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Welcome to version 18a! The big feature this version adds to the game is the ability to have 3-4 player games, instead of just 2 players.

This version also kicks off Season 3, with 3 new fighters (one per faction), some new 4-player maps, and tons of balance changes!

This is a very large update and has taken a long time to develop. Thanks for your patience!

3-4 Player Games

So far, every game in Barnard’s Star has been limited to exactly 2 players. This is not the case anymore! With this update, you’ll now have the ability to create games with up to 4 players.

Actually, the hard part was updating the code to work with not just 2 players, but any number of players. So while we’re limited to 4 this patch by the number of team colors and the size of available maps, I hope to add support for up to 8 players soon!

How to create 3-4 player games

As you can imagine, much of the UI had to be reworked for this change. The process to create a game and add players now has 2 steps: First, you’ll create the game with the settings you choose. At this point, the game lobby will show up in your list of games. From there, you can click into it and invite other players. Or, if it’s public, you can wait for someone to click the new “Join Random” button. Once everyone has accepted the invite, the owner of the lobby (the person that created it) will be able to click “start” to turn it into a game.

While the game is still in lobby phase (i.e. it hasn’t started yet), you can view and change the game settings. To change the number of players in a game, open the lobby and click the “Game Settings” button, and from there you can change the setting for the number of players in the game.

How does it work?

Just like regular 2-player games, but with more players! For right now, there aren’t options to create teams, so it’s a free-for-all. (I hope to add support for team games soon.) All players will duke it out until there’s only 1 person left.

Note that when you surrender or time out in a 3-4 player game, the game won’t end if there are still any players alive.

Now let’s talk about that “Add Mutation” button you may have noticed in the video above …

Other game changes

Game Names

Previously, each game was referred to in notifications and on the game screen by who you’re playing against. However, now that you can have games against multiple opponents, and each one can be different because of mutations (see below!), it seemed nice to be able to identify each game by a unique, procedurally generated name. (This idea is stolen from Polytopia - thanks for the idea! 👋)

When creating the game, you can click the game name that shows up to generate a new one.

Mutations

Mutations are customizations you can make to a game to shake things up by changing the rules a bit. Add them in the “new game” screen:

Use the red circle with an X in it next to a mutation to remove that mutation.

Some mutations have another parameter related to them – for example, for “Base Health” this is the amount of health each base will have. Use the arrows above & below this parameter to change its value.

Currently there are 5 mutations available:

1. Base Health - Change the amount of health each base has. This has options ranging from 5 all the way up to 40 health.
2. Number of Fighters - Change the number of fighters on each team. This has a minimum of 2 an a maximum of 8. Note that if you join a game that has the number of fighters set higher than the number of fighters you have unlocked for a team, you will get fighters unlocked until you have enough to choose your team for the game.
3. Random Teams - teams will be chosen randomly.
4. Mirror Match - All teams will have the same fighters as the first team.
5. Disable Life Link - killing a fighter will NOT damage that fighter’s base.

I hope to add even more in the future. Hopefully these first ones shake up the rules enough to be fun! I’d love to hear feedback on these mutations, or ideas for new ones.

Timeouts

With the UI rework required for many-player games, I thought it was a good opportunity to make a change to how game timeouts work. I’ve always been a little bugged by how easy it is to time out on a game, if you miss the 1-hour reminder or aren’t available (or are asleep) when the 24-hour mark comes around. This update changes the system slightly. Now, rather than being instantly booted from the game, one of the other players in the game is required to actually click a button to kick them out of the game:

(tsk, chalcidfly, always timing out 🙄)

This way, the other players in the game can decide to kick the other player immediately, or to wait and give them a little longer to play their turn.

Currently, this applies the same to both ranked games and friendly games. In the future, it may be changed to instantly kick people who time out in ranked games.

Ranked games vs Friendly games

Previously, all games were treated as ranked! At least in the sense that the outcome would influence each player’s Elo rating, for better or worse. With all the new game options, this has been changed so now you must specifically join a Ranked game if you want it to count for Elo.

Ranked games are 1v1 games with no mutations, a random map, and random who-goes-first.

New Fighters

This patch introduces 3 new fighters, one per faction. The theme for this batch of characters is “teleporters.”

Human Architect

The Architect sports a Teleport Gun, which can be used both to swat enemies away, or to rocket allies closer to their destination. She also has a Glue Gun for slowing down enemies’ advances.

• Health: 5
• Movement: 5

Teleport Gun:

• Damage: 2
• Range: 4

Deals damage and teleports any fighter it hits about 3 squares away, in the direction of the hit. Cannot teleport into pits or off the map. Targets enemies that aren’t directly behind cover, friendlies, and cover. Orthogonal directions only.

