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The exciting new thing for this update is flavor text for all the units!

Flavor Text

Huge thanks to Ian "Marzeltine" Black for writing flavor text for all the units! You can view it in the Fighter Almanac:

As well as in the brand new info button next to each unit in the in-game Choose Units menu:

For your reading pleasure, here is the flavor text for all units in its entirety!

Humans

Enforcer

Clad in riot gear, and adept at hand to hand combat, Enforcers are experts in suppressing disruption.

Sniper

Adrenal modifications allow for steady shooting in the heat of battle and deliver enhanced vigor from the rush of the kill.

Commando

Humans are working to match Robot technology, and Commandos use a prototype version of the Enforcer Shields manufactured before the war began.

Rocketeer

Rocketeers are often asked to block off the dangerous areas caused by the devastation of their bazookas.

Amphibian

Flooding large areas is good for terraforming, and electrifying flooded areas has proven effective in combat.

Mad Scientist

Tasked with re-purposing available resources, Mad Scientists added high voltage to a handful of Human equipment before cobbling together more novel weapons like Displacement Charges and Teleport Guns.

Medic

Experts at delivering medical care in the field, the power for Medics' Electric Punches once delivered life saving defibrillation.

Ranger

Trained to scout alien landscapes, Rangers are prepared for anything.

Punk

Embracing bleeding edge technology, these cyborgs have weaponized themselves for the cause.

Architect

Armed with guns using miniaturized teleporter generators, and slowing glue derived from Robot oil, Architects are always thinking about what comes next.

Robots

Antivirus

Built for durability and mobility around off-world construction sites, they used to specialize in keeping Humans safe.

Overwatch

Originally designed to compliment Snipers, they often use Buster Shots to clear site lines for ranged attacks.

Exterminator

Assassination droids often sold as "body guards" to make owning them legal.

Daemon

These reconnaissance droids joined Rangers in the exploration of distant lands, cannibalizing their parts to produce multiple short range Minions.

Firewall

Equipment designed to clear areas for Human colonization made an easy pivot to warfare.

Chembot

Marvelously viscous Robot Oil is engineered to ignite easily, yet not be lit by flames. That way it can be used to put out any fires that get out of hand.

Defragmenter

Shields are still for allies, but the pharmaceuticals have been modified for new enemies.

Physics Engine

Formerly cargo workers, the logistics of deep space ensures that Physics Engines always have something to do.

Catalyst

Engineered for problem solving, Catalysts were put in charge while Humans were placed in cryogenic Stasis for their journey. The ability to Psi Blast is a recent development.

Omnibus

Temporary teleporters were first engineered for new Human settlements that didn't have infrastructure in place for permanent versions.

Critters

Grump

Their resilience in hazardous environments and the ability to crush obstacles has allowed Critters to expand their acid mining to regions that are considerably more dangerous - and more profitable.

Gunslinger

What they lack in traditional rifle technique they make up for with inhuman dexterity.

Bounty Hunter

Experts at capture and kill missions, and often getting paid more for bringing them in alive, Bounty Hunters are skilled enough to apprehend the wildest Critter outlaws.

Psion

Early reports of alien ghosts have now been recognized to be otherworldly hit and run tactics.

Blobber

Evolved to thrive in highly acidic environments, Blobbers ingest seemingly impossible volumes of acid and can expel massive amounts of it when threatened.

Acid Junkie

In their element while around acid, they seemingly experience euphoria when consuming it. The large quantities they keep on hand are easily weaponized.

Gargoyle

Allowing them to glide over obstacles, Gargoyles' wings give them tremendous mobility. The healing properties of their blood could potentially be sold for untold fortunes.

Overlord

Overlords exhibit a poorly understood control over space and time, using it to rip lifeforms from vast distances onto the battlefield. Overlords are determined to add to the Critter ranks, whether recruits are willing or not.

