The launch of ScourgeBringer took us by storm, pfeww! Thank you very much for the reception.
It's been such a rush that we couldn't properly communicate with you in regards to how it's going. We're also back in full lockdown over here, so we had to adjust once more.
Long story short, we are now working on more ScourgeBringer stuff!
First: we are working on a comfort update. This update (which is expected to be v1.50) will focus on smoothing out some of the rough edges you may have encountered.
Once v1.50 will be out, we will take a step back on the game to analyze what could be improved and/or expanded. The plan is not yet set, up until now we were fully focused on the launch and didn't think far ahead.
But let's dig into what we'll be working on for this v1.50 update.
Adaptive difficulty system
We are aware that some players are having a rough start with challenges in the game. We hear you out loud. In fact, we knew from the start that some players would face some friction, but due to time constraints we had to focus on the mid-core/core experience.
To help on that, we are going to introduce a dynamic difficulty system which will adapt the challenge based on your play style (this will only affect struggling players; expert players will not get an harder game from this, their game will be intact).
We don't believe in having difficulty modes, which to us is something of the past. We prefer to try to design an experience that adapts itself to your own pace. We're still working on the details but this new system will undoubtedly smooth out the struggles of some players.
This new system will be enabled by default for all players, though expert players will be able to turn it off in the settings, and the dynamic difficult will always be turned off when playing from the Chaos Roots.
Our goal is to have a wider range of players reaching the standard ending, while keeping the hot salsa as it is.
Save in-between Realms
We know that expert players are likely to beat the game in one go, but some players might be cooler with their pace. This new update will keep track of your progress and when you will come back, you'll be able to continue from where you left.
We still don't know the save will work from within a Realm itself, or only in-between, but we are working on it while also being mindful about possible save loop holes.
Stats and achievements menu
The Nexus computer will expand with two new registries.
You will be able to review your achievement progress (which is likely more useful on platforms where achievements are not available), and also check some stats about your save (e.g. games played, Judges beaten, etc.).
More options and quality of life improvements
We will be introducing new settings, like the possibility to disable the dynamic music system and force the game to either be chill, and battling every times.
We're also always looking into enhancing accessibility and will add an options to reduce flashes.
You have been many to suggest more comfort at some specific places, so we're going to try providing more quality of life improvements here and there. For instance, we're going to add a confirmation before restarting or going back to the Tree. We're also going to make where you can find each computer log clear, among other things.
This v1.50 update is expected to arrive before the end of the year. Once we're all set and comfortable with this new update, we will study what's in our power to add to the game!
Stay safe! Thomas
Version 1.44 is out with fixes!
Hey Bringers!
Woooo, the release out of Early Access has been quite some work for us! We hope that you are enjoying your stay.
We spent the week monitoring your feedback and chasing a few pesky bugs.
We will come back later to you with responses to feedback. For instance, we would like to propose a new difficulty mode for players who could spare a boost, and continue to polish the game with new menus/modes, more flexible saving, balancing, and stuff! Once the main concerns have been addressed, we'll assess the demand of new content.
But today, we're interested in the game update 1.44 which just came out (and you have noticed a couple other patches these past few days). This update is mainly targeted at removing a soft-lock in Realm 6.
For your interest, here are the cumulative patch notes since the release.
Changes:
Fury will not target enemies which are currently exploding
Fury cooldown enhancements now are stepped to 7% (instead of 10%) and the cap is now 70% (instead of 50%)
Blood Bullet cursed altar has been boosted to 100% damage (instead of 50%)
Fixes:
Fixes Teleporting Blood Sentinel staying blocked in its explosion and soft-locking the game
Fixes game freezing on Nintendo Switch when encountering Realm 6 prisms (v1.0.3)
Fixes Cursed Second Wind preventing to restart or exit the game once
Fixes weapon mods dropping even though the current weapons has no free slot
Fixes Original Crab-bot and Ignis inflicting damage upon touch while they attack
Fixes player and enemies disappearing when using the Fury on the Primordial Ignis or Splat-fly Nest
Fixes Unsettling mod not resetting properly
Fixes some typos
Fixes a visual glitch in Realm 5
Fixes a crash on Nintendo Switch when rapidly undocking and plugging joycons at the same time (v1.0.4)
Fixes Jumping Challenge being active during a specific dialog
We cannot believe it, to be honest. ScourgeBringer is officially out of Early Access.
We also want to take a moment to thank the entire community for being amazing all throughout early Alpha all the way up to this point. We couldn’t have done it without your support and we are so grateful for that.
Alright, let’s get to the meat of it.
