What Have We Been Up To?
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It has been a whirlwind week for everyone, us included. Please stay tuned to our official channels for any further updates, as we will keep everyone informed on how things will impact us, if they do. We also hope that you are staying safe and healthy in this time.
Last week, we released out "Smoothness" update. This update is meant to smoothen the rough edges previously found in the last beta update. This update contains a better base game to build bigger updates, coming soon.
In addition, on Tuesday at 8:00pm CET, Thomas will be livestreaming ScourgeBringer over at MIX's Twitch channel for a Q&A session and playing some of the new update. Be sure to tune in: https://www.twitch.tv/mediaindieexchange
From the previous newsletter: detailing the Smoothness update.
Scourgebringer News
Let's go over the Smoothness update in detail, in case you missed it from our other channels!
Please note two things in particular which are:
Enhanced Weapon Systems
We’re still working on bringing further enhancements, but had to delay some parts of it because those enhancements (tht are not included in the game yet) rely on gameplay features that are not in the game… yet. This includes enemy vulnerabilities, for example.
Rewarding Exploration
We are going to add more ways to reward exploration in the future (more than just the items for now). Stay tuned for that!
Please see a full changelog below:
New
- Localized the game title to Chinese.
- Gameover screen displaying your performance and lore about enemies.
- The game will now track your game stats (play time, enemies killed, boss killed, blood earned, etc.); For now they are displayed nowhere but that may come to be useful in the future.
Gameplay:
- The map and mini map will now display an exclamation mark (!) to show any items on the ground in each room.
- Beating a boss will now force traps (e.g. spikes) to instantly disarm to avoid getting hit after the last hit (this is only for bosses).
- Upon clearing all rooms, players will be rewarded with extra item drops (there's no particular feedback yet, but we'll later add a "full clear" message upon clearing the last room of a level).
- Garo will now occasionally talk about enemies that killed the player (mostly bosses, providing a few tips and some lore).
Blood Blessing:
- Bullet Bending: makes you invulnerable for 0.2s after deflecting bullets with the Smash.
BLAST.32 weapons:
- Stun gun: can stun if the target is vulnerable.
- Shock wave: protective weapon that repels enemies and bullets.
- Stun wave: enhanced Shock Wave that also stuns enemies.
- Pulse laser: heavy railgun to instantly fry things up.
- Rapid laser: semi-automatic railgun.
- Rocket launcher: standard rocket launcher, boom.
- Multi launcher: high throughput rocker launcher.
- Mini nuke: devastating rocket launcher, very slow to reload.
Settings:
- Added a setting to display (or not) run stats upon a gameover.
- Added a button to reset custom mappings to their default values.
Changes:
Gameplay:
- Deflecting bullets with the Smash no more slightly moves Kyhra toward the target.
- Upon properly defleting a bullet, the Smash will scan for close forward bullets to avoid getting hit by rows of bullets.
- All bullets will now get cleaned upon completing a room.
- Bileranha will no more attack during its death animation.
- Bileranha can now be smashed during its second phase while it's doing it's "bone throwing" attack.
- "Floor is lava" achievement now requires a room to have at least 3 enemies.
- We added a mechanism to prevent bosses to be fully wrecked by shotguns or miniguns (while preserving their raw power).
- Increased attack anticipation time of Munching-slug and Electro-fly enemies.
Items:
- Bosses will no more drop map reveal items.
- Map reveal items will not drop if at least 2/3rd of the map has already been explored (this will also prevent map reveal items to drop twice).
- Single room reveal item, and partly revealed item have been entirely removed.
- Drone and Fury reload items, and combo items will no longer spawn in shops.
- Mini-bosses and bosses now have a guaranteed full drone reload item drop.
- Bosses now have a guaranteed full fury reload item drop.
- Added some collisions and layering to items so that they are less likely to overlap.
- Items now have a longer time upon spawning before they can picked up to avoid picking up items while hitting the last enemies.
- Max ammo bonus items now also affects the bullets per reload stat of weapons.
Settings:
- Allowed to set the game speed setting up to 150%.
- Mouse Aim setting now has an intermediate option to use the mouse aim only for shooting (and not for dash or smash)
- Moved Game pad style setting to the controls tab.
UI:
- The random "seed" of each run is now properly displayed on the map screen and on the gameover screen (though there is no UI to start a seeded run, for now).
Graphics:
- The slash through effect has been changed to a blood splatters to make the game less flashy and more impactful (we'll continue to work toward reducing photo sensitive effects).
Fixes:
- Fixes using the mouse in menus when mouse aim is off.
- Fixes some inaccuracies in bullet collision detections.
- Fixes Turbo Loot blessing now yeilding the intended guaranteed health drop.
- Fixes enemies not getting knock back by smashed bullets.
- Fixes Alpha crab-bot lifting from the ground if hit on the very frame it appears.
- Fixes enemies fixed to walls being flipped when entering a room.
- Fixes player getting hit while performing a Fury if they were within a boss or enemy attack collider.
- Fixes Adult splat-flies "teleporting" if hit by a dash right after a smash when they are about to explode.
- Fixes Omega Lock-prism loosing its "!" mark when first attacking.
- Fixes MAX combo staying on screen after picking up Ultra Combo blessing.
New splatter effect:
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