Hello, friends! We’ve been heads down building the rest of Ambrosia's world, tuning up systems, swearing at spreadsheets, and trying to make our bosses slightly less cruel (or more interestingly cruel, depending on your perspective). But we decided it would be a good to take a break from these machinations to bring you something in the meantime - an updated demo that brings a number of fairly substantial changes. For those who already played, the scope of the demo is unchanged in terms of areas and enemies. But we've polished up some rough edges and also added some long-requested features and balance updates. Let’s go through what’s new.
🌱 Environment Retexture Pass
Textures have been reauthored. Everything pops just a little more now. And someone has really gone and made a mess of some of the stages! So if it looks different, that’s because it is. We wanted the demo to better reflect our intended atmosphere—more depth, more grime, more personality
⚙️ Weapons, Mods, Equipment Updated
A balance pass has been applied across the weapon and mod system. Our goals: elevate delight, reward deliberate use of equipment, and fix a few internal numbers that have been bothering us for months. Meanwhile, crafting has evolved into an upgrade system that is available for preview in the demo… Which also means more equipment is now lurking in the demo’s crevices!
Affected tools include:
Breaker Cores: New mod that gives you additional shots for more pew pew.
Split Stage: New mod that shoots a missile forward and back
Treen Guard: Grants "Fragile Armor" which cannot be mended outside Checkpoints
Oh yeah, another minor change is that the player has the "Mend" action by default (rather than needing to pick up a piece of equipment for it), so no more missing out on a crucial recovery option if you miss a chest!
🧠 Boss Reworks
The two demo bosses have received at least minor reworks. Attack patterns have been adjusted. Some behaviors were overhauled. One or two were quietly taught some manners. The final fight also includes updated mechanics, most of which are telegraphed, all of which are dodge-able (in theory).
We are not naming names, but one boss in particular no longer enters a death spiral loop if you hit them in the leg at exactly 0.03 seconds after phase 2 starts. Probably.
🔧 Minor Adjustments & Fixes
You can now return to the title screen during game play. Handy!
Fixed an issue where armor icons on boss gauges didn’t blink when damaged
Fixed an issue where players with AMD 7000 series GPUs would see game crashes or texture errors
✳️ One More Thing...
We’ll have more to share soon on some of the engine-level improvements (including a fun one involving water), but for now, feel free to give the demo another go and send us your thoughts. If you manage to softlock yourself in an endless mineshaft again, please at least tell us how you did it.
Thanks for playing.
—The Clockwork Ambrosia Team