Here are the full patch notes of this update:
New:
Content: A new secret Realm with own twist and enemies: The Beyond which includes:
2 dedicated bosses
8 dedicated enemies (with 4 alpha variants)
1 dedicated mini-boss
Lots of new enemies to existing Realms:
8 new mini-bosses
5 new enemies
Secret rooms A mysterious altar where the sacrifice your Judge Blood. What will happen? 3 different endings 13 new achievements
Hard mode:
Added a whole new post-game content: The Chaos Roots (which unlocks by beating the Ordeal once)
Game modifiers: 10 modifiers to tweak your own challenge within the Chaos Roots
Difficulty: tweak the difficulty of enemy waves
Blood: tweak the amount of blood dropped
Enemies: tweak the aggressivity of enemies and bosses
Realms: tweak the size of Realms
Max HP: tweak the maximum starting HP
HP: tweak the health items drop rate
Challenges:
Oppression: enemy waves start to appear before the previous one has been cleaned
Danger: traps will deal more than 1 HP of damage
Jump: staying on ground for more than 1 second will inflict damage
Escalation: for each beaten Realm, each inflicted damage is increase by 1
Gameplay:
Enemies now have a family type (among organic, construct, and devil)
Enemies now have resistance to specific attacks depending on their type (e.g. constructs will resist to bullets)
Added visual feedback above Kyhra when bonuses are looted to display the total bonus without having to look at the map
Shops:
New shop type: weapon shop
New shop type: cursed shop
Weapons:
Revamped weapon system which now supports BLAST.32 modifications
Weapon modifications can be dropped or bought at shops
New weapons: big laser, refract laser, big grenade, multi grenade, double gun
Blessings:
Added 11 cursed Blessings:
CURSED DRAGON PUNCH: Bullets deflected by Dragon Punch will target enemies, but its cooldown is increased by 50%
CURSED SECOND WIND: Upon reaching 0 HP, you are saved and get back 34% of your max HP, but lose all of your Blessings
CURSED GLASS CANNON: Lose 50% of your max HP, but deal 50% more sword damage
CURSED SMASH: Instead of reflecting bullets, the Smash will refill BLAST.32 reload energy upon hitting bullets
CURSED HIT: Depending on your current luck, you may not lose any HP upon getting hit, but you'll lose 2 HP otherwise
CURSED TRANSMUTATION: Convert all the Judge Blood aquired during this run into normal Blood (1 to 1000)
CURSED VITALITY: Lose 67% of your max HP and health items have no effect anymore, but you gain 1 HP every 1000 Blood collected
CURSED DEAL: Get back 50% of your HP, but your weapon will be replaced with the default revolver with no mods
CURSED WEAPON: Upgrades your weapon into a maxed out weapon of the same type, but you'll lose 50% max HP
CURSED MOD: Weapon mod effects are 50% stronger, but weapon damage are 50% weaker
CURSED AMMO: Each fired bullet also consume 200 Blood, but is 50% more powerful
Added 8 more normal Blessings:
HIGH CONFIDENCE: BLAST.32 deals 5% more damage per room cleared without getting hit. Resets if hit, and capped to 50%
INSTANT MOD: Adds a random mod to your current weapon (or replaces one if the weapon is maxed out)
BLOOD FAVOR: Deal 5% more damage for every 1000 Blood you hold on to (capped to 50%)
TOP PREDATOR: When on max HP, all damages are increased by 50%
LAST STAND: When you have 1 HP left, all damages are increased by 50%
KEEP ROLLING: Smashing shop items doesn't increase their cost
FASTER DRAGON: Reduces the cooldown of Dragon Punch by 50%
LARGER SMASH: Increases the reach of the Smash
Blessings which have a progression now have a progression bar under their icon
Items:
Added Shield and Strong Shield, which allows to get hit without loosing HP once or twice
Items now have rarity ratings
Added a set of super rare items that can be obtained only with some Blessings or skills
Settings:
The right stick manual aim is now disabled by default (this was misleading because the game is designed to work with the auto aim and some players were struggling because they felt using the stick was the intended way to play)
We added an option (in controls) to manually enable the right stick aim, and added an option to only aim (not fire)
Lore:
More log files have been added and now only drops in specific Realms
New mysteries have been added
Two new NPCs
Changes:
Difficulty:
Difficult rooms are now less likely
Difficult rooms will now have 2 waves instead of 3
Challenge rooms are now more challenging
Gameplay:
Some Realms will now require to beat more than one mini-boss to unlock the boss door
BLAST.32 reload energy is now capped to the number of missing bullets (it is not possible anymore to have a full clip loaded ahead)
Added some juice to canceling bullets with the smash when the player doesn't have Lethal Club skill
Weapons drop rates are now bound to each Realm (i.e. the more you progress, the rarer the weapons)
Reduced the occurrence of harder rooms in normal runs
Changed the icon of the Fury recharge bonus to be more relatable
Skills:
