BIRDCAGE Update 1.1.0

It’s Barry and Giannis here and today BIRDCAGE version 1.1.0 launches, bringing with it; scoring changes, balance tweaks and bits and pieces of new content! While a lot has changed as you’ll see from the below patch notes, this is a refinement of what we set out do with BIRDCAGE, its mechanics and its systems. If you experience any new, or strange bugs, it’s always worth verifying your installation files, as this has fixed quite a few people’s issues in the past. Without further ado, let’s see what’s changed…

Doth thou desire the SCORE?

Our intention with BIRDCAGE is that scoring mechanics are complementary to one another and give the player a degree of freedom in finding out where scoring utility lies. While we wanted 1CC on every difficulty to be attainable, we felt the true peak was in a full chain; getting from the very start, to the very end, without losing your chain. This is possible of course and has resulted in some seriously huge scores. Player feedback has given us the opportunity to further develop our scoring mechanics and make improvements, for all players. Scoring changes are as follows.

• All enemy scores have been reassessed and recategorised

• All enemies now drop Small Medals and award CHAIN when destroyed with The SWORD / during HYPERBLADE Mode

• CHAIN number at stage end is now banked for game end

• CHAIN number is reset at the start of every stage

• Stage Rank awards now grant a cumulative Rank Bonus at game end

• Total CHAIN number is now multiplied by Rank Bonus for a new Final Bonus at game end

• Players can now return to title via score entry on Game Over

• New online leaderboards have been added for 1.1.0 but old leaderboards remain visible

• Other scoring mechanics including Graze, are now connected to the global scoring formula

• HYPERBLADE Meter now carries across stages

• Blue bullets now grant small medals when destroyed during HYPERBLADE Mode

• Score extend thresholds have been reassessed per difficulty

• Maximum extends have been capped to 3

• Added a new Chain Up pickup to Mid-Boss spinner

• Score Bonus pickup from Mid-Boss spinner has been reworked

• Difficulty based score modifiers have been reassessed

This should give score focused players more options and in most cases, more of a challenge when it comes to optimising a run. For other players, a more balanced approach to CHAIN attainment and retention should allow for higher scores, more often. It’s worth noting that all these changes apply to Score Attack as well as Story Mode and Arcade Mode.

How Hard is Mode?

While we set out to make Easy Mode as accessible as possible to new players, we feel that the gap between Easy Mode and Normal Mode is perhaps a little too large, leaving players unprepared for the challenge of Normal Mode. At the other end of things, for the sickos, we felt that Hard Mode could offer a little more challenge. Since launch we’ve continued to address many pain points across difficulties and stages, for example; further improving the visual clarity of stage hazards, changes to some enemy patterns, clearer on-screen visual communication etc. Difficulty modes have been rebalanced in the following ways.

Easy Mode

• Auto-HYPERBLADE has been disabled

• Shield recharge rate has been slightly reduced

• Maximum Extends are now limited to 3

• At maximum Extends, a Chain Up pickup will appear when you defeat a Mid-Boss

• Score Extend thresholds changed

Normal Mode

• Maximum Extends are now limited to 3

• At maximum Extends, a Chain Up pickup will appear when you defeat a Mid-Boss

• Score Extend thresholds changed

Hard Mode

• Maximum Extends are now limited to 3

• Mid-Boss spinner no longer grants Extend and instead will always grant a Chain Up pickup

• Score Extend thresholds changed

Even with these changes, each Mid-Boss pickup should have utility, depending on whether you’re playing for score, for fun or just trying to get through your chosen difficulty mode!

The Other Stuff

Across the game, we’ve been cleaning up the last remaining bugs and adding some small bits of polish here and there. While not everything we’ve added is listed here, a good number of the changes are as follows.

• A new achievement for collecting all Stage Medals has been added

• A new achievement for watching the post credits scene in Hard Mode has been added

• A new achievement for completing the game’s tutorial has been added

• Added a CHAIN Meter graphic for when player has a Shield

• Added a new music track to the Hard Mode post credits scene

• Added several new enemy SFX

• Added several new UI SFX

• Improved Mid-Boss and Boss death visuals and SFX

• Rebalanced Stage 5 Arcade Mode

• Increased Stage 6 enemy waves

• Rebalanced TLB on Hard Mode

• Improved compatibility with Saturn like controllers (M30 etc.)

• Removed timer stop during OVUM-CORE

• Buffed ARCHE’s Drones

• Fixed an issue where certain enemies weren’t dropping medals

• Fixed an issue with SWORD aim

• Fixed an issue with Mini Helminth Medal drops

• Fixed an issue where video wouldn’t playback in sync on Steam Deck

• Fixed an issue where window border opacity wasn’t retained on restart

• Fixed an issue where CHAIN Meter incorrectly decayed during TLB

• Fixed a video rendering issue

• Fixed a handful of visual issues

• Further small performance gains via optimisations

Hopefully this gives you all an idea of the work we’ve been putting in to try and improve the experience of playing BIRDCAGE for all our players! We couldn’t have made the time for this without the support of everyone who’s already purchased the game and especially those of you that have left us a positive review. The reception has been amazing and it’s been great hearing from you all, so thank you. We’d also like to thank our play testers for helping with this update, their input as ever, was invaluable and they’re a credit to their community! Enjoy the update!

One last thing. We’ve had a bunch of messages about the game’s physical soundtrack and we’re pleased to pre-announce that we’ll be announcing something tomorrow, that you might be interested in. See you then!

Barry & Giannis