The Early Access Release on next Monday 20th Feb. 2023 of Striving for Light: Survival is fastly approaching! So we want to share the early access release update preview with you all so that you have an idea of what to expect on launch day. Furthermore we have updated the demo so that you can check out some of these new features for your self. So this is what the Early Access Release (Version 0.9.0.0) will hold in store for Striving for Light: Survival.

New Features

New Map Difficulty Tiers

Two new map difficulty tiers (4 and 5) have been introduced. The already existing difficulty tiers 1-3 have been rebalanced. The way of unlocking new map tiers has been changed. You now need to defeat the final endboss on the last wave to unlock the next map tier. Furthermore the difficulty tier visuals have been completely reworked.

New Unlockable Characters

2 new characters have been added, now there are 8 playable characters available in total for the Early Access Release (including the 2 more balanced starting characters).

• Farmer
  Once his mission was to herd the chicken, until the darkness engulfed his farm. Now he is taking his chicken to fight back.
• Rogue
  A unknown rogue. Quick but weaker attacks.
• Dark Wanderer
  Nobody knows where he came from and where he will go. They tell that he channels the energy of each defeated monster to create his own monstrosities.
• Darokin
  Darokin, the wise man of Ankerath. Slow but with unique magical strength. Start Skill: Glaring Light on attack.
• Heleja
  Heleja, the scholar of Ankerath. Outstanding range skills, but week melee skills.
• Goladir
  Goladir, blacksmith of Ankerath. Made for melee combat, but week ranged skills.

Build Viewer

Leaderboard entries now display which character was played on the highscore run. You can also click on the character button to view a build summary of the leaderboard entry to see what build has been played. This feature will also be introduced to Striving for Light with the next bigger update. There have been quite some backend improvements and changes which require a leaderboard wipe.

Steam Achievements

100 steam achievements have been added to the game. These are additional achievements which sum up with the in-game achievements to over 250 achievements in total. In-game achievements are bound to the save files so when you enter a new season everyone joining the season can go on a fresh journey of unlocking and completing achievements. Steam achievements are permanent and can only be achieved one time. Achievements in general will not be taken away. Even if you enter a new season you can always switch the the last season save file and continue playing on this one. Or you can just play offline and not play online at all.

Steam Rich Presence

Added steam rich presence which showcases information about your current run to your steam friends. The map, map tier, wave and your current level is shared.

Start of a new Public Season

Today with the introduction of the new build viewer we are wiping the leaderboards for Striving for Light: Survival. Due to all the balancing changes this can be seen as the start of the public Early Access Season 1. So jump into the demo and get back your rankings! There will be new seasons on a regular basis which require to register with a new save file if you want to participate in the fresh leaderboards. On a new season all players start from zero and start a race to unlock their preferred skill and weapon combinations to go for the highest scores on the different maps. We will announce season starts ahead of time so you plan to take part in these events.

Map Difficulty Tier Display

A new map tier difficulty display has been added next to the arena wave counter in the UI.

Demo and Full Version Progression Share

The progress of the demo will be carried over to the full version. Only steam achievements are not enabled for the demo.

Improvements

• Hearts can now accumulate infinitely. Previously only 2 hearts in the arena could be carried over to the next wave. From now on you can accumulate all not used hearts infinitely and keep them until the last wave. This should even more reward players that manage to not receive damage for many waves.
• Reduced attack speed is now indicated as a red label on the skill tooltips
• Heleja now has a default projectile multiplicator of +2 (was 1)
• Increased attack and movement speed of melee companions
• AoE fields in the forest are now red instead of green to increase visual clarity
• Increased distance for all enemy and boss spawns to player position
• New map difficulty system
• Increased heart attraction movement speed
• Performance improvements for projectile heavy builds

Balancing

• Increased boss enemy HP pool
• Rebalanced traps for all difficulty tiers.
• Increased companion damage skill nodes now don't have any downsides (was -10 % attack speed)
• Decreased spawn possibility of max HP skill nodes slightly
• Increased enemy spawn rates on waves 12-16
• Bursting Shot / Wield now has flat damage 20 (was scaling with melee and range damage before)
• Decreased cellar spider charge speed
• Increased brightness of cellar spider to make them stand out more against the arena backgrounds
• Increased brightness of ghost enemy to make them stand out more against the arena backgrounds
• Improved enemy spawn algorithm to prevent enemies to spawn very near to player position

Bugfixes

• Fixed weapon names not being displayed for Chinese language
• Fixed skill node search bug which caused cursor to jump to a skill node when pressing enter key for adding "space"
• Fixed a bug which caused selected melee and range weapons not being saved and applied for next run
• Fixed a bug which made it able to continue the game on the end of waves

We are already looking forward to the Early Access release on 20th Feb. 2023. Let us know your thoughts in the comments or join our discord and join the community! Join our official discord!