Another month zooms by in the blink of an eye! Here's what I worked on in July- really getting into improving the visuals now but there's still work being done tweaking design elements after each playtest, fixing bugs and adding plenty of quality of life features. This is a long one, let's get into it!
New Visuals
- New FX / More Vibrant Colors
- Visual Style + Level Design
Since there's so much going on and a lot of information to convey at any given time in the game, I've settled on a clean, lightly stylized visual style for the environment to give the player a clear read on enemies and projectiles. These images don't represent final assets but more the general feel I'm going for- spacious arenas with clear boundaries to keep all focus on the action. I designed many types of islands this month, some with fall hazards or traps but I kept coming back to simple open spaces, they just felt much better to play. When the game is all about high speed and intense action, having to navigate a complicated level is just not fun! 
- Early Lava Biome Visuals
Previous previews of the lava biome had tinted the whole scene red which made it a bit visually fatiguing to play in after a while. I went for a more striking look in this pass to try and make the lava pop while maintaining the clean and simple style mentioned above. 
- New Pickup Visuals
New distinct meshes for weapon mods, grenade mods and perks have been added to easily identify them at a glance.
New Enemies
I've added most of the enemy archetypes needed for the beta this month- plenty of crab variants that each bring something new to the table. Many of these enemies aren't too difficult to fight alone but when spawning in groups they can test the skill of even the best players!
- Shotgun Crab
Deadly up close, these crabs fire a volley of shotgun shots your way.
- Launcher Crab
These crabs wield triple shot rocket launchers and can leap high into the air. Luckily they knock themselves back when firing so it'll take a little while for them to catch up to you again after each shot!
- Mage Crab
Specializing in mystical ranged attacks, these crabs fire dense formations of projectiles which can be tricky to dodge if backed into a corner.
- Poison Crab
Inaccurate and with sporadic movement, these crabs can easily add some chaos to an otherwise manageable situation.
- Sniper Crab
Excelling at long range, these crabs fire arcing sniper shots that soar over obstacles and meet their targets with devastating accuracy.
- King Ant Boss
The visuals aren't final for the ant itself but I've made a full set of unique attack patterns worthy of a giant poisonous ant!
New Enemy Attacks
Here are a small selection of the dozens of new enemy attacks added this month. I've gone over every single enemy and improved each of their attacks while ensuring that they have a consistent response, allowing experienced players to masterfully outplay them. Enemy attack formations can also now expand outwards instead of always aiming at the player. This creates bullet hell situations that can play out very differently depending on the island layout.
- Mage Crab Circular Attack
- Elite Skull Line Strike Attack
- Heavy Crab Weapon Attack
- Elite Skull Homing Attack
Cooldowns
Something that was starting to become clear when playtesting was that the best strategy to succeed was to increase the fire rate of your weapon as much as possible as the vast majority of weapon mods were chance based, so more rolls of the dice naturally led to more success. This created an imbalance where very powerful mods such as Black Hole or Crystal Strike which would trigger much more frequently than intended on fast firing weapons and much less frequently on slower firing weapons like the pump shotgun.
To combat this, I've made the majority of these "low chance but powerful when triggered" mods cooldown based. This means that they are guaranteed to trigger every X seconds regardless of the fire rate of your weapon. In addition, it allows me to make each of them stronger with each level stacked (previously each additional level simply increased your chance for them to trigger which didn't scale well with the late game).
Finally I've made it so that damage based weapon mods no longer affect "secondary" mods such as Torpedo Shot (making already very damaging bonus projectiles deal broken amounts of damage) which crushes another meta that wreaked havoc in my playtests!
More Weapon Mods
Remember I added the "final" weapon mods a few updates ago? Well one thing led to another and a few more slipped in this month! I really wanted to add more elemental and critical hit build options as well as embrace the cooldown changes mentioned above with more powerful "one shot" (high damage but long cooldown) mods that help spice up builds so I've added a bunch of new mods and perks to further diversify build options.
