11 Sep 2026Developer post

Pigeons at Devlog 9/11/26

Howdy Last week i spent a few hours tracking down a crash that sometimes happens when exiting to the main menu. With most crashes, I can find the cause pretty easily by having the game write to the log file at specific points so I can see exactly where it fails (or if I’m really

Howdy

Last week i spent a few hours tracking down a crash that sometimes happens when exiting to the main menu. With most crashes, I can find the cause pretty easily by having the game write to the log file at specific points so I can see exactly where it fails (or if I’m really lucky, the log will already have an error from whatever caused the crash).

No such luck this time. The menu initialized just fine - it was only a few frames after loading the menu that the crash actually occurred. I made a special build of the game with a loop that infinitely hosts, returns to the menu, and hosts again, because my fingers were getting tired. When the crash finally happened, I opened the Windows Event Viewer (amazing UI, I know) to find this:

Turns out, the crash was triggering from the discord sdk, which means I messed something up in our voice chat implementation. Due to some stupidity on my end , the voice chat call wasn’t ended for a moment after leaving a lobby, but the discord voice lobby associated with the in-game lobby was left, so the call was trying to access memory that the lobby had already freed.

In the end, all I had to do was reorder a few lines of code.

Infusion Changes

I’ve been working on a big change coming to pattern infusion - in 1.0 most upgrade stats will be affected by the size of their upgrade patterns. This helps balance out being able to make large upgrades a lot smaller, but it also buffs upgrades if you infuse a larger pattern into them, which should make for some interesting build choices. Upgrades whose stats depend on surrounding cells aren’t affected by this change.

-Liam

Grabbing This Little Goober

Recently I’ve been making some new fungifal effects, and everything’s gotta get tested somehow…

This snippet is only a small part of a much larger effect that will attach to several different things at a time. On the technical side of things, the system uses a buffer, a container for data that keeps track of targets, their size, and their position to dictate how many tendrils to make, and where they should go (currently this buffer only contains a single Roachard).

When it comes to effects like this, I want them to feel very tactile to capture the fear (or other emotion…) that many grabbing tentacles might evoke. For me this translates into a lot of whipping motion when they attach, and wiggling with ‘strain’ to give the illusion of tension. The physics here are completely faked however, unlike a similar effect: the line on Scrapper’s Grapple Pole. In the case of the grappling line, it’s of very little consequence what happens to it after it’s released, which gives us the luxury of that super elastic spring & reeling motion. For these tentacles though, which will be very numerous and provide valuable information to the player, I don’t want to be meeting a physics system in the middle. Even if that means more effort towards an incredibly similar (and potentially stiffer) result, in my opinion it’s always worth knowing how and when to fake your physics for the sake of getting the player the information they need.

We’re working very hard on 1.0, which is beyond exciting for all of us. But as much as I’d like to gush about all the cool new stuff we’re working on, I believe it’s all best left behind the curtain for now…

-Noah

Original post

02 Sep 2026Developer post

1.10.2

Fixed a crash that sometimes occurred when returning to the main menu Fixed an issue with how POIs and side objectives were sorted Autocannons won’t spawn in the tutorial mission Fixed popup info being allowed to clip off the sides of the screen Fixed a missing face in one of the

27 Aug 2026Developer post

1.10.1

Fixed an issue where certain skins would sometimes not appear when selecting a skin at Lottery Larry (most often with Skeletal Ghost skins) Also fixed an issue where Larry would only give Skeletal Ghost skins with Entombed, which is only supposed to come from ghost skins that dro

25 Aug 2026Developer post

MAJOR UPDATE - FREEZE & FESTER

Hey gang, Roachard here. Saxon's opened up another region of New Atlas for y'all. Apparently there's a new threat down there that keeps freezin' other hazard crews to death. They've nicknamed it John. I'll stay all cozy up here with my Saxitos. >> END TRANSMISSION New Regio

Hey gang, Roachard here.

Saxon's opened up another region of New Atlas for y'all. Apparently there's a new threat down there that keeps freezin' other hazard crews to death. They've nicknamed it John. I'll stay all cozy up here with my Saxitos.

>> END TRANSMISSION

Watch on YouTube

New Region - The Swamp

Saxon has opened up another region of New Atlas to Hazard Crews! The Swamp is a more temperate region with caves, industrial pipelines, and verdant forests.

Cryo

CRYO IS FINALLY HERE! We’re kinda soft launching cryo to get a better idea of how it plays with the rest of the sandbox before the Cryo Grenade comes in 1.0!
For now we’ve added a variant of the exploding barrel enemy that freezes everything around it.
And…

Cryo Upgrades

4 special cryo upgrades that can be equipped on any employee! These upgrades are like new abilities and only one can be equipped at a time.
So where can you get these? Keep an eye out for a mound of ice in the Swamp and Ice Floes. For this update, the ice mound always spawns in the Swamp.

Lottery Larry

Lottery Larry has arrived in the HUB! He lets you get new random rolls of specific skins.

Controller

Added aim assist when playing with a controller (can be disabled in the control options)
Menus can now be navigated with the dpad on controller. You can still switch the floating cursor by moving either stick.
Improved Blitseg controls - Left stick controls movement, right trigger is boost, and left trigger is drift
The cargo screen for requesting vehicles and extraction is now a toggle when using a controller, and is also navigated with the dpad. When the cargo screen is open, you can call the drop pod by pressing the right trigger even when the drop pod button isn’t selected.
Lowered the trigger threshold for firing weapons
Fixed an issue where binding a key to a controller-agnostic button wouldn’t work when switching to a different controller. Like if you bound jump to triangle on a playstation controller you wouldn’t be able to jump with Y on an xbox controller. Now you CAN.

The Fungal Moon

Replaced the tutorial with a new intro mission! It’s cooler and better.

