Ziggurat
15,000 community members!
To celebrate we're giving two Steam keys for the game (They will be in the first comment of this announcement).
It's been a few weeks without updates, and we're sorry for that! We're currently working on some internals and it has taken more time than expected, but we intend to release a bugfix/balancing release next week.
Update #7: Bugfixes, new room modifiers and boss balancing
- Boss balancing:
- King Blob: Decreased speed and damage of the rotating attack.
- Gunkarr: Decreased damage of the jump attack.
- Audrey: Reduced tentacles health, damage and projectile speed.
- Poloko: The shockwave attack is easier to dodge and deals less damage.
- Adam: Increased damage and range of the fire column attack.
- Percival: Decreased delay before the predictive grenade lob.
- King Blob: Decreased speed and damage of the rotating attack.
- Added new room modifiers: Hiccups, Lights Out, Nostalgia, Behemoth, Juggernaut, Wet floor, Sixth sense, Numb.
- Released in a previous hotfix: Fallback shaders for some particle effects
- Improved a bit CPU usage of audio loops.
- Fixed some sounds being heard even when volume is set to 0.
- Fixed some attacks being done even when the enemy is frozen.
- Updated Unity to latest version,
- should* help with random Mac OSX crashes.
- Fixed mouse cursor being shown right after killing the final boss.
- Fixed minor issue with the wave bar on obelisk rooms.
Ziggurat Update #6: Minor bugfixes and balancing
- Improved russian font title and fixed the intro texts
- Fixed Lady Audrey tentacles not spawning in valid places
- Novice can now be unlocked by using all wands, not just the Apprentice's one.
- Fixed frostbow icon not showing when out of mana
- Added a setting to disable enemy highlights
- Fixed a rare bug with obelisk rooms getting to an unwinnable state.
- Lady Audrey balancing: Reduced damage and fire rate of tentacles.
Also, during the Steam christmas sale, you can get the game with a 20% discount, a perfect chance to gift it to your friends! ;)
Update #5: New boss and minor improvements
- New Floor 2 boss: Audrey.
- The last 3 enemies of a wave are highlighted when behind walls and far away.
- Weapon balancing:
- Nikola's Surge: Damage +40%. Mana usage +25%
- Bloodthirst Needles: Damage -10%
- Butterflies: Mana usage +20%, Damage -10%, Butterfly fly time + 50%
- Crossbow: Increased freeze chance
- Freeze bombs: 100% freeze chance. Decreased damage on impact. Increased spike time.
- Shaman wand: Mana usage -10%
- Alchemist wand: Damage -33% Mana usage -50%
- Nikola's Surge: Damage +40%. Mana usage +25%
- Changed savegame deletion policy. Saved games are only deleted when you resume, or when you use Save & Quit again. This way you can for example pause an Endless play, and still play standard games without having to resume or lose progress.
- Changed default gamepad mappings: Upgrade is set to X button, and Y button is set to "Last weapon". This should better match usual FPS gamepad controls.
- Auto aim behavior disabled/modified for certain weapons. For example, Serpent staff projectiles won't hit where you are actually aiming, so auto aim is disabled for it.
- Changed the image for the bad ending.
- Game mode is shown in the map screen.
- Fixed wave not ending at the proper time when the Carrot Rain / Necromancy modifiers were active
- Fixed crash when resuming a game with the Magic binding perk applied
- Fixed crossbow projectile not being rendered
- Shrine effects are now checked, so effects such as "Lose Amulet" or "Amulet recharged" don't appear if they wouldn't have any effect.
- Fixed some minor typos
- Added Russian and Italian languages
- The default language is automatically detected (instead of always defaulting to English)
Ziggurat awarded "Best gameplay" in HóPlay 2014
We're very proud of getting this award, as we think it's the most important category, the one that separates videogames of other audiovisual productions :)
You can see here a group picture of the winners, as well as the winners for the other categories: http://hoplaybilbao.com/en/ganadores/ Alejandro González/WaaghMan is the one on the lower right!
Update #4: New weapons, room modifiers, and balancing
- 6 New weapons (2 of each category)
- 10 New random combat modifiers such as Piñata, Tea party or Necromancy.
- Added optional Auto aim setting (Disabled by default).
- Balancing changes:
- Perk Husk: Seriously nerfed.
- Perk Avarice: Drop rate isn't reduced as much
- Perk Bloodlust: Reduced effectiveness by 20%
- Perk Thick Skin: Reduced effectiveness by ~40%
- Perk Mana Shield: Doubled mana cost
- Perk Loan Shark: Nerfed a bit
- Perk Turtle: Reduced the effect (both damage received and inflicted)
- Perk Revenge: Reduced shockwave radius
- Divine gift - Extra protection: Reduced effectiveness by ~25%
- Endless mode: Greater enemy damage boost
- Perk Husk: Seriously nerfed.
