Hey everyone! another patch is live and with this patch, there is finally a Demo waiting for you if you haven't yet played Beat Invaders! Another new "feature" is a new trailer - I finally took the opportunity to use some of the footage I collected during the recent patch development to refresh the old trailer. It didn't really do the game no justice anymore. So check it out and let me know what you think in the comments. Let's jump right into the changes!

New Features

Skip Track list

WIth this feature you can add up to four tracks to a list of songs that won't be played anymore from that point on. You can edit the list in the options menu.

New Special: Auto Tracker

Activating this Special will give your projectiles homing capabilities for a moment.

New Upgrade: Pods - Double Up

Adds a projectile to your pods - that means each round will fire one more shot - Missiles and the Attack Pods. This can be leveled to level four which gives your Pods a lot more power making Pod centered builds more interesting and viable.

New Achievements!

13 new Achievements are waiting to be unlocked!

Detailed Upgrade Menu Stats

This was requested more times than I can count: The ability to show in detail what an upgrade does for you. Now you can press the detail button and get all the information about what you will get from an upgrade!

Outline Effect

Fans of a more Comic like look can try the new Outline Effect by activating it in the Options menu.

Tutorials

I added a series of small tutorials that will explain the basic gameplay mechanics of Beat Invaders. Some mechanics were always very obvious while others, e.g. Enemy Shield Link weren't. I hope this will help new players learn the game quicker!

Changes

Attack Pods manual fire

Attack Pods are back to manual fire mode - At some point in the past I changed it to auto-fire. But it felt a lot less powerful to press the shoot button. Not that all charge-up times (Railgun and Pulse Blaster) have been reduced, it's more fun to shoot it manually.

Automatic Settings on the Steam Deck

For Players that did not have played the game so far on the Steam Deck, it will select good settings on the first start up automatically.

Special Info in Upgrade Menu

The effects of a Special were not explained anywhere. Now you will get a small box during the Upgrade Screen when you have a Special in your Special Slot, explaining what the Special will do for you on activation!

Repair Special repairs Convoy

In the past, the Repair Special only repaired your ship, with an amount that could be improved from the "Special Power" upgrade. The Repair Special will now also repair your convoy ships, making it more valuable.

Performance improvements!

The game should, in general, have a noticeable better performance on most systems (including the Steam Deck).

Rebalancing

I had the feeling that the higher waves were a bit too easy, oftentimes the screen was cleared before the action could even start. This was adjusted and to make up for it, point rewards for some enemies were increased.

Smaller Changes

Token pickup has a new sound, Tokens got a new look, the Player ships got a visual upgrade, You will now have a level up indicator on the ship... and a lot more!

Bugfixes

And of course, this new patch also has a lot of bugfixes, especially for some bugs related to continuing saved runs.