Glue Gun:

• Cooldown: 1
• Range: 4

Architect shoots an enemy with sticky glue, dealing 2 damage and reducing their movement for the next turn by half. Targets enemies that aren’t directly behind cover. Diagonal directions only.

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Robot Omnibus

The Omnibus can place one half of a teleporter at a time. Place one by your spawn point, and the other one by your enemy’s base for a shortcut to victory! It also sports a Machine Gun, which shoots 3 shots – one at range 2, one at range 3, and one at range 4. Each shot only does 1 damage, but they can work together to make short work of cover, or a patch of acid on the ground.

• Health: 5
• Movement: 5

Machine Gun:

• Damage: 1
• Range: 4

An automatic firearm that shoots 3 shots in quick succession. The first shot is short range, but each consecutive shot gains 1 additional range. Targets cover and enemies. Can’t pass over cover. Orthogonal directions only.

Place Teleporter:

• Cooldown: 1
• Range: 1

Omnibus places a teleporter at the target location. Place two teleporters to be able to teleport between them. Can’t have more than two on the map at once. Targets empty spaces without a pit or an existing teleporter/burrow.

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Critter Lurker

The Lurker creates burrows around the map. This is similar to Omnibus’s ability to place teleporters, but it’s both quicker (both ends are placed instantly) and shorter range. But be careful – the Lurker isn’t just a support character! He’s also got a formidable Dash Strike attack that allows him to target enemies 2 squares away.

• Health: 5
• Movement: 5

Dash Strike:

• Damage: 3
• Range: 2

Lurker dashes forward in a straight line and deals 3 damage to target enemy. If the enemy is killed, Lurker moves into their square. Targets enemy fighters. Can move through allies.

Burrow:

• Cooldown: 1
• Range: 5

Creates burrows both at Lurker’s current location and the target square. Targets empty spaces without a pit or an existing teleporter/burrow.

(Burrow: similar to a teleporter. If a fighter of the same team color moves onto a burrow, they will move to the matching burrow. If a fighter of another team color moves onto this burrow, it will be destroyed, along with its matching burrow.)

Balance Changes

To give some context to these changes, here’s a peek at the winrate stats for each fighter going into Season 3:

In theory, a perfectly balanced game would have all fighters’ winrates close to 50% at all times. Of course, in practice it’s a bit more complicated than that. But from the graph above, there are some fighters that really stand out with a super high win rate (Defragmenter, Mad Scientist, Punk), which will be getting slight nerfs. On the other end of the spectrum, there are several fighters that stand out with a very low win rate, and they will be receiving buffs (Commando, Medic, Exterminator).

Human Balance Changes

Commando

Commando has a great personality. He always tries his best. He’s the first one charging into battle … and regrettably, he’s also usually the first one to be killed. To give him a bit more durability, he’s getting the Regeneration ability. If it looks similar to Grump’s passive, it’s because it’s the exact same ability.

Regeneration (new passive!)

• Heals 2 health at the beginning of each turn.

Sniper

Sniper isn’t doing that badly. In fact, along with her marksmen pals Overwatch and Gunslinger, she has one of the highest pick rates in the game – above 50%! Her win rate is a bit low. The real problem, though, is her consistency. With her powerful on-kill triggered passive, if she’s positioned right, she can soak tons of damage while cashing out kill after kill on the enemy team. However, with only 3 movement, it’s pretty difficult to get her positioned in a good spot. And if she gets into a bad spot, she has a hard time getting out of it.

To help her end this feast-or-famine pattern and hopefully become a bit more consistent, I’m pulling some power out of her passive ability and putting it into her movement.

Movement: 3 -> 4

Taste of Blood (passive)

• Striking the killing blow on an enemy heals Sniper to full health by 2.

Amphibian

Amphibian actually already has a pretty good winrate. However, her pick rate is relatively low. A few patches ago, Spray Water was changed so that the stream of water would go only 4 tiles instead of 5. I’m changing that back to 5, to hopefully enable some more spectacular plays with ol’ Fibby.

Spray Water

• Water stream goes 4 -> 5 squares.

Mad Scientist

Mad Scientist is one of the few fighters that are unequivocally over-performing. His diagonal-throwing Electrolysis Grenade can seem to come out of nowhere and set up powerful chain kills. That ability is getting a nerf, but he’s also getting a secondary ability to compensate.

Electrolysis Grenade

• Range: 4 -> 3

New ability:

Water Grenade:

• Cooldown: 1
• Range: 5

Mad Scientist throws a grenade that spreads water on the target square, and orthogonally adjacent squares. Targets any space without cover or a pit. Orthogonal directions only.

Medic

Medic is one of the worst-performing fighters in the game. She tends to get bullied, and her healing ability isn’t as powerful as you might want. Her heal is being increase from 3 to 5 (aka “healing to full health”), and she is getting the ability to heal herself.

