Hi!
Today we're releasing an update for the game with plenty of changes based on suggestions and feedback, that we think will improve the overall feeling of the game and rate at which skills are unlocked.
Improvements:
- Elite enemies have now an aura below them.
- Added a "Huge" UI Scale setting to show even bigger texts. Useful for Steam Deck, but some UIs may overlap.
- Now up to 50 previous attempts are saved per level.
- Completion reward is now shown in the stage selection screen.
- 21:9 aspect ratio is now supported without borders. In 21:9, enemies will be spawned from further away, which may affect gameplay and performance.
- Toxic Stench vissual effect is now easier on the eyes.
- Added an option to select specific controller button faces.
Gameplay changes:
- Increased money rewards for completing a challenge. This increase is applied retroactively, you'll receive additional money upon loading the game for every challenge already unlocked.
- Increased money rewards for completing a stage.
- Rerolls now try to avoid showing repeated items whenever possible.
- Reduced minion difficulty growth rate on the boss wave.
- Adjusted difficulty of some specific waves (see below for detailed information).
Bugfixes:
- Fixed Evolved Jellyfish not having the proper starter values and being weaker than the base version.
- Fixed Luck affecting money drop rate.
- Fixed a softlock in the game when the controller is disconnected on the level up screen.
- Fixed UI and minor gameplay issues when dying while using a timed skill (only possible with Ker's)
Difficulty analysis
We also wanted to discuss a bit on the topic of difficulty, as there's been a lot of talk on it and we wanted to be transparent and share some data we have thanks to the game's telemetry.
First of all, we want to say that our goal is to have most of the first stages rather easy to complete as long as you don't mess up too hard with movement or upgrade choices, and slowly increasing difficulty in later stages, making them more challenging to compensate the upgraded skills and features that are unlocked along the way.
It's not our intention to "force" players to grind for money or pick specific weapon/trinket combinations, and we want everything to be viable when properly combined, and we'll be on the lookout for underpowered/unpopular choices to make them as interesting as the popular ones. Aside from super-strong outliers, we don't plan on nerfing equipment, and will try to improve the weaker items so they become equally powerful or interesting to choose.
Now, on to the data!
Here are some graphs of the distribution of wins, loses and cancellations of every stage in the game, per minute.
- Graveyard 1 and Forest 1
The shapes of Graveyard 1 and Forest 1 are most in line with what we were looking for: A few deaths here and there, but most people manages to complete them, and there's no major difficulty spikes along the stage (a small one in minute 2 of Graveyard 1 can be spotted, when the ghosts show up for the first time, but it's not too drastic and we'll reduce it a bit anyway).
- Forge 1
Forge 1, however, doesn't entirely have that ideal shape: There's a comfortable difficulty along the stage, but once people get to the boss, the number of loses increases considerably, and fights drag on for longer than in the other two stages, with loses getting to their highest value at minute 15, when minions become so strong that players can't survive against them.
Our guess as to why this happens is that the boss is harder to kill than the previous ones because of the saw attack blocking projectiles and forcing players to dodge it, so they can't spend as much time attacking the boss (Note that currently Forge 1 and Forest 1 bosses have the same health). We'll try to solve this by lowering the boss health a bit and lowering the rate at which minions get stronger once the boss spawns. This should increase winrate of the stage noticeably.
- Graveyard 2
Graveyard 2 shows a healthy distribution, with a couple spikes of deaths towards the end of the stage that we'll make a bit easier.
- Forest 2
Forest 2 is more rough and has a much lower success rate, with many players dying halfway through the level, and many others dying to the boss as well. We'll reduce difficulty of the waves at minutes 5, 9 and 11, as well as the aforemented change to minion strength increase, so it becomes more in line with the intended difficulty.
- Forge 2
Forge 2 is in a rather good spot, no need to change anything important here!
- Graveyard 3
Graveyard 3 shows a new situation: While the early and mid sections of the stage look fine (with a small difficulty spike at minute 12), minutes 17 and higher, including the boss, become incredibly easy and almost everyone wins! This is the result of increased mission length paired with evolutions and skill upgrades becoming too powerful for the enemies to overcome, to the point that adding new enemies may even work in favor of the player.
For now we'll not address this, as there's no major issue with a single stage being a bit easier than expected.
- Forest 3
Forest 3 shows a huge spike of deaths at minutes 15-16, probably related with a deadly combination of invulnerable golems and fast berserkers, paired with a rush of boars in the next wave leading to player's deaths. We'll reduce the intensity of this wave so players don't get stuck in there so often.
- Forge 3
Forge 3 shows another nicely spread out distribution, without huge spikes (although we'll reduce a bit the difficulty of them at specific spots).
Of course, we're not just using the data to decide our course of action in regards to difficulty, and we've heard your comments that enemies feel a bit too spongy later on. Our first action in regards to this is to reduce "spongyness" of boss minions, so they don't become as hard to kill as time goes on (they will still become stronger, just not as fast). We probably also want to reduce overall difficulty a bit, but since we're increasing the amount of money earned in today's update, we'll wait until we can see how that turns out before doing additional changes.