard Mode) is shown on the skills page.
Settings
There is a new thing to play with in settings - "Nice Skills". Skill points in the game were shown as rounded numbers with an ability to show them with decimals if you hold the "S" button on the skills screen. Now, instead of that, you can set in settings whether you want the skill points to have decimals, or be nice and rounded. This will affect skill points shown in 4 places: hero skills screen, skill points gained at the end of the game, total skill points in stats, total skill points in the heroes screen for each hero. Skill points are rounded by default (Nice Skills: ON).
Stats
Due to the fact that splash damage wasn’t calculated in total damage (see the explanation later in the "Bugs" section), the old average damage value and the respective leaderboard didn't fairly represent the real average damage value. That is why the old leaderboard was removed and a new one was added. Also, now the way average damage is calculated is different, it’s based on the total damage in the last 5 games only, and not on the total damage from all games as it was before. If you played less than 5 games in total the value won’t be shown.
You will see “N/A” there
When you hover the mouse over the question mark sign, you can see the total damage (in thousands (k)) from the last 5 games.
5k damage is done in the last game, and 0 in the previous 4 games as just 1 game has been played with the new system during the test
When you played at least 5 games with the new system, this value will be uploaded to the Steam Leaderboard (if the other conditions are met… like the last game was 3+ minutes and you have enough Trust). Hopefully, this new system will be fair and it will more reflex the most recent activity of the player, rather than the whole history (we already have The Total Damage leaderboard for that purpose).
A new cause of death was added: Smoking.
Now you can see if a player (or you...) completed or not completed the tutorial in stats.
Leaderboards
The old Average Damage leaderboard was removed from the game due to a bug (see the explanation later in the "Bugs" section) and replaced by a new one with the same name.
Bugs
The Total damage value calculation was fixed. It was not calculated properly before, it did not take into account most of the splash-type damage due to the way it's calculated. This means that Average Damage and Total Damage leaderboards are actually wrong. Unfortunately, at this point, it's quite hard to clean up those leaderboards or to wipe them out because the values that people have there are partially right (especially in the Total Damage leaderboard), it's just splash damage wasn't accounted for. Sadly, there is no easy fix for the old Average Damage leaderboard at this point and it will be removed from the game as it doesn't fairly represent the ranking. Sorry to those who was affected by it. There will be a new system to calculate the average damage (see above in the "Stats" section) and a new Average Damage leaderboard.
Wind-corrected crosshair won't be shown if you have Sharpshooter perk (because it cancels wind Influence on projectiles).
Blood particles that are generated after a splash damage were a bit broken before. You didn't see the right amount of particles after a splash damage because the life of the splash object (technical language...) was reduced from 30 ticks to 5 in one of the recent updates, yet the way blood particles are generated was not changed. Now it's fixed and you should see more blood after splash.
Other
"Scrolls of Wisdom" screen was renamed to "Random Advice" as it's more clear.
One old random advice was updated (the one about average damage).
A guide on Steam was updated.
The Trust formula was updated.
The official website was updated (+1 weapon, +1 perk, etc.).