Bet: smashing shop items will now yields items of the same family (health will reroll into health, etc.), and the more you smash an item, the more rare it'll get (up to a rotation of 3 items, after which the rotation will come back to the original item, while keeping the price increase)
Living Dangerously: if an item can't be upgraded, it will now be converted into 25% of its blood value
Determination: now also recharges the Fury
Blessings:
Laid Down Arms: has been removed because it didn't make much sense with the new weapon/shop system
Items:
Bubblegum, Suspicious Shroom, and Blue Pill items have been removed from the game because they felt too underwhelming
Removed max ammo items because they didn't add much to the gameplay and made things more bloated
Shops will now always propose at least a normal item and an upgraded item
Power Pack and Force Pack have been removed from shops
Energy Bar will now drop randomly in rooms
Health related items drop rates have been rebalanced to drop less +MAX HP
Items now have background colors corresponding to their family
Weapons:
Drops and shops will no more propose the same weapon as the currently equipped weapon
Stun weapons have been removed from the game
Challenge rooms:
An Ammo Crate is now guaranteed to drop upon completing a Challenge room
Lore:
All the texts have been rewritten to be smoother and more comprehensive, while also adding a new reading layers for players reaching the post-game
All logs have been rewritten and some of them will now only drop in specific Realms
Sounds:
All music have been finilized and masterized
All sounds have been masterized
Engine:
A lot of optimizations have been made to use less GPU memory (this should make GPU with 512MB or less of memory to run way smoother)
Optimized loadings for faster and more efficient data handling
Fixes:
Fixes defaulting controls mapping isn't applied in game
Fixes game resuming from pause while settings menu still visible if closed with the start button
Fixes ammo and reload energy bar going too high into the Blessing and HP UI
Fixes Gyroscopic Compass not working in Challenge rooms
Fixes a very rare crash when starting the game in Chinese, Japanese, or Korean
Fixes Laid Down Arms blessing not being active in Challenge rooms
Fixes exploding bullets still exploding on the player when smash without Lethal Club
Fixes Nightweaver being targetable by the Fury when it is off-screen
Fixes Smashing items doesn't allow to choose which item is smashed
Fixes Smashing computer and logs
Fixes Crystalization culminating with Starting Package Fixes flies looping their attack sound Fixes unwanted presence of crude words Fixes dropped items going through doors (and possibly warping into the void) Fixes dash direction not following the mouse aim when sticked on a wall Fixes typos
New post-game content
Hello everyone,
Following our previous posts on the new content and the system changes, we wanted to share with you what some of the “end game” can look like with ScourgeBringer.
Once you complete the main game by beating the Ordeal once, you can unlock what we call “The Chaos Root”.
In this, there will be 10 modifiers that can tweak your own challenge within this place. - Blood: tweak the amount of blood dropped - Enemies: tweak the aggressivity of enemies and bosses - Realms: tweak the size of Realms - Max HP: tweak the maximum starting HP - HP: tweak the health items drop rate
- Challenges: - Oppression: enemy waves start to appear before the previous one has been cleaned - Danger: traps will deal more than 1 HP of damage - Jump: staying on ground for more than 1 second will inflict damage - Escalation: for each beaten Realm, each inflicted damage is increase by 1
Beside these hefty challenges, we also revisited the early game difficulty by hopefully smoothing it out for a more welcome introduction into the ScourgeBringer.
Beyond all of this new content, we also focused on polishing other aspects of the games. For instance, the lore and logs have been fully refreshed and enhanced for a more compelling involvement in the story. New mysteries will await you…
In our pursue of improvements, small things also got a boost, like quality of improvements such as quick bonus feedback (it’s in the small things, right?):
Pfeww, that was a lot. We’re now all geared up for the release!
See you in two days for the full release of ScourgeBringer!
As always, feel free to join our Discord and enjoy hanging out with us :)
Launch Party Inbound!
Hello everyone, Can you tell we’re releasing a game soon? :P
Thomas will be joined by Florian (ScourgeBringer artist) Joonas Turner (musician), Pia (writer), Adrien (ScourgeBringer comic artist) and myself!
The current plan is:
19:00 to 20:00 - free talk / game presentation 20:00 to 22:00 - Joonas comments on the soundtrack, live play
It’ll be iconic.
We hope to see you all there!
As always, feel free to join our Discord and enjoy hanging out with us :)
Gameplay enhancements
Hello there,
Along with the new content we described yesterday, we made a ton of changes to the game’s core for the upcoming October 21st release!