Beast

Short lived, these massive Critters seem to feel no pain, including when all the acid in their system bursts from their dying bodies.

Lurker

Vicious and incredibly fast, even when tunneling, Lurkers need to be kept well fed or they'll eat nearby allies.

Map Editor

The map editor has now been live for nearly 5 months! Players have created 60+ maps

The map editor itself has stayed the same, but some of the experience around map creation has changed:

• When uploading a map, if you publish it not as a draft, it will now stay on your device for further editing.
  • Sometime in the future, this process will be further improved to download all maps you have previously uploaded. That way you can edit all your maps across devices.
• Downvotes on maps are no longer saved or displayed. The button is still there when you vote on a map, but it has no effect.
  • It seemed like downvotes were discouraging experimentation, without providing any actionable feedback.
• For those in the Discord, the “a map has been published” notifications now go into the #map channel and include a preview image of the map! So far this is a bit spammy, so the process may be changed at some point in the future. Maybe each map wil create a thread and post updates in the thread, rather than spamming the channel with a new message each time.

These are pretty small changes for the time being, but there’s still a lot of room for improvement in this area! Look for more map editing improvements over the next few updates.

A few of the changes I’d like to make in the near future:

• When you make an online game with “Random Map” selected, it should choose from player-created maps too, not just built-in ones.
  • This will probably be limited to maps that have a certain threshold of upvotes – maybe 2 or 3 upvotes to start.
• More stats around the maps you’ve created can be shown
  • For example, total games played on a map
  • There’s also the possibility for maps-related leaderboard(s) – e.g. total maps created, total upvotes received on your maps, or total games played on your maps. I’d like to provide a bit more reward & visibility for our hard-working cartographers and this seems like one way to do it!

Bugfixes

This update includes several bugfixes:

• “Surrender” (for online games)/“End Game” (for local games) no longer freezes
• Punk’s Displacement Charge ability can no longer go over walls
  • No weapon or ability should be able to target or have any impact through walls. Please let me know if you see any exceptions to this rule!
• Unit spawn previews for the yellow & brown team colors (players 5 and 6 in 6-player free-for-all games) have been added
  • This is the little ghost guy that shows when you tap the portrait of a unit to see where they will respawn. Prior to this update, for yellow & brown players, it would be a ghostly blue color instead of their team color.
• Shieldbot has been fixed for yellow & brown team colors
• Seismic Pulse ability description has been updated to match last patch’s changes
• Bazooka kills triggered by Exterminator’s Reflect Projectiles passive ability now properly refill moves & actions, as all kills should
• The splash of acid around Acid Junkie at the end of the Acid Dash ability now deals damage even if acid is already present
• Some weirdness with the targeting of Architect’s Teleport Gun ability has been fixed

Infrastructure Improvements

Part of the reason this relatively small update took so long is that I was taking the opportunity to update some of the infrastructure & tooling that I use to update the game. These changes will hopefully help to make the process of developing & releasing updates smoother in the future. However, none of them are really visible to anyone but me, so I figured I’d mention some of them here for those interested.

• All game-related code repositories have been moved from Bitbucket, where they were located for historical reasons, to Github. Github offers better automated job running, which means I was able to automate some stuff:
  • Server deployment is now totally automated, meaning I can deploy server-only bugfixes & improvements very quickly and easily
  • Some automated tests now get run each time I push changes. This should help prevent future regressions (provided I write enough tests)
• Some new visibility tools are in place to help diagnose & fix bugs:
  • Better server-side alerting, so hopefully I’ll be more aware of stuff breaking
  • Sentry for client-side error reporting, to help get visibility into issues besides what is brought up by people in Discord

Roadmap

Stuff that will be prioritized next:

• Several reported bugfixes that I haven’t been able to get to yet
• More map editor improvements (some of these are mentioned above)
• Bigger and more educational campaign (really a glorified and story-ified tutorial)
• F2P, after the campaign is done!

As always, thanks for playing!

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