Major update

Leveling system, meta-upgrades, and MUCH more!

All Aboard! The Train Defense Express Demo · published 28 Mar 2025, 07:27 UTC · build 17890331

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Hello, gamers! I'm VERY excited to bring you this new patch, version 0.6, which brings much-requested meta-progression features, such as an EXP/leveling system and permanent unlocks/buffs!

First of all, I'd like to thank my friends, who go by sargx, Exolun, and SilentWizard, for extensively testing this new build, and Grisknuckle for the new art, which you'll see on the Boons screen and some of the new achievements. If you find any bugs, please blame them. :)

Let's get into it!

Difficulty Changes

As anyone who played the previous patch knows, the only boss that was any trouble at all was Werebear. This patch, the other bosses are being buffed to also make them a challenge. This means the overall difficulty of the game is going to increase, even on the easiest game mode. Luckily, the increased difficulty will be balanced out by the new meta-progression system, which we'll talk more about later.

But first, the new difficulties:

Normal Mode - Normal mode's enemy scaling is slightly lower than the current enemy scaling, meaning that, compared to before, the enemies do not become as difficult as quickly. However, the bosses will be harder than before thanks to buffs this patch, so the overall difficulty will increase, but if you've gotten past an hour before, you should have no trouble adapting to this difficulty.

Hard Mode - Enemy difficulty ramps up much more quickly than normal. In Hard Mode, skipping chests will also increase the price of chests a very small amount, so skipping is not free on this mode. In compensation, you'll get a 1.5x experience points boost in this mode. You'll definitely have trouble getting past the 1 hour mark without unlocking any permanent upgrades first!

Select your desired difficulty from the new Game Setup dialog that appears after selecting New Game on the main menu.

New Leveling System

At the end of each round, when you get a Game Over, or when you Exit to Main Menu, the "Game Over" screen will appear, summarizing your score, and tallying your experience points. You'll gain experience points based on your performance in that game session. Destroying creatures, upgrading carriages, lasting a long time, and collecting gold all have an impact on how much experience you'll gain.

In this v0.6 patch, the rewards unlocked go up to level 10. More unlocks will be added next patch. If you level beyond level 10, you'll still retroactively gain whatever unlocks that are added that are below your current level when the next patch comes out.

Also, the game makes great efforts to record your leveling progress after each match, whether you finish by getting a Game Over, whether you Exit to Main Menu, or close out the game entirely. I recommend that, if you want to exit a game before it's done, to exit to the main menu so that you can see how much experience you gained.

Boons

During the game, Tickets have a chance to drop from enemies, and they are guaranteed to drop from bosses (they drop even more tickets on higher difficulties). Spend these tickets on Boons - permanent upgrades which offer some benefits on the battlefield.

There are 5 new Boons this patch. Next patch, 5 more will be added, and more after that.

To access the Boons menu, first get to level 1. It's available on the Game Over screen, and also in the new Collections main menu option. Unlock the new menu to see what kind of Boons you can upgrade!

The new Collections menu currently only has the Boons menu, but in the near future, will show other things, such as achievements gained, items unlocked, and records.

Boss Changes

New Boss - Satyr: The Satyr does not attack. Instead, he wanders around the screen. Every time you hit him, he gets mad, and he throws out deceivingly cute monsters all over the screen. If you ignore him for too long, he gets even MORE mad.

Splitter: Splitter had a rather serious bug where his health did not scale at all. That's why, past the 10 minute mark, he was the easiest boss in the game. Now, he's one of the hardest. Good luck!

Summoner: The summoner and her slimes have been given a significant health boost.

Necromancer: The necromancer's health has been boosted. Also, the raised Skeletons now inherit the properties of the creature they were raised from. In other words, if they're raised from Orc Riders, the skeletons are faster and have more HP, and if they're raised from Armored Orcs, they're slower but have way more HP.

Carriage Changes

2 new carriages have been added! Unlock them by leveling up. If you're having trouble with bosses like Werebear, level up fast!

Wise Investment - Scaling Changed: Everyone knows Wise Investment is the most broken option in the game for gold generation due to its uncapped gold generation via interest payments. I'm okay with that, but I thought it got you into the trillion gold territory a little too quickly, so the star level scaling has been nerfed.
To give you some numbers: If you have a level 4 Wise Investment and 100M gold, it goes from generating 4,250,000 every 10 seconds, to 3,350,000 every 10 seconds in patch 0.6. It's still over-powered, but hopefully it will take you a little longer to get to 9 quintillion gold.