Optimization

Optimized refreshing upgrades to get rid of the big lag spike when dismantling or opening an upgrade screen especially in Ouroboros
Changed how audio is loaded to make the game start faster and use less memory

Upgrades

Fixed an issue with the calculation for reduced efficiency of stacked multiplicative stats. Upgrades like Sawed Off should increase spread less as you stack more of them, but instead they would begin to decrease spread after stacking more than two.
(Gunship Cannon) Sawed Off doesn’t increase spread as much when stacking it
(Lead Flinger) Lucky Last was accidentally always setting the explosion size to the same values, regardless of what was shown for its stats. This is now fixed and the displayed stats have been changed to reflect the actual values being used.
(Bruiser) Enemies no longer dig in and out of the Hard-Light Prison
(Swarm Launcher) Decreased Scatterburst fire rate when you have enough ammo to fire multiple shots
(Swarm Launcher) Reversed the min/max values of Wait Charging’s duration stat so that the better value is the max
(Shocklance) Fixed an issue where Ready and Waiting’s hud element could incorrectly move to the right when switching characters or weapons
(Globbler x Photon Disc) Globulous Siphon now works correctly when Bullet Time is equipped on your Photon Disc
(Acid Grenade) Fixed an issue where you could clip outside of the level bounds with Lightspeed Material Transfer
Updated the descriptions of the following upgrades to display your bound action key instead of the name of the action (i.e. “hold RELOAD” is changed to “hold R”)
- Overload Contingency, Energy Convergence, Molotov, Pummeler, Munition Siphon, Portable Solar Array, Ballistic Charger, Tinderbox, Frantic Fingers, Residue, Practice Makes Perfect

Vehicles

Personal vehicles can be summoned instantly with a cool warp-in effect
Vehicles won’t damage you as you exit them

Enemies

Enemy missiles don’t travel faster on higher threats
Improved how global enemy intensity works. Instead of always being inundated by enemies, hostile waves will gradually increase in size until reaching max intensity, after which they reset to the smallest size and begin to increase again.
Fixed being able to damage an enemy’s core through its shells if all shells were still alive but its shield neck had been destroyed

Other Stuff

Fixed an issue where the flamethrower sound could continue playing indefinitely if you held right click as your Jackrabbit was being replaced with another weapon
Changed the borders around equipped upgrades so they don’t overlap in list view
Some grenade upgrades change the grenade’s HUD icon
Some VFX will now start half-way finished if they appear right on top of you
- Affected systems include: most explosions, limb deaths, enemy core deaths, and elemental death puffs
Status VFX & their death puffs now fade out when close to the camera
Wrangler has new VFX for his Air Dash
- Also added to Glider’s ‘Course Correction’ and Scrapper’s ‘Impulse Vault’
- A few of Wrangler’s upgrades like Through Hell will also augment/supplement the dash effect
Shocklance’s Crystalline skin is correctly marked as Epic
Added employee ability icons/descriptions to the inventory screen
Fixed incorrect colliders on the Gravity Farm launch pads
Added proper texturing and some VFX to the Text Logs you can find around the world
New team revive screen effect
Fixed an issue where your character would rotate for other players if you looked around while in a third person emote, even though it wasn’t rotating for you
Opening a locked bunker counts as a side objective completion
Added different ambient audio when you’re inside the Incursion facility
The upgrade grid does a much better job of detecting which hexagon you’re actually hovering over
Fixed lost resources being obtainable at the lost loot terminal if you were already maxed out on the resource
Moved keybindings to their own settings tab
The bullet cart in the hub recharges ability cooldowns granted by upgrades
The profile select popup shows your player level on each profile you’ve played on (the level won’t appear until you switch to the profile at least once)
Fixed an issue where the color of your HUD cooldowns wouldn’t immediately update after switching employees
Fixed an issue where certain employee voicelines for grouping up or ending a mission weren’t playing for the host player
Saxonite Transport barrels can be respawned from the cargo pod screen if they get stuck
Fixed an issue where the meteorite side objective could spawn on top of you if you were standing in a non-navigable location (like on top of the Saxonite Transport rocket)
Stopped the arm animation from playing when Bruiser’s Shield Projector is activated from the Acid Grenade’s Connected Systems upgrade
The locked bunker wasn’t checking a large enough radius for other objects before spawning in a procedural level, which could let it spawn too close to mission areas like the Saxonite Transport truck path. Now it checks a larger area!
Fixed an issue that could rarely turn the Cycler skin into a NaN emitter
- NaNs are numbers that aren’t a number. Division by zero returns NaN, which usually turns shaders very white and very black. We were dividing by zero. If you ever saw your Cycler turn into a singularity, this is why.
Ouroboros shops will try to face away from walls if they spawn too close to a surface
Infusing an upgrade now unequips it so it doesn’t cause other upgrades to unequip when its pattern changes
Employees are shown at the top of the codex list
Fixed rain particles being invisible

Original post

19 Aug 2026Developer post

Pigeons at Devlog 8/19/26 - Cryo

We’ve been working on a cryo element for a while, and before our August update we wanted to write up a post about what to expect from cryo in this update and then in 1.0. So this is that! The August update is sort of a soft-launch of cryo so we have time to work out any balance i

We’ve been working on a cryo element for a while, and before our August update we wanted to write up a post about what to expect from cryo in this update and then in 1.0. So this is that!

The August update is sort of a soft-launch of cryo so we have time to work out any balance issues or bugs before 1.0. We’ll be adding:

The cryo element (duh)
Four cryo-themed employee upgrades
A cryo exploder enemy

The full power of cryo will be unleased in 1.0 with a new grenade! It’s not done yet so you can’t have it.

Freezing and Shattering

When cryo is fully applied to a target, it becomes frozen. Frozen enemies are locked in place, and freezing specific enemy parts like guns pacifies them. Frozen players can still move, but much slower than normal.

When a frozen target takes enough damage, it shatters, breaking free of the ice and taking a bunch of damage. Punching a frozen target usually shatters it instantly. It’s a lot of fun to hear the crunch of shattering a group of enemies simultaneously.

Cryo Upgrades

These new employee exotics are more like special abilities - they’re all activated effects and one can be equipped at a time.

Ice Cube

Hold Q to encase yourself in ice, freezing yourself and providing damage resistance. Jump out of the cube to create a cryo explosion and heal yourself based on how long you were encased.

Permafrost Wave

Hold Q to send out freezing spikes of ice in every direction.

