Community Update #5 — Survivor Mode

Welcome to Community Update #5! This is our biggest update yet — we’re introducing Survivor Mode, a brand-new way to play CODEX MORTIS that challenges you to push beyond the 15-minute mark. We’ve also added a Spawn Rate Indicator, post-15-minute wave randomisation, a cleaner Sand Tomb layout, and a Corpse Pile scaling fix. Read on for the full details!

New Feature: Survivor Mode

Survivor Mode is a new game mode available once you’ve beaten a world. After 15 minutes, a portal opens — you can escape for a full reward, or stay and face an endless escalation.

After 15 Minutes — The Choice

• A portal opens — escape at any time for a full reward

• Stay, and elite enemies begin flooding in at an increasing rate

• Elite spawn chance starts at 5% and climbs up to 50% over time

• Bosses and minibosses continue on their regular cycle — endlessly

• How long can you push your luck?

World-Specific Mechanics

• Forgotten Graveyard — Classic survival on open terrain with graveyard bosses and their special attack patterns

• Sand Tomb — Enemies spawn across the desert, not just inside tombs. Entering a tomb boosts your spawn rate multiplier, but now also causes bosses to de-aggro — use tombs as a tactical retreat. Sandworm waves sweep the sands periodically (1 min on, 1 min off). No tome pages to collect.

• More worlds coming soon — locked worlds display “Coming soon to Survivor Mode”

Progression

• Survivor Mode has its own completion records per world and difficulty tier

• Story Mode progress carries over — if you’ve already beaten worlds on high difficulty in Story Mode, those tiers are unlocked in Survivor Mode too (but not the other way around)

• 7 difficulty tiers — the same Easy through Apocalypse scaling as Story Mode, with independent completion tracking

• Best survival times are recorded per world and difficulty

Post-15-Minute Waves

After the portal opens, enemy wave composition becomes randomised — instead of repeating the same wave pattern, the game randomly selects 3–5 enemy types from the world’s roster every 30 seconds, keeping the challenge fresh and unpredictable no matter how long you survive.

Spawn Rate Indicator

A new on-screen warning now appears in all game modes whenever the dynamic spawn rate increases. The more enemies you kill, the faster new ones appear — this indicator makes that mechanic visible with messages like “The Horde Grows Stronger (1.50x)”.

Improvements & Fixes

Sand Tomb — Simplified Layout

• Tomb interiors have been redesigned with a simplified, cleaner shape that is easier to navigate

• Less getting stuck on awkward corners — more focus on the action

Corpse Pile Scaling Fix

• Pile sprite scaling changed from linear (growing with count) to percentage-based (current/max) within a fixed 0.75–1.5 range

• Higher maxCorpses no longer produces oversized piles

• Explosion radius, collider radius and pulse intensity for pile creation and merging now use fillRatio instead of raw count

Thank you for playing and for all your support during Early Access! Your feedback and engagement mean the world to us and keep pushing the game forward. Stay tuned for more updates!

— CRUNCHFEST & GROLAF