Monthly Update: Dion The Dinosaur
There are girls who are clever, and then there are…clever girls. The Dinosaur unit in Athena Crisis has mysterious origins - perhaps one of the many universes connected to yours simply never saw the fall of the dinosaurs, and they’ve been roaming their planet for millions of years, just waiting for the walls between worlds to weaken, freeing them to seek new, tastier prey. Whatever event spurred their arrival, they’re here, and you’re going to have a tough time asking them to return home.
As a secret unit, you’ll most often find the Dinosaur roaming the jungles and plains of Athena Crisis, free of allegiances to any side or faction, simply aiming to disrupt the best-laid plans of commanders everywhere (and snack on your infantry units). As you might expect, the Dinosaur brings to bear its mighty Bite attack on opposing units: at full strength this will generally be enough to defeat any unit it’s capable of attacking, which includes most infantry and armored units. Its tough skin makes it difficult to take down without suffering fearsome counterattacks, but if you have a Flamethrower in the area, one spray of fire should result in some tasty BBQ back at HQ after the mission.
Athena Crisis Is Now Steam Deck Verified
Our friends at Valve have issued a full Steam Deck verification for Athena Crisis, meaning that you’ll have the same wonderful experience on your Steam Deck when you play Athena Crisis as you would on your PC or Mac. You can try it today, and please let us know on the official Discord if you have any issues.
Coming Soon: Athena Crisis Merch!
That’s right, you will soon be able to show your Athena Crisis pride with a variety of t-shirts at the Null Store. Featuring some of our fabulous in-game art, these fine wool-spun t-shirts will surely make you the envy of your peers at your next game night. Keep an eye on the Athena Crisis Community Hub on Steam for more details as they get closer to production.
New Features And Updates
Per-Map Player Achievements
You can now rank yourself on each of the Prequel Campaign maps! You’ll earn stars in four different categories after each map.
Pace: How many rounds it takes to win.
Power: The ratio between destroyed and lost units. A 10:1 ratio is best.
Style: An adaptive goal that might be different depending on the map, like for example capturing a certain amount of buildings, how many units a player can lose or how many "one shots" a player did, ie. defeating a unit with full health in one attack
Bonus: Whether an optional objective was achieved or not.
You can review your Stars progress on your profile page, and you can also build Star rewards into your own campaigns using the map editor. There’s even automated suggestions for each metric that goes into the Star rating if you want to let the computer handle the decision-making.
New Additions
- Many new skills were added to unlock special units such as the Alien, Bazooka Bear, Acid Bomber and Super Tank.
- We added many new decorations so you can design maps that are even prettier.
Improved Gamepad Support
You can now use a gamepad or controller on the main menu, portrait selector, and when typing out a character name. If you’re interested in playing with a controller, check out the updated button mapping here:
Status Effects
Units in Athena Crisis are now capable of afflicting status effects on their opponents. The Alien's poisonous bite will wear down a unit's health over time; unless you heal the unit, it will continue taking damage every turn until it collapses. Other units may earn the ability to deal status effect damage in the future, where appropriate.
Balance Changes
A number of balance changes were implemented based on player feedback, including:
- Alien attacks will deal less outright damage (to account for the new status effect indicated above).
- Zombies and a number of other special units can now attack low-flying aircraft. (Zombies can also now take over enemy units with a unit ability called “Convert.”) Aim for the stars, Mr. Zombie!
- The AI will now build fewer Jeeps and Support Ships. They’ll still build some, but they shouldn’t flood their supply lines with easy-to-destroy units anymore.
- The AI will now also hold onto their Skill activations until it makes more sense to use them: earlier in turns, and when more units will be affected by the Skill.