Axom: Conquest Demo Patch 0.8.0.2

Welcome to Axom: Conquest's biggest patch yet! This patch combines all the feedback I have received over the time the demo has been available and I've really pushed to make this the best possible tower defence game I can.

I can't wait to get some more feedback and keep progressing toward the release!

Axom will be ours!

Featured Changes

Gameplay

• New Tower: Alien Cannon - Shoots a projectile that explodes into a sphere which damages enemies over time and slows their attack speed.

• New Tower: Mortar - Shoots a long range projectile that moves slow and explodes in an area.

• New Tower: Snowballer - Shoots a projectile that deals cold damage.

• Advanced and Experimental upgrade rarities have had their chance of appearing doubled (Meaning you will see them much more often than before).

• The trader will now appear every 2 waves (Up from 3).

• You can now “Lock” Upgrades in the trader (So if you see something you like but cannot afford it yet).

• Later wave upgrades and structures now appear twice as early, for example (wave 5 instead of 10).

• Research Tree has been reworked slightly and some upgrades have been replaced.

• Towers placed on high-ground now have 30% increased range and damage, and there is an indicator to show this.

New System (Capsules)

• Capsules are a new thing can be found or bought in the trader. They act as one time use consumables and have various instant effects for example (Double Capsule - Select a Tower or Hazard, it duplicates to a nearby location).

• 14 New capsules added (Play and find them all!).

• Certain Towers now have new variants, for example (Double-Flak is upgraded from Flak-Gun) These come in the form of capsules.

New System (Tile modifiers)

• Each tile of the map can now have different tile types (Which come from capsules or upgrades) and give various effects both positive and negative.

• There is currently 3 tile types with plans to add a lot more.

Research Structures Overhauled

• Previously research structures took up the same slot as towers and hazards. Now they act as a separate upgrade.

• You get to choose 1 research structure on wave 5 and 15.

• Each research structure must be built and provides a passive ability along with new active abilities which have wave cooldowns.

• There are currently 5 research structures to be found in the Demo.

Enemies

• New enemy: Hexxer - a humanoid alien that casts disabling hexxes, acts as the boss for the Demo.

• New enemy types will now appear every 5 waves (Previously 10). This means every boss wave now contains a new enemy type.

New Upgrades

• Dozens of new upgrades to find and collect.

• New nexus types to discover.

Visuals

• When placing Refineries you now get a preview of how it will affect enemy paths and the preview will now snap to resource nodes.

• Build grid has had it’s visuals overhauled.

• Tower range increase per level is now shown as an expanding circle when hovering the upgrade button for that tower.

• New visuals for the initial Nexus landing sequence.

• New textures and visuals for both the desert and snow biomes.

• Cliff models have been updated.

Audio

• New combat music track.

• There is a new audio log when clicking on a resource cache for the first time.

User Interface

• The entire User interface have been overhauled.

• New visuals for all menus and buttons.

• The build menu no longer exists, instead replaced with a dedicated bar at the bottom of the screen.

• New bar on the left side of the screen for the new consumable and research ability system.

• The menu to look at current upgrades has been moved to the right side of the screen.

• The trader menu is now no longer a completely separate screen and is built into the main interface.

• When hovering the upgrade button in the selected building panel, you now get a preview of all the stat changes that will occur when upgrading.

• Tooltips for all upgrades now display their type, tier and level.

• New accessibility option to change the UI colour.

• The Upgrades menu in the main menu has been overhauled and renamed, it is now called the Axom Codex and contains much more information like, nexus types, enemies encountered etc.

• Dialogue pop-ups now appear in the top corner of the screen and no longer interrupt gameplay, they can be closed at any time.

• When any tooltip appears (Or hovered in the trader) there will now be an additional tooltip to explain any keyworded mechanics (Like Void for example).

• New icons for all stats (These will appear any time a stat appears in a tooltip).

• Research Tree upgrades now all have flavour text when clicking on them.

Minor Changes

Gameplay

• Trader prices have been adjusted, now they are slightly cheaper as you progress to higher waves but will stay the same at lower waves.