Splinter Virus

Hold Q to freeze nearby targets who aren't frozen and instantly shatter nearby targets who are frozen.

Ice Skates

Hold Q to toggle Ice Skates, allowing you to move faster with less control.

Dev note: This one is so dumb but we’ve had a lot of fun sliding around uncontrollably with it.

So when can we freeze things?

You’ll be able to try out these upgrades for yourself when the Freeze & Fester update launches next week! This update isn’t as big as our last few because our focus now is on 1.0. If you didn’t see our last post with the 1.0 roadmap, you can check it out here.

Original post

31 Jul 2026Developer post

The Roadmap to 1.0

13 months ago we released Mycopunk into early access… It doesn’t feel that long, at least not to us, but our little game has changed a lot since then. We overhauled the UI, added the roguelike (I won’t call it roguelite, fight me) mode Ouroboros along with the Ice Floes, made two

24 Jul 2026Developer post

Pigeons at Devlog 7/24/26 - Grass & Moonlets

Grassy Grass Hello again! This week I have been working with a LOT of grass (for no particular reason), and so I thought it would be fun to go through some of the details with how we make the Myco-foliage. Much like the terrain, the grass is built with Modifier Objects. Each of t

Grassy Grass

Hello again!

This week I have been working with a LOT of grass (for no particular reason), and so I thought it would be fun to go through some of the details with how we make the Myco-foliage.

Much like the terrain, the grass is built with Modifier Objects. Each of these Objects has an array of Modifier layers that all stack on top of each other to create the final look.

These layers are incredibly multi-faceted, but all of it boils down to is changing the grass’s height, color, and texture based around some procedural noise maps. These noise maps don’t look especially natural on their own, which necessitates a lot of supplementary math to poke and prod it into something that eventually begins to look like a flower patch. The full available options for each layer look like this:

All this for one single layer? Doesn’t this get a bit overwhelming?

Haha yesh :3

The majority of these features were added in order to achieve a specific idea I had while I was working on the grass for the World Update. Height Masking in particular was added for the large pillars and canyons that generate in the Desert so that I could have different types of grass at high elevations.

I don’t want to go into all of these options with incredible depth, but I’ll write a bit about them to give you all a better idea of how they come together into the finished product:

Configuration

Mixing - The two override modes dictate what the modifier actually effects when it comes to the height and the color. Usually these are both set to ‘Mix’ which will do its best to blend them together, but they also have options for multiplying, overriding, and adding onto what’s already there. Effect Empty means it will also apply to spots without any grass, and Artistic Mix is a later addition which uses a different color mixing algorithm that works a bit more like mixing paints as opposed to computer mixed colors.

Noise - This is the most important part of a layer as it’s what will actually create the basic patterns that the grass will grow in. We currently use 4 different types of noise:

Increasing the Octaves means that the noise is sampled multiple times (adjusted by Lacunarity and Persistence, which change the size of the noise on subsequent passes, and how opaque the passes are). Power, Clip, and Remap are used to cut the noise off, and make it have a harder edge. So a layer with very high Clip and very low Power/Remap will create smaller patches with very hard edges and low Clip with high Power/Remap will make large soft sections.

Mask Interaction - One of the later additions were the masks, which define regions that other layers can access. So for example, I can make patches of grass that will set a mask which is then used by a bunch of flowers so that they’ll only grow inside those patches. Layers can also choose to only spawn outside of the mask, as well as create variants of existing maps by multiplying them, adding to them, or subtracting from them.

Height / Color - Yeah.

Type - Probably should’ve just called it ‘Texture.’

Warp - Used for applying some distortion to the original noise sample by using a noise sample of its own. This is incredibly useful for breaking up the patterns and making them look a tad less ‘mathy’ by giving them rougher edges and smearing them around. Here’s some Perlin noise warped by Cellular noise:

Height Masking - Cuts off the layer based on its height in the world, very useful for cliffs and canyons. The cool thing about this is that it can be combined with the other Masking options to create a single Mask that other layers can use to get the same results without my having to copy/paste all the Height Mask options.

Falloff - These options are used to customize how the grass behaves when I need it to be confined to a smaller area. As you may have noticed, a healthy amount of things that spawn in levels have their own types of grass that grow around them (especially the different mushrooms). These props have individual parameters for dictating the size, softness, and warping of the falloff field. This, in turn, necessitates some override options on the layers in order to give me some wiggle room.

Falloff fields are set up like this:

This object is unique since it has two whole modifiers on it, a smaller inner one for the glowing flecks around its base, and a larger one that creates an irradiated sub-biome in the area. The big blue/green indicators are used for gauging how large the areas are, as well as how soft they’ll be, which is set using the ‘Ratio’ slider. As you can see the larger one is set to 0.75, which means the smoothing starts 75% of the way to the edge, while the smaller one starts at 42.5%.

For those who might be curious: the largest single grass modifier is for the Tundra, which has different grass at high altitude, as well as two different biome variants at both altitudes. With a grand total of 44 layers, I present Tundra Moldy Fields:

Apparently I became rather spent towards the end of working on this one, but I am quite happy with the results…

The Dark Ages

To close this off, I should mention that this whole system was completely rebuilt for the new procedural terrain. This new grass runs entirely on the GPU, while the old version was built for the CPU and generates a pre-set file (over the course of several, very slow minutes) that it saves to the game files. Trying to generate these on the fly would’ve made the procedural levels simply not work.

Each of the layers in the old version had multiple noise layers that get mixed together, which was replaced by the Masking system to make it easier to work with. Another point of ease-of-use comes from the UI, as you can see here, I can only see a small area of it at a time which is not so fun. I would personally rather be overwhelmed than underwhelmed by my software, so I am incredibly happy with the improved version.

-Noah

A Moon of a Moon

I’ve been working on X11-B, a new region coming with 1.0 and a moon of New Atlas. Of course, New Atlas is itself a moon, so what do you call a moon’s moon? A moon, apparently. But we’ll call it a moonlet because that sounds better.

