Dev Blog - March Gameplay Update

This version includes many major upgrades to the core gameplay experience. First, I’ll go over the main changes in a short list, then I’ll expand on one especially interesting topic. And at the very end, there will be a small spoiler for what’s coming next!

Agenda

• What’s New

• Bug Fixes

• Expanded Look at the Difficulty Levels Update

• Spoilers for What’s Coming Next

What’s New

Major Difficulty Levels Update

Until now, the difficulty levels only had a small difference between them, mainly changing the HP and Armor of your units and the enemy’s. In this update, we’ve made many more changes, making the Casual experience feel very different from Normal, and making Brutal difficulty truly brutal.

I’ll explain all the details below.

For now, these updates are only implemented in campaign levels 1–3, but we’ll continue adding them to the higher campaign levels as well. So if you enjoy a challenge, this might be a great time to try playing again on Hard or Brutal difficulty!

Major Fog of War (FOW) Update

The fog of war now hides every element in the game except nutrient plants. In addition, we made the previously visited fog darker, so it’s much easier to tell which parts of the map are currently hidden from your sight and which are not.

This creates a much better Skirmish and Multiplayer experience, so come join our community on Discord and play with us! Some of us are already looking for new sessions!

Top-Left HUD UI Update

We’ve made several improvements to the HUD UI to make it easier to understand:

• The HUD now shows the buff information (Armor and Speed bonuses) of your selected creature. These values change during gameplay, helping you understand what affects these bonuses. Later on, we’ll add even more information there, since there are additional buffs in the game.

• When you don’t have Acid or Healing nutrients, they no longer appear in the HUD.

Merge Arrows Assist UI

When you try to merge creatures, there are now clear green arrows showing where your creatures are going to merge.

Level 3 Alerts Update

In Level 3, there are now minimap alerts in addition to text and voice alerts whenever a new Chimera spaceship enters the level, giving you more time to prepare.

Control Groups Update

We’ve improved the responsiveness of control group keybindings, especially for double-clicking.

Bug Fixes

• Fixed: revert issue when changing language in the settings

• Removed the “Maximized Window” option from settings, since it no longer works properly on Windows

• Fixed: Action/Grow menu hover box disappearing after building

• Fixed: Action/Grow menu hover box appearing behind the menu itself

• Fixed: tile flickering before selecting tiles to grow on large creatures

Difficulty Levels Update – Expanded

We have made it possible to control many more aspects of level design through difficulty settings, allowing us to create a very different experience for each level and giving players more meaningful choices between Casual, Easy, Normal, Hard, and Brutal.

Here are some of the things we can now control:

Number of NPCs and Enemy Modu

For each part of a level where you encounter NPCs or enemy Modu, we can now manually set different numbers for each difficulty. For example, Casual players might encounter only a single Modu in one location, while Brutal players could face 10 in the same place, plus additional enemies in other areas.

Steam post image

Different Resource Amounts in Nutrient Plants

Each difficulty level can now have different amounts of resources in nutrient plants, making it harder to build up your army on higher difficulties.

Enemy Modu AI Changes

Each difficulty level can now use a different AI “brain” for enemy Modu. These AI brains can become smarter and faster on the harder difficulties.

Different Waiting Times Between Level Triggers

For example, in Level 3, we knew the Chimera spaceships that spawn every 90 seconds are very hard to eliminate, so we increased the time between spawns on easier difficulty levels.

Special Triggers for Specific Difficulties

This allows us to add special content only for Hard or Brutal difficulty, such as additional enemy spawn points and many other possibilities.

Working on these updates feels almost like building each level from scratch again, as we imagine what a Casual, Normal, or Brutal version of that level should feel like.

What’s Coming Next in Moduwar

We’re now working on the next campaign levels: Levels 7 and 8. These will include new NPCs, Human vehicles, buildings, bosses, and some crazy stuff that I can’t talk about yet because I don’t want to ruin the surprise!

One of the features we’ve been waiting to add to the game for years is finally coming soon: Factions.

There will be 3 Modu factions:

• Human-Modu

• Chimera-Modu

• Free-Modu

Each faction has its own story and will develop additional special organs. This first Factions update will include 3 new organs, one for each faction. Check out the pictures to see some of the upcoming assets:

Steam post image

Level 6 Rescale

We realized that the current Level 6 map size is enormous, so we’ve reduced it by about 30–40%. This smaller version will be released in the next update.

I hope you continue to enjoy Moduwar :-) Please let us know if you have any further questions or thoughts about the game.

Best,

Alon