Hey Killers,
We’ve been quiet recently and it’s because we’ve been hard at work on the next update for STRAFE®. We’ve taken our feedback (both praise and criticism) and used it to shape the direction of this update within our vision for the game. You can read a bit more about that HERE.

This update changes the game quite a bit. We’ve added 2 new game modes, new enemies, updated AI, polished weapons, your run can now be saved (but only loaded once) and a persistent unlock system of game mutators along with a shit-ton of other changes. We’ve made sure to keep our vision of STRAFE® intact but worked to deepen the best parts.

We wanted to release this update in the middle of September but did not because it needed more time. Our team is currently 3 people so our speed is dictated by that. We feel it’s better to release it in a solid state then land on an arbitrary date so we’re psyched to say that we found a compromise.

If you’re interested, you can play the update right now and help us test it out. It is beta and you may run into bugs. It’s very helpful to us to document them and send us details. We can only fix what we know about. You can find details HERE.

When we feel that the update is ready we will roll the changes into the main branch for everyone to play! We feel it will not be too long, but who know what people will find.

Here’s a list of the major changes coming in the next update, we are still at work on fixes & balance so this list will get longer by the time we release the update.

When the update is finished it will be coming to Steam & GOG first and then we will focus on bringing it to the PS4. (beta access only on steam, and a reminder that the SPEED ZONE and STRAFE ZONE are only available on steam as well)

Big Additions:
+Added StrafeZone (Daily Challenge)
+Added SpeedZone (Week long speed running challenge)
+Added ability to save runs
+Crashed runs can be recovered
+Added 20 new unlockable game modifiers
Big Head Mode
Rocket Arena
Hardcore Mode
Hyperdrive
Enemy Blood Blasters
Scrambled Cache
Lil Chumps
Instagib
Traditional mode
Blood Lust
Threes Company
Near Sighted
Scrambled Baddies
Moon Walkin’
Get rich or die tryin’
Call me Lil Joby
Game of Guns
QB
Can’t Stop, Won’t Stop
STRAFE® Abridged
+Added 11 new room modules to ICARUS
+ Added 3 new enemies (with unique a.i.)
+ Added the traveling Merchant

Balance & fixes:
+Split soldier and Host into two enemy types each because skilled players only saw their initial behavior before their ai switches into melee mode
+Removed some rooms from ICARUS that were considered unfair
+Revamped enemy aggro
+Can no longer acquire multiple primaries by spending clip
+Fixed bug related to weapons switching when out of ammo in primary weapon
+Fixed issue causing inconsistent turning speed on glowbrites
+Fixed issue stopping Carriers from leaping at the player multiple times as intended
+Fixed issue that was causing more path calculations than needed
+Improved performance of enemies that fire multiple shots at once
+Lowered the time it took the Leper to transform into bomber mode
+Fixed issue causing some enemies to dry-fire when startled
+Made the different glutton skins more different from one another
-Pale glutton is faster and lower health
-Soldier glutton is slightly slower
+Fixed issue causing the host to aim unreliably
+Improved side to side aiming of Host
+Fixed black flash when quick restarting
+Fixed issue that would cause favorite weapon to always show as machinegun
+Fixed issue that would incorrectly show playtime in the post game stats
+Fixed issue that could cause save files to corrupt
+Reduced initial spread on machinegun and rebalanced rate of fire perks for machiengun
+Fixed bug resulting in enemies showing less blood impacts than intended
+Fixed bug causing frame drops when using the empty machinegun
+Fixed bug causing the nailguns bullet to become frozen in some instances
+Rebalanced HMG - Lowered warm up time, slightly lowered reload time, increased max fire rate
+Fixed global stat to correctly show total player deaths
+Fixed bug stopping the “Completionist” achievement from popping
+Reworked Richoshot - Pierces enemies and slightly increased initial damage.
+Increased damage per tick on the shotgun gas
+Lowered damage on initial spin fusor upgrade
+Lowered max damage on nail gun explosions
+Fixed bug causing Airbud to be less powerful than intended
+Trappy robot appears longer before teleporting
+Made the blood bags easier to see on their way to secret doors
+Improved issue allowing turrets to get stuck inside one another
+Lowered ammo use per tick on the lightning secondary for the railgun
+Fixed issue causing an older version of the turret to be present rarely
+(possibly) Fixed issue softlocking burbs merchant
+Fixed specific issue causing levels to fail while generating causing an infinite load
+Added another fix for a case where train tracks could intersect level geometry
+Able to speed up end credits
+Fixed bug allowing the player to jump while credits rolled
+Fixed bug causing the black hole launcher to make zombie corpses
+Fixed bug allowing players to Kill the merchants defense turrets without triggering a robbery
+Fixed bug allowing fire to spawn too close to keycards
+More to come before this is officially live!

Thanks,
Thom & Stephen