Moon shenanigans aside, X11-B is high difficulty area meant for your best builds. Enemies are tankier and deal more damage, and electromagnetic radiation storms periodically sweep across the moonlet, fizzling your abilities.

-Liam

Original post

16 Jul 2026Developer post

1.9.9

Fixed Pummeler’s fire rate stat being reversed Fixed Adaptive Stabilizer’s stats being reversed Controller: Movement deadzones apply to cursor movement Fixed an issue that prevented the voice chat push-to-talk binding from being changed on controller Opening the Ouroboros upgrade

10 Jul 2026Developer post

Pigeons at Devlog 7/10/26

Countering Projection Warping This little writeup is gonna be pretty technical, but I think it’s cool so too bad. Let’s say, hypothetically, New Atlas has a moon. We’ll call it a moonlet and toss it into orbit. Just one problem - perspective cameras warp geometry as it approaches

Countering Projection Warping

This little writeup is gonna be pretty technical, but I think it’s cool so too bad.

Let’s say, hypothetically, New Atlas has a moon. We’ll call it a moonlet and toss it into orbit. Just one problem - perspective cameras warp geometry as it approaches the edge of the screen, and an oblong moonlet looks dumb as hell.

We could make the camera 2D, but then the mission select skybox (an inverted sphere) covers everything. So how do we get a perspective camera to render an object without warping it?

New Atlas doesn’t have any visible warping because it’s right in the center of the camera’s view. Can we just render the moonlet in the center and then offset it back to its original position on the screen? As it turns out, yes we can!

The planet’s vertex shader runs once for each vertex on the sphere and outputs that point’s position relative to the sphere’s center. We basically want to ‘swing’ the sphere over to the camera so let’s start by transforming the vertex and center into view space (in view space all positions are relative to the camera, which lies at (0, 0, 0)). Trigger warning for some shader code:

// Transform object positions into view space float3 centerVS = mul(UNITY_MATRIX_MV, float4(0, 0, 0, 1)).xyz; float3 posVS = mul(UNITY_MATRIX_MV, float4(positionOS, 1)).xyz;

Then we calculate the angle needed to rotate the moonlet’s vertex from its current position to the camera’s origin. Sorry for the math.

// Direction from the camera to the sphere's center float3 from = normalize(centerVS);

// Camera's forward direction float3 to = float3(0, 0, -1);

// The cross product of 'from' and 'to' gives a vector that's perpendicular to both float3 axis = cross(from, to); float s = length(axis);

// The dot product tells us close 'from' and 'to' are to pointing the same direction float c = dot(from, to);

Now we do some dark magic to calculate a matrix that will rotate the vertex over to the camera’s center. This is Rodrigues' rotation formula. I don’t know how it works. Matrices scare me.

float3x3 rot = float3x3(1, 0, 0, 0, 1, 0, 0, 0, 1); if (s > 1e-5) { axis /= s; float3x3 k = float3x3( 0, -axis.z, axis.y, axis.z, 0, -axis.x, -axis.y, axis.x, 0); rot += s * k + (1 - c) * mul(k, k); }

// Apply the rotation to our vertex position float3 posRotVS = mul(rot, posVS);

// Transform it into clip space // Clip space is like half way between view space and screen space -_- float4 clip = mul(UNITY_MATRIX_P, float4(posRotVS, 1));

At this point, the planet tries to render in the center of the camera’s view no matter where it’s placed, but we want to move it back toward its original position. We can calculate how much we have offset it and use that to offset it back to where it ‘should’ be in clip space.

float4 clipCenterOrig = mul(UNITY_MATRIX_P, float4(centerVS, 1)); float4 clipCenterRot = mul(UNITY_MATRIX_P, float4(mul(rot, centerVS), 1));

float2 ndcOffset = clipCenterOrig.xy / clipCenterOrig.w - clipCenterRot.xy / clipCenterRot.w; clip.xy += ndcOffset * clip.w;

And now it works! Right? That doesn’t look right. It turns out that since we use its object position to map textures onto the planet and we’ve applied an ungodly warp to the planet’s position, the texture mapping doesn’t work anymore. Not to worry, we just need to use our original object position to map the textures.

Now it really works! It still has a tiny bit of warping, but that’s because we curve all the UI toward the edge of the screen after rendering.

And with that, X11-B renders correctly in the mission select screen. It’ll be open to visitors at 1.0.

-Liam

Explosions and Blood

There are a LOT of explosions in the game, which I feel like is a recurring problem when it comes to improving visibility in the game. These same issues also exist with the enemy death and limb destruction effects as well, which are very flashy and satisfying but can really get in the way — especially when using the Carver where they’ll be splashing in your face almost constantly.

I had previously solved this problem with first person versions of the explosions that won’t render in the center of your screen while you’re inside of them, but those are less performant, and more immersion breaking as it’s very obvious that they’re rendering weirdly for the purpose of a better view.

So what’s the solution?

Time manipulation :]

The method is rather straightforward: when an effect spawns too close to you, some parts of it will begin playing part of the way through, instead of playing from the very beginning. This is more prominent the closer an effect is to the camera so that (for example) at 4 meters away the effect will start 20% of the way through, and when it’s right on top of you it’ll start 40% of the way.

The end result looks like this:

For comparison, here’s what it used to look like (ft. Terry):

Pretty cool right? It’s a very small (and very easy) change that has a lot of payoff without looking super unnatural.

-Noah

Original post

09 Jul 2026Developer post

1.9.8

Fixed an issue where the Shocklance’s Storm’s Eye upgrade was displaying the wrong number for the stacking penalty on its damage stat Fixed an issue where the blue pipe in Moldy Tundra wouldn’t think all players were present in multiplayer Fixed an issue where firing a bunch of m

06 Jul 2026Developer post

1.9.7

Fixed a bug that let upgrades of different weapons be infused together if you selected both upgrades in the pattern infuser and then changed the bottom upgrade Fixed a bug that would make the pattern infuser show a different weapon each time you selected an upgrade to infuse into

03 Jul 2026Developer post

Pigeons at Devlog 7/3/26

Feeling Fulfilled I started working on Fulfillments, our in-game achievement system coming with 1.0! Many Fulfillments will reward a new type of cosmetic… HATS. We’ve only just begun experimenting with hats, but here’s Scrapper wearing a Scrapper hat: As it turns out, hats are (b

Feeling Fulfilled

I started working on Fulfillments, our in-game achievement system coming with 1.0! Many Fulfillments will reward a new type of cosmetic… HATS.

