Hey everyone, Last week we revealed what we've been working on for some time now: NIGHTFALL WAVES - a third-person tower defense and exploration game set in a mysterious archipelago. It also features cool gameplay/music sync & sarcastic narration which Ballhalla is infamous f
Hey everyone,
Last week we revealed what we've been working on for some time now: NIGHTFALL WAVES - a third-person tower defense and exploration game set in a mysterious archipelago. It also features cool gameplay/music sync & sarcastic narration which Ballhalla is infamous for! Check out the Steam page:
You can play an early demo of the game right now! Your feedback at this stage is incredibly valuable and we'd love to hear it in the Steam forums or on our Discord!
Hello rhythmic ball gamers, I just pushed an update that hopefully fixes a random freeze issue that like 5 of you had since the last patch. It was seemingly caused by using a "newer" compiler (Visual Studio 2017) for that patch, even though that's the recommended one for the engi
Hello rhythmic ball gamers,
I just pushed an update that hopefully fixes a random freeze issue that like 5 of you had since the last patch. It was seemingly caused by using a "newer" compiler (Visual Studio 2017) for that patch, even though that's the recommended one for the engine version used. I've since reverted back to the old compiler and that seems to have fixed it.
Sorry for the inconvenience to those that encountered this issue and that it took so long to be fixed! Please let me know in case the issue should persist.
Special thanks to Guddy, who provided logs & helped testing the fix! <3
Hey fellow music game lovers, Just a quick heads-up - our game CITY OF BEATS released earlier this week on Steam! It takes a lot of the design (like music elements & humor) from Ballhalla and mixes it with shooter & roguelite gameplay. Check it out here: Cheers & have
Hey fellow music game lovers,
Just a quick heads-up - our game CITY OF BEATS released earlier this week on Steam! It takes a lot of the design (like music elements & humor) from Ballhalla and mixes it with shooter & roguelite gameplay.
Hey fellow speedrollers, Just a quick (and final) heads-up: our City of Beats Speedrunning Competition ends in 3 days! If you beat the current demo's Speedrun Mode fast enough, you can win Steam Keys for the full game, which releases in Q2 23! Current record is at 4min 22sec : Jo
Hey fellow speedrollers,
Just a quick (and final) heads-up: our City of Beats Speedrunning Competition ends in 3 days!
If you beat the current demo's Speedrun Mode fast enough, you can win Steam Keys for the full game, which releases in Q2 23! Current record is at 4min 22sec:
Join our Discord where you'll find all the info you need to participate:
Heya, can you believe it's already been 5 years since Ballhalla has launched on Steam? (I can't) While we're all busy working on our next game, I still put the time aside to work on a small update that fixes two issues: uploading a trial from the editor recently stopped working,
Heya,
can you believe it's already been 5 years since Ballhalla has launched on Steam? (I can't)
While we're all busy working on our next game, I still put the time aside to work on a small update that fixes two issues:
uploading a trial from the editor recently stopped working, but now you can again create & share your cool creations!
the soundtrack download was broken after Steam changed to their new soundtrack system, this should be fixed as well
But that's not all - here comes the hype part:
Ballhalla Speedroller Challenge
I've built two new workshop trials in the community editor - the top 3 players on the leaderboards for each of these two trials will get a Steam key for our next game, City of Beats!
The first one is a rather easy trial... https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2564752139 ... but what's a contest without a little bit of challenge, right? https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2563515245
Ok, how does this work?
Simply subscribe to & play those two levels and try to get into the top 3 during the next 2 weeks!
On August 19th (6pm CEST) we'll check out the leaderboards and give out the keys.
If you're one of the top players, to claim your reward, join us on our Discord server and either link your Steam account to your Discord profile, or send an ingame-screenshot from your leaderboard list.
Hey all, For the next couple of days you'll be able to play our upcoming music-driven shooter CITY OF BEATS - if you've enjoyed Ballhalla, I'm sure you'll like it! Simply sign up on the game's store page and download the game ! Don't forget to wishlist & follow the game if yo
Hey all,
For the next couple of days you'll be able to play our upcoming music-driven shooter CITY OF BEATS - if you've enjoyed Ballhalla, I'm sure you'll like it!
Heya fellow music game lovers, For the next 10 days, you can download our upcoming game CITY OF BEATS and play through the first chapter! Just click on the green "Request Access" button on the game's store page and you are good to go: After you've played, it would be awesome if y
Heya fellow music game lovers,
For the next 10 days, you can download our upcoming game CITY OF BEATS and play through the first chapter!
