Hello Gladiators

We are back with a fresh update! We would like to take this opportunity to express our gratitude to our players and community members for sharing their valuable feedback with us. As we promised earlier, we will continue to publish monthly development logs to keep you informed about what we are currently working on. Don't forget to join us on Discord to stay up-to-date with the game's progress and not miss any upcoming events.

Lets dive in.

In the Works

The Crystalcaster

Our amazing artist continued working on a new type of Crystallisk that we briefly covered in our previous Dev log. The Crystalcasters are masters of ranged combat and will attack from a distance, using energy projectiles, also known as the spitting ones by the gladiators. Here you can see the progress from sketch to actual sprite made by our talented artist. We cant wait to add it to the game!

Improvements

The Sanctuary

Behind the scenes we started working on a brand new area youll encounter in the game called The Sanctuary. In this area youll be able to select different characters to play as, as well as pick your weapon and ability of choice. Additionally, youll be able to permanently upgrade your favorite weapons and abilities here using your hard earned Crystallum at the giant forge. We wont disclose too much just yet as we want to surprise you with whats coming. Stay tuned for more information about The Sanctuary!

Updates

HUD overhaul

Were finally done with overhauling the HUD and implementing all the features. The HUD is now bottom centric and all the important information is visible at a glance. Some new elements have been added to display your progress to achieve Overkill Time as well as the power boosts gained during.

From Health Bar to Lives

We decided to change the way your player health is managed as we think this will create a more engaging and clear experience. While it used to be a health bar, which made it less clear to how much health you had left, we now switched the system around and went with lives instead. This way you can easily see how many lives you have left allowing you to focus more on the game itself!

Depleting Not Filling

The crystals stability gauge now depletes instead of filling up as this makes more sense to convey that the crystal is losing stability over time.

Burrow Counter

Weve included a burrow counter that displays how many burrows youve destroyed and how many burrows there are in total. This makes it easier to check your progress during the wave.

Weapon & Ability Cooldown

Both the weapon and the ability cooldowns are now clearly visible on the HUD, making it a lot more intuitive.

Audio System Overhaul

Were in the process of converting our old audio system, which was starting to show its flaws by now, to the new system using FMOD Studio. This allows us to implement adaptive soundtracks, scaling sound effects, audio balancing, and so much more Overhauling the audio system was nothing short of a daunting undertaking as it meant we had to unlink a lot of our systems and triggers to implement the new FMOD events. With the new system in place, our audio engineer could now focus on setting all the effects and soundtracks up creating an amazing atmosphere while doing so.

Additional Soundtracks

With the new overhaul of our audio system also came new soundtracks! Our audio engineer immediately went to work and made full use of the power of FMOD by implementing a system that scales the intensity of the soundtracks as you progress through the waves. Additionally, we also added some new soundtracks made by our lovely artist Andrew Dunne for the shop area and during Overkill Time.

Overkill Time

In our previous Dev log we introduced a new mechanic called Overkill Time. After gathering all of the feedback of our community we iterated and improved on the idea to ensure it felt right. The more you crush your foes the more you revel in the power by racking up a power enhancing boost that will last even after exiting Overkill Time.

Fullscreen Overlays

To enhance your experience weve added several fullscreen overlays during certain events. We think this will help you to detect if a certain event is triggered like for example being low health or when the crystal is about to overload.

Fracturion

We reduced the amount of armor Fracturion has making him easier to kill and more interesting to invest in high damage upgrades.

New & Improved Upgrades

With this update we bring 2 new upgrades and an updated version of the Stormbringers Fury upgrade! The 2 new upgrades are all about drones and making them stronger while the updated Stormbringers Fury is even more devastating.

Hive Mind - NEW

Summon a pack of drones that will lock-on targets and launch themselves towards the target to destroy them. Each stack, up to a maximum of 10 stacks, increases the damages of each drone and the number of drones you can have active.

Tinkerer - NEW

Each stack increases the damage of all your drones by 20%.

Stormbringers Fury - UPDATED

The new update brings even more mayhem as you now truly become a god of thunder! The lightning summoned by Stormbringers Fury will now strike multiple targets summoning a multitude of lightning bolts.

Fixes

• Misaligned hitboxes
• The hitboxes of several things have been made more accurate
• Fracturion attacks having too large of a hitbox
• Burrows not displaying correct damage state
• Dashing through walls
• Crystallisk keep attacking/dealing damage even after death
• Audio playing too loud

Known Issues

• Soundtracks not fading into each other nicely
• Fracturion not being able to charge into the top wall
• Upgrades not affecting other upgrades and only affecting weapon
• Damage upgrade not increasing the damage of other upgrades
• Critical hit damage not applying to other upgrades
• Upgrades not being able to critical hit
• The overkill bar in the HUD can start shaking after going into overkill and
• immediately going out again through getting hit
• Audio becomes louder when hitting Fracturion repeatedly
• Audio balancing