Hello everyone!
For the first time since Evil Empire started working on Brotato, I can proudly say: we have updated the beta branch!
Here's a TLDR of the content, for full details keep reading:
6 new items and 1 new weapon
Ban system
Save profiles
Codex
Icons in character and item descriptions
VFX, animation and accessibility tweaks
To access the beta branch, go to your Library, right click on Brotato and go to "Properties" of your game, then select "Betas". In the “beta participation”, select “beta” in the drop down menu.
So, the “New Dawn” update is yours to test, and in it you’ll find lots of stuff.
The objective was to have a quality-of-life update to start, plus some additional features that we felt the community wanted. A way for us to start working on Brotato by tipping our toe in the water before plunging in headfirst.
We should mention that the new content in the beta is only available in English for the moment.
Before getting into the content, a word about the progress saves:
When playing on the beta branch, the progress you make will be deleted at the official update release.
During the beta period, if you switch back to the default branch to play some classic Brotato, the progress you are making will NOT be lost with official update release. Only what you did on the beta branch will be lost.
The saves files are in the usual place. The beta files are labelled “v3” and are the ones that will be lost with the update release.
If you have any questions about that, do not hesitate to ask.
Right now that's out of the way, here are the main features...
Even though our focus was QoL, we still wanted this update to have a little bit of meat on it, so we added 6 items and 1 weapon for you to play around with.
One item (fresh meat) is already unlocked. The others must be unlocked with an in-game achievement.
Here is the list of the items with their challenges:
To unlock each item:
Fresh Meat: No unlock needed
Fruit Basket: Collect 100 fruits while at maximum health.
Candy Bag: Win a run without locking any items in the shop.
Ghost Outfit: Reach +70% Dodge.
Will-o'-the-wisp: Kill 30 enemies by burning them in a single wave.
Hourglass: During the last 5 seconds of a wave after wave 2, press 'Return to Main Menu'. Then press 'Resume' to try the wave again.
Next up is the new weapon:
Vorpal Sword unlock: Reach +100% Crit Chance.
Have fun with those and let us know what you think! Now let's move on to the new extras...
This is something that we’ve seen wanted by many, so we are taking a shot at a ban system. In the beta, you can now ban up to 8 items in the shop during your run.
To unlock the ban system, you have to win a run in Danger 3 or more.
We’ve decided not to include weapons in the ban. During closed testing, banning weapons resulted in some… incredibly op outcomes, because it gives you more control over the pool of possible options in the shop (3 red weapons by wave 5, hello?).
So we believe banning items is the way to go and we want to test it with you - this is a beta after all! Try it out and tell us what you think :)
You can now have 3 saves in Brotato. You can copy your progress onto another profile or reset the save. You can also unlock every item, characters, weapons and Danger level on a save (which will deactivate the earning of achievements, you’ll still have to get them the hard way).
This allows you to have a fresh save and keep your old one, copy your ongoing profile to go endless while starting a run 20 on another profile, lend Brotato to your annoying sibling with different track progression, etc.
The possibilities are endless (and by endless we mean within the bound of 3 profile slots)!
The Codex gathers the Progress menu and information about Items, Weapons and Enemies.
Think of it as a wiki in the game with additional info, like how many times you killed a specific alien and more!
We see this as still a work-in-progress, so let us know what stats you'd like to see here.
We wanted to improve readability and make it faster to associate what items/characters works well with what stats. That way, you can make quicker decisions.
If it’s not to your liking (we spend some time on it but fair enough) this can also be deactivated in the Accessibility menu by turning off "Show effects icons", the choice is yours.
We’ve added a lot of visual elements that fall into different categories.
Now, Chest and LvUp icons are merged when you gain more than 4 during a wave.
We made some tweaks to curse and flames VFX to better set them apart (and we felt it was pretty). Plus, you can now distinguish your cursed turrets from the regular ones.
You’ll probably notice it quickly; we’ve added an animation for the beginning and end of a run. Look at that brotato, landing on hostile ground after his crash! Don’t worry, this animation does not make you lose any time (if speedrun is the kind of thing that gets you going).
Last but clearly not least, we’ve added a bunch of options for you to change the colors displayed in the game. All of that is in the Accessibility menu.
For every change and addition, see the patch note at the end of the post.
As to where you should write this feedback: go nuts.
Write on the beta channel of the Discord, in the Steam discussions, wherever you feel is right, we will find you.
We’ll try to have a more structured way of gathering this in the future. But right now, we only want one thing: to know what you think about our first contribution to Brotato!
Cheers,
Dalloks & the EE team.
Content
- Added 6 items and 1 weapon
- Each item has been added to its corresponding ban list:
Fresh Meat → Life steal list
Fruit Basket → Consumable heal list
Will-o'-the-Wisp → Elemental damage list
Ghost Outfit → Dodge list
Features
- Added an Item Ban System in the shop with 8 ban tokens
- Added a Save Profile System with 3 slots
- Saves can be reset or copied
- All content can be unlocked per slot
- Added a Codex Menu
- The Progression Menu has been moved into the Codex Menu
- Added Item Description tab
- Added Enemy Description tab
- Added Weapon Description tab
- Added sorting options to all inventories (pause menu, shop interface, codex menu, etc.)
- Added an option to disable item cosmetics
- Added an option to customize bonus and malus colors in descriptions, as well as tier colors
- Added an option to switch title screen key art
- Added Mac and Linux build support (not deployed yet).
- To play on Steam Deck for now, switch to Proton Experimental under Properties > Compatibility
Changes
- Banned Piggy Bank and Crown from the item pool after wave 20
- Added Charcoal and Gnome to the Cyborg's banned item list
- Made Gobbler unable to be buffed
- Added stat icons to character and item descriptions
- Added more in-game FX: flames, cursed, and critical damage effects
- Added Chest/Upgrade counter (icons merge when you reach crate or level-up milestones in a wave)
- Added start and end of run animations
- Merged General and Gameplay option menus
- Added different visuals for structure spawning
- Added responsive controller icons in solo mode
- Added button shortcuts to lock or ban an item in the shop
- Made small layout adjustments to the main menu More Tech-Related
- Changed when burning is applied — it now triggers just before damage is dealt. This makes Will-o'-the-Wisp proc when one-shotting enemies with a burning attack.