Today, after 9 months, Elemental War is leaving Early Access. We added a lot of features in this time and want to sum up the highlights in this news.

Highlights

During Early Access we added a lot of stuff. Some things were just bugfixes and optimizations, others were Quality of Life features and the biggest were new features like the Map Editor, Multiplayer and the Alliance System.

Alliance System

Already in update 0.9.2 in November we first introduced our alliance system. With it you can team up with other players, chat and increase your alliance rank by participating (and winning) challenges. Challenges are available both for singleplayer and multiplayer. The challenges can be played by as many alliances as like. The highlight are the modifiers you can buy for the challenges. For every challenge every team can buy up to on modifier that will affect all enemy alliances. We have five different ones in the game and they are pretty mean and can e.g. decrease the lives of your enemies or increase the hitpoints their monsters get. Gold is earned by playing challenges and even without winning the challenge you will earn some. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GU1Y2WsTPbs

Map Editor

In update 0.9.11 end of March we released our Map Editor. With this editor you can create maps that can be played in the game, both for singleplayer and multiplayer! The maps will be uploaded both to Steam (when playing via Steam) and our own server (for everybody else) so you can play all mods no matter which version of the game you play. After the launch of the editor we even added some new features for maps in general like portals that don't need to be at the edges of the maps anymore. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1V5RCa6G7yI

Multiplayer

Not that long ago, in update 0.9.13 end of April, we finally released the Clash Mode, our multiplayer. There you have to send monsters to the opponent team while at the same time defending your own map from the monsters your opponents send. Different tactics and more than 21 skills help you to get your enemy lives down. It can be played 1 vs 1 up to 4 vs 4. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bOhBC-iaLcY

Full changelog

Enhancements:

• added special sound when new elemental spawns
• added seven more quests with achievements
• added another achievement
• added sounds for some towers
• added progress bar for interest countdown below gold panel
• added earned interest below gold panel
• added unlocked tower levels to tower info screen in main menu
• increased frequency of swamp gas

Balancing:

• reduced negative effect of Hourglass tower
• slightly increased malus for multiple Root Nexus
• decreased damage of Taxman tower in end game of multiplayer

Fixes:

• restarting game when choosing elements yourself now works properly again
• it's easier now to solve quest 'Gold Fever'
• improved some tower upgrade tooltips
• scrolling in achievement view works now
• fixed animation of Money tower
• added missing word in English description of Sustained achievement
• fixed map editor not working for maps with start portal in a corner
• DPS in damage tooltip now are updated when attack speed is changed while tower is selected
• fixed an issue that caused some texts in some menus being cut off in the front
• fixed error on Mac that caused UI elements becoming invisible after they've been highlighted
• reduced RAM usage
• decreased loading speed of ingame settings
• fixed broken Mine tower animation
• fixed performance problem in multiplayer
• gold text now gets scaled in case it would overflow the box
• fixed typos in English achievement descriptions
• map editor now should be able to properly publish to Steam Workshop also on Linux
• changing the alliance flag now also updates the preview
• fixed tooltips sometimes causing game to hang up
• background music in editor now uses same volume settings as the main game
• fixed display error of T crossings in editor when loading a map
• fixed error hinting player where to go with T cross in editor
• hint to manually select next path for unclear paths in editor is triggered just once per path now
• Gas Bubbles now raise again

What's next?

Even though Elemental War is finished now, we're not going to abandon it. If bugs or other problems come up, we will of course fix them. The rest will mostyl depend on your feedback. If you liked Elemental War and want to see what we're doing next, join our Discord and/or subscribe to our YouTube channel to stay informed. You can also follow us on Steam. If you have any balancing concerns or bugs, please let us know, either as comment, in the discussions, via the Feedback functionality ingame or on Discord. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7B0QgYUB__Y