BIG Optimization Patch, Plus Balancing and New Content (October 28)

First and foremost, thank you all for your patience. Without delving into too much personal detail, 2023 has been a rough year for this solo dev, and I'm very, very glad I'm finally able to put out a solid update for you guys. Here's what this new update contains:

Big Optimization Improvements

The game should run much more smoothly now, after weeks of work completely rewriting the way several systems in the game are handled to be better optimized. There are a couple specific cases where you may see a second or two of lag spike on high wave counts with a lot of path splits and a projectile-heavy run, but overall the lag improvements should be huge and you should be able to play a standard run without any sign of lag. This is an ongoing project so eventually even the occasional tiny moments of lag should be eliminated.

Balancing / Gameplay Adjustments

Because of some of these updates, when you start the game for the first time your skill tree will be reset and your spent crowns refunded, so make sure to have a look at the new skill tree options!

• You now keep all Crowns earned thus far into a run if you quit out of a run

• Tinkers spawn Automatons at a slower rate

• Automatons cannot be healed by healing auras

• Bugbears and Swamp Drakes (more about those below!) do 10x damage to automatons

• Bugbears are now unlocked by default

• The God King's HP regen rate has been nerfed

• Dragon Knights are now resistant to fire damage, instead of fully immune

• Hags are immune to the Wizard's freezing spell

• Holy Warrior speed and HP has been nerfed

• Cost scaling on card upgrades has been reduced

• Enemies that have a Poison effect on them receive reduced healing

• The reward gold offered by bosses goes up with boss difficulty

New Content / UI Updates

• The newly added Swamp Drake tower does an AOE blast on hit, then rolls down the lane applying Poison

• There is now a counter to show you how many times you've used the Altar, so you can track how buffed the Holy Warriors are

• The Junkmonger will now tell you clearly how much gold you'll get for selling a card

• Holding down Q will reload the spell automatically once the cooldown is over, allowing for rapidfire spellcasting

• Waves will now begin spawning at the outermost entrance, and will move closer and closer in, instead of every path entrance spawning enemies simultaneously

Bugfixes

• You should no longer die in the middle of using a potion

• You can no longer unlock the Goblin King achievement at random

• Fixed a bug where you could sometimes buy a card through the upgrade panel

• Fixed some bugs around enemy units facing the wrong direction

• Fixed an issue where sometimes tower placement was fussy and you'd have to shake your mouse a few times before it would register a spot as a viable build location

• Fixed a bug where sometimes the Blinkbeast tower wouldn't fire correctly or would get "stuck"

• Fixed a bug where Automatons and Bosses could get stuck in certain intersections

• The Hag attack animation particles should now appear consistently when enemies are in range

• The game no longer offers you a potion as a starting boon if you have the Three Potion Start

Roadmap for Next Update / Known Issues

• New tower in development: the Hydra, a three-way fusion of the three types of dragon tower!

• Working on a mid-run save functionality, so that you can exit the game and return to a run later

• The addition of a map tile attachment point preview, so you can see and control which piece of road your new tile will connect to if there are multiple possibilities

• Further optimizations so that the game flows nicely at the 200 - 300 wave range

• Visual indication of which path ending is your longest road

• Add the ability to buy a potion to top up your health if you're currently sitting at 3 potions but have taken damage

• Known bug where for some players pushing escape when the menu is open doesn't close it again

• Known bug where rolling ammo from the Swamp Drake and Bugbear doesn't split equally between all possible paths on a Marketplace tile intersection

• Known bug where sometimes Hobgoblin towers enter a kind of "rail gun" mode where they fire nonstop

• Revisiting of the spells to make sure they're all balanced and working in a way that feels good

• Working on a super-secret major content update to add a whole new layer to the gameplay...!

Again, thank you so much for your patience and hopefully you'll pop the game open and give it a play to check out the changes for yourself. These optimization changes hopefully make the game run much more smoothly for everyone, and the balance changes and new Swamp Drake will hopefully make it more fun to play! Stay tuned for the next update, which will come with even more new content.

As always, if you encounter any bugs or have thoughts about better ways to balance the game, please leave a comment in the forums!