Ahoi folks! It's been a bit since our last content update, and internally we're not too sure if there will be another before launch but alot has already changed and we wanted to give you good folks a peak at what we've been up to!

Balancing Changes

Oh boy where to start... pretty much every single enemies health pool and weapons damage/projectile speed in Viscerafest has been completely rebalanced, and a good few of these changes are far from what one might call "subtle tweaks".

Skullpiercer - Shredders

The pistol and assault rifle duo have been butting heads throughout development alot with the pistol usually pulling through as the victor, it being so ammo efficient and all. Alot of players tend to neglect the Shredders and have pretty openly told me so, thus I decided it was time to fix that. The Shredders are now far more ammo efficient than the Skullpiercer, and can more reliably stun lock some of the games chunkier foes, this coming with the caveat that their projectile speed is pretty slow now, which makes them slightly harder to use. But if you want the most bang for your bullet, the Shredders are now the way to go. The Skull Piercer is now effectively a mini railgun. It is much more powerful and is the closest thing the game has to a hitscan weapon. This was done to give the weapon a more pronounced role in the combat space, so whether your in the early, mid, or late game you'll always go back to it. Its basically replacing the old role of the Pung Cannon (but I'll talk about the changes coming to that girl in a bit). The Skull Piercer also uses 10 cells per shot now, and whilst the ammo economy surrounding the Pistol and Shredders has been tweaked to accommodate this you can very easily burn through your ammo very quickly with the lil guy. In short, the pistol is now an easy to use long range power house that burns through ammo whilst the assault rifles are great for stun locking and preserving resources, but are really ineffective at range.

The Bunker Buster - Pung Cannon

Similarly the games shotgun and rocket rifle have also been at each others throats. The Bunker Buster has always been a lil bit lacking and hasn't had enough of a well defined role within the combat space for awhile. The Pung Cannons just more powerful, easy to use, and to make matters worse the games melee attack doesn't cost any ammo and has been just about as powerful as the Bunker Buster for a long while. This is one of the reasons why in the last patch we started implementing some changes to the Bunker Buster, but it seems it wasn't quite enough... and we got some mixed feedback on the changes made to that weapon. So... First of all, the Bunker Buster has been buffed to make it more powerful, its spread tightened to make it easier to reliably one shot lower tier targets, and its projectile speed reduced pushing it toward more of a close-mid range oriented weapon. Whilst we have not removed the weapons splash damage it has been reduced. To counteract the presence of the splash damage however, point blanking an enemy with the Bunker Buster will now deal just short of double the damage. As for the Pung Cannon, priorly its primary usage was in scoring direct hits similar to a railgun, with a fun lil side function where if it hit a surface rather than an enemy it would detonate after a short delay. That secondary function has now become the weapons primary feature, doing much more damage than direct hits. The size of the hitbox on the projectile itself has been reduced to make it easier to more reliably miss enemies, and conversely the splash damage radius of the explosion has been increased to make it easier to hit your target. Taken as a whole the Pung Cannons role is now more about hitting heavier targets and groups of fodder indirectly with splash damage, meaning it requires a bit more skill to use, and functionally no longer conflicts with the Bunker Buster despite being more powerful.

The Deus Mortis

For those who missed it the Deus Mortis (Viscerafest's Quad Shotgun) is getting a massive rework. Whereas prior it was just your standard super-shotgun now you will be able to call your bullets back to you! And paired with the weapons piercing function you can effectively use this to hit enemies multiple times with a single blast! Or just do kewl trickshots... that to... Effectively tapping LMB will fire the the weapon, and tapping LMB again will call the bullets back to you and reload the gun. Holding LMB until the gun reloads will allow you to just fire the weapon normally, and similarly switching weapons will cut off your ability to call the bullets you just fired back. Because of this the weapon is obviously a tad more complicated to use, and as such the game will do more to teach you how to use it. The level it's introduced in (C1L5) will also be almost solely focused on allowing you to get used to the weapon, that way we can ease players into its quirks a bit more effectively.

Melee Resistant Enemies

Awhile ago we added melee resistance to a few enemies as a way to try deincentivise the over abusing of melee attacks some players were committed to. but ultimately the application of this melee resistance was lacking, and in some cases had the opposite effect of what was intended. Because of this melee resistant enemies have been heavily reworked to better achieve the intended goal, and to make their melee resistance more immediately readable. Melee resistant enemies now have purple armor and or skin, upon punching them, a more noticeable *tink* sound plays, with sparks and poofs accompanying a fewer quantity of blood effects. Melee resistant enemies are also no longer stunned by melee attacks meaning you can no longer stun lock them by *slowly* pummeling them to death as they stand by helplessly grunting at you. Conversely there are a few enemies that are now particularly vulnerable to melee attacks. The Drones for example (who were formerly melee resistant) now take extra damage from melee attacks. They do still have their melee counterattack however, so punching them is indeed still a risk.

