Welcome to the Early Access version of Brigador Killers. This is the most ambitious and elaborate game Stellar Jockeys have ever made, taking the better part of a decade. We hope you have as much fun diving into it as we have had losing our minds making it.
The Deluxe Edition includes the all-new soundtrack by Makeup and Vanity Set, and the accompanying audiobook.
Also available is the Double Deluxe which is the deluxe editions of both Brigador: Up-Armored Edition and Brigador Killers, and includes all albums of music, and both audiobooks.
There are substantial differences between the Early Access version of Brigador Killers and the previous alpha builds and the demo. In brief:
Play through an extended narrative campaign – fight your way through the Undercity and start assembling your arsenal.
Take on new challenges – almost all previous maps have been adjusted or remixed with entirely new objectives, along with a few new levels.
Spend your credits at merchants – check the mission selector to see which missions have a merchant present, and be sure to return to those merchants as you clear later missions to acquire better gear.
Upgrade your bases – construct upgrades from the Fabricator and deposit them in your base's ARMORY.
Check out new art assets – more character portraits, weapon renders and unit sprites have been put into the game (some MS Paint still remains).
Don't hang around – a combination of the enemy AI overhaul and new spawning behaviors makes combat much more threatening and much less repetitive. It is also much more dangerous to spend too long deployed in missions – get in and get out.
Here is a gameplay manual in the form of a Steam guide that goes into more detail.
Overall the biggest gameplay difference is there is now an intended progression curve, particularly in the post-narrative segment. The previous builds had next to no progression and players had almost immediate access to mid- to high-tier gear early on which trivialized the difficulty – this is no longer the case. You will need to complete harder missions to get access to higher tier weaponry. Vehicle access is also gated until you clear enough of the initial missions from Angel Base, and travelling to the next base will require a vehicle.
In the near term the game is likely to get one or more hotfix following launch and Stellar Jockeys expect to be very busy for the next couple of weeks. Previous experience has taught us to be ready for an influx of bug reports and dealing with any of the nasty crashes we didn't catch while testing. We greatly appreciate your patience as we tackle these things.
Once things calm down you can expect to hear more news. Approximately the plans for the game in early access are going to be following:
Adding more story content to the campaign – there's still much to be told following the events of the pinball attack.
More enemies – additional factions will appear as the game's narrative progresses in addition to NOSPOL cops, Chobbers and Nossian Corvids.
Reintroduce alternate rigs – in the interests of progression and game balance, the carmine, cinderblock and spacer rigs have been temporarily disabled.
Replacing placeholder art assets – a lot of you have told us repeatedly how much you like the MS Paint assets and substitutes for certain sprites, but they will eventually be taken out (don't worry, some of them will remain in the game in some fashion).
Localization support – translation of the game's text and interface into Chinese, French, German, Japanese, Russian and Spanish is underway with more languages planned.
We cannot give an exact ETA on these plans at this time, and priorities may change rapidly especially following this release. In the long term for 1.0, we will also be looking at things like:
Linux support
Controller and Steam Deck support
Modkit & Mapping tools
Achievements
The first two technically exist already. The game is made in a Linux environment but it is not officially marked as having Linux support currently. As with the demo build it may be possible to run the game on Linux without issue, but your mileage may vary depending on your distro.
Controller and Steam Deck support is another big task that involves making changes to how the game draws its UI and font size among other things. Steam has automatically marked the game as Playable on Steam Deck, but we strongly recommend that you play on mouse and keyboard.
The modkit and mapping tools for Brigador Killers will eventually become available – we don't want to end up in a position where we are bricking people's creations as a result of data and scripting changes.
Similarly, achievements for Steam and GOG require making the game able to speak to the relevant APIs on those platforms – this is not a high priority for us at this time, but it's one of our goals for 1.0.
There is a pinned thread on our Steam subforum for tech support. The short version is when reporting a crash or bug, please tell us the following:
Your system’s information
A copy of log.txt which can be found in the main Brigador Killers game folder (this file is overwritten every time you start the game).
A copy of the crash dump file (if possible). This file is titled brigador_killers.dmp and is typically located in C:\\Users\\[YOUR USERNAME]\\AppData\\Local\\Temp on Windows.
A description of what you were doing before the bug occurred.
You are welcome to email us at [email protected] with your technical difficulties as well.
There are a few places to leave your feedback on the game such as:
Steam forums
r/brigador subreddit
Our Discord server
We are most active on our Discord server.
Last but not least, this is Makeup and Vanity Set's official site for all his music and the Brigador Killers OST should also be live there very soon.
Okay, that's more than enough words for now. Aside from any hotfix posts, check back in at the end of the month as usual where we'll be looking at your impressions and answering some frequently asked questions.