Demo 0.3.0 — mini-bosses, three new bosses, sixteen new items, a radio
Smashteroids · published · build 25309822
Mini-bosses
Planet 3 stages now spawn mini-bosses. A mini-boss is a large elite with its own health bar that arrives during a stage. When it arrives, most of the enemies on screen are cleared out. Killing it pays a gold bounty. A stage can get one, two, or none. There are twelve, and a stage never spawns the same one twice.
Torc: two bodies that orbit each other and take turns dashing at you.
Trident: three bodies in a line. They aim, show their charge lanes, then charge one after another.
Anvil: a block that stays put while its hammer swings at you. Kill the block first and the hammer bounces loose around the arena.
Crux: teleports in, fires a spinning X of beams across the arena, then teleports away.
Bagatelle: bounces off the walls like a pinball. Every wall hit fires a ring of shots.
Bombard: keeps its distance and fires mortars at you.
Rondel: three bodies in a ring that close in on you at once. Escape through the gaps.
Tumulus: burrows underground. A marker moves toward you, then it erupts and knocks you back.
Scissor: two blades that charge at the same time from two sides.
Lantern: turns the screen dark for a few seconds and plants mines while you can't see.
Revenant: follows your flight path and lunges at where you just were.
Bellows: blows a cone of wind that pushes you toward the wall while firing into it. Move out of the cone sideways.
Mini-bosses can't outrun you. They wait a couple of seconds after arriving before attacking. One that arrives late in a stage has less health, so it can still be killed before the timer ends.
Three new bosses
Planets 2 and 3 have three new bosses. Each one is a giant version of an enemy from the last update.
The Astrolabe is a huge Radian. It draws a big arc on the ground, then sweeps through it. Between sweeps it fires beams across the arena. In its final phase its Radian escorts spread around the arena and fire beams between each other.
The Mosaic is a huge Tessera. The arena becomes a grid. Rows and columns of tiles light up and then go off. If you're standing on a lit tile, move. In phase 2 the floor becomes a checkerboard. In the finale it charges wall to wall, setting off tiles behind it, while its Tesseras grab tiles of their own.
The Palimpsest is a huge Cursive. It writes loops across the arena on your row, and the ink hurts a moment after it lands. It never stops moving and spawns more Cursives as it writes. In phase 2 it slashes back through its own lines. In the finale it writes in every direction at once.
No more repeat bosses
The first planet's boss is now random instead of always the Shrike, and the Shrike only appears on planet 1. Every other boss can appear on any planet in its range, so picking the same biome doesn't give you the same boss every run. You still never fight the same boss twice in one campaign.
Boss tuning
Boss fight lengths are tuned so fights don't end in seconds or drag on for minutes.
The Shrike spawns about a third fewer harriers.
The Kiln drops coals you can kill all through the fight, not just before its finale.
The Murmuration's flock is a bit denser.
Every boss fight has its own meteor shower in the boss's colour. It's 30% thinner than a normal stage's shower.
Beating a boss now pays a gold bonus beside its spoils.
Some boss escorts die after a set number of hits no matter what gun you have.
Sixteen new items
All of them fire on their own timer, so they add to whatever you're already doing.
Mortar drops shells on the biggest group of enemies on screen. Boomerang throws blades that fly out and come back. Trapline drops mines behind your ship. Pinball fires a ball that bounces off the walls and through enemies.
Martyr is a drone that rams and detonates on the nearest enemy when you get hit. Lancer fires a beam through everything in a line. Leech heals you on every hit, including in boss fights. Dragon breathes a line of fire. Winter fires ice that slows enemies.
The Burst family: Halation fires a full circle, Chevron the four diagonals, Quadrant the four directions, Gyrate a sweeping turn, Vanguard a fan in front of you, Flurry a scatter in every direction, and Roulette picks a different shape every shot. Stacking one makes it fire faster with more shots.
Drones are now rare instead of epic, so they show up in shops more often. Drones of the same kind take turns instead of all firing at once.
Enemy variants
About a fifth of enemies now spawn as brutes: twice the health, slower, bigger. Another fifth spawn as skirmishers: half the health, faster, smaller. A few spawn as juggernauts with three and a half times the health. The total is balanced to match before, and a brute is worth more score.
Projectile enemies can only make up 40% of the enemies on screen at a time.
Tracers and Carillons fire 30% fewer shots per volley on normal stages and are 20% bigger.
A strong build now faces more enemies rather than enemies with more health.
The Thicket theme is no longer only Nettles.
Each hit you take in a stage now increases the damage of the next hit slightly more than before.
Hazards
Relentless is toned down. It used to spawn enemies nonstop, mostly harriers. Now it surges for eight seconds, pauses for six, and the extra enemies come from the stage's normal mix.
Orbital Lance does about a third less damage and only reaches halfway across the map.
Pylons charge in 3.5 seconds instead of 4.
Gilded Belt pays once per rock instead of for every fragment, and Credit Storm drops fewer coins. Both paid too much.
The radio
There's a new RADIO page on the main menu. You can listen to every stage and boss track, pick which ones play during your runs, and choose a colour scheme for the visualizer. It's built entirely with the game's new mod system.
Mods are coming
The full game is getting mod support: data packs, Lua scripts, custom items, enemies, bosses, game modes, and Steam Workshop. It's not in the demo and it's not done yet, but the radio is a taste of what one mod can do. More on that closer to launch.
Shop and pause screens
The shop's owned items panel and the pause screen are split into ITEMS and PYLONS tabs, with mouse or controller. The stats sheet shows one Drones row instead of eight. The run report shows damage per drone type.
Shop and economy
Common items are worth buying now. The cheap ones cost 35 to 40 credits and do a lot more. A luck charm that used to give +15% for 10 credits now gives +25% for 35. Health plating and regen items doubled.
Rerolls are cheaper. Buying an item halves the price of your next reroll. Buying all four items in a shop makes the next reroll free.
About a third of shop offers now lean toward your ship's playstyle.
Every cleared stage pays a flat 110 gold instead of a smaller amount that grew with each stage.
Killing a formation pays gold for the formation, not for every body in it.
Prices go up about 10% slower over a run. Gold coins are always worth 1 credit. The Necromancer items raise about half as many thralls.
Chain Lightning's first jump does less damage, so the Tesla no longer clears whole crowds on planet 1 with one hit.
New look
New logo, new boot splash, new app icon, new Steam art. The main menu logo glitches like a TV losing signal.
The grid lights up more. Enemy shots light it in their own colour, so they're easier to see next to boss attacks.
Elites die with a smaller version of the mini-boss explosion. One in eight normal kills does too.
Mortar and Barrage shells show a tracer from your ship to the impact.
Your player panel has a health bar. The FPS counter is green.
Performance and fixes
Big explosions no longer tank your fps. The Cairn's slam, or a big pile of kills at once, could halve a 120 fps machine. Fixed, and it looks the same.
Explosions and glows stopped drawing once you flew away from the start of the map. Fixed.
Fixed a crash on every Kiln kill.
Plugging in a controller mid-session works again.
Quitting a run during a boss's death slow-motion no longer leaves the menus in slow motion.
Mines, shells and drones no longer freeze on screen during the stage-clear screen.
The radio's track names show properly.
Fixed the Polish translation of "reroll".
Many smaller bugs fixed.
If you like where this is going, wishlist the full game. It helps more than you'd think.