Hey guys, we now have a cozy, pun-filled Discord server just for you! Come join us if you want to talk about your favorite Ballhalla mockery, our future games, other music/rhythm games and stuff. Just click on this banner for the invite: that is all k thx bye
Hey guys,
we now have a cozy, pun-filled Discord server just for you! Come join us if you want to talk about your favorite Ballhalla mockery, our future games, other music/rhythm games and stuff.
Hey all! It's time to show you what we've been working on for quite a while now: City of Beats, a music-driven action game where every action is synced to the beat and your weapons shoot the melody. After Ballhalla, we wanted to build on that rhythmic gameplay foundation, but go
Hey all!
It's time to show you what we've been working on for quite a while now:
City of Beats, a music-driven action game where every action is synced to the beat and your weapons shoot the melody.
After Ballhalla, we wanted to build on that rhythmic gameplay foundation, but go into a more action-oriented direction. Basically everything that glows red still wants to destroy you to the beat, but now you can shoot back and play cool melodies while doing so! Of course, sarcasm and puns are again all over this game.
You can find way more info here, including a cool trailer:
Hello everyone! The summer heat is on, and we at tinyBuild wanted to do something to brighten up your day. Today, Road to Ballhalla is going on a weeklong sale at 75% off. We’ve been doing lots of interesting things recently, and I wanted to take the opportunity to highlight some
Hello everyone!
The summer heat is on, and we at tinyBuild wanted to do something to brighten up your day. Today, Road to Ballhalla is going on a weeklong sale at 75% off.
We’ve been doing lots of interesting things recently, and I wanted to take the opportunity to highlight some of the things we’re working on.
Specifically, on August 13 (that’s next week!) we are launching Kill It With Fire - a physics comedy game about exterminating spiders and burning down your house in the process. It’s a very lighthearted game the alphas of which have had 90%+ ratings on Steam.
The game is on Pre-Order that allows you to save 10%, or you can simply Wishlist it! We greatly appreciate it.
Heya, I've just uploaded another small update. The editor now again properly sets the game exe path on first start. This didn't work recently, as the Rerolled update changed the game exe parent folder, so the editor couldn't find it. Happy rolling!
Heya,
I've just uploaded another small update. The editor now again properly sets the game exe path on first start. This didn't work recently, as the Rerolled update changed the game exe parent folder, so the editor couldn't find it.
Hey guys, For those of you that have bought the Soundtrack DLC, I've just uploaded the 4 new tracks of the bonus levels that were added in the big update last week (for free, obviously). They make up about 14 minutes of sweet new music - as usual, composed by Nicholas Singer! The
Hey guys,
For those of you that have bought the Soundtrack DLC, I've just uploaded the 4 new tracks of the bonus levels that were added in the big update last week (for free, obviously). They make up about 14 minutes of sweet new music - as usual, composed by Nicholas Singer! The soundtrack now contains 78 minutes of music to remind you of your exploded balls.
For those of you that haven't bought the Soundtrack DLC yet, it would really help Nick & me out a lot if you did. :) We're trying to get our next project going right now, so we can use every bit of help there.
Heya, Yesterday I pushed a small update that fixes two issues introduced with the Rerolled update: 1. The game no longer triggers your VR software on start. Not sure if that was an attempt of the game telling me "I want to have a VR mode and make everybody puke", but it's gone no
Heya,
Yesterday I pushed a small update that fixes two issues introduced with the Rerolled update:
1. The game no longer triggers your VR software on start. Not sure if that was an attempt of the game telling me "I want to have a VR mode and make everybody puke", but it's gone now. 2. In rush mode of trial 1-5, restarting during the final section will no longer break the warball spawners. That was a facepalm-worthy failed attempt from me to improve performance.
I've teased this update for a long time, but now it's finally time to reroll the balls. Two years after the initial release, aligned with the game's release on PS4, Xbox One and Switch, here comes Ballhalla's biggest free content update to Steam! It contains new levels, styles, a
I've teased this update for a long time, but now it's finally time to reroll the balls. Two years after the initial release, aligned with the game's release on PS4, Xbox One and Switch, here comes Ballhalla's biggest free content update to Steam! It contains new levels, styles, achievements, settings and tons of improvements and fixes.
For existing players, the only downside is that your existing savegames won't work with the new game build. There are too many changes, both content-wise as well as in the engine, to keep them compatible. When starting the game, you can choose between the new and the old version, so no progress is lost!
I recommend starting fresh to experience all the new content and improvements since the game's original release, but if you just want to check out the new levels and get the new achievements, you can also use the save file I prepared: https://torchedhill.com/roadtoballhalla/BallhallaRerolled.sav Just put this file into %userprofile%\AppData\Local\RoadToBallhallaUE4\Saved\SaveGames to unlock the first 3 worlds.
