Hey everyone! After a very intense and long playtest beta it's finally here: 2.0! Originally I planned on calling this version 1.x, but the changes are so big and enormous that it is a new big version.
If you are interested why these big changes were neccessary, you can read this post that goes into the problems of 1.x in more detail.

At this point I want to say a BIG, BIG thank you to the Beat Invaders community on the Discord server. There were a lot of beta versions and a lot of the changes for 2.0 are based on community feedback!

Added Features

• 11 new music tracks by "Approaching Nirvana"!
• Beat Invaders is now officially verified for the Steam Deck!
• One game loop (wave 1-40) is now devided into four Sectors - each with unique color, atmosphere and environment.
• There are now Daily and Weekly challenges with their own respective Leaderboards.
• A new Boss (The Hammer) is waiting for you after Wave 20.
• Around 25 new Upgrades and almost all of the existing upgrades have been completely reworked of new and different upgrades!
• System Hacks are a new gameplay element that let's you customize your Ships sub-systems for some extra unique upgrades.
• Leaderboards now hold more details about Ship Type and equipped System Hacks.
• New Event Wave: Minefield
• New Enemy Type: Spreader Mine
• Steam Rich Presence was added.

Changes

• The games performance was drastically increased, especially with a lot of projectiles on screen - And there WILL BE more projectiles on screen!
• Visibility of enemy projectiles was improved.
• The Ship Classes were rebalanced and partially reworked.
• Ship Class: Pulse Blaster was strongly reworked and received the Charge mechanic.
• Ship Class: Pulse Blaster Piercing was reworked.
• Leaderboards are now separated by Easy, Normal and Hyper.
• Upgrades now come in different rarity levels: Common, Rare and Epic.
• Upgrades now can have preconditions - Some Upgrades will only be added to the pool after other upgrades were unlocked.
• Completely reworked gamepad rumble.
• Repairing your ship during wave changes now works differently than before using Repair Bots.
• Specials now have a separate slot and can be activated manually by a dedicated Button. The Special mechanic was hugely reworked.
• Tank Type Enemies now shoot two diagonal projectiles.
• Meteoroids have been rebalanced in a lot of ways.
• Upgrade Tokens collected during a run now work differently - instead of purchasing upgrades you earn levels. Per level you can purchase one Upgrade.
• Dashes now feature charges that can be increased during a run.
• Almost all Upgrades have been reworked - All effects are now MUCH more impactful and you will feel the upgrades from the first point invested.
• Friendly fire was strongly reduced. But you can also equip the IFF System Hack and have no friendly fire at all.
• Increased Meta Upgrades upgrade cost.
• Enemies gain more health over the course of a run.

New Upgrades, Unlocks, Specials and Hacks

• Evasive Salvo
• Attack Pod Salvo
• Convoy Freighter Replace
• Convoy Freighter Turret
• Convoy Freighter Turret Fire Rate
• Specials Plus
• Micromissiles Area Damage
• Micromissiles Damage
• Dash Charge
• Pulse Blaster: Capacitor
• Pulse Blaster: Charge Boost
• Railgun: Overcharge
• Spreadshot: Combinator
• Spreadshot: Focus Fire
• Hunterswarm Launcher
• Repair Bot
• System Hack: Code Profiling
• System Hack: Cutting Edge
• System Hack: Overcharged Accelerator
• System Hack: IFF Modulator
• System Hack: Defensive Refactoring
• Special: Supermagnet
• Special: Ultrashield
• Special: Ship Repair

Fixes and smaller Changes

• Unlocking multiple unlocks in one run will now work correctly.
• Convoy Freighters now move out of the way more effectively.
• Hyperbeam: damage reduced, tick rate increased
• Attack Boost: does not make the player invunerable anymore.
• Attack Boost: causes Freighters to move out of the way to avoid friendly fire.
• Attack Boost: time was reduced from 15 > 10 seconds.
• Enemy Transport ships will now go from left to right some times.
• The last used Ship will now always be selected for the next run.
• The ingame camera is a bit more dynamic.
• Added button hints for Dashing and Specials.
• Reworked the Credit screen.
• Added a savegame backup feature.
• Added a fullscreen and borderless fullscreen feature (mostly to fix fullscreen problems in certain Linux distributions).
• Added acoustic feedback when changing the volume sliders.
• Using Esc / B now exits all menus correctly.
• And a TON of more bugfixes.