Commanders, the playtest is now live!
Join us this weekend up until Tuesday to test the upcoming "Pathfinder" update (0.9.13) for Survivor Mercs.
Please join our community Discord server to participate - it is the best way for us to engage with you and discuss details and feedback!
Once you have the access code from Discord and have Survivor Mercs in your library, follow this guide to switch to our "playtest" beta branch in Steam:
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3365937333
⚠️ IMPORTANT NOTE ⚠️
Your savegames are stored with different file names for the playtest version. Your existing savegames are NOT modified, but you will also start with a fresh game!
We are running this playtest to get your feedback on two major changes. Please read on for more details and how you can use the "cheats menu" in the playtest version (F1 key) to make faster progress:
NEW "STAGED" MAPS & OPS
We mentioned with the last updates that we are planning a major structural change for how you play Operations (runs) in the game.
Instead of one full 20-minute-run, your Operations are now separated into multiple stages, each with different challenge configurations. The final stage in each Operation will be the Final Boss Fight.
At the moment, we have 4 different challenge types and a multitude of different enemy configurations for each one:
- Time Attack - reinforce your squad, get some loot, and collect some XP; but beware, you only have 3 minutes until an artillery barrage is nuking you! Conduit is marking an Extraction Point after ~1 minute to get you out before it's too late.
- Onslaught - kill a specified amount of enemies before the Extraction Point appears. You technically have all the time in the world for this, but this challenge deserves its name.
- Elite Encounter - the mini-bosses have their own challenge stage now. Make sure you are prepared to defeat it because Conduit cannot get you out before you are victorious.
- Boss Fight - the final stage in each Operation is the boss fight you're most likely already familiar with
After each Stage, your Danger Level increases. This will trigger Complications, random modifiers that will influence your run.
Please note that we only have implemented a few "dummy complications" for now. We will introduce more fun and complex complications, and are planning to add "advantages" you can get as a reward from certain challenge stages.
You can extract for good after you beat a certain number of stages. This "tactical retreat" will save you and your squad together with all your loot. This is basically what your Extraction used to be.
If you want to abort the operation earlier, you can always do so, but you will lose everything apart from a handful of Blood Diamonds and DNA.
Everything about the Extraction is still WIP, e.g. you will see the old menus and may also get some stats and numbers that are off. We are currently still re-working these menus into the new HUD/UI-style.
Every time you finish a stage, you will return to the map stages overview. Now you can spend your "skill points" (level-ups) to upgrade your squad. You can no longer pick upgrades during your run!
We are planning to replace the random rolls with a system where you can directly spend your "skill points" on your Mercs, Weapons, Gear, and generic upgrades. We want to reduce randomness in upgrades to let you make better squad-build decisions, In turn, we aim to bring more variety in challenges & operations, especially with more challenge types.
⚠️ IMPORTANT NOTE ⚠️
The current maps are not 100% reflecting the progression and balancing we want to achieve.
Instead, we tried to provide different configurations with each map, so you can test different run configurations and lengths.
If you want to progress quicker and unlock the maps & ops fast, use the cheats menu (F1) in your run, go to "commander", and make yourself invincible, heal yourself, or extract for the current stage immediately (not the whole run).
You can also use the cheats menu in the bunker, go to "meta", and treat yourself to some resources to build rooms, buy new stuff, or research traits.
⚠️ Don't mess up your Steam Achievements!⚠️
Read about the cheats menu below and use it with CAUTION!
NEW HUD & UI
The second big thing we want to test with you is the new HUD.
You will notice that most of the UI & HUD during your runs has changed drastically. The goal is to not only make the UI more beautiful - it should also become more readable, easy to understand, and provide better focus on the action and support fast, tactical decisions.
This new UI style is also in parts coming to the bunker. But the bunker and all its sub-menus are still using the "old" UI. And you will see that some screens, particularly popups and the end-of-run screens, are also still using the old style.
Please let us know how you like the new style direction and how you rate it in regards to usability and clarity.
The new HUD & UI elements will receive further polishing and are still pretty much WIP. We want to understand how well it works for you before we rework everything and only then learn that we overlooked something important. For additional context: the bunker menus will stay somewhat solid and skeumorphic, meaning they try to mimic actual displays, physical controls, or displays. The in-game UI is meant to look more like a holographic overlay. Since you and your Mercs are remote-controlling clones in battle, imagine you're jacking into a retro-VR-arcade-machine to steer your clone from a satellite view.
⚠️ CHEAT MENU DANGER ZONE ⚠️
If you don't want to unlock everything regularly, open the "cheats menu" (F1 key) in the bunker menu, go to the "missions" tab, and unlock the individual maps & operations, or Mercs, Gear, and Traits.
⚠️ WARNING ⚠️ - DO NOT "UNLOCK EVERYTHING"
If you do this, you MAY OVERWRITE YOUR STEAM ACHIEVEMENTS!!
We currently DO NOT have a reliable safeguard in place and you may end up unlocking all Steam Achievements by accident.
USE THE CHEATS AT YOUR OWN RISK!
We cannot stress this enough!
The playtest is meant for feedback on the new HUD & Operations. Many of the other things are still pretty much the same as in the current live version.
If you mess up your achievements with the cheats, we likely cannot fix this!
YOUR FEEDBACK MATTERS
This is the first public playtest we're running like this. Please let us know anything you like and dislike, and report any bugs or issues you encounter.
We have dedicated channels on our Discord server to discuss with you and really understand your feedback to make better design decisions.
There will be more playtests like this, ideally before every major update. So hopefully you will enjoy it and we can not only run even better playtests in the future, but also improve our updates even more!
Lock, load, and playtest, Commanders!