Read the (probably incomplete) changelog below.
New Features
added 4 bonus levels with all-new gameplay mechanics, to be accessed from world 2 & 3
reworked the Hub area by adding lots of small new things to discover (won't spoil them here)
added new achievements (for the bonus levels as well as the new Do Not Enter hole you STILL should not enter)
added new ball styles (white ball color, "Circles of Life" trail effect, and a secret bonus style you get by doing one of the new activities in the Hub)
added some new bugs (hopefully not)
New Settings
Rush Respawning: if you want to perfect you time score, you can now decide to always restart the trial when you explode, instead of respawning at the last checkpoint
Supersampling: make the game look even better by setting this to 200%, or get more FPS on slower devices by going below 100% resolution scale
Easy Mode: you literally can't turn this one on
Language: you can now switch the language from within the game
Improvements
adjusted the amount of Tokens needed per chapter
increased blue key orb pull range, which is especially helpful in 2-1
decreased collision size of blue barrier tiles, so you don't get "unfairly" destroyed by them
improved super-secret background resyncing of music to the gameplay, but if you haven't noticed it before, you now still won't, and that's the whole point, so why am I even listing this
improved projectile turret performance - this should increase FPS in levels with lots of turrets (like 2-3) on slower devices
improved the grid puzzle in 3-1 by making it a bit more straightforward
now displaying your best time in Rush trials while playing offline (for whatever reason)
added a new clue for the rainbow to the game; if you recognize it, you'll know you're on the right track
Fixes
fixed 2-4 secret teleporter disappearing when dying before the first checkpoint
fixed some bugs with holes in the Hub area triggering twice sometimes, because physics
fixed a bug that allowed the main menu to be opened while rolling into a Hub hole - though it was so difficult to reproduce, I probably should rather have unlocked an achievement for those that managed to do it
fixed a bug I have described as "workshop page 0 bug" in my Git log, but I can't remember what it was, so whatever, but I guess it has something to do with browsing your downloaded Workshop levels
ported the game engine from 4.7 to 4.17, which was a nightmare to do, but may or may not fix some not-game-related issues some of you were having (e.g. green screen flickering in fullscreen mode)
So, I'm sure the big question that you just can't get out of your head is: "How much did the last update affect/improve Ballhalla's balance?". Do not despair! The game tracks the average amount of respawns players need to finish each trial. Note that it's only tracking the first
So, I'm sure the big question that you just can't get out of your head is: "How much did the last update affect/improve Ballhalla's balance?". Do not despair! The game tracks the average amount of respawns players need to finish each trial. Note that it's only tracking the first time players finish a trial and not their best run, as I wanted to compare the initial difficulty of each trial.
Here we go:
The difficulty curve is now much smoother than before and has less spikes. Especially 1-2, 3-3 and 4-5 had way more respawns than other trials in their chapter and therefore saw the biggest change. 3-3 (teleporters suck) is still a bit high (as it's the only trial that focuses more on precision than rhythm) and 4-3 (time travel) is surprisingly low (maybe I should change that :>), but besides that I'm happy with the results.
As far as I can tell, you're having more fun with the game now (and this was the whole point of it): all of the over 40 Steam reviews since the update were positive and some of the negative ones even have been changed to positive!
Just for fun, here are the stats from the beta test a year ago (though keep in mind this data is only from about 100 players and not several thousands like in the stats above):
Yeah, right? (The high amount of respawns in 2-2 actually came from players trying to bruteforce the hidden pathways because they didn't understand the hints.)
So, I'm sure the big question that you just can't get out of your head is: "How much did the last update affect/improve Ballhalla's balance?". Do not despair! The game tracks the average amount of respawns players need to finish each trial. Note that it's only tracking the first
So, I'm sure the big question that you just can't get out of your head is: "How much did the last update affect/improve Ballhalla's balance?". Do not despair! The game tracks the average amount of respawns players need to finish each trial. Note that it's only tracking the first time players finish a trial and not their best run, as I wanted to compare the initial difficulty of each trial.
Here we go:
The difficulty curve is now much smoother than before and has less spikes. Especially 1-2, 3-3 and 4-5 had way more respawns than other trials in their chapter and therefore saw the biggest change. 3-3 (teleporters suck) is still a bit high (as it's the only trial that focuses more on precision than rhythm) and 4-3 (time travel) is surprisingly low (maybe I should change that :>), but besides that I'm happy with the results.