Troopers

Because of the changes made to the pistol mentioned above it can effectively oneshot all of the games lower tier goons now. This means for the first 2 maps of Viscerafest you'll be exclusively fighting enemies your starting weapon can steamroll, and whilst that's not necessarily a bad thing it does lend to the opening sections of the game to feeling like an utter pushover. So to counter this the Troopers have received a major change. When going to attack you Troopers will now whip out a lil shield to protect themselves with. Unlike the other shielded enemies however they will still be vulnerable to melee attacks in this state, and visually the shield is quite different from say the Drones or the Hellbirds to make this more apparent. So in essence they're effectively functionally the opposite of the other shielded girls and boys, only able to counter your projectiles when they themselves are shooting at you. Other aspects of their behaviors have also been tweaked to compensate for this change, they attack less frequently now, move slower, etc...

Upcoming Changes

How Viscerafest's combat is balanced in general will be changing with the full game as well. There are alot of very brief combat encounters in the current game that lead to an "awe... that's it?" Kinda reaction that I've seen a few players have, and as a result we'll be beefing things up a bit and also using that as an excuse to give the player more in the way of resources. There'll be a few more encounters triggered by events, where say you'll pick up a key and a door will open with enemies charging into the room with you. Additionally there'll be more encounters tied to secrets, and because of this secrets in general will have greater rewards. One example in particular is that in the new version of C1L1 there's a secret at the start of the map that requires you to effectively explore the whole level before you can access it. Finding the secret will repopulate the whole map with a new set of encounters, introducing a new enemy early, and the secret itself will give you a decent amount of ammo along with a powerup to deal with them. Powerups in general will be more present throughout the whole game, both in secrets and out in the open, as opposed to their relatively scarce presence outside of secrets now.

THE GIRLS ARE BACK IN TOWN!!!

Oh yeah... did I mention that for Viscerafest's full release both chapters 1 and 2 will be receiving some new enemy types? I mean yeah if you're on our discord you know that but you're probably not which you should be! But regardless yes, on top of the new enemies coming to chapter 3 the games first 2 chapters will be receiving 2 new enemies. One of which you can see above! This lady in particular is called the assassin, a fast sneaky stinker who can go invisible and will toss disks that project holograms of herself to fake you out!

Tutorials

But wait! There's more!!! Awhile ago we talked about how we were planning to rework Viscerafest's tutorialization, and we gave a list of the changes we were planning to make... BUT I'VE GOT ONE MORE TO ADD TO THAT LIST! The tutorials will be pickups now... In all seriousness the reason for this is quite simple, the way tutorials just abruptly pop up in your face right now with no former warning is admittedly rather annoying. Having them be pickups gives you some form of visual forewarning that "Hey! There's a tutorial coming up!" and the hope is this will help to alleviate some of the frustration caused by them with their current implimentation. As a way to reward players for engaging with tutorials the pickups will also give you a bit of health. So... yeh!

Art Updates

You may have guessed this already based upon the enemies above but Viscerafest's in game art is also getting some love. From HUD elements, to enemies, weapons, etc... The whole suite is getting some artistic spit and polish.

Chapter 1 Rework:

Viscerafest's opening maps are seeing some love as you know, with the first 3 being almost complete. So I thought we might give you a peak at the games new opening map!

Chapter 3

Currently I'm just starting pre-production on the final map of chapter 3, with C3l1-C3l6 being playable and finishable. Once chapter 3 is *content* complete, we'll be going back through and polishing up the chapter as a whole. We've not really been showing off too much of it yet because to be perfectly honest it's just not ready for public viewing. The levels themselves are there and they are playable but they need alot of love and so we're hesitant to show too much just yet, but here's a lil peak!

Once chapter 3 is complete we'll still have the games finale to do as well, and Chromonaut, the lead dev on the game Bitter, is giving us a hand with the final boss. And honestly I can't tell you how hard it is to not spoil what we're working on, I'm immeasurably excited to see everyones reactions to alot of what the games final chapter and ending have in store!

In Closing

That is all for now! If you've read to the end then uh... congratulations? Admittedly there's alot here and I'd understand if someone didn't feel obliged to soak it all in. What's more so there are a few things I actually would've liked to say more about, give you a better idea why some of the decisions we've come to have been made but for the sake of your time and mine, I think I will spare you. Regardless, once again thank you so much for your support! And have a wonderful day!