Demo Update and Roadmap

The new update is finally up.

This update makes a bunch of graphical changes to the game. Gameplay wise, the biggest changes is the removal of the colors mechanic, and the introduction of "M-Cells" to replace it. We've also replaced the Swapper cell with a bond cell version of the same idea and removed the Interest Cell and Shrapnel Cell from the game, for now. Here's the list of changes:

• Immune cells generally increased in size. More variation in size as well.

• Movement of blood cells. You can now move your blood cell clump around your placeable area. Viruses will target it no matter where it is.

• Colors mechanic replaced. Cells and viruses no longer have colors, and immune cells no longer magnetically attract viruses. (We have magnet and M-cells to replace this, see below).

• M-Cells introduced. M-Cells are a new category of cells that encompass walls, bonds, wildcard cells, and generally cells that mostly just sit there in combat.

• All cells that reacted with "matching colors" in the past now react to M-cells instead. This includes

  1. Resonant Wall

  2. Resonant Cannon

  3. Resonant Buffer

  4. Resonance Amplifier

• Magnet Cells introduced.

• Magnet buffer replaced with Magnet Cell. Magnet Cell attracts all viruses up to a larger range than the old colors attraction.

• Kinetic Magnet Buffer's attraction affect now affects all viruses.

• Removed a couple other cells:

  1. Shrapnel Cell

  2. Swapper Cell

  3. Interest Cell

• Added two new cells:

  1. Swapper Bond cells: Attach to one nearby immune cell. At the start of your next shop round, swap health with the nearest attached cell.

  2. Proximity Buffer: When you place this, give the nearest M-Cell +3 health.

• Bombs and mortars have been slightly debuffed.

• A number of graphical and color changes.

• Some minor UI improvement and fixing of bugs related to placement

Along with this update, I also want to share our Roadmap to the early access release of Auto Immune.

From this point, there are basically 2 milestones left to our Early Access release on Steam.

1. First week of Febuary 2024: Steam Next Fest demo. This will be the last single player demo of the game, and the beginning of our big marketing push leading up to release.

2. March 2024. Limited multiplayer demo. We will be testing out our multiplayer in the discord. This is mostly for technical testing purposes and will not be released to Steam.

3. April 2024. Early Access launch on Steam. The big difference between the launch version of the game and the Next Fest demo will be the inclusion of multiplayer. Our exact design of multiplayer games is still somewhat in flux, but basically there will be:

   • Unranked Multiplayer with your Steam friends (games hosted by clients, no matchmaking or dedicated servers)

   • Ranked Asynchronous Multiplayer - You'll compete for rank against past runs of other players.

We have ambitions for more multiplayer options in the future, but we're choosing to do this async multiplayer as our main mode for now because launching a small indie game that depends on having a high concurrent player count is extremely risky. It would take us too long to be sure we could do it well on a technical level, and more importantly, no matter how good our implementation is, we'd risk the game's future on having enough concurrent players at launch. Most indie games that try to do things this way fail, so we are taking a safer, more gradual route. Anyway, more details to come about this in the future.

Enjoy the new demo and let us know your feedback here in the Steam forums or on our Discord!