As far as I can tell, you're having more fun with the game now (and this was the whole point of it): all of the over 40 Steam reviews since the update were positive and some of the negative ones even have been changed to positive!
Just for fun, here are the stats from the beta test a year ago (though keep in mind this data is only from about 100 players and not several thousands like in the stats above):
Yeah, right? (The high amount of respawns in 2-2 actually came from players trying to bruteforce the hidden pathways because they didn't understand the hints.)
Surprise - I've decided to split the big 2017 update in two parts, so you guys don't have to wait as long! The first (smaller) part is out now and contains a major balance pass. I went through all 28 trials + the scavenger hunt secrets and updated them based on feedback I got fro
Surprise - I've decided to split the big 2017 update in two parts, so you guys don't have to wait as long! The first (smaller) part is out now and contains a major balance pass.
I went through all 28 trials + the scavenger hunt secrets and updated them based on feedback I got from you. Notable changes include (MINOR SPOILER WARNING):
1-2: vertical laser hallway (this one often lead to frustration as it's only the second level and the section is quite difficult)
3-1: increased button countdowns, reworked the button/teleporter puzzle (it was quite easy already, but many players just didn't find the right button order and thought it was impossible to solve in time, so I made it a bit more straightforward), captcha is now a bit easier to read
3-3: requires less precision overall (players had about twice as many respawns as in other chapter 3 trials), especially the jumping between barriers (it's hard to see from the 3D perspective if the ball would land on a barrier or not, and especially hard to control when using a gamepad)
4-1: reworked the final two sections to be less mind-melting (this coupled with insta-death lasers lead to some frustration)
4-5: made it more obvious what to do in general, reworked the final section (it required too much precision and perfect boost timing before)
Secrets 9 & 10: not telling you what changed, it's a secret
so much more
I also increased some of the rush time limits, as well as the max. amount of respawns you can have to get all tokens (now 5, previously 2). This way the game gets a bit more forgiving on your hunt for the completion & rush achievements.
While this update is targeted more to new players, later this year will see the actual NEW CONTENT part of the 2017 update. That one will include new trials, gameplay elements, music, ball styles, unnecessary level hub holes, a quest for perfection, an easy mode that can't be activated (literally!), performance tweaks and more!
Surprise - I've decided to split the big 2017 update in two parts, so you guys don't have to wait as long! The first (smaller) part is out now and contains a major balance pass. I went through all 28 trials + the scavenger hunt secrets and updated them based on feedback I got fro
Surprise - I've decided to split the big 2017 update in two parts, so you guys don't have to wait as long! The first (smaller) part is out now and contains a major balance pass.
I went through all 28 trials + the scavenger hunt secrets and updated them based on feedback I got from you. Notable changes include (MINOR SPOILER WARNING):
1-2: vertical laser hallway (this one often lead to frustration as it's only the second level and the section is quite difficult)
3-1: increased button countdowns, reworked the button/teleporter puzzle (it was quite easy already, but many players just didn't find the right button order and thought it was impossible to solve in time, so I made it a bit more straightforward), captcha is now a bit easier to read
3-3: requires less precision overall (players had about twice as many respawns as in other chapter 3 trials), especially the jumping between barriers (it's hard to see from the 3D perspective if the ball would land on a barrier or not, and especially hard to control when using a gamepad)
4-1: reworked the final two sections to be less mind-melting (this coupled with insta-death lasers lead to some frustration)
4-5: made it more obvious what to do in general, reworked the final section (it required too much precision and perfect boost timing before)
Secrets 9 & 10: not telling you what changed, it's a secret
so much more
I also increased some of the rush time limits, as well as the max. amount of respawns you can have to get all tokens (now 5, previously 2). This way the game gets a bit more forgiving on your hunt for the completion & rush achievements.
While this update is targeted more to new players, later this year will see the actual NEW CONTENT part of the 2017 update. That one will include new trials, gameplay elements, music, ball styles, unnecessary level hub holes, a quest for perfection, an easy mode that can't be activated (literally!), performance tweaks and more!
If you're itching for more content but don't want to wait until the next update arrives, look no further. Joca has created a couple of really cool Workshop trials using the community level editor! I especially like how the gameplay elements are used in unique ways to create inter
If you're itching for more content but don't want to wait until the next update arrives, look no further. Joca has created a couple of really cool Workshop trials using the community level editor! I especially like how the gameplay elements are used in unique ways to create interesting new challenges. Not many have beaten these trials yet, so it's your perfect chance to claim that sweet top spot on the leaderboard. :)
Check them out here: https://steamcommunity.com/profiles/76561197999733878/myworkshopfiles/?appid=425410
