OMG Insiders: Join us on Carl's Spring Break

Introducing tropical Lava Del Rey!

The inspirational start of this map really came from an early version of the Scurvion Alpha waterways, which was much more expansive than it is today. I wanted to expand on that satisfying feeling of getting some water legs and zipping through the map from one objective to the next.

It quickly became clear that a cluster of islands would be the best foundation for this kind of design. While water legs were a great way to get around, it was important they didn’t feel like a requirement. Islands were carefully placed and and designed to allow for island hopping to be fun with all kinds of mobility.

The center piece of the map is the Volcano. This is our first stab at making an environmental hazard specific to one map, adding a real layer of danger that we hope proves challenging and also adds a fun twist to you’re runs! This map is huge and action packed, be wary of your hunter timer! Completing all of the objectives can prove very difficult.

It’s your boy, Brady (OMG_Brady)

New Artifact: Sheriff Carl

So, we love Carl, so fighting alongside him seemed natural, but it needed to feel special and fun too. Since Artifacts are powerful abilities that shift the tide of battle, it seemed like we had to make one for Carl. Enter “Sheriff Carl”.

The idea is that this is Carl’s “Safety Suit” that he totally forgot he invented until Squishy had his first independent thought and pushed the red button on Carl’s capsule. After pushing it, Carl’s capsule unfolded into this mech suit, and they got out of a tight situation with the Omni Princess and Hunters. Now, Carl uses it to help Squishy and get a taste of the good ol' days of adventurin' and hootin' and hollerin'.

On the gameplay side, the player calls down Carl and he immediately gets to work. he’s intended to be a potent counter to the game's most dangerous threats, particularly Enraged Hunters, while remaining useful against any threats if the Hunters aren’t present. Carl follows you closely, targeting priority enemies, and enjoying the chaos alongside you. It's not just about winning fights; it's about having fun doing it with a character players already know and love. Yippee-ki-yay!

We’re thinking of this as v1 of this Artifact, so hoping to hear back from players.

Fun Fact: I had to animate this directly in Unity without an animation rig since I jumped ahead of the normal process. So, the animations are bare minimum, and v2 will get more love on the new rig that @Scott Albaugh made for us. The model itself did get a nice update from Scott though.

Love, Rocky (OMG_Tangent)

Rangus Files

• The Rangus Files are our main lore entries. They have been in the game for a while (at v1 status), and what we've done now is convert them into collectible “video cassette tapes” that are hidden across the different planets. We plan to expand on the design and add a lot more lore entries to flesh out the world, but now they can be found each time you land on a planet, and you can try and collect them all.

• I’ve always loved reading our community’s ideas on the lore and story, and look forward to hearing what folks think about them in this new form. We’re still crafting our canon leading up to Launch, so expect a lot more to be added and for there to be key tweaks to the current ones as we solidify the history of Rangus and its characters. Keep the theorycrafting coming, please!

New Mutations

• Mutations are “Major Upgrades” that change the way you play the game, and you can obtain up to 3 of them as you level up. Each Mutation is tied to an element, and which Mutations you see in a run are based on the elements of your weapons. Up until now, you would generally see every possible Mutation for your elements during a run, but with this update, we added 4 new Mutations!

  With “Battery” we are trying out a new theme for Electricity, where you build up a buff, then release it for extra damage. Parting Gift is my personal favorite, but I don’t want to spoil it, so grab a Kinetic weapon and get to spatulating!

New Ability: Grapple Tongue

I'm a sucker for grapple hooks in games and a grapple ability for Swapmeat has been on my wishlist since our early prototypes.

For inspiration I'd say the feel of Pathfinder's grapple (Apex Legends) is closest to what I was shooting for. Freedom of movement mixed with strategic cooldown timing allows you to stay swinging so long as your environment supports it.

Here is one of the earlier test vids, I was so excited to share with the team once I got it working!

• Jason Stokes aka OMG_Crangus, Art Director

Balance & Enemy Scaling

In the Artifacts & Chill (0.17.0) update we made some updates to the Time to Kill (TTK) for players defeating enemies. We primarily made these changes to reduce the overall chaos of the game to let the player focus on less enemies with more interesting behaviors and avoid overwhelming players with a wall of enemies to clear.

In Swapmeat there is an invisible “Challenge Level” that our AI directors use to control which enemies to spawn, how many of those enemies to spawn, and a handful of various other aspects of the game that need to scale over time. Your base Challenge Level is determined by which Solar System and which Game Difficulty you have chosen.

Prior to today’s update, the Challenge Level would additionally increment after planet completion. This meant that the Challenge Level was locked in throughout the duration of a planet and we would instead rely on the Hunter’s to force the player to hurry up. Additionally, Challenge Level was scaling the amount of enemies. This conflicted with the goals of our 0.17.0 update of increasing TTK and lowering enemy counts.

In today’s update the Challenge Level will slowly tick up while you are on the planet with a reduction in how much is increased on planet completion. The intent is that players are consuming more of the map to keep themselves ahead of the curve – activating shrines, obtaining Item Containers, and completing hard events for more experience which will result in level up rewards. The Hunters are still a threat to eventually kick you off of the planet, but it should be less stressful on earlier difficulty levels. We will be tuning them more aggressively for Nightmare in a future update. Don’t you worry.

Challenge Level is also going to scale enemy health in this update. Enemies are going to become sturdier but, there will be less of them. We’re going to continue to balance this to find the right mix of enemy count and their health for Challenge Level + Player Count.

This is the second step forward of a chain of steps leading up to a big change. We update Early Access every two weeks which allows us to involve you, the player, in development really early. It also means that we might make changes that are uneven.

There are still a few systems we intend to rework before our launch, but balance and content are shifting to a primary focus of ours. If you find places in the game that are harder or easier than you expect, please let us know in Discord .

• Jamie Stormbreaker (OMG_Stormbreaker), Game Director

Read the full patch notes here.