Players, take heart! Two more robotic resistors have joined the fight, armed with new weaponry and ready to lay waste to those that oppose you!
Hunter.0 is the prototype of a line of robots created to hunt down and destroy their own kin. Armed with the Ionic Edge, a powerful energy sword, Hunter.0 neutralized countless targets before finally being destroyed and having its parts scattered far and wide. If found and reassembled, a powerful new ally could be added to the Resistor lineup, one who will stop at nothing to eliminate all that stands between it and its goals.
Robo-Shop has also arrived! This automated shopping cart/hovercraft hybrid comes armed with the legendary Pachelbot’s Cannon, a devastating weapon with a unique pickup mechanic for faster reloading of its giant cannonballs. Robo-Shop also comes equipped with a new ability: Man the Cannons! Fires a rapid barrage of full-strength cannonballs when triggered, devastating nearby enemies unfortunate enough to be caught in their path.
New Weapon - Ionic Edge: This powerful energy sword was created to destroy renegade robots. Each swing that doesn’t destroy an enemy makes the next swing more powerful!
New Ultimate - X-Caliber: An experimental upgrade for the Ionic Edge, this Ultimate turns the sword into a gun-blade that shoots high caliber bullets with every swing! The bullets gain the same damage bonus as the blade itself.
New Weapon - Pachelbot’s Cannon!: This slow-firing weapon shoots a giant cannonball at the nearest enemy. Cannonballs have unlimited piercing and do high damage to all enemies in their path, and can bounce off of walls and terrain. If a cannonball comes to a stop and is picked up by the player, it greatly reduces the cooldown before the next shot.
New Ultimate - Boomer Shooter!: The Ultimate form of Pachelbot’s Cannon, this weapon fires giant bombs in lieu of cannonballs. The bombs explode upon being picked up and deal damage to nearby enemies. Bombs that are not picked up will eventually explode after their fuse burns down.
New Ultimate - CD-Burner: This Ultimate upgrade for the CD-ROM adds fiery trails that set enemies on fire as they pass through them, applying the new burning status. Burning is a damage-over-time effect with a medium duration. If an enemy that is already burning would have the status applied multiple times, each subsequent application resets the duration and adds a portion of the damage from the new application.
In addition to new characters, weapons, and ultimates, we have several significant balance and progression changes in this patch, a new enemy ability, and some smaller updates. Details can be found below!
- Rebalanced progression: Completing Stage 1 now unlocks ultimate weapons for future runs. Completing Stage 2 now unlocks an extra weapon and passive slot for future runs. Added more weapons and ultimates to the base pool of unlocks (see below). –Dev Note: As we’ve added more weapons, stages, and characters, it’s become clear that we have the design space to be more generous with unlockables in general. We’ve moved up the ultimate unlocks to Stage 1 as we feel ultimate versions of weapons are fun and rewarding, and should be given to players sooner. As part of this change, the old reward for completing Stage 1 (extra passive slot unlock) has been moved to Stage 2. Additionally, we have greatly increased the starting pool of both weapons and ultimates. This change gives players more options for builds from the beginning, and pares back some of the meta-progression bloat that was starting to creep into the game as we added more content.
Added 4 weapons to the base weapon pool:
- Orbital Laser
- Shotgun
- Landmines
- Rockets
Added free ultimate unlocks for all basic starting weapons:
- Planet Killer Laser
- Molten Shotgun
- Diamond Saw
- Blue Ray
- Toxic Waste
- Charge Coils
- Shrapnel Rockets
- Cluster Mines
- Tuned Robot Graveyard difficulty. Reduced the HP gain of enemies slightly over time, and reduced the HP of the final boss by 20%. –Dev Note: We’ve decided our game plays a little too hard in the beginning, so we’ve made changes to the Robot Graveyard to ease onboarding slightly for new players. These changes should make the level slightly easier, especially in the back half of runs.
- Added a new Armor mechanic to specific enemies. Enemies with armor now gain flat damage reduction equal to their armor value, making them much tougher against rapid-firing low-damage weapons while remaining vulnerable to higher-damage weaponry. Armor cannot reduce damage below 1. Poison and burning damage is unaffected by enemy armor. Enemies with armor will play a “ting” sound when struck, and quickly flash a shield image. –Dev Note: The design goal of armored enemies is to reduce some of the inherent power of small damage weapons and make build choices more interesting. Assuming all things being equal, rapid-firing small-damage weapons have some inherent advantages over their high-damage slower-firing brethren in this type of game. One of our primary design goals is to make all builds viable and encourage variety, and abilities such as armor help with that. We like armored enemies internally as they add an interesting twist to gameplay and build choices, but we’ll also keep an eye on them going forward.
- Added a new armored [redacted] enemy to the graveyard! Watch out!
- Buffed Energy Burst. Default firing rate increased by 20% from 2 → 1.6 seconds. –Dev Note: Energy Burst is our default “vanilla” weapon that has a lot of utility, but it has long felt slightly weaker than its peers, especially in the beginning. This firing rate buff will help it be more useful, consistent, and reliable.
- Tesla Coils reworked so that it will now keep its targets until they go out of range or die (it will no longer strictly target the closest enemy). Since this change makes the Coils much stronger, their base damage is reduced from 0.45 → 0.4. –Dev Note: Tesla Coils can be frustrating to use when you’re moving around a lot and dodging enemies, since it can be very difficult to get them completely powered up. This change should make it much easier to actually power up those beams and get kills with intentional play!
- Buffed Orbital Laser. Slightly increased starting fire rate and size. –Dev Note: The Orbital Laser is really fun and unique, but can easily underperform compared to other weapons. These small buffs will make it a more appealing option.
- Adjusted Crankshaft Ability: Power Surge. Increased ability duration from 8→10 seconds. Increased ability cooldown from 35→50 seconds. –Dev Note: We are still tweaking this ability, as we want it to feel very strong when triggered and increasing the duration both increases its strength and makes it easier to use effectively with all weapons. The cooldown increase reflects the ability’s increased utility.
- Ultimate Weapons will now always be displayed when leveling up instead of only displaying when you can afford them (after you’ve unlocked ultimate weapons, and if there are any available for your current loadout). There is now a UI indicator that shows the cost of the next Ultimate. –Dev Note: We wanted to make sure that players know that Ultimate Weapons are available and display them even when the player might not have collected enough Ultimate Shards to afford them yet this run. We’re hoping this change will help make player more excited about getting ultimates by displaying them more consistently, and help to alleviate any confusion about the increasing costs of subsequent ults.
- Molten Plasma Shotgun - Updated to apply burning instead of its own unique effect.
- Adjusted a few ultimate unlock requirements to be easier.
- Adjusted beetle rings in Stage 3 to be a little easier (again) by reducing their hp.
- Added lots of Steam achievements.
- Added a weapon sound to the CD weapon.
- Updated sprite for player stunned effect.
- Fixed glitch with graveyard boss’s hands not resetting upon death.
- Miscellaneous tweaks and improvements.
- Replaced and updated Serrated Byte character sprite: It is now 73.637% more adorable.
Thank you again to all our players for your feedback and impressions. We’re hard at work as usual, reach out and let us know what you think on Discord or the Steam forums anytime! Thanks again for playing!
–The Crablacksmith Team (James, Frank, Luke, and Adrian)