• Fixed a bug where if you pressed the back button while paused, and quickly pressed ESC while transitioning, the objective remained on screen.
• Fixed a bug where objectives could generate with obscenely high targets when starting a new save file. (only happened when you loaded a separate savefile)

[ 2025-05-11 15:55:19 CET ] [ Original post ]

• Changed orientation of Objective Refresh item to be synced up with other items.
• Fixed an issue where green gems were synced up.
• Changed the color of the Black Gem to be more visible on the weapon stands.

[ 2025-05-09 21:51:15 CET ] [ Original post ]

Hi, here's a cool little update that should improve stuff (hopefully!)

New Features

• Added a refresh objective item (Rare) to the shop.

Changes

• Minor graphical adjustments.
• Target damage of objectives now generate based on prior max damage number for each weapon category. This should make objectives generally more fair to complete, since they no longer rely on the fight target damage.
• Fight target damage ramps up much faster.
• Chance based events have a max chance and they are harder to reach.

Objectives now have two target weapon categories and give a buff to each, making them easier to complete. The base price of Treasure Chests has been changed: $14 -> $12 The base price of Pickaxes has been changed: $13 -> $12 The skill "Pirate's Dream" has been buffed: 50% -> 75% chance. Lucky Clover: luck events are now guaranteed. Objectives give less money since they are way easier to complete now. Common, Uncommon and Rare loot bags appear less frequently now. The base price of all loot bags have been increased:

• Common: $5 -> $7
• Uncommon: $9 -> $11
• Rare: $11 -> $14
• Epic: $15 -> $17
• Legendary: $18 -> $20

Damage multiplier global buffs have been nerfed slightly (per rarity): (+2.0x +2.5x +3.0x +4.0x +5.0x) -> (+2.0x +2.5x +3.0x +3.5x +4.0x)

[ 2025-05-08 17:18:36 CET ] [ Original post ]

Switched renderer from the unstable Vulkan renderer to OpenGL 3, which should be WAY more efficient on lower end devices. I tried to match the visuals to the Vulkan version, but it's not 100% perfect. I also improved shader precompilation, which should mitigate stutters when loading new weapons. It's still going to be there for the first time, but it gets better the longer you play. (rendering is weird...) Let me know if there are any issues on Discord!

[ 2025-05-02 13:41:28 CET ] [ Original post ]

And here's another one!

More Optimizations

• Disabled glow as it didn't have much effect but cost ~0.31ms per frame
• Removed sub-surface scattering from all materials which cost ~0.17ms per frame

On my computer the improment is (on the same test scene but with more weapons, 2x render scaling and max shadows): GPU frametime: 2.1ms -> 1.58ms (25% faster) Once again, these improvements will vary from system to system.

Changes

• Adjusted skill rarity distribution: there should be more skill variation now.
• Savings Account (skill) was adjusted from: (30%, 40%, 50%) to (50%, 60%, 75%) money kept.
• Grounded (skill) deals 2x more damage and each level gives more damage than what it did before.

Bugfixes

• Lucky Streak (skill) now resets properly.
• You can no longer look at your deck while buying a loot bag.

[ 2025-04-30 19:40:41 CET ] [ Original post ]

Hi there! The first update is here, so let's jump straight into what I changed:

Optimizations:

Total optimization: CPU frame time: ~4.5 ms -> ~3.8ms (10-20% improvement) Please note that this doesn't 100% translate over to real world performance in case your system is GPU bottlenecked.
These may not look like large numbers, but it's because I tested them on my strong enough computer, where the difference is hundredths of miliseconds per frame. Frame rate improvements may vary per computer. The test scene is the screenshot above with 30 buffs and 4 skills unlocked. Testing was done INSIDE THE ENGINE, not on an exported version (likely would have better performance there).

• Weapon Description: doesn't update position on screen while invisible: ~3-4% total frame time decrease
• UI 3D: no longer updates when invisible: runs 35% faster
• Trail Renderer: no longer updates when invisible: runs 50% faster
• Buff/Skill Scroll bar: doesn't update the scale and color of children when invisible: runs 84% faster
• Majorly decreased stutter when moving weapons around, loading the weapons for the first time in a savefile. (this mainly affected late-game savefiles with a lot of buffs)

Changes

• Changed how the camera behaves.
• Changed the looks of the weapon backgrounds during the area transition to make weapons more visible.
• Added additional particles to the Black Hole to improve its visibility.
• Combo descriptions should no longer clip off screen.
• Hitstop amount now depends on the target damage.

