Hello. It's been a while, right about 3 months since the last update. I took a month off from the game in December but have since worked hard on a major update. As previously mentioned I'm gearing towards launching the game from Early Access and this update brings it really close. For this one I had 2 main objectives on top of everything else; a final map and polish everything as best as I could.
Volcano map
Introducing volcano and volcano endless maps. I had a lot of fun with this one, hope you do too. Go dance with the devil!
Polish
The polishing phase is time consuming to say the least. There's plenty of new and updated sound effects, particle effects as well as animated sprites like grass and trees to liven up the experience. There's tweaking of UI elements, colors and text. But it's not all about improving what's there. I've also had to take a hard look at whether some elements or features were required at all and so some went to the trash bin.
Misc
One thing is certain. The more you play a game the more you get ideas on how to improve it. I tried to keep new features to a minimum but sometimes I just can't help myself. So yes, there's a bunch of various content additions as well as potentially a divisive new feature. Take a look at the changelog to find out what...
Launch date
Still undecided but possibly early April. I want to reserve some time for marketing and fixing any last remaining issues this update may have brought along. I'll keep you posted. In the meantime I appreciate your feedback on the game as usual!
Full changelog:
General
- New maps: Volcano and Volcano Endless
- New item: Heatseeker - Destroys an incoming enemy projectile then goes to cooldown
- New elite type: "Blocker" - Creates a barrier around you that you can't pass
- New enemy flyby formation: "Circle" attack
- New power-up: Back Pain Ointment - Increased consumable carry limit
- New barracks feature: Call to Arms - Double your party members for 20s
- New altar feature: Sacrifice health for +40% level up
- New local event: Assembly - Triple your party members with Call to Arms
- New local event: Fountain of Youth - Increase max health at the Pond
- New local event: Target Practice - Up to 100% longer time at the Tower
- New local event: Farmer's Market - Extra animal(s) at the Market
- New local event: Investment Seminar - Better tier interest rates
- New pub feature: Now sells ham as well
- New achievements: 4 specialty win conditions plus Volcano map achievements
- New and adjusted options for 50% and 100% character attribute bonuses
- New 100% weapon bonus options for primary weapons
- New rune bonus
- Added ability to reroll rune options with gold
- Added sounds for all special enemy powers
- Added sound for stunning an enemy
- Added sounds for flyby enemies
- Added new music for map entrance phase
- Added a small story beat to tutorial
- Updated pause menu music
- Updated sounds for all primary weapons
- Updated sounds for weather events
- Updated death animation effect
- Updated projectile particles
- Removed Village Hardcore endless mode
- Removed clock icon and map target time from the GUI as redundant
- Removed many text shadows for a cleaner look
- Removed option to toggle off Sky (clouds and mist)
- Removed option to reorder weapons and consumables
- Ongoing missions are capped to max 2 before 15min and 3 afterwards. Black obelisks are excluded from this count
- Weapon slot cost reduced from 35 to 25
- Weapon upgrades beyond maxed out level are not offered before all weapons are maxed out. Once offered, 2 slots are offered instead of 1
- Pub prices are adjusted based on how many you have on inventory
- Church service (local event) applies discount to all services not just healing
- Some extra enemies are spawned at start of most missions
- Increased fetch mission timer a little bit
- Protect mission target can also be hit by enemy projectiles
- Player can start the run at any day time they want (unless map is fixed to certain time)
- Player health and energy bars show only when not full
- Player hitbox is a bit smaller
- Player status effects like cursed or infected will show visibly on the character info panel
- Player will get pushed and drop a random consumable when hit hard by an enemy (e.g. elite)
- Player will get encumbered if having too many consumables (base limit is 20). Each consumable over the carry limit will reduce player speed by 1%. Strength increases carry weight limit as well as some bonuses and a power-up
- Enemies will no longer fire projectiles when stunned
- Enemy movement speed is slowed down briefly after knockback depending on knockback force
- Suicider (bomb) enemies will always explode on death and hurt enemies too
- Sandworms can be killed
- Library and Bandit Camp radius is bigger but cooldown increased from 30 to 45s and max time lowered from 30 to 20s
- Bandit Camp gives 100% gold drop on the first minute
- Apple, berry or agave cooldowns increased from 30 to 60s
- Tower cooldown increased from 30 to 45s
- Thief's Poison Bomb will have poison damage as standard
- Thief can only steal gold once per enemy
- Mine starting gold is slightly higher on average
- Auras will spawn intersecting each other
- Blizzard will affect elites too
- Vortex will be placed anywhere in view instead of where the player is located
- Bear will last for 10s and attack flying enemies as well
- Party members and other friendly AI won't target scared (running away) enemies anymore
- Fetch mission main arrow will disappear when crate arrows are present to avoid confusion
- Bandit Camp has been renamed to Bandits
- Sacrifice has been renamed to Altar
- Healing (Pond) has been renamed to Fountain
- Forest maps have a farm
- Mountain maps are more snowy for better contrast
- Weekly leaderboard names the winners of past 3 weeks
- Very Easy difficulty starts with +200 gold and Easy with +100 gold (for non-endless maps)
- Very Easy and Easy difficulty enemy spawn interval is even slower
- Added Colombia and Latvia flags to leaderboard
- Some GUI text and colour adjustments
- Some performance improvements
Bugs
- Potential fire mission game crash with "Unable to find instance for object"
- Weighted Dice item was adding free rerolls on other events in addition to level up
- The game ran briefly in the background between level ups (when pressing "next level up")
- Bank rates information wasn't adjusted to different game speeds
- Chickens could attack enemy portals that couldn't be destroyed