We’ve only just begun experimenting with hats, but here’s Scrapper wearing a Scrapper hat:

As it turns out, hats are (basically) just gun crabs on a player model. So that’s cool. I also extended our skin modifier system to work with hats. You can’t tell from the still picture, but I’m wearing a spectral scrapper hat which makes me feel important.

And we have a WIP look at the Fulfillment UI:

Vehicle Delivery

You know how you have to wait like three seconds for your Blitseg to land after calling it in? It feels like an eternity. An eternity of misery, hunger, and dread. With the next major update we’re making the Blitseg summon instantly. It’s even got a cool new warp-in effect.

List Recycling

If you have a LOT of upgrades you might have noticed some lag when entering a weapon’s upgrade screen or dismantling upgrades. That’s because the game creates a UI element for every upgrade you have for a given weapon, even if they aren’t visible in the scroll view. Why, you ask? Because it’s easier. And recycling UI elements is boring. But it had to be done, and now your many upgrades will perform better in the next big update!

-Liam

Some new… Ambiance…

I recently decided to upgrade the ambient effects in the game to work in a much cleaner, and more performant way. I had been meaning to add more tailored ambient VFX to the different regions for a while, and that ultimately made an overhaul of the system feel like the best idea. Visual effects are — in large part — about building up the solidity of the game world, making the fake things that happen feel like they are obeying some kind of physical laws. Bullets spark off metal, things still light on fire, rain still falls, etc. As you may have noticed though, prior to this change you could outrun said rain, so clearly I had to do something.

(yes this gif is horribly compressed. but we're limited to 5mb so deal with it)

This new system maintains a static number of particles that always exist exactly where the player is, instead of falling down around the player. Once a particle gets too far, it reappears in a different position at the other side. I wish I could prattle on about optimization and clean design a little more, but the truth is that usually your first idea (even if it’s quite clever) isn’t the best one, and that was the case here.

-Noah

Original post

02 Jul 2026Developer post

1.9.6

Fungus sometimes grows in Incursion rooms Fixed an invisible error when using Phantom Limb Plate Launcher - Reversed how Simple Inertia’s range stats are displayed since its min stat is better. This also means that boosted versions of this upgrade boost the stats in the correct d

30 Jun 2026Developer post

1.9.5

Fixed the DMLR sometimes spawning a bunch of lightning strikes at the same time when Arc Lightning and Concussive Blast were both equipped, which made it sound quite loud. Fixed Oxythane Breach Escalation not appearing in the mission select screen after you’ve completed it. Now i

29 Jun 2026Developer post

1.9.4

Fixed an issue where the locked bunker would only carve out terrain for the host player Fixed that same issue when spawning Scorched Transponder buildings in the Gravity Farm :p Fixed laptop screens in the main menu sometimes missing their texture The sound for regenerating healt

Fixed an issue where the locked bunker would only carve out terrain for the host player
Fixed that same issue when spawning Scorched Transponder buildings in the Gravity Farm :p
Fixed laptop screens in the main menu sometimes missing their texture
The sound for regenerating health stops playing when you pause time by opening your inventory in singleplayer. No more BWWWRRRRR while you sit in your inventory.
In the lobby list, the button to reset your lobby name only appears if you’re hosting the lobby
The mission select screen is SUPPOSED to make sure that at least one of each mission is spawned on New Atlas, but it was bugged!! Now it’s not bugged.
The Backlog task to kill enemies in Ouroboros now correctly progresses from kills in Ouroboros Blitz
Fixed an issue where fired plates would stay in the world forever if you opened and closed your inventory
The HUD element for DMLR’s Autocycler now has correct timing when Coronal Ejection is also equipped
Fixed an issue where dying inside the Prized Possession facility could respawn you outside the playable area
Battery Barry no longer flashbangs you with a massive blue icon when someone picks him up

Plate Launcher - Vector Interdiction had some unintended interactions with upgrades that made it deal way more damage than intended while bypassing those upgrades’ downsides. We’re making a few small changes to how it combines with other upgrades. It might still be too good but that’s ok for now.

Vector Interdiction plates don’t bounce
Nice Catch deals reduced damage to you when you redirect a plate
Your accuracy of redirecting plates is affected by the Plate Launcher’s spread
Improvised Explosives doesn’t continue to reduce the plate’s damage if it triggers more than once

Previous patch notes from 1.9.3 that I forgot to post:

Ouroboros Blitz

Blitz is now available after you play normal Ouroboros once (previously you had to complete an Ouroboros run to unlock it)
Fixed an issue where the final boss would drop contraband upgrades even though the mission had ended
Fixed a bug that could allow Blitz to continue after killing the Amalgamation
Since Blitz is meant to be a streamlined version of Ouroboros, we’re trying out a change where Contraband Scrap and shops are removed from Blitz. Let us know what you think!

Original post

26 Jun 2026Developer post

1.9.2

Fixed an bug that wouldn’t let you continue normal Ouroboros runs after killing the amalgamation Paid Time Off correctly spawns in every region again Fixed bosses not moving in Ouroboros Region-specific resources correctly appear when hovering over a mission on New Atlas Fixed en

25 Jun 2026Developer post

1.9.1 Hotfix

Fixed an issue where pattern infusion would sometimes eat your Antimass Substrate and not infuse your upgrade. If you lost some Antimass from this… sorry… because all data is stored locally we don’t have a way to track what was lost, but we can give everyone who has unlocked infu

25 Jun 2026Developer post

1.9 - THE ENEMY UPDATE

Hey gang, Roachard here. Those fungal freaks are infecting more machines on New Atlas, and I do NOT want to die to a toilet, so y'all better get killin'. Saxon operatives also discovered a buncha facilities hidden beneath the moon's surface, and they want us to check 'em out. Get

Hey gang, Roachard here.

