Hi, the free Swarmlake 4.0: Zenith update is out now. 8 years after release, this is the definitive version of Swarmlake:
Added shooting beam: A manual fire mode that charges and fires a concentrated energy beam. Can create corridors through enemies, detonate bombs directly and create an explosion on the floor, opening up new scoring combos and high-skill expression.
Added beam jump: Fire the beam at the ground while jumping to launch yourself upward. Can be cancelled mid-air.
Added variable jump height: Tap for a short hop, hold for a full jump. Opens up more precise vertical control in tight situations.
Added training mode: Structured scenarios that teach the game's core mechanics one at a time. Addresses the most consistent feedback since release that Swarmlake is hard to get into without practice.
Changed enemy steering and prediction behavior: Chasing enemies drift more when the player changes direction rapidly. Charger (yellow) enemies predict circular player motion. Rewards active movement over running in circles.
Added GPU particle system: Explosions now have more density and atmosphere.
Added volumetric lighting: Light shafts pass through the scene dynamically, most visible when looking toward the sky's zenith.
Improved visual clarity: Enemy rim lighting makes dense groups easier to read. Colors are more saturated. Emissives are now transparent. UI panels use a frosted glass backdrop.
Improved shadow quality: Softer, more natural edges.
Improved input precision and responsiveness: Aiming and movement now register more precisely and consistently at any sensitivity or framerate.
Rebuilt on DirectX 12 and 64-bit: A modern graphics API and native 64-bit process, delivers the best frame pacing and performance on Windows.
Improved CPU performance: Approximately 3x improvement across the board through extensive optimizations. Most players will see a noticeable jump in frame rate and smoothness. Startup is also significantly faster.
Rebuilt arena: The floor is now hexagonal tiles, the wall is dynamic hex panels, and ocean waves fill the space beneath.
Improved music-reactive visuals: Light beams, ocean, and the wall now pulses to the beat.
Added floor reactions: The floor responds visually to bomb explosions, beam impacts, and projectile hits.
Added 3D gun HUD: The weapon's status display is now rendered in world space, appearing physically mounted on the gun rather than overlaid on screen.
Improved gamepad controls: Aim assist, a dynamic stick curve for finer small adjustments, and reduced deadzones.
Added gamepad rumble: Explosions, hits, and scoring moments produce physical feedback on controllers.
Improved replay: Includes a gameplay statistics display, player model damage and heal feedback, and replay scrubbing. The game stays in replay after a run ends.
Added localization: The game is now localized into multiple languages.
Improved leaderboard: Names display correctly for all languages including CJK. Right-click any entry to open the Steam profile.
Improved player responsiveness: Direction reversals are snappier, reducing input lag at speed.
Reduced auto fire rate: Power shifted toward the beam. Better fits expectations of when taking damage relative to enemy density.
Added score-gated active bomb cap: Limits how many bombs can be active at once early on, smoothing the difficulty curve.
Increased enemy spawn scaling: Speeds up pacing.
Tweaked bomb spawns to bias toward center with more height variation: Encourages more vertical play.
Removed delayed shard attraction: Encourages more aggressive playstyles.
Reworked achievements: Split into tutorial and score tiers. Score achievements are now higher due to increased maximum score achievable, which should result in similar challenge.
Improved defaults: Defaults to vsync and borderless fullscreen. Skips rendering when minimized.
Added retrying failed replay upload
A beta branch legacy_3.0 is available for players whose hardware does not support 4.0's requirements. In Steam, right-click Swarmlake > Properties > Betas > select legacy_3.0.
Thanks for playing!
- Dominique