Hyper Beam: The base duration of Hyper Beam is still 2 seconds, but the duration scaling was reduced from 1 second per level to 0.75 seconds per level. So, if you got Hyper Beam to level 4, it now lasts 5 seconds instead of 6. This makes it slightly less powerful, but still one of the best carriages in the game, I think.
Also, the beam was made slightly transparent so that it's easier to see what's going on.

Engineer: The base damage and damage scaling of the turret was slightly increased.

Machine Gun: Buffed the Machine Gun's damage, range, projectile speed, and damage scaling.

Gravity Gun: Previously, the Gravity Gun had a bad habit of sucking enemies into the Infinite Power Generator. Now, if its target is too close to the generator, it will try sucking them towards the nearby train tracks instead.

Goo Launcher: Increased the base area of effect radius and damage. Also, the slow applied to enemy creatures now scales up with star level.

Hand of Midas: Slightly reduced the exponential star level scaling of the created gem's value.

Chain Lightning: The base number of bounces is up to 5 from 3, and the base bouncing area of effect radius was increased.

Cannon: Fixed a bug with the cannon projectile impact's visual effect.

Grenade Launcher: Increased damage, area of effect, and range.

Shotgun: Damage scaling was increased. It's now a very competitive option at level 3 and 4.

Gem Generator: Now generates more valuable gems based on your train's speed. Upgrade your train's speed to increase the value of this carriage.

Upgrade Changes

Hire Miner: You will now receive +1 miner per ugprade for every 10 Miner upgrades you have. For example, at 0-10 miners, you receive +1 miner per upgrade; at 11-20 miners, you receive +2 miners per upgrade; at 21-30 miners, you receive +3 miners per upgrade; and so on, and so forth.

The Pity, Damage and Gem Value upgrades are now slightly cheaper in the middle range so that it's slightly easier to get early levels.

System Changes

Early Game Speed-up: The early game was a little bit slow, so the first 3 chests have had their price reduced by 5 gold, and enemies now start spawning more quickly after 45 seconds in Normal mode, and 30 seconds in Hard mode (down from 2 minutes in patch 0.5).

14 new achievements! Many of the new achievements are related to gold collection. Due to system changes, your existing records in this area don't count toward the new gold-collecting achievements.

Knockback: Creatures were not consistently being knocked back by some effects such as being hit by the train due to interacting in an awkward way with other crowd control effects. Some changes were made to make it much more consistent this patch.

Low Health Alert: A new alert sound now plays when you drop below 85%, 55%, and 25% health. It has an internal cooldown of 10 seconds. You can turn this alert off in the Gameplay options.

Music Switch-up: Removed a couple of songs and replaced them with new songs.

Grass Brightness Reduced: Slightly reduced how bright the green grass was.

Damage Numbers Auto-Hide Threshold Lowered: Damage numbers, those little numbers that pop up when you deal damage to an enemy, are the leading cause of lag, so they're automatically hidden when there's too many enemies on the screen. The threshold at which they're auto-hidden was decreased so that they'll hide earlier than before. This should help fights such as Necromancer be a little less laggy.

2 new power-ups! Level up to unlock them.

Upgrade Hotkey: The same button or key that can be used to open the Upgrades menu (X/Square on controller, V on keyboard) can now be used to close it.

Game Speed Memorized: When restarting game sessions, the game now remembers your preferred game speed setting.

Gem Pick-up SFX Nerfed: The sound effect played when a gem is picked up has been slightly reduced.

Way Too Much Gold: Fixed an integer overflow issue that occurred when players were gathering WAY too much gold. For this patch, the maximum gold value is now comfortably capped at 9 quintillion.

Localization Error Fix (Korean): The word for "MAX" was corrected in the Korean localization, for when upgrades were maxed out.

Demo update: The demo timer has been increased to 1 hour 2 minutes. You can level up in the demo, but cannot go beyond level 5. All progress in the demo (except achievements) are carried forward to the real game.

That's all for now! The next patch is coming April 18th. The major feature introduced will be Relics, which are artifacts that enhance you or your carriages in some way for the rest of the game. Please enjoy the new patch!

- Likadev

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