- Proximity Barrage: Shots that hit enemies spawn powerful missiles that seek out nearby enemies
- Hot Shot: Increased critical hit chance and damage but incoming damage is also increased
- Critical Blast: Critical shots that hit enemies create powerful explosions
- Critical Link: Critical shots that hit enemies spawn 5 new shots that target nearby enemies
- Critical Chain: 100% critical hit chance for a short time after landing a critical hit
- Critical Blades: Critical shots that hit enemies spawn 3 deadly spinning blades that seek out nearby enemies
- Spike Strike: Shots cause powerful spikes to erupt from the ground, damaging nearby enemies
- Ice Strike: Shots bring down powerful ice strikes that damage and freeze nearby enemies
- Fire Strike: Shots bring down powerful fire strikes that damage and burn nearby enemies
- Lightning Strike: Shots bring down powerful lightning strikes that damage and shock nearby enemies
- Poison Strike: Shots bring down powerful poison strikes that damage and poison nearby enemies
- Random Shot: Shots apply random debuffs to enemies
- Ice Storm: Shots create icy storms that deal damage over time
- Fire Storm: Shots create fiery storms that deal damage over time
- Lightning Storm: Shots create electric storms that deal damage over time
- Poison Storm: Shots create poisonous storms that deal damage over time
- Triple Shot: Chance to fire in a triple shot formation
- Arc Shot: Chance to fire in an arc shot formation
- X Shot: Chance to fire in an X shot formation
- Square Shot: Chance to fire in a square shot formation
More Perks
- Driller: Destroying destructible rocks has a greater chance to spawn loot
- Finishing Move: Enemies eliminated with critical hits drop more crystals
- Ice Aura: Freeze and damage nearby enemies every few seconds
- Fire Aura: Burn and damage nearby enemies every few seconds
- Lighting Aura: Shock and damage nearby enemies every few seconds
- Poison Aura: Poison and damage nearby enemies every few seconds
Biome Structure Changes
The structure of each biome has changed multiple times over the last few updates, it's of course something that is very important to get right as it determines the pace, loot and general fun of each run. I made these changes at the start of the month and they are just as fun now as they were then so it looks like this is the last major gameplay loop iteration (at least until people play the beta).
The main issues with the previous structure that gave random portal choices to players after each island were:
A: Players would always pick weapon mod portals over every other type as those are the most instantly useful rewards especially in the early game.
B: It slowed down the pace of multiplayer runs too much to have to discuss which of the 3 random portal choices to go for after every single island.
C: Not having set island types meant that players sometimes faced 3 elites in a row which limited variation and broke the balance of the early game (as most players weren't equipped well enough to be able to take on 1 let alone 3 elites at that point).
D: Since players were opting mainly for weapon mod portals, they found it hard to heal and would often frustratingly die before finishing the first biome.
To fix A, reward chests now contain a random mix of weapon mods, grenade mods and perks. You might get 3 perks in one chest and no perks in the next- this unpredictability actually ended up being far more fun than choosing a perk portal and knowing that you were guaranteed to get perks- where's the suspense in that?
To fix B, C and D, I moved back to a set list of island types per biome with peaks and valleys in the difficulty curve, more opportunities to find heals and rewards corresponding to the difficulty of each island.
Island 1: Horde (Rare chest reward)
Island 2: Horde (Consumable (health, armor or crystals) chest reward)
Island 3: Challenge (Rare chest reward)
Island 4: Horde (Consumable chest reward)
Island 5: Elite (Epic chest reward)
Island 6: Horde (Consumable chest reward)
Island 7: Defense (Rare chest reward)
Island 8: Horde (Consumable chest reward)
Island 9: Shop
Island 10: Boss (Legendary chest reward)
In addition to these changes, flawless chests now have an 75% chance to be a consumable chest and a 25% chance to be a rare chest, allowing for both bonus heals or (if you are lucky) bonus mods and perks if clearing an island flawlessly.