Those fungal freaks are infecting more machines on New Atlas, and I do NOT want to die to a toilet, so y'all better get killin'.

Saxon operatives also discovered a buncha facilities hidden beneath the moon's surface, and they want us to check 'em out. Get to it!

>> END TRANSMISSION

Enemy Redesign

We’ve redesigned almost every enemy! The New Atlas fungus infects machines, so it’s about time it used those machines to attack you. With these new designs we’ve also put more thought into how enemies are fractured into their different shell pieces.
Enemy bodies bob around as they move
Added soft limits for how many Brutes and Abominations can be alive at the same time
Added sounds when you damage cores or shells that change depending on how much health the part has left
Outlines on dangerous enemy parts are red
Fixed gun arms jittering when you get too close
Improved the behavior of the laser arm - it’s more consistent and the laser won’t get glued to you when you run away
Fixed enemies laser sometimes firing at you forever if the enemy’s sightline to you was blocked
Amalgamation
- Amalgamations that spawn randomly now have less health in lobbies of 1-2 players
- Reduced the tracking speed of the Amalgamation’s liquid flamethrower :)
Added the Abomination Lacerator, a melee-only abomination
Added the Antigrav Drone
Slightly lowered the health of Optical Jammers
- And made the outside shader look neat
- And made the text sync to other players B)
Added new death VFX for cores

New Exotic Upgrades

Added new exotic upgrades to the following weapons!
- Swarm Launcher - Guidance Array
- Lead Flinger - Phantom Limb
- Carver - Lockdown
- DMLR - Concussive Wave
- //ERROR_INFORMATION_UNAVAILABLE//

New Mission - Incursion

Saxon has discovered unknown facilities descending into the depths of New Atlas. Fight through as many floors as you can before time runs out. The further you progress, the more Antimass Substrate you gain. This new resource is used for…

Pattern Infusion

Once you hit player level 13, you unlock Incursion and can start gaining Antimass Substrate (which also drops from other high-threat missions).
Antimass can be spent at the Pattern Infuser in the HUB to infuse one upgrade’s pattern into another. The more cells you remove, the more Antimass this process requires.

Prized Possession Redux

Barrel rolling is out, Barry is in.
Instead of rolling the power unit back to the drop pod, you now rescue Battery Barry. While holding Barry, your weapons fire faster but you move a bit slower.

Bruiser Voice

We weren’t happy with Bruiser’s original voice, so we re-recorded all of their voicelines.

Voice Chat

Added voice chat! We use the Discord social SDK as our voice backend, but you do not need to have a Discord account to use voice chat, and it does not need to be installed.
Added options in the audio settings for voice volume and push-to-talk. Voice mode defaults to push-to-talk and can be changed to open-mic in the audio settings.

Upgraded Mission Select

Mission select now encompasses the entirety of New Atlas. It’s easier to navigate, but more importantly, it’s cool.
New Atlas also has a new shader and looks better.

World Generation

New Moldy Tundra variant - the Sunken Highlands

New POI - Locked Bunker

Abandoned Saxon bunkers can appear in uncharted levels. They evidently weren’t very useful to the colonists of New Atlas, but perhaps they’ll be worth cracking open.

Gif Rescue

Switched our gif backend since Tenor is closing its public API. Using /gif in chat will now use KLIPY instead! As part of KLIPY’s free API terms, gifs now have a watermark on them.

New Player Experience

You can click on your player level in the inventory screen to see what gets unlocked at each level
Until you’ve unlocked all normal weapons, leveling up now provides an Armament License, which can be used to unlock weapons in any order
Changed level-up rewards for weapons, providing better rewards sooner. Added skins to level-up rewards.
Added Boundary Incursion to each weapon’s level 32 reward. You’ll be able to claim this even if you already got all of the level-up rewards.

Ouroboros

Added Ouroboros Blitz, a shorter variant of Ouroboros that lasts only 13 rooms, drops double upgrades, and automatically equips any upgrades you pick up. Blitz is available after you play Ouroboros once.
Failed Ouroboros runs correctly count as failed if you aren’t the host
Cleansed Ouroboros upgrades now count toward your total number of collected upgrades
Fixed a couple spots in the glass tower where enemies could clip through the floor instead of being stuck on their level
Abomination bosses no longer jump up and down in the ledge room

Turbocharges

Added new turbocharges for:
- Mitosis (Swarm Gun)
- Miniaturized Warp Core (Accelerator)

Misc

Incoming enemy spawns are marked on the minimap
Added special sounds when damaging & killing shells and cores
Damage numbers pulse larger when they first appear and then get smaller
Red crosshair damage lines are more opaque
Fixed an issue that was messing up lighting on procedural terrain
Fixed an issue that allowed abominations to take partial explosive damage to their unexposed cores
Reduced health of the Devastator’s high-gravity ring
The Blitseg’s VFX now orient to surfaces and make ripples along water
Lingering Shocklance coils shot by other players are now faded to reduce clutter
Lingering Shocklance coils are less tightly wound to reduce clutter
Permeable sides of shields will now fade out at close distances so you can better see what you’re killing
Fixed an issue where a back arrow would appear on cleanup detail gunk health bars
Fixed enemies jittering when they pull in new parts
Fixed an issue where eye trails from Wrangler’s Eyes Up Here upgrade would sometimes snap to a previous eye’s position
Fixed incorrect visuals when highlighting a personal shield generator enemy part
Fixed a bug where certain bullets would phase through an enemy’s leg if it was ragdolled
Fixed a bug that caused the Swarm Launcher to cause huge framerate drops when it was equipped under certain circumstances
Broken Frame modules can no longer be scrapped
In-game friends who are playing on a different version of the game are no longer shown in the main menu
Overhauled the skin equip UI. Hovering over a skin previews it.
Added an experimental launch option to force DX12, which may provide better performance.
Fixed data upload side objective sometimes spawning underwater
Fixed the position an unobtainable bear collectable in the Ice Floes
Fixed an issue with Combustive Rounds for the Accelerator where if you held R during a reload it would consume your grenade and then delete your explosive rounds
Fixed a bug that rewarded a bunch of xp if you joined a mission right as it was aborted
Au-Si Jackrabbit riccochet lines are disabled by default and can be re-enabled in the gameplay options
Upgraded ambient particles for each region
Fixed an issue where Cycler plasma bullets looked incorrect in low light

Shocklance

Micro Detonators

Reduced the chance for Micro Detonator explosions to trigger more explosions
Elemental explosions have no impact damage and now only deal damage from their over-time elemental effects
Increased impact damage on non-elemental explosions:
- Min: 12 → 40
- Max: 18 → 44
Micro Detonators has been insanely powerful for a long time, and we want to bring it back a bit without torching the upgrade - to keep it feeling cool we’re trying to balance it without lowering its explosion chance. We’re giving extra impact damage to non-elemental Micro Detonator explosions to make them a little more useful.