Med Kit

• Can now target self
• Healing: 3 -> 5

Punk

Punk is great, mostly because she has 5 movement and a shotgun. You know who also has a shotgun, but only 4 movement? Ranger. He would like a word. I felt that it was a bit too easy to use Punk’s abilities without careful planning, and she was just being picked for raw damage output, crowding Ranger out of the space. Hopefully, these changes will encourage strategic play, while giving players a bit more motivation to pick Ranger.

Movement: 5 -> 4

Robot Balance Changes

Exterminator

Exterminator is one of those fighters that looks cool, and seems cool, but in practice he just falls short. The fact that there’s an undo button in the game means that Reflect Projectiles is hardly ever triggered. This means that he needs more ways to trigger it. He’s getting a new ability to help with that.

Taunt:

• Cooldown: 1
• Range: 6

Uses a psychokinetic blast to force the target enemy to shoot their projectile weapon at Exterminator. Targets enemies with a projectile weapon or ability, who are in position shoot this fighter.

Taunt can be used on any “projectile weapon or ability,” which may not be clear right away what that includes. So here’s the list:

• Pistol
• Rifle
• Diagonal Rifle
• Shotgun
• Sidearm
• Machine Gun
• Teleport Gun
• Glue Gun
• Psi Blast
• Bazooka

That’s right – you can Taunt Bazooka, which means you can force Rocketeer to shoot his rocket at you, reflect it (as long as Reflect Projectiles is up), and it will go sailing back from whence it came.

This might be a bad idea, but reflecting explosive rockets felt too fun to not include. If Exterminator having this ability makes Rocketeer utterly unfun to play, Bazooka might have to be removed from this list.

There’s also been a change to his main attack Plasma Sword, which probably won’t make that big a difference, but hopefully will be useful in certain situations.

Plasma Sword

• New effect: Can ignite oil into fire, turn water or acid into steam, and destroy cover in one hit.

Automechanic

Automechanic is a bit of a niche character, and he’s got a pretty low winrate. He’s getting some straightforward buffs to help increase his pickrate and winrate.

Primary attack: Machete -> Plasma Sword

• Note that the damage and range for both weapons is the same. The difference is the new additional effect mentioned above: Can ignite oil into fire, turn water or acid into steam, and destroy cover in one hit.

Oil Change

• Heal all teammates standing in oil for 3 health Instantly heals self to full health. Also heals all teammates standing in oil to full health.

The Oil Change changes are very similar to Human Medic’s changes above – medics can be tanks too!

Defragmenter

Our buddy Defrag currently has the highest winrate in the game at nearly 65%, along with a very healthy pickrate at 24%. He’s objectively too strong in his current state. These changes should help playing against him feel less oppressive.

Movement: 5 -> 4

Sketchy Syringe

• Damage: 3 -> 2
• This change has been reverted in version 18b.

Changed: When Daemon & Overlord (Robot & Critter summoners) deal themselves 1 damage at the beginning of their summoning ability, this damage will come directly from their health, bypassing any shield they may have.

Physics Engine

The nerfs to Physics Engine’s earlier state were a bit too effective; he went from “insanely powerful all-around bruiser” to “niche utility pick.” I still think his current state is closer to being balanced, but wanted to give a little strength to bump up his usefulness a bit.

Kinesis Module (pulling ability)

• New effect: Deals 2 damage to enemy fighters.

Critter Balance Changes

Blobber

Blobber is a bit too dominant at the moment. His Acid Bomb move, especially, has a pretty long range for A. dealing AOE damage and B. coming from a 5-movement character. Since it spreads acid one square beyond its target coordinates, its effective range is actually one more than what it says it is. This change should help bring him back under control.

Acid Bomb

• Range: 4 -> 3

Acid Junkie

As Acid Junkie’s biggest fan said recently in Discord, AJ is “the best worst character.” Despite its loyal fanbase, Acid Junkie has had a consistently low winrate & pickrate across patches. He is also the recipient of straightfoward buffs to increase his power level, and enable the activation of his acidic fantasy more often.

Movement: 4 -> 5

Acid Dash

• New effect: Splashes acid to all squares adjacent to ending spot.

Roadmap

This was a large update, and it took a long time to work on! After this, I foresee several small updates before adding any new major features.

My plans in the short term (over the next few months) include:

• Lots of bugfixes for the major changes introduced in this patch
• Potential follow-up balance changes
• More 4+ player maps
• Team colors & maps to support 5-8 players
• More mutations
• Team-based play for 3+ player games (as opposed to free-for-all)

In the longer term:

• In-app purchases for some in-game goodies, like skins or special team colors
• Significant single-player content
• Making the overall game free (don’t worry, existing premium players will get something as a loyalty reward!)

Feedback

As always, let us know in Discord or on Twitter what you think!

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