[ 2025-04-29 21:16:20 CET ] [ Original post ]

Hi there! After 105 days of development time, COMBOLITE finally launched today on April 28th. Join the discord here: https://discord.gg/MRPH7QWprk

Changes since the demo

There have been WAY TOO MANY changes to list them all here, so I'm going to point out the main ones.

The ball has physics now!

You can hit the ball around and the game actually feels like you're making combos now!

"Combo" system

Whenever you get a buff, there's a chance that a combo gets generated instead. A combo is made up of 3 attack directions. If your weapons attack the sphere in that order, you will get some sort of advantage, like more damage or money.

Objectives give special skills!

Skills give certain weapons a unique skill or some ability that allows new and interesting synergies to be made. I added 20 skills in total for the release, each categorized into a rarity. There's also only one objective at the same time instead of three, so it's a bit easier to focus on them. The difficulty and rarity of each objective is determined based on the amount of damage the selected weapon category did, so weapons that you haven't really used recently will not get an impossibly hard objective.

Difficulty settings

I added 7 difficulty modes, each of them with some interesting twist that should change your strategy. Most of them are harder than the base normal mode, but some of them are easier while still giving the player a different experience. A new difficulty mode gets unlocked when reaching the end of area 3 in any gamemode.

Graphics improvements

I switched from the older OpenGL renderer, to the newer Vulkan renderer, which allowed me to do some additional fancy graphics. All of the maps were completely remade from the ground up, so it doesn't look like a floating circle in the middle of nothing anymore.

Basically doubled, or even tripled the amount of content!

• 8 categories of weapons, with a total of 34 weapons
• 29 collectable buffs
• 448 combos with 4 different special rewards

Future plans

Currently getting the game localized is my first step, and I have made some steps towards that already. I want to definitely add a bit more content to the game, especially in the area department, but for now I will be taking a short break to chill for a bit. If you have any cool ideas, recommendations, feedback, or anything like that, join the discord and let me know!

[ 2025-04-28 16:15:31 CET ] [ Original post ]

New Features

• Added save and quit button to pause menu. (such a great feature isn't it?)
• Added a tutorial that plays when you first play the game.
• Added some Steam achievements.
• Added an area counter to the map.
• Added "battle logs" which shows certain weapon events like bananas duplicating, treasure chests being opened etc.
• Added a setting to disable impact frames.
• Global buffs now show weapon count underneath their description.
• Added playtesters' names into credits.
• Added a custom cursor and settings for sizes.
• Finally added SFX to gems being applied.

Changes

• Increased slow-mo impact effect treshold to +25% of previous PB instead of +15%.
• Changed how weapon descriptions are positioned to hopefully make them clip less off-screen.
• Target damage ramps up MUCH faster in the late game.
• Loading screen plays when the game loads instead of when pressing the play button in hopes of burning out less people's eyes.
• Objectives now have an animation when they are collectable.

Bugfixes

• When clicking the deck view button with 0 weapons, the game no longer dies.
• Buffs and modifiers properly save/load now.
• Dying no longer softlocks the game.
• The "highest damaging weapon" part of savefiles now reset properly when erased.
• Hopefully arrows properly work now again? I don't know this system is so weird
• Fixed a bug where objectives refused to progress after loading a savefile.
• Small arrows of weapons should no longer be visible while paused.
• When selling a selected item, the move back to shop button doesn't break anymore.
• SFX and Music sliders properly save now.
• Objectives now correctly reset after fights
• Changed layout of target damage text so that it doesn't look weird on large numbers
• Shop no longer appears in deck view.
• Shop should no longer refresh prices when you go in and out of the pause menu.
• Locked items no longer persist between savefiles.
• Fixed a graphical bug where one of the fights were skipped on the map, and the one after it was overwritten once.
• Weapon descriptions should no longer clip outside of the window once again

Balancing and weapons:

New weapons:

• Midas Blade: A sword made out of solid gold. Deals +0.1x more damage for each gold coin you have.
• Black Gem: +5x damage multiplier. -0.25x for each weapon on the field.
• Black Hole: Every attack, destroy the item before or after it and gain +20 base damage.
• Treasure chest: Once destroyed, receive between $5 to $20 and a rare buff for a random weapon. 10% chance to destroy itself.

Buffs:

• Hammer: deals 3x damage if the sphere has broken armor.
• Blue Gem: +25, +35, +50, +65, +75 base damage based on rarity. Instead of a flat +25. Decreased base price from 7 to 5.

Nerfs:

• Red Gem: Increased base price from 5 to 7.

[ 2025-02-24 17:25:09 CET ] [ Original post ]