Splintered Lance

Reduces damage by ~50%
Splintered Lance was essentially providing a 3x damage boost, especially when combined with Notched Breakpoint for reduced spread. We tried just making it so that multiple coils can’t damage the same target in a single shot, but it ended up feeling better to give a flat damage reduction instead so that it still gives a bit of a damage boost.

Half Cocked

Reduced max coil size:
- Min: +110% → +57%
- Max: +160% → +66%
Much of the Shocklance’s superiority comes from its ability to get massive AOE sizes. Half Cocked already does a lot, so we’re lowering the coil size increase it gives from a fully charged shot.

Gearshift

Increased post-auger charge speed by 30%
Increased duration by 25%
Gearshift is currently the least-used Shocklance epic so we’re increasing its stats a bit. We want the charge speed boost to feel more impactful when combined with upgrades that increase your charge time.

Ready and Waiting

Increased passive charge rate when the Shocklance is unequipped by 560%
Added a UI indicator that shows the Shocklance’s current charge when its unequipped
Our goal with this change is for Ready and Waiting to allow you to fire off a shot, switch weapons, and then switch back without needing to charge it yourself. This upgrade previously had an unnecessarily slow charge speed when the Shocklance was unequipped.

Fisticuffs

Damage boost stat is now labeled as ‘damage’ (previously was incorrectly labeled as ‘speed’)
Increased damage boost:
- Min: 9 → 19
- Max: 11 → 28

Plate Launcher

Plasma Blades

Plasma blades now deal reduced damage compared to direct hits with a plate
Plasma Blades my beloved. The blades look too cool to reduce their size, so we’re instead making them deal less damage than direct plate hits. They’re still really good, but not quite so insane.

Damage Arc

Damage Arc can’t be triggered by shooting your plate with another plate
The core idea of Damage Arc is to encourage you to swap to your other weapon to shoot your plate, but the best way to use this upgrade was to throw on a bunch of plates and shoot them into each other - we hope to bring it back to that core identity by disallowing plate-on-plate damage. We’re also working on a new Plate Launcher upgrade that encourages single-plate builds :)

Nice Catch

Reduced the damage you take when catching a plate by 50%
The damage you take is further reduced for each extra bullet in your magazine capacity
Increased move speed when holding your Plate Launcher by 100%
An upgrade that damages you is always gonna be tough to fit into a build, but we’re hoping that decreasing self-damage for larger mag sizes will make it a bit more useful.

Slap Job

Reduced spread
- Min: 10 → 9
- Max: 20 → 10.5
Slap Job was like laughably unusable so we’re reducing its spread by about half.

Bouncy Plates

Reduced upgrade size from 5 to 3 cells

Swarm Launcher

Munition Siphon

Reduced upgrade size from 8 to 5 cells
Increased grenade charge rate by ~40%
Munition Siphon didn’t feel as potent as it should have so we’ve made it recharge your grenade faster and made it easier to fit into your Swarm Launcher builds.

Remote Control

Reduced upgrade size from 4 to 3 cells

Over Extend

Doesn’t reduce magazine size as much
- Min → -40% → -10%
- Max → -30% → -4%

High Caliber Pellets

Pellets no longer automatically dive

Original post

19 Jun 2026Developer post

Pigeons at Devlog 6/19/26: Balancing

Hey there! This week we’re putting the finishing touches on the upcoming enemy update. It’s coming Soon. This devlog is a bit bulkier as we’re going over a set of balance changes and new enemy designs… Ok let’s go: Balance Changes We’ve got some big balance changes coming with th

Hey there! This week we’re putting the finishing touches on the upcoming enemy update. It’s coming Soon. This devlog is a bit bulkier as we’re going over a set of balance changes and new enemy designs… Ok let’s go:

Balance Changes

We’ve got some big balance changes coming with the enemy update. We’re focusing on the Shocklance, Plate Launcher, and Swarm Launcher, and yes, Micro Detonators is getting a small nerf.

Before we get into the details, some background on our balancing philosophy: While it’s tempting to lean into the “don’t nerf, only buff” mindset we don’t want to feed the powercreep too hard. Over time the game gets easier, so enemies need to get harder, and it turns into a cycle of boringness. Which is boring. While we’re happy to let overpowered upgrades stay overpowered for a while (they fun), eventually we do want to bring them in line with their peers. That said, we have a couple rules we like to follow when balancing:

When an upgrade is nerfed, buff one or more other upgrades to create interesting alternatives.
Even if an upgrade is cool, we don’t want any of them to feel mandatory.
Nerfed upgrades should still be good. We try to never balance something into the ground.

With that out of the way, lets move onto a few changes coming with the next update!

Shocklance

Micro Detonators

Reduced the chance for Micro Detonator explosions to trigger more explosions
Elemental explosions have no impact damage and now only deal damage from their over-time elemental effects
Increased impact damage on non-elemental explosions:
- Min: 12 → 40
- Max: 18 → 44
Micro Detonators has been insanely powerful for a long time, and we want to bring it back a bit without torching the upgrade - to keep it feeling cool we’re trying to balance it without lowering its explosion chance. We’re giving extra impact damage to non-elemental Micro Detonator explosions to make them a little more useful.

