Demo Version 0.14.98 Update!

Today we're proud to announce that a major update for the Slayers, Inc. Demo is now available! Feedback for the demo has been great, with tons of builds, insane scores, and interesting bugs being found, touted, and noted, respectively. It's also given us a better feel for how a large audience who are new to the game perform, and where certain things are seen as over-or-underwhelming.

On top of that, our artist has cooked up some killer new sprites for the Slayers themselves, allowing them to be more expressive and animated than ever. While we could have waited to implement these until the full release, we just couldn't wait to give our players some cool new art. Add that to the mechanics and balance tweaks, and you get a beefy update that touches almost every part of the game in one way or another.

Anyway, enough of the preamble ramble, let's get to the Meatshrooms and potatoes:

< Changelog >

Content:

• New sprites for the Slayers

• New debris art for the Manor

• Changed up the Character Select menu

• Added a Random Slayer option in the Character Select menu

• Added new "Pause" versions of each boss theme

Balance:

- General -

• Waves are a little shorter on average now

• The Overlord now gains more credits on Fighter and Hunter and less credits on Slayer per wave (in other words, more enemy spawns per wave on Easy and Normal, slightly less than before on Hard)

• Knockback "smoothed out"; beginning knockback is more noticeable, and increasing knockback doesn't instantly turn the game into Chomper pinball

• Reduced Essence drop gains for Loops

• Tightened the ranges for how far an enemy can spawn from you

• Chest price growth is slightly slower

- Slayers -

• Each Slayer gains a different fraction of their base DMG on leveling up => All Slayers gain 25% of their base DMG on leveling up

• Salem's base DMG increased from 7 to 10

• Krono's base DMG increased from 9 to 11

• Annie's base HP increased from 35 to 40

• Annie's Bullet Charges give 200% bonus DMG per charge, with a max of 1,000% DMG => Annie's Bullet Charges give 400% bonus DMG per charge, with a max of 2,000% DMG

- Items and Artifacts -

• Anvil: +300% (+50%/stack) Knockback => +100% (+25%/stack) Knockback

• Chitin Shard: Bleed deals 65% DMG => Bleed deals 40% DMG, bleed damage increases by 10% per hit, up to a max of 120% DMG

• Poison:

  • Regular poison (Poison Plant): Poison deals 80% DMG => Poison deals 70% DMG, and now deals an extra 20% DMG for every debuff the enemy has (excluding poison, poison trail, and weak poison)

  • Weak poison (Liquid Poison): Weak Poison deals an extra 20% DMG for every debuff the enemy has (excluding poison, poison trail, and weak poison)

• Tainted Veins: Some hellishly complicated formula for healing => You heal 1 HP for every 100 (-10/stack) Essence you pick up

• Spinebark Sap: Regen 0.5% (+0.25%/stack) of max HP per second => Regen 0.25% (+0.125%/stack) of max HP per second

• Ancient Stake: 15% chance to heal 5% max HP on kill => 15% chance to heal 2.5% max HP on kill

• Jagged Fang: Heal 0.3% (+0.15%/stack) of max HP on hit => Heal 0.6% (+0.1%/stack) max HP on hit

• Saw Amulet: Deal 60% DMG 4 times per second => Attacking the enemy applies a stack of Saw. At one stack of Saw, deal 40% DMG 3 times a second. Each additional stack of Saw adds 15% DMG, up to a max of 100% DMG. Saw stacks decay over time.

• Electric Bullet: Electrified enemies deal 40% (80% to Shielded enemies) DMG to the 5 closest enemies within 512 of them every 0.5 seconds => Electrified enemies deal 50% (100% to Shielded enemies) DMG to a random enemy within 512 of them every 0.25 seconds

• Gorgon Mask: Guardians now need to be dropped to 10% HP rather than 20% HP to be killed instantly while Petrified

• Stacked Deck: Random debuffs are applied for 13 seconds => Random debuffs are applied for 7 seconds

- Enemies -

• All enemies had their base HP and HP scaling buffed. They also get a flat HP increase per Wave and Loop

• Spawn no longer deal any contact damage

• Manor, Crystal Valley, and Rebirth Mire enemies had their damage buffed

• Royal Chomper's wandering shots used to deal 100% damage, now deal 75% damage

• Royal Chomper now spawns less mortar shots per volley

• Mortar attacks are now twice as large

• Increased move speed for Chompers, Knights, and Spawn

• Amalgomoz's summons are now immune to singularities

• [Hard] Nolvoth now cancels all of their debuffs when going underground for their spike attack

• Increased damage scaling for enemies in Loops

• Increased HP scaling for Guardians in Loops

QoL:

• Game now pauses if a controller is disconnected

• The right analog stick now moves the mouse

• Enemy bullets should now appear above all other objects in the environment

• Added a dynamic controls list to the Pre-Run Tutorial

• Lowered volume for Critical Hits

• Removed the developer message on startup

Optimization:

• Put in more strict limits for particles, damage numbers, etc.

• Fixed some performance issues stemming from item tooltips

• Cut down on critters crawling through your RAM when you aren't looking at them

Bugs/Typos/Cleanup:

• Fixed a bug where you could not buy things if you had the same amount of Essence as their price

• Fixed a bug involving Tailypo's target acquisition

• Fixed a bug where Nolvoth could be hit while coming up from its spike attack

• Fixed a bug where the game would not show up on the taskbar when started in fullscreen

• Fixed a bug where mortar crosshairs would never despawn

• Fixed a bug where the colors for the loop lines on the death screen crashed the game after a certain number of loops were cleared

• Fixed a bug where some enemy/boss spawn-ins could rarely cause brief freezes or crashes

• Fixed a bug where spores growing on poison pools did not slow player down

• Fixed a bug where projectiles would "double dip" on Crits on Marked enemies

• Fixed a bug where rewards spawned on the same tile as a Slot Machine would be mostly/completely invisible

• Fixed a bug where enemies appeared to have the Singularity debuff, but did not spawn a singularity

• Fixed a bug where players could still change 'Use' items and pick up other items after death

• Fixed a bug where players could be hit for a brief moment when leaving an Area

• Fixed a bug where enemies were facing weird directions when not Dazed and moonwalking when Dazed

• Cleaned up tooltip descriptions

• Cleaned up some Archives entries

So a couple things have been touched up.

This will most likely be the only major update to the Demo as we swing over to fully focusing on the full release. Again, thank you all for playing Slayers, Inc. and giving us your feedback.

With that, we've got Chompers on our trail and a few Fractures in front of us, so it's time to sign off. Keep an eye on our Twitter and Discord for updates, teasers, and other tomfoolery.

Happy Slaying!