To add more diversity, we revamped the weapon system which can be customized with modificators. Ever wished for a crazy bouncing laser?
For the weapon to get also more incentive to be used, we are introducing resistances to some enemies. Some will be resistant to smash attacks, and enemies will now have a type (e.g. creatures, devils, and constructs) with specific weapon mods to go against them.
The item system also got a treatment and each of them will have a rarity grade, and obtaining the rarest ones will require to find secrets or use the advanced bargain skills at your disposal. We are also introducing two new NPC with our shop!
Welcome Xip’os, who are selling weapon mods and upgraded weapons.
And also Lefanu, who is opening its… cursed shop which demands your own HP to get already upgraded items.
To close on today’s post, let’s show off some of the new weapons we made to make them more appealing! Here comes the difract laser, and the cross grenade launcher!
See you on Monday for news about the post-game content and revised difficulty!
As always, feel free to join our Discord and enjoy hanging out with us :)
New Realm: The Beyond
Hello everyone, We wanted to share with you some news about the New Realm and what can be expected to drop alongside the full game on October 21st!
In addition to all the content you’ve seen before, we have also added in… a new secret realm.
This realm is called The Beyond, and it will feature 2 dedicated bosses, 8 new enemies with 4 alpha variants, and 1 dedicated mini-boss.
There are 13 new achievements as well as 3 different endings you can get.
We are introducing cursed blessings, 11 of them!
But wait, there’s more! There will also be new normal blessings, and we revisited previously released content by introducing new normal enemies, and 8 new mini bosses! Some realms will have up to 3 mini bosses required to open the boss door.
There are also some secret rooms and a mysterious altar where you sacrifice your Judge Blood.
See you tomorrow for details about what we changed to the weapon system and more!
As always, feel free to join our Discord and enjoy hanging out with us :)
New trailer and bonus content
We’re just days away from our October 21st release date, and we have a lot to share before then. Thanks again to everyone who has supported us along the way, we could not have done it without you.
Over the next few days, we will detail all the new and changed content coming to the full release!
But today we wanted to share with you our new trailer, which is very punchy and shiny!
Enjoy the madness: [previewyoutube="PPaLBk3lxrw;full"]
Additionally, we’re announcing bonus content which will also be available on October 21st. We will introduce a Supporter Bundle, which will contain the following: - The game itself; - The Supporter Pack, which contains an exclusive 12-page prequel comic, 20 early prototypes, and a dozen of artwork; - The Original Soundtrack from Joonas Turner.
Note: each item will also be available separately! And if you want the bundle but already owns the game, a discounted option will also be there for you.
See you very soon with more details about the full release content and changes!
As always, feel free to join our Discord and enjoy hanging out with us :)
Last Sale Before Price Increases!
Hello Fated Ones,
We hope you are doing well. We are making our swift way to our release (October 21st!), we also wanted to announce that we will be raising our price around that same time (from $14.99 to $16.99).
As such, we want to put ScourgeBringer on sale one last time before the base price is raised. It’s a good time to pick up ScourgeBringer if it’s been on your wishlist. It is 20% off until Monday evening.
[previewyoutube="NKbUqj8vJdo;full"]
Thomas had a great AMA in case you missed it, where he discusses more about the game and was quickly answering everyone’s questions. If you want any more questions answered, feel free to head on over to our Discord via #questions-for-the-devs: https://discord.gg/flyingoak
In addition, Thomas talks about all the upcoming features and details to expect for the upcoming full release content. We strongly encourage you to have a look there, to get a feel for what you can expect soon.
As always, we’re so appreciative of this community and we are working so hard to prepare a great game for you!
Feel free to join our Discord regardless and enjoy hanging out with us :)
We can hardly believe it, but the time is almost here! ScourgeBringer will be officially released on October 21, 2020.
ScourgeBringer 1.0 will come packed with new stuff: - The Beyond: a new secret Realm, with not one, but two new bosses - Chaos Roots: a new post-game mode, with a bunch of run modifiers to spice up your game - System revamps: a new gun modification systems with weapon mods; a revamped item system, with new stuff like shields - Story reshaped: rewritten dialogs, rewritten (and new) logs, more lore, and of course endings - New shops and NPCs: get weapon upgrades, or pay with your own HP for cool items, and meet new Greed's acolytes - New content to previous worlds: new mini bosses for more diversity, new blessings - Secret rooms: will you find them?
After 130 weeks of development, 30 weeks of Steam early Access, 4 updates and 150 pizzas, we can hardly believe the date is almost upon us. We couldn't have done it without the support of our amazing community. Thanks to the countless feedback, fanarts, and laughs we've had along the way.