Greed totems now also have a small chance to appear on any island, further adding variation.
One thing that I'll be keeping an eye on is how speedrunners handle Defense islands since you are forced to defend an area for 45 seconds to complete them with no real way to optimize or skip them. I may add a guaranteed portal choice after clearing island 6 to allow speedrunners to opt for a different route.
Other Stuff
- Improved Inventory UI
When hovering over individual inventory slots, you'll now see much more specific information than before: raw damage numbers along with a percentage increase. This makes it much easier to see which mods are doing the most damage without having to calculate it yourself based on percentages which was confusing especially if you didn't know the base damage that the percentages were based on! In addition, any mods that spawn damage areas (like the elemental Strike and Storm mods mentioned earlier) will now show the amount of damage + elemental damage stacks dealt over their lifetimes, making it much easier to understand their effectiveness. Many other mods have been updated to have better descriptions (like Splash Damage detailing the radius in addition to the damage dealt) because who likes playing games where you are forced to tab out and read a wiki every few minutes?
- Movement Improvements
I've removed the dash, slide and land camera shakes, repositioned the camera and tightened up the movement heavily to make a much more focused movement experience- less bells and whistles actually keeps things feeling more grounded and responsive! - Loot Balancing
Generally Rare loot should be a "boring" stat up (often with downsides), Epic loot should be a "fun" stat up and Legendary loot should have much more unique and exciting effects. Because of this I've made a few adjustments to allow for Legendary loot to stand more clearly apart from the other rarities. Ice, fire, lightning and poison shot mods have been moved from Legendary to Epic rarity as the newly added elemental Strike and Storm mods take their place: the most powerful elemental mods in the game. Similarly with all the new more interesting critical hit based mods added this month, Sharpshooter (greater chance to critical hit) and Power Punch (increased critical hit damage) have been moved down to the Rare rarity. Finally both Growing Shot and Shrinking Shot have been removed as they were very hard to notice, generally weren't all too interesting and often resulted in confusing reductions in damage for players that had picked them up earlier in a run.
- General Balance Changes
- Grenades now deal 50% more damage making Grenade Mods a more viable choice- previously Weapon Mods and Perks were by far the most popular when choosing loot.
- Enemies have had their health increased across the board: it was easy to 2-3 shot most enemies which led to some islands being cleared very quickly. While I want to avoid bullet sponge enemies, this change allows more time for your mods to trigger and noticeably contribute to taking those beefier enemies down!
- Shop prices have been adjusted so that Legendary loot now costs roughly 3x the price of Epic loot making boss fights the primary way to get Legendary drops. - New Circular Lobby
The lobby has been improved to have all interactable totems in an easy to reach circular layout: quickly change things between runs without having to spend time traveling. - Fail Of The Month: Huge Slug Elimination FX
I got a bit carried away with some of the early tests improving the FX that play when slugs are eliminated...
- Protected Chest Pickups
Last month, protected chests were added (meaning each player is assigned a chest after clearing each island and only they can open it). To further this, the loot choices that each chest spawns are now also protected so other players can't grab your loot while you are deciding what to take. Players can still share loot by dropping mods and perks from their inventory. - Improved UI Text Readability
Shadows have been added to most important text UI elements for easier reading in bright lighting conditions. - Ice Changes
Enemies no longer instantly thaw from ice when taking damage, allowing you to keep enemies frozen while dealing damage. The only exceptions to this are if enemies slide into water while frozen or if they take burn damage. - Removed Radial Damage Falloff
It just felt better (and easier to gauge DPS) in playtests to deal full damage to enemies regardless of their position within an explosion radius!
Community Spotlight: TheeCRAB
TheeCrab has been making some amazing Crab Champions videos: if interested I highly recommend checking his stuff out here
Thanks for sticking around and reading this update, it turned out to be much longer than expected!
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