Generals,
Since launch, we've read everything you've written to us: reviews and comments on Steam, Bilibili, Reddit, YouTube and social media, in every language they came in. Thank you for taking the time, including those of you who are upset. It's clear the game matters to you.
The short version: Patch 1 arrives early next week, and you'll find what's in it below. But first, we want to explain how we're going to update the game, and why.
How we'll update Genesis
In previous updates and DLCs, in our rush to respond quickly to some criticism, we released patches without testing them enough. Sometimes we fixed one thing and broke another, and you were the ones who paid for it. We learned from that.
That's why our patches may take a little longer to come out. It's not because we aren't listening. We're reading everything, analyzing it and discussing every change with a lot of love for this game. We want to do it responsibly, and that means every change gets properly tested before it reaches your hands.
Patch 1 focuses on the points where almost all of you agree. Here are the highlights:
Casual difficulty: more gold.
Heroes: faster leveling pace and a stronger catch-up bonus.
Spells: faster leveling pace and a stronger catch-up bonus.
Unlocks: fewer stars needed to unlock towers, heroes and spells.
Stages 3, 7 and 10: adjustments to tower spots and waves.
Targeting: enemies near the exit can be targeted while they're visible on the path.
Classic mode: lower ability costs; on Impossible, towers start fully upgraded.
Rain of Fire: buff.
Artillery: cost adjustments, so they're easier to build.
Bolin: mine placement fix, buff and bug fixes.
Bug fixes.
When Patch 1 goes live, we'll publish a detailed changelog with every change, the exact values and the reasoning behind each one.
What takes more time
Other topics are more complex, and they're also the ones where opinions in the community differ the most. You probably know which ones we mean: balance changes that could make the game easier, like changes to the economy pace, more gold to build more towers, stronger towers or more tower spots, to name just the most requested ones.
The thing is, none of these works on its own. For example, tower spots are fixed, so if we add more without adding gold, the same gold gets spread across more towers and you end up with less for each one. And if we add gold without reviewing the waves, the game simply gets easier, and the challenge many of you love disappears. Several of you actually suggested exactly this: more gold, with the waves adjusted to match.
These changes are connected, and they only work if we adjust them together and test them carefully. That's what we're analyzing right now.
What Kingdom Rush means to us
Since 2011, we've made Kingdom Rush with the same idea: a tower defense game that challenges you to find the strategy. Which tower works against each enemy, where to place it, when to use each spell, how to beat that level that seemed impossible. And that moment when everything clicks and your defense does its job.
Over the years, many of our most loyal fans have played every game in the franchise and become true experts. That's why, at some point, we added difficulty levels: we want all of you, whether you've been playing Kingdom Rush since 2011 or just joined us, to find a challenge that fits your level. On Veteran and Impossible, that challenge has to live up to what those difficulties promise. At the same time, a game shouldn't be frustrating. The line between easy and boring, hard and fun, and hard and frustrating is very thin, and balancing four difficulty levels is hard and takes time. We know that at some points Genesis crossed that line, and we're working to identify exactly where and why. That's why we want to make every adjustment carefully: so that anyone looking for a challenge finds it, and anyone who wants to enjoy the story and watch their towers in action can do that too.
This is the first step, not the last. We'll keep reading and adjusting.
See you on the battlefield,
The Ironhide Team
P.S. About crashes.
In parallel, we're working hard on fixing them. Every PC and every device is its own world: drivers, settings, installed programs. Testing every possible combination is impossible, so being in direct contact with the players who are having problems is key for us. If the game crashes for you, write to us at [email protected] and tell us about your setup. You can also try the open beta. To do that, open your Steam Library, right-click the game, select Properties, go to the Betas tab, and choose the open beta from the dropdown menu and let us know if it fixes your problem.