New content
Multiplayer design rework
Some adjustments have been made to the multiplayer experience to make it more friendly.
When players die in multiplayer, heart pickups now spawn around where their character died. Other players in the arena who are alive can revive the player by picking up the heart! The player will revive immediately instead of at the next shop, however if the pickup is missed, they will still revive at the next shop or after the boss!
In addition to this, you can freely adjust the visibility of other players’ item effects, meaning you can make them fully invisible, too. Perfect for if you want to exclusively focus on the enemy attacks.
The new settings also allow for players to customize how visible enemy beams are (e.g. Protectors, Fiestas, Guardians), as well as hiding projectile trails which may boost performance on lower-end devices.
The time interval it takes for all enemies to spawn into the arena per wave has been changed based on the number of players, as shown below:
- 1-player: 6s → 6s
- 2-player: 10s → 9s
- 3-player: 10s → 12s
- 4-player: 10s → 15s
Augment shop
An augment shop is now present in the lobby, providing players the opportunity to purchase augments directly with credits rather than using the crates system or receiving augments from daily rewards.
The augment shop refreshes every 24 hours with:
- 4x “1x Common” augments
- 2x “3x Common” augments
- 2x “1x Uncommon” augments
- 1x “3x Uncommon” augments
- 2x “1x Rare” augments
- 1x “3x Rare” augments
The augments are selected at random, and they can be from any of the three crates. Buying the augments in 3x bulk also has a discount, allowing for more augment crafting!
F2P improvements
- Achievements that are locked behind gamepass exclusive classes, or are otherwise grindy achievements based on augments, no longer count toward 100% completion in the lobby’s Achievement menu.
- Augments that have no utility outside of a gamepass class can now be traded into augments of the same rarity.
Parrying feature
You can now parry enemy projectiles. To parry an enemy bullet, equip a melee tool and lunge into the bullet. The bullet should turn yellow and go towards the enemy you’re facing!
The following enemies can be parried: Gunners, Rangers, Bursts, Rapid-Fires, Shotguns, Vortex, Darkness, Bone Mage, Tomorrow’s blue and orange shots.
The following enemies have unique effects when parried: Rocket (Explosion), Bomb (Explosion), Tomorrow’s bombs (Explosion), Fire Mage (Burn), Ice Mage (Freeze), Arctic (Freeze), Dissolver (Poison), Alchemist (Poison), Miasma’s triple poison shots (Poison).
Parried shots deal 200 damage and are impacted by melee damage increasing items like Fruit Punch and Orange Juice.
Arena picker feature
Previously, Arenas 2 through 5 would be challenged in a completely random order, but I wanted to add a bit more flavor to how you would challenge the Arenas. So I added a new feature, the “arena picker”.
All four of the Arenas that you would have played can now be chosen in whatever order the player(s) decide, based on voting. Only two Arenas are revealed at the start, but if you don’t want to fight them yet, you can also go for a mystery option to reveal another one early.
One distinction is that in the case of a tie, the top-most Arena will always win.
I kind of see this as a “map voting screen” you may find in other games, however you don’t pick the arenas you fight, but you pick the order you fight them in.
“Highway Arena” rework
The Highway Arena was always designed to feel like a “bullet hell” arena, but due to the strength of ranged-type enemies, we felt like it would probably be a good idea to reduce the amount of total ranged enemies that spawn per wave.
The “Nitro” enemy has been added to the pool, and you may be familiar with its design if you played my other game, Randomly Generated Droids. In this case it works similarly to a Charge Droid, but has a random angle for its charge direction (which is telegraphed).
The “Ranger” enemy type has also been removed from the pool, making it now exclusive to the Quarry Arena, and the “Laser” enemy type frequency was also reduced.
Miscellaneous tweaks
- The defeat and the victory screen now report how many credits you earned throughout the run.
- Credits are now only awarded after first arena clear. You won’t earn any credits until Royal Red and Royal Blue are defeated. (This does NOT change how many total credits you earn during a run!)
- Stage Prop item rework: “When a wave starts: gain 8 seconds of vigor. Take triple damage the first 8 seconds of every wave.”
- Hovering over the craft button for an augment type will tell you what it crafts into (ex: “You can craft 5x Top Spin I into 1x Top Spin II”).
- The audio page is now the first page to show up when you click the Settings button.
- Shocked enemies and shocked players now receive a small yellow spark effect while they’re shocked. This is to match how freeze has the ice block.
- Freeze Ray’s laser telegraph is now an icy blue, while Heat Ray’s laser telegraph is now a fiery orange.
- Fiesta’s beam now has a 0.3 second delay between applying arrows to a target and applying the speed boost to a target, giving players a brief window to react.
- To make the damage output faster, Icedagger now freezes enemies for 1 second (instead of 3 seconds).
- Windforce now triples the base parry damage of its shots, raising it from 200 base to 600 base.
- “Meteor” enemies now faintly suggest the size of the AoE impact their meteor attacks leave.
- Swiss Roll is now programmed to block miscellaneous negative status effects during a roll (e.g. Stage Prop’s “triple damage taken” status effect).