New patch - The Samurai Update improves melee combat and adds Japanese support

Hello survivors,

As I explained in the previous post, we needed a short break from working on our next title Dream Engines: Nomad Cities, and getting back to Judgment for a small but impactful update was the perfect way for us to spend this time. So here you have it - the Samurai Update.

In this update we focused on making survivors equipped with melee weapons more meaningful. We've heard your feedback in which melee were not very useful because they died before they could even get near their targets and deal any real damage. This update strengthens these melee survivors and adds new ways for them to quickly close the distance and deal damage, but also increase their survivability and make them less cannon-fodder. We also added some new content around this such as the Samurai profession, a new enemy, and some small quality of life improvements.

This isn't a huge update, as we're super busy trying to release our next title, but it's always good to show our older child a little love and we tried to choose something that would be meaningful but not too time-consuming. I hope you enjoy this update.

Other than that, the big change is added support for the Japanese language, which made the Samurai culture the perfect blend of our focus on Melee and Japan. So we've also added some content around that.

On a more personal and grim note, this update is coming out at a hard time for me, as my beloved father passed away a few days ago. I would like to take this opportunity to thank him for all that he has done for me, he taught me so much and always took great care of our family. I wouldn't be where I am and this game would never have been made without his loving care. Thank you dad.

What's in this update

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You can find the full change list in the bottom of this post.

Melee Changes

To increase the survivability of melee characters, we mainly added two new mechanics. The first is giving shields a blocking stat that has a chance of completely blocking ranged attacks. This has the added benefit of adding a new weakness to ranged weapons when we gave this blocking stat to some of the enemies, making melee wielders even more useful against these specific enemies. Shields can only block attacks from the front (ie - non flanknig) and not at point-blank range (ranged attacks already have a penalty for point-blank range).

The other thing to increase survivability is something that creates some equality between ranged and melee survivors in terms of their ability to stay alive after taking damage. Ranged survivors could fight and take damage until they were badly hurt, and then retreat from combat fairly easily, since they were already fairly far away from their attackers. Melee, on on the other hand, had to run straight into the front lines, drawing damage from all demons, ranged and melee, and if they took heavy damage escape was almost impossible since they were so deep within the range of their attackers. So we added an ability, that is mostly available to melee-weapon wielders, which allows them to retreat from combat by becoming untargettable and increase their movement speed for a very short duration. During this time they would also be unable to deal any damage, so this is strictly a defensive ability.

We also gave additional bonuses to all melee weapons, added a charge ability that allows melee wielders to quickly close the distance to their targets before taking too much fire, and two new samurai armor sets that provide some bonus to melee attacks.

The Samurai

A new profession was added, the Samurai, that has several melee-oriented skill sets, in addition to scouting, crafting, farming and archery. You may even find a Ronin with some extra bonuses.

We also added a new Samurai special survivor, we'll let you try to find it yourself so no spoilers here.

The Jiangshi

This Oriental soul-sucking demon is actually Chinese in origin and not Japanese, but it felt like a good fit for this update. Fairly strong melee enemy that can suck a survivor's soul.

Quality of Life

We've already done several quality of life updates so the most important changes that are fairly doable have already been done previously, but I still feel these new ones are pretty useful. We've added a keyboard shortcut to cycle between survivors, when you press TAB the next survivor will be selected. While you could always set group number 1-9 to specific survivors, it was limited to 9 survivors and usually these groups were better used for combat formations (melee, ranged, snipers, etc). The cycle ability is much more useful for quickly checking on the status of all your survivors or task forces.

The other thing is just something I felt was missing, and it's a small number splash indicating the damage amount dealt when a unit is hit.

Old saves and Mods

As far as I can tell, save files and mods based on the last build (desert survival update) should work just fine. If you find any issues let us know.

Playing the older version

I understand that some of you may be in the middle of a game and all your planning for character progression and equipment did not take these new changes into account, so you may want to continue playing in the older version.

For this purpose, we still have the old version available on a separate branch. To play it, right click the game in your Steam library, then select Properties, and in the "Betas" tab select the "Desert Survival Update" branch. That's the previous version. I do recommend to switch back to the default branch afterwards.

Full change list

• Added an official Japanese translation.
• Mechanics: Added a blocking mechanics where shields have a chance of completely blocking ranged attacks when they are not flanking and not point-blank ranged. This effect only applies when a melee weapon is equipped with the shield.
• Mechanics: Added a mechanic where survivor abilities can only be used in combat when specific equipment is used.
• Mechanics: Added a mechanic that allows an ability to have two types of effects, one applied on the user and another applied on nearby enemies/allies. Previously each ability could only have one type of target (self, AOE, or single-target)
• UX: Added the ability to cycle between survivors or task forces by pressing TAB.
• UX: Added a small damage amount indicator when a unit is hit.
• Content: Added abilities that allow melee weapon wielders to charge at enemies and quickly closing the distance towards weapons range.
• Content: Added abilities that allow survivors (mostly melee weapon wielders) to become untargettable for a very short time to allow them to retreat from the front-lines before they are mowed by ranged enemies.
• Content: Added a new profession - the Samurai, that excels at melee combat, bows, farming and crafting.
• Content: Added a new special character you can find.
• Content: Added a new enemy - the Jiangshi is an oriental vampire-like demon that can suck survivors' souls.
• Content: Added a disappearing consumable that allows survivors to retreat from dangerous areas without taking damage.
• Content: Added a smoke bomb consumable that acts like disappearing powder but also disorients and applies penalties to nearby enemies.
• Content: Added two new armor sets - the Samurai armor and Ronin armor that provide decent protection and are agile enough to have high evasion stats. They also provide a small bonus to melee attacks.
• Content: Added a new higher-tier dagger type weapon, the Wakizashi.
• Balance: Increased the bonus melee attackers have when attacking targets with ranged attacks.
• Balance: Increase the penalty ranged characters have when attacking at point-blank ranged.
• Balance: Added ranged-blocking stats to some of the enemies (similar to the new bonus provided by shields).
• Balance: Added another benefit to each melee weapon (except tier 1). There are different benefits to swords, knives, and blunt/other melee weapons.
• Balance: Increased speed bonus provided by the rocket-boost ability of the rocket suit from 40% to 100%.
• Balance: Changed the disappear ability (ninjas have them) to make the survivor untargettable for a short duration instead of increasing evasion, but also cannot deal any damage for the duration. Also gave this ability to daggers wielders and added it to melee defense skill tree.
• Balance: Changed the maximum damage that can be reduced by armor to 80%. Previously there was no limit except that you always took at least 1 point of damage per attack.
• Graphics: Added the ability to disable the FPS limit (by default we limit the game to 60 FPS to lower usage of CPU and GPU).
• Fixed bug: When selecting some enemies their description texts had a tiny font in Chinese.
• Fixed bug: You could cancel a construction of a free object (like the well you get when you start the game) after it was already built and get another free one.
• Added a credits screen