Gearshift

Increased post-auger charge speed by 30%
Increased duration by 25%
Gearshift is currently the least-used Shocklance epic so we’re increasing its stats a bit. We want the charge speed boost to feel more impactful when combined with upgrades that increase your charge time.

Splintered Lance

Reduces damage by ~50%
Splintered Lance was essentially providing a 3x damage boost, especially when combined with Notched Breakpoint for reduced spread. We tried just making it so that multiple coils can’t damage the same target in a single shot, but it ended up feeling better to give a flat damage reduction instead so that it still gives a bit of a damage boost.

Ready and Waiting

Increased passive charge rate when the Shocklance is unequipped by 560%
Added a UI indicator that shows the Shocklance’s current charge when its unequipped
Our goal with this change is for Ready and Waiting to allow you to fire off a shot, switch weapons, and then switch back without needing to charge it yourself. This upgrade previously had an unnecessarily slow charge speed when the Shocklance was unequipped.

Half Cocked

Reduced max coil size:
- Min: +110% → +57%
- Max: +160% → +66%
Much of the Shocklance’s superiority comes from its ability to get massive AOE sizes. Half Cocked already does a lot, so we’re lowering the coil size increase it gives from a fully charged shot.

Fisticuffs

Damage boost stat is now labeled as ‘damage’ (previously was incorrectly labeled as ‘speed’)
Increased damage boost:
- Min: 9 → 19
- Max: 11 → 28

Plate Launcher

Plasma Blades

Plasma blades now deal reduced damage compared to direct hits with a plate
Plasma Blades my beloved. The blades look too cool to reduce their size, so we’re instead making them deal less damage than direct plate hits. They’re still really good, but not quite so insane.

Slap Job

Reduced spread
- Min: 10 → 9
- Max: 20 → 10.5
Slap Job was like laughably unusable so we’re reducing its spread by about half.

Damage Arc

Damage Arc can’t be triggered by shooting your plate with another plate
The core idea of Damage Arc is to encourage you to swap to your other weapon to shoot your plate, but the best way to use this upgrade was to throw on a bunch of plates and shoot them into each other - we hope to bring it back to that core identity by disallowing plate-on-plate damage. We’re also working on a new Plate Launcher upgrade that encourages single-plate builds :)

Nice Catch

Reduced the damage you take when catching a plate by 50%
The damage you take is further reduced for each extra bullet in your magazine capacity
Increased move speed when holding your Plate Launcher by 100%
An upgrade that damages you is always gonna be tough to fit into a build, but we’re hoping that decreasing self-damage for larger mag sizes will make it a bit more useful.

Bouncy Plates

Reduced upgrade size from 5 to 3 cells

Swarm Launcher

Munition Siphon

Reduced upgrade size from 8 to 5 cells
Increased grenade charge rate by ~40%
Munition Siphon didn’t feel as potent as it should have so we’ve made it recharge your grenade faster and made it easier to fit into your Swarm Launcher builds.

Remote Control

Reduced upgrade size from 4 to 3 cells

Over Extend

Doesn’t reduce magazine size as much
- Min → -40% → -10%
- Max → -30% → -4%

High Caliber Pellets

Pellets no longer automatically dive
Since the Swarm Launcher already has another upgrade that makes pellets auto-dive (AND the upcoming Swarm exotic also stops pellets from hovering) it was kind of redundant for High Caliber to do the same thing.

Cones

I’ve been working on a new weapon slated to come with 1.0. It’s an energy weapon that doesn’t fire individual projectiles, and I want it to deal damage in a cone. The problem is, Unity’s physics engine doesn’t have any sort of query to find objects overlapping a cone. I considered convening the cone council but figured it wasn’t worth their time.

So, how do we get a cone query without cones? We fake it approximate!

I ended up splitting the cone into multiple capsule queries that get progressively fatter as they get further along the cone. I add more capsules if the cone angle is wider. Here’s a visualization:

Watch on YouTube

If an enemy is found inside a capsule, we fire a ray from the gun to the closest point on the enemy’s collider to make sure there isn’t a wall in the way. If the ray hits a solid surface then we ignore that enemy.

Of course, one enemy may be inside more than one capsule, and we certainly wouldn’t want to damage the poor guy twice. Enemies that the [REDACTED]gun damages are stored in a temporary hash set (a collection that can’t contain duplicates) so that we can cheaply go:

if (AlreadyDamaged(target)) { dont; }

Enemies

Meet the Lacerator! He’s a new abomination variant that spawns with no ranged weapons, but he doesn’t slow when meleeing.

And, of course, the Fridge.

The explosive barrel brute also got a visual revamp. Plus, we fixed an issue where he would sometimes keep running at full speed after beginning to explode.

Original post

05 Jun 2026Developer post

Pigeons at Devlog 6/5/26: Prized Possession

Equipping Skins The UI for equipping skins got a small overhaul, making it more straightforward to equip different types of skins. With this new UI it’ll be easier for us to add new types of skins in the future, which we have a few ideas for… Prized Possession Redux Barrel rollin

Updates & announcements

Infusion Changes

Grabbing This Little Goober

New Region - The Swamp

Cryo

Cryo Upgrades

Lottery Larry

Controller

The Fungal Moon

Optimization

Upgrades

Vehicles

Enemies

Other Stuff

Freezing and Shattering

Cryo Upgrades

Ice Cube

Permafrost Wave

Splinter Virus

Ice Skates

So when can we freeze things?

FAQ

Grassy Grass

Configuration

The Dark Ages

A Moon of a Moon

Countering Projection Warping

Explosions and Blood

Feeling Fulfilled

Vehicle Delivery

List Recycling

Some new… Ambiance…

Ouroboros Blitz

Enemy Redesign

New Exotic Upgrades

New Mission - Incursion

Pattern Infusion

Prized Possession Redux

Bruiser Voice

Voice Chat

Upgraded Mission Select

World Generation

New POI - Locked Bunker

Gif Rescue

New Player Experience

Ouroboros

Turbocharges

Misc

Shocklance

Plate Launcher

Swarm Launcher

Balance Changes

Shocklance

Plate Launcher

Swarm Launcher

Cones

Enemies

Equipping Skins

Prized Possession Redux

Enemies