Changed in 0.13.0
NEW FEATURE: Some units now also increase the "shared" stats
Non-rare/regular units now also increase the "shared" stats, for example "Xp Multiplier", "Speed" and "Fire Rate".
Hopefully, this will make non-rare units more interesting and valuable, since usually they do less damage than the rare unit types.
Also, hopefully, this will make transforming the units a bit more interesting, since this might have an impact also on the stats.
NEW FEATURE: Increase enemy health based on player performance
Previously it was "hard coded" how much the enemies health increased during the run, so always on the level 5 for example the health multiplier was the same for everyone and on the level 10 the health multiplier was the same for everyone.
This worked pretty well, but the issue was that once you get powerful enough, the hard-coded enemy health multiplier could never catch you and you are basically overpowered for the rest of the run. This could make things boring, since the enemies could never "catch up" to become challenging again.
So now the enemy health multiplier grows automatically, when you start to go thru enemies at a faster pace.
Hopefully this will still provide moments where you can feel the increase in damage you make, but still make the game able to balance itself within a few levels.
Even though in the game it's called "enemy health multiplier" the health grows exponentially with every step.
There has been always a "fine line" in balancing how much enemies should have health compared to the amount of damage you do. This balance has probably one of the biggest impact on if the game feels good or not, so hopefully this change will have a positive impact on that.
NEW FEATURE: Stats Screen
During a run, you can now see various statistics and charts of your current run in the "Stats" screen.
NEW FEATURE: Show the amount of damage the Units have done in the current level
One of the long-running requests has been the be able to see how much the units have done damage.
Now when you open the new stats screen, you can see the amount of damage done in the current level as bars and numbers above the unit icons.
These numbers will persist until you start doing damage on the next level. So you can see the stats from the previous level still at the start of a new level.
NEW FEATURE: Ability to Finish the Run
Another of the other long-running requests has been the ability to finish the run.
Now on the last level of each loop, you can end the run after you have finished the boss fight.
There is also a new "Teleporter Spawner" building which you can use to spawn a teleporter, if you want to start a new loop.
NEW FEATURE: Leaderboards
Now after you successfully finish a run, your score is saved to the leaderboards (if your new score is better than your older one).
Currently there are different leaderboards for Normal and Hard difficulty.
The score is only saved if you successfully finish the run, so the score is not saved if you get game over during a run.
The leaderboards are a bit experimental at this point and the leaderboards might get cleared on each update, or there might be a specific mode for it in the future, but for now, let's go with this.
NOTE: If you continue a run started with the previous version of the game, the score won't be saved, since the existing run doesn't have all the up-to-date data. So it's recommended to start a new run with the new version.
FEATURE CHANGE: Sidebar stat changes
Some of the stats on the right sidebar now have tooltips that describe the stat. The tooltips also show which items and units affect the stats.
Some of the stats also have a "progress bar" to show an indication of how big the number is.
FEATURE CHANGE: Total Enemy Health Bar Updates
The big "Total Enemy Health Bar" on top of the screen got a few visual tweaks. Now it's a bit clearer about how much damage per second is made.
FEATURE CHANGE: Remove the changelog button from Main Menu
The changelog button is now removed from the game and the changelog is no longer inside the game.
This speeds up the release process a little bit, since the potential release build can done and tested even if the changelog is not finished.
NOTE: If you see that there is a new release, but you don't see the release notes yet on the library, the release notes should be visible on the store page. It takes a few hours for the Steam library to show the release notes, even though the store pages show them immediately.
FEATURE CHANGE: Fire Damage Changes
One of the challenges in the game has been that the units that cause fire damage are really overpowered during the boss fight. This is because previously the fire caused damage every second until the enemy was dead.
This has caused the boss fight to feel very bullet-spongy if there are no fire damage units.
Now the fire damage does damage for 5 seconds. The fire damage units are still great during the boss fight, but hopefully now the boss fight doesn't feel too bullet -spongy, if you don't have any units that do fire damage.
FEATURE CHANGE: Boss Fight Changes
Due to the changes to the fire damage units the boss health got lowered, to make the boss fight nicer with non-fire damage units.
- Add/Fix objectives for Boss Fight
- Lowered boss enemy health from 18k to 10k
FEATURE CHANGE: Projectile Fly Curve
Previously the flight path for the projectiles was more physically realistic in that it took the speed of the projectile into consideration when calculating the curve/path for the projectile, but this caused an issue where it was hard to calculate the correct curve for the projectile when the projectile speed was insanely fast.
Now the projectile speed is still taken into consideration, but it doesn't affect the curve, which might the curve look more unnatural, but it is now more predictable / works correctly.
FEATURE CHANGE: Item Stat Changes
Previously some items that had linear stacking have been changed to use "hyperbolic" stacking (or as internally called Risk of Rain 2 stacking, which was a huge inspiration for this game). This means that instead linearly growing stats by 15% for example each, the increase is largest for the first item added to the stack then the increase grows slightly smaller with each next item added to the stack.
This change is since now Units also increase these values too (units increase these values linearly).
The numbers still end up being big, but hopefully this brings a bit of balance to the game.
Items affected:
- Projectile Speed Up
- Speed Up
- XP Up
- Agility
- Fire Rate Up
FEATURE CHANGE: Unit Stat Changes
- Kinetic Rod Unit: Damage 20 -> 200
- Kinetic Rod Unit: The rods now move twice as fast to the target
- Mine Unit: Damage 20 -> 15
- Mine Unit: There are slightly fewer active mines concurrently
- Flamethrower Unit: Damage 2 -> 10
- Sticky Bomb Unit: Damage 2 -> 20
OTHER CHANGES
- [Community Feedback] Make it more likely that Ale-Pub always has at least one hireable unit type even if the "unit type list" is full.
- [Community Feedback] Clamp unit positions inside the play area (and boss ring), to prevent the glitch of units moving outside of them
- Updated Unity from 2020 LTS to 2021 LTS
- Added sound effects for Teleporter Appearing
- Fix so that the "back" / esc button closes the last opened dialog.
- After the Game Over, show the stats screen, instead of going to the main screen
- Show levels numbers in full again, without modding them (for example the sixth level on the second loop is now shown as 16/10)
- Added a system where some background UI elements are hidden based on what's in front of the UI
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That's it for this release. I hope you all like the new features and always remember to give feedback!
To the next update!
- jounitus