DRACOMATON 1.3: A Modifiers Update + Some Words On Other Projects!

A Message from Calex:

Hi y'all! I'm not usually the one who writes posts like this so cut me some slack on this one. It’s been a while, but we've got a new update to celebrate the anniversary of the game's Steam release. It's a bit of a smaller one, but we hope you enjoy it. The team has been busy battling on other fronts, but we figured we'd celebrate by putting the game up as temporarily free-to-keep from August 1st -> August 4th alongside pushing out a new system and some quality-of-life changes/fixes. As usual, thank you so much for your support since the game's release in the summer of 2023.

Most of the content in the update is from an experimental branch that we're finally moving into the main game build. We've spent some time fixing various issues in the migration to a new engine version, and it's stable enough now to where all the issues we know of have been resolved. If we get the time and inspiration to jam for another content update, we'll have a nice jumping-off point to go off of thanks to these changes.

The time since DRACOMATON's initial release has been hectic but exciting for many of us. If you enjoyed the game and are interested in what we're up to, I'd recommend taking a peek at some of our other projects we're currently working on to see if it's your cup of tea.

• For the past year and a half, I've been working at Moonshot Games on a PVPVE shooter called Wildgate, centered around spaceship battles between crews in the most dangerous areas of space. Now that it's been announced I can finally talk about it but I'd go on for hours so I won't in this post. If you're reading this, it's already been released! (So go take a look if you haven't already!)[dynamiclink href="https://store.steampowered.com/app/3504780/Wildgate/"]

• For the past two years, Andrew, Annie, Autumn, Ben, Nik, and Sophie have been working on a psychedelic rhythm-based action platformer about chasing after your heart called Beat, Heart, Beat. There's a free demo you can play right now, which has a fresh update with the first story mode chapter. I highly recommend giving the demo a try, especially If you enjoy games like Muse Dash or Rhythm Doctor. [dynamiclink href="https://store.steampowered.com/app/3239360/Beat_Heart_Beat/"] https://linktr.ee/beatheartbeatgame

• Yiyang, Manas, and Manoj are currently working on a seagull game called Gulltastrophe. It's a tactical seagull action game where you play as the Seagull, and need to steal their food, poop on their houses, and cause a giant Gulltastrophe. [dynamiclink href="https://store.steampowered.com/app/3532810/Gulltastrophe/"]

• Calex

Patch Notes:

Modifiers

The game now has modifiers for you to mess around with! You can access the modifier menu by hitting the button on the main menu after you’ve beaten the game at least once. There are plenty of modifiers to mess around with, including the ability to use the old Construct form laser beam. Maybe we'll add more in the future ˡᶦᵏᵉ ᵗʰᵉ ᵃᵇᶦˡᶦᵗʸ ᵗᵒ ᵘˢᵉ ᶜʰᵃᶦⁿˢᵃʷ ᶠᵒʳᵐ.

The list of currently configurable modifiers:

• Construct Primary: Spray OR Laser. In Update 1.2 we replaced Construct Form's laser attack with a spray of projectiles. Some players expressed the option to use the old laser, especially since it has some unique form interactions, so you can toggle this using this modifier.

• Cooldown Scalar: You can reduce or increase your form's ability cooldowns using this modifier.

• Time Scale: You can control the overall timescale of the game using this modifier.

• Enemy Damage: Sometimes you just want to relax and turn enemy damage to 10% of what it usually is. Or you can double it if you're into that.

• Enemy Size: Our enemies and rooms were not designed for our enemies to be 50% larger. Change at your own risk.

• Enemy Speed: Watching the whole room instantly swarm you has never been easier.

• Reward Chance (Chaos, Form, Item): These modifiers take the existing chance you would've had for these rewards, and scales based on those odds. If you want to play item-less,,. I guess you can do that now.

Miscellaneous

• We've updated the game to a new engine version, Unity 6. This has allowed us to remove the Unity splash screen from the game startup flow, which should let you open the game a little faster now.

• We've made a couple of polish passes to specific forms and status effects VFX to promote improved visibility throughout the game (Thank you Tracie).

• Miscellaneous bug fixes.