- Fixed some characters not being properly unlocked if you won the game
- Fixed Initial character Level 5 perks appearing again when resuming a game.
- Fixed FPS drops when using keyboard and gamepad at the same time.
- Enemies exiting the room bounds for whatever reason are automatically killed.
Update #3: The Big Content update
- New unlockable Endless mode, with gameplay variations to ensure fun, varied and challenging gameplay for hours (if you manage to survive).
- New room theme for Floor 2: The Quarry.
- New enemy: Rotten stem
- Added French and German languages
- Balancing changes:
- Shielded Skeletons: Fixed attack animations, reduced damage and attack distance.
- Poloko: Reduced regeneration when spawning enemies, reduced number of carrots spawned.
- Gunkarr: Reduced close quarters attack range
- King Blob: Reduced attack damage
- Adam: Increased number of small golems spawned, increased grenade speed
- Ignus: Reduced number of minions spawned, reduced flame duration
- Examiner Cepheus: Increased health
- Necromancer: Increased threat value, reduced number of spawned skeletons
- Slime: Reduced threat value
- Basilisk: Reduced threat value
- Carrots: Reduced threat value
- Shaman: Reduced shot damage
- Green slime: Reduced shot damage
- Scarab Beetle Staff: Increased damage
- Staff of Atlantis: Increased fire rate
- Sphere of Ulthar: Increased damage
- Porcupine Bomb: Increased mana usage
- Increased poison damage rate, reduced poison state duration (so you can deal more damage with poison weapons as long as you keep poisoning them)
- Wraith rings: Reduced vertical spread, increased homing distance
- Reduced duration of damage over time when you exit the damage source (In other words, lava deals less damage if you quickly jump outside it).
- Shielded Skeletons: Fixed attack animations, reduced damage and attack distance.
- The game should start at the configured resolution now.
- Fixed player perks appearing twice.
- Done some improvements that reduced the project size, and probably memory footprint.
- Rewards on treasure rooms shouldn't come out flying anymore
- Monsters on obelisk rooms no longer drop score goblets (so you can't farm them)
- Demon: Fixed some animation issues
- Should have fixed Stuttering some people were experiencing.
- Fixed water reflections being white from time to time.
- Fixed Scaredy cat perk effects stacking
- Fixed Mudblood achievement unlocking when loading a game.
- Fixed some achievement conditions not unlocking when playing a resumed game.
- Prevented some cockatrices with speed boost from jumping too high.
- You are shown an unlocked item for new game modes when winning the game.
- Should have improved a bit performance and visual quality for Low/Lowest settings.
- Fixed bad behavior with Magic Binding perk
- And plenty of other minor improvements
Update #2.1: Hotfixes and an apology
- Fixed new room issues (pathfinding, door, holes, monster spawns)
- Fixed Shield Skeleton not having an attack animation
- Fixed minor issues with destructible objects
This wouldn't be usually enough to do an announcement, and would be just a post in the forums, but we wanted to do an apology for releasing an update with so many problems.
We also wanted to thank you for being nice and reporting them so quickly. There's no way we would have managed to fix everything in just one day if not for your help.
Update #2: More rooms, new perks, bugfixes!
- Added plenty of new rooms (more than 15). These ones have more verticality than usual.
- Added lots of new perks, making a total of 100 different perks available.
- Changed unlock system to guarantee a new weapon if you unlock at least 3 items, and a new amulet if you unlock 5 items.
- Fixed Mirror of Fate perk breaking saved games.
- "Clear saved data" also clears game stats now.
- Changed shielded skeletons attack pattern, so they aren't as tedious to kill.
- Changed Easy Peasy achievement requirements (now it's easier to get)
- Now Sound effects volume setting doesn't apply to music
- Added a Smooth Mouse option in Control settings.
- Other minor bugfixes and improvements
For next update, if all goes well, we plan to add a new enemy, a new room theme, and the promised Endless mode.
Update #1: New enemy, bugfixes and improvements!
- New enemy: Ulmar fish
- Fixed perks not appearing in the upgrade screen when reaching a certain level
- Now you can map mouse buttons over third.
- Now you can map mouse buttons to movement
- Changed the way input mapping is done, now you don't need to map all 4 directions for movement.
- Shrines show the amount of health/mana you need to pay
- Changed and improved room culling performance, the game should be a bit smoother (we're still looking into the stuttering issue some users are having)
- HUD should be shown on the center screen on 3 monitor setups.