Lone Survivors 1.3.0: The Game Juice Update
Hey Survivors! 1.3.0 is all about how the game feels. Every hit, kill, upgrade card, chest, boss and class ability now has new effects and sounds behind it. Bosses make an entrance and go out with a bang, legendaries finally feel legendary, and crowded late runs are much smoother. The pause menu and end screen are rebuilt too.
Secret class names are hidden behind spoiler tags below.
Bosses Make an Entrance
The first time each kind of boss shows up in a run, the camera swings over and zooms in until the whole boss fills the frame. Black bars cut in diagonally with its name, the fight slows almost to a stop, and then the camera swings back to you. You can't be hurt while it plays, speedruns skip it, and you can turn it off in Options > Effects.
...and Go Out with a Bang
The killing blow freezes the fight, a chain of explosions tears through the boss in slow motion, and a final blast breaks it apart, with its chest bursting out of the explosion. If the kill unlocks something, its unlock screen now waits until the boss is gone instead of covering the explosion.
Bosses Hit Back
- Slams, dives, leaps and eruptions land with a thud, a shockwave and a shake. Volleys, swipes, summons and teleports each have a sound of their own, and each boss's original attack cry still plays.
- Warnings are easier to read. Circles on the ground show the whole danger area from the start and fill in toward the hit, and markers stay until the hit lands.
- Attacks that had no warning now have one: the Lava Serpent marks its lane before each sweep, the Dungeon Guardian's laser charges first, the pirate ship marks where its TNT will land, and more.
- Every boss attack now costs 1 health. The Cave Guardian's slams used to take 15!
- Boss attacks no longer carry on behind the upgrade screen.
Legendaries Feel Legendary
Upgrade cards make a bigger entrance the rarer they are. A new weapon lands with a ring and a glint, rare cards add a burst of stars, legendaries announce themselves and land with rays and a flash, and post-legendaries do all of it in two colours with an aftershock. Regular upgrades still land plainly, so the big ones stand out.
Take a legendary and it locks in with a flash, then rises over you in slow motion and slams down with golden shockwaves that push nearby enemies back. For a few seconds after, every shot from that weapon glints gold.
Chests Pop
Quick Chests are now on by default. Time slows for a moment as each upgrade rises out of the chest in its rarity's colour, then breaks into pixels that arc into your character. It takes about a second, and opening a chest also knocks nearby enemies back. If you turned Quick Chests off before, it stays off, and the full chest screen has its own new effects.
A Sound for Every Weapon
- Weapons have their own sounds now. Swords swish, bows twang, magic hums, and the heavy hitters land with a boom. Weapons that fire several shots play a sound for each one.
- Weapons that stay out hum quietly while they're out: the Flail, Magic Beam, the Defense Drone, the Bat Swarm, the Royal Apiary and more. The more you have, the quieter each one gets. Shield, Undying Flames and Toxic Slippers can hum too: turn on Always-On Hums in Options > Sounds.
- Kills have their own pop, experience pickups chime higher and higher as they chain, and levelling up, taking damage, healing and dying all have new sounds.
- Elites and bosses arrive with a horn, and the music now crossfades when they show up instead of going silent first.
- New Sounds tab in Options: set each kind of sound to New, Old (the 1.2.11 sound) or Off. Enemy hits and coin pickups keep their original sounds.
Many of the new sounds come from Pixel Combat by Helton Yan (CC BY 4.0), Kenney's sound packs (CC0) and Shapeforms Audio's free sound effects. Thank you! The rest were made for the game, and the Credits menu lists everything.
Shrines, Circles of Power and Trials
- They announce themselves when they appear, and their map marker pulses so you know where to go.
- Completing one sets off a column of light and a shockwave. A Circle of Power shows the weapon it empowered streaming into you.
- Fixed: they often appeared right on top of you, especially on the Lava, Dungeon, Village and Ship maps. They now appear somewhere you can walk to, as far away as the map allows.
Class Abilities
Every class's active ability has new effects and sounds:
- Knight: the charge stomps off, leaves afterimages, slams into each enemy and ends in a skid.
- Miner: the slam grows with the charge: dust, flying rock, cracks in the ground and a shake.
- Mage: the clone counts down with ticks that speed up, then goes off with a burst.
- Necromancer: graves rise in a ripple outward from you.
- Warrior, Barbarian, Frog, Builder and Controller all got the same treatment.
- Pirate: flexing builds up to a shockwave the size of the circle. Prisoner: the leap leaves afterimages and lands with a ring of dust. Plague Doctor: every potion has its own effect when you drink it.
- A soft chime tells you your ability is ready again, and pressing it too early clicks and shakes the icon.
New Pause Menu
The pause menu is rebuilt around your run. Your loadout lists each weapon with its level and its share of the run's damage. Select one to see its stats, the crowd control it applies, its upgrades, what Circles of Power and shrines did for it, and its damage dealt. Select Shrines to see what all your shrines add up to.
New End Screen
- A win shows your clear time, coins, level, every objective you completed, which win this is with your class, and everything you unlocked.
- A loss shows how close you got: the objective you fell on, how far into it you were, and what finished you off.
- Endless shows your score breakdown, how it compares to your best, and your global rank.
- Switch between Damage and your Upgrade Path, which names the run's MVP weapon. After a campaign win you can jump straight to the next map.
Smoother Late Runs
- In our tests, 250 enemies against a fully upgraded seven-weapon build ran about 45% faster, and 500 enemies three to four times faster, with the worst hitches several times shorter.
- Damage numbers are far cheaper to show, and poison, bleed and burning add up into one number per enemy instead of a number for every tick.
- With that room to spare, late runs can now field up to 400 regular enemies at once, up from 260.
New Options
- Effects tab: Screen Shake slider, Reduce Flashing, Hit Pause, Vibration and Boss Intros.
- Sounds tab: New, Old or Off for each kind of sound.
- Controller vibration on big moments: taking damage, elite and boss kills, level-ups, chests, legendaries, shrines and trials.
- Switching save slots now loads that slot's options and volume.
Fixes
- Fixed some weapons' attacks going off behind an open upgrade screen.
- Fixed the second and third upgrade cards being cut off mid-pop.
- Fixed the camera staying zoomed in for the rest of a run when a class ability overlapped a chest opening or a boss intro.
- Fixed Shrine markers following the elites summoned by a "Face hard elites" shrine.
- Fixed lightning strikes from the Skeleton Wizard and the final boss piling up unseen in long fights.
- Fixed the Cave and Dungeon Guardians' fire circles hitting a second time after the fire went out.
- Fixed the Lava Serpent's first sweep sometimes laying out in the wrong direction, and the Sandcastle breaking its charge animation at half health.
Thanks for playing Lone Survivors! This update changes how almost everything looks and sounds, so let me know what you think, especially about the new sounds. If anything is too much, the Effects and Sounds tabs let you tune it to your taste.