THE VAMPIRE BOSS & LOCATION. The board goes dark when it attacks. Pop bloody bubbles to feed it and get your sight back. This location has only ONE extraction checkpoint, at minute 10 - reach it with enough XP or lose the run. High risk, high reward.THE BALL BOSS & LOCATION. It drops onto your board and turns your weapons off until you destroy it. The campaign is now 12 locations.THE ARCADE MACHINE. Beat The Core and the arcade cabinet in the submarine unlocks. It has 3 games:
BUBBLEATHON - the 60-minute marathon. This used to be the long TV run in the main game. It is now its own arcade mode with 30 checkpoints, a power pack at every one, and bosses coming in pairs from the start. The main game's TV run now ends at its boss like every other location. In short: the main game is about strategy, the arcade is about competition.
PROJECT POLTERGEIST - chase the flash & neutrino, chase the high score.
HELIX DISCOVERY - protect the DNA core against all the bosses & bubbles. Your score is how long you stay alive.
Every location now has 3 difficulties. You pick one on the location card before you play.
Easy is the normal game. The painful location rules (The Chronos burning your coins, The Core turning off your upgrades, and so on) are gone from Easy. Only the limited weapon and keepable slots remain. The Vampire and The Ball keep their special rules on all difficulties, because that IS their fight.
Hard and Insane ask for much more XP, give more slots, and make the bosses mean it
Each arcade game has its own leaderboard: Bubbleathon XP (your old TV run scores still count here), Poltergeist high score, and HELIX survival time.
The main game is more focus on campaign so marathon players are not fighting for the same list.
We removed achievements that were basically the same thing twice, and added new ones that actually mean something.
Hovering a boss on the map now shows a full info card: what the boss does, the location rules, and the XP you will need - for the difficulty you picked.
Game over no longer gives free consolation gold.
Lots of sounds were re-balanced, and there is more life in the submarine.
Many small fixes in main game, menus and the arcade.