• The Q and E keys can now be used to rotate the camera, in addition to the existing buttons.

• The Demo now has a wave cap of 20.

• Resource caches will now drop 1 free capsule in addition to the random upgrade.

• Alien-Ruins now drop 1 capsule and 1 alien upgrade (Previously 2 alien upgrades).

• New accessibility option to slow down gameplay when hovering combat abilities (To give you a chance to read them).

• Infected-Ground now spreads at the end of every other wave, previously it was every wave. And there is now text that appears making this more clear.

• Structures sold the same wave they are built now sell for 90% of their build value.

Enemies

• Ranged enemies have had their range reduced and their minimum range increased (This means they will attack walls sooner, rather than wait to attack the structures behind).

• Swarmers - Now move slightly slower and have more health.

Structure Changes

• Scouting Beacon upgrade cost reduced by 25%.

• Booster Tower now always shows the range it affects other structures.

• Tower range increase per level increased to 110%, from 105%.

• Hazards can no longer be placed on high-ground (This was redundant anyway).

Upgrade Changes

• Space Stilts - Now provides 20% increased range on high ground, down from 25%.

• All Basic upgrades now have more basic names to distinguish themselves from the more advanced upgrades.

• Box-O-Scrap - Removed and replaced with a new capsule.

Visual

• Icons when Structures are destroyed are now more eye-catching.

• Icons for upgrades and capsules when they drop are now more eye-catching.

• On the far upper cliff level there is now spiky rocks to indicate this area is unbuildable.

• New effect when selling structures.

• Various particle and visual effects have been tweaked for readability or quality.

• Maximum zoom out distance has been increased slightly.

• The map now contains slightly more dense scenery.

• The main menu background art and animations have been updated (Planet Axom has new effects).

• Outline effect has been reworked slightly.

• Health bars for both structures and enemies now scale based on screen size (So they will always appear uniform).

• New explosion effects.

• Structure health bars now wiggle and shake slightly when the structure is actively taking damage.

Audio

• Research Structures now make unique sounds when built and clicked on.

• Hints have a new sound when appearing.

• New sounds when collecting alien or none alien upgrades.

• New sound effects for certain upgrades and effects.

• New explosions sounds.

User Interface

• Controls page in settings updated with some more hotkeys (Keybindings still WIP).

• Upgrade button in the selected building panel now shows stat multipliers when upgrading in the button.

• All stats in the building panel are now colour coded.

• Tower range is now a viewable stat in the building panel.

• When upgrades appear after completing a wave or finding blueprints there is now text and an icon showing exactly what type of upgrade it is. (Choose a basic upgrade, Choose an alien upgrade etc).

• Next wave indicator at the top of the screen now shows the total waves (5/20 instead of 5).

• The cursor now flashes more prominently when the Ion-Cannon is ready to fire.

• Structure build costs are now listed in the actual buttons, in addition to their tooltips.

• New tooltips when hovering over currencies.

• When structures are selected for construction they now have a subtle animation to show this.

• Settings menu now has separate menus for gameplay and accessability.

• Critical damage now has a + symbol to show it’s additional percentage.

• Research lab UI art has been reworked slightly.

• There is now a large text pop-up that appears when enemies gain strength as the run progresses.

• The main menu has been reworked. Now the bottom menu bar will always be visible and makes it easier to quickly go between different menus.

• New prompt on the cursor when using abilities or building structures which tells you which buttons will do what.

• You can now view the enemies that exist in your current run in the upgrade menu.

Bug Fixes

• Inferno Tower flame FX now scale correctly with increased range.

• Hazards now correctly glow when selected like Towers and other structures.

• Fixed Needler and Buzzer enemies attacking in melee range.

• Fixed an issue where 2x2 structures could not be placed on certain highground positions.

• Particle effect when selling structures now scales with structure size.

• Fixed an issue where resource caches and alien ruins would not spawn on certain map seeds.

• Mortar Tower barrel no longer starts parallel to the ground.

• Speed stripes upgrade now correctly increases Enemy movement-speed.