Aighty! So we have a lot to talk about with this coming update but I wanted to kick things off on a
slightly more fun note. If you follow us on social media (which if you don't you totally should) this
won't be anything new to you, however, I know not everyone does. But last week we unveiled a
small teaser for Viscerafest's final chapter via its Lil promo image, and we thought we might give
you guys who may have missed it a peak!
Development on the game's final chapter is kicking off now and as time rolls on we'll be giving you more Lil insider peaks here and there.
But it's time to focus on the here and now because we've got a patch to get to! And boy is it a doozy...
The "I May Have Gone A Bit Too Far In Some Places" Patch
So over the course of time since Viscerafest chapter 2 was released I've had the chance to sit down and observe some folks run through the new content. Hearing their thoughts, watching them play, and just generally taking mental notes as I evaluate what needs to be fixed tweaked, or change. Over the course of me doing this, it ultimately brought to light a fact I'd had a hunch on but was not fully sure about. That of course being Viscerafest chapter 2 was just a bit too hard.
You see the way the game was supposed to be paced as follows. Each chapter would escalate throughout the course of its run time, getting harder and harder throughout until it ended, as one would expect. But when the chapter after rolls around the idea was the chapter would open by scaling things back to about the midway point of the prior chapter. This was going to be done for 2 reasons.
- Give players a bit of breathing room in the hopes of preventing the experience from becoming exhausting.
- Prevent the game's consistent escalation from reaching a critical mass where it becomes so torturously hard partway through that nothing after that point could surpass it outside of being unrelentingly cruel.
So in essence, C2l1 was supposed to be as hard as C1l4, which it is very much not, and as a consequence, the consistent escalation seen thereafter impacts the rest of the chapter resulting in the game getting a bit harder a Lil faster than I intended. As a result, this patch's aim is to scale things back to where they were supposed to be as well as address various other balancing and gameplay-related issues. Now it's worth noting, not every inch of every level has been altered, some fights and encounters have remained the same, but for the most part, a fair chunk of the levels encounters have been completely reworked and the chapter's pacing as a whole has been changed for what I believe to be the better.
Tbh this is an issue I can't fully go into here. Most players are just reading this to get to the patch notes, it's not really the time or place for a deep design discussion. So if any of the changes or tweaks leave you feeling perplexed or worried, please feel free to post your thoughts in the steam forums, OR more preferably hop over to our discord! Which I will be including in a link below. But enough talk! Here are your patch notes!
Patch 0.9.1.0
Tweaks:
- Stalkers HP nerfed
- Stalkers homing projectiles now have looser homing
- Arachnospud's HP nerfed
- Arachnospud's homing projectiles now have looser homing
- Nomad's hitscan attack damage output tweaked
- Nomad Priest's speed buffed
- Nomad Priests' aim nerfed
- Hellbird's speed nerfed on harder difficulties
- Hellbirds will now be vulnerable for longer after they attack
- Spawnlings will now wait longer between jumps
- Mecha scientists now wait longer to begin attacking
- Chapter 1 final bosses projectile spew damage nerfed
- Chapter 2 final bosses homing missiles now have looser homing
- Enemy and item placement tweaked in C1l3 and C1l4
- Enemy and item placement tweaked across all chapter 2 levels
- C2L6's level geometry tweaked to allow enemies free access to other parts of the level
- Warhound's initial blast radius slightly reduced
Fixes:
- Fixed bug where Chapter 2's final boss would shoot one last cheeky projectile between phases
- Fixed level/teleport transitions breaking due to fixed fades
- Fixed bug that allowed the chapter 1 boss to be damageable via melee during its intro
- Fixed train outdoor ambient sections that were playing indoor sounds
- Fixed platform in C2L5 infinitely looping sounds
Discord: https://discord.gg/E2pUkxe