🎃 HELLBREAK – Halloween Update is Live! 💀🔥 - October 27

We’re back with another update, just in time for Steam Scream Fest 2025!
To celebrate, HELLBREAK is 25% off until November 3rd.

This update brings a small Halloween-themed visual, 6 new blessings, a pre-shader compilation system to reduce stutters, performance improvements, controller improvements, quality-of-life additions, and a bunch of important fixes and polish.

🕯️ New Stuff & Quality of Life!

🎃 Halloween
Tormented demons are now dressed for the season, they’ve got pumpkin heads!
You can toggle this on or off anytime from the Settings menu, named Halloween.
(Bonus: their giant heads make them easier targets for some extra points!)

⚙️ Pre-Shader Compilation
The game now compiles shaders during launch, which should eliminate most gameplay stutters.
It might take a bit longer on your first launch but will be much faster afterward.
Note: This feature slightly increases RAM usage, you can disable it anytime in Settings. It’s enabled by default.

🧠 Performance Improvements

• Improved overall performance when a large number of enemies are alive simultaneously.
• Fixed an issue that could allow enemies to exceed the intended maximum count at certain stages.
• Implemented several Steam Deck–specific optimizations to improve performance and stability.
• Further optimized enemy AI processing and physics calculations for smoother gameplay during heavy combat.

🎮 Advanced Controller Settings
Added an Advanced Settings tab to the Input Settings page. This tab currently includes advanced settings for controllers, listed below:

• Left & Right Stick Minimum Dead Zones
• Left & Right Stick Maximum Dead Zones
• Controller Aim Response Curve

In addition to this, we have added separate sliders for Vertical and Horizontal Sensitivity.

👁️ Field of View Improvements
Increased the maximum value for Field of View (FOV) from 100 to 110.
In addition, we have introduced a small scaling FOV on wide screens to prevent unwanted camera zoom.
If you are using a widescreen, please let us know about your experience so we can improve this further!

🔫 Combat Improvements

• Auto Spell Switch: A new optional setting! When enabled, you’ll automatically switch to your other spell (if available) once the current one goes on cooldown.
• Greatly reduced the impact of movement on weapon accuracy, firing while moving is now much more precise.
• Enhanced Totem destruction effects on Abyss difficulty.

⚔️ 6 New Blessings!

We’ve added six new blessings, most focused on making melee combat more rewarding and scalable:

• Bloodrush: Your damage scales with your movement speed.
• Executioner’s Edge: Melee attacks deal 5% of the target’s max health as bonus damage.
• Bloodthirst: +10% melee attack speed.
• Berserker’s Feast: Each melee kill grants +5% damage for 5s (up to 6 stacks).
• Carnal Rush: Each melee kill grants +3% movement speed for 5s (up to 10 stacks).
• Demon’s Grasp: +25% melee attack range.

Blessings that affect only melee weapons will only appear if you have a melee weapon equipped.

🛠 Fixes

• Fixed an issue preventing the Tutorial from being completed, getting stuck at “Kill the Remaining Enemies.”
  (This was a bug introduced by the last patch. If you have played the tutorial before, you don't have to play it again as that was the last section anyway.)
• Fixed multiple issues that could cause soft-locks in the Tutorial (like the freezing task when applying Frostbind early).
• Fixed rare crashes caused by Bolgrut’s attacks. These should now be stable but if you notice any issue, please let us know and we’ll get back to it immediately.
• Fixed melee weapons ignoring damage scaling effects.
• Fixed Wretch's ammo on kill upgrade not working correctly.
• Fixed Totems on Abyss difficulty not taking melee or melee-based damage.
• Fixed leaderboard arena tab highlights not displaying correctly.

💬 Thank You & What’s Next

As always, thank you all so much for your support and feedback!
Many of the improvements in this update came directly from your suggestions and reports. We’re listening closely and committed to making HELLBREAK the best experience it can be.

You can share your feedback through the Steam forums or join us on Discord to talk directly with us and the community.

What’s Next?

• We are working on improving the layout of Necropit, introducing more options for different styles of fighting.
• Working on more weapons and blessings!
• Working on more content, including new arenas, infinite mode, and more!

Reviews Matter
We also want to thank everyone who has left a review. It helps us out immensely, and we read every single one of them.
If you have been enjoying HELLBREAK so far and want to support us further, leaving a review really helps us out. Thank you!