Update #18: The Big One

The eighteenth update for Swarmcade is now live! After a bit longer than hoped (that's game dev for you), 1.0 is finally here! This is the biggest update to the game since the early access launch. A new stage, new difficulty, new upgrades, new heroes, enemies and bosses/elites. Plus some much-requested quality of life and features, new achievements and more.

There's a lot to go through so let's begin!

Patch notes

Note: Some text has been marked as spoilers as some of you may prefer to find out the major new features/rewards and unlocks through actual gameplay.

New

• Title Screen added and Title Music

• Bonus Stage (unlocked after surviving 30 minutes on Stage 5 - retroactive). On this stage every

  wave is randomised

• Lucky Draw added after completion of Bonus Stage - Spend excess gold here for a chance of a prize. There is a pity mechanic so you will never go too long without a win!

• Cursed difficulty unlocked after

  killing Bonus Stage 1 Boss and with 60 or above upgrades.

• When on Cursed difficulty

  a Genie appears after a certain amount of level ups and will grant very powerful boons, or tricky curses (if you're unlucky).

• Several remixed Enemies, Bosses & Elites added (many will only appear on the new difficulty)

• G-Upgrades added after killing the Bonus Stage Boss. These new perma-upgrades enable far far higher level, "broken" builds by upgrading the boons granted by the Genie (and also lowering his curses).

• 1 Regular hero unlocked for defeating Bonus Stage 1 boss

• 4 powerful new Bonus heroes unlocked through the

  Lucky Draw

• 4 new unique weapons that are exclusive to the new bonus heroes. Unlike regular weapons these start at level 8 because they are weapons that scale over time. The more you level up the more powerful they get! And they get very powerful, competing with ultimate weapons in terms of sheer damage.

• All 25 Regular heroes can now unlock an

  even more powerful Star version in the Lucky Draw. Star versions of the heroes enhance their key passives and/or stats.

Quality of Life

• Completely reworked level up choices and the RNG factor

• As long as the weapon/item pool allows, rerolls should always show new choices

• An Ultimate weapon or item combo now displays on the LV up choice menu when unlocked (retroactive)

• Late Game Auto-levelling can now be enabled in the options menu. This means all choices during the infinite stat phase of level-ups will be automatically chosen at random and the level up screen not shown. The stat increases will still show above the hero

• Chests will now be picked up from a slightly further distance

• New animations for Thunderbolt attacks

• New animations and icon for Ice Spike attacks

• New Coin icons and sprite in game

• Paladin now shows when passive has healed him

• Wave number is now displayed on HUD

• Damage number size shrunk slightly

• Damage numbers tweaked to help with performance impact

Gameplay Tweaks

• Level up choices are no longer fixed Weapon/Weapon/Item instead all choices are random

• Infinite stats now only become available upon level up after the first two pools have been exhausted

• Infinite stats now display a level number

• Healing and gold removed from LV up choices

• Lost XP pick-up now drops quicker once threshold has been hit

• Unlocking Hard mode no longer requires stage completion on normal, instead unlocks for all stages after 40 or above upgrade unlocks

• New players now start the game with +300 gold

• Subtle Text Cues added for some secret bosses

• Enemy dogs fire attack changed to red hue for easier legibility

Balance

• Windwaker's Fairy heal amount increased

• Warlock's Resurrection now increases his max HP upon reviving after every death (very powerful buff!)

• Archmage casts his random Ultimates slightly less frequently (Star version unchanged)

• Magnet max pick-up range doubled

• Ultimate Ward - petal rate adds cooldown scaling (this is a buff!)

• Some Ultimate cooldowns slightly increased to balance out the new boons available on Cursed difficulty

• Ultimate Banana slightly decreased explosion damage, still insanely powerful!

• Bosses damage adjusted depending on difficulty and player power

• Some elites buffed on harder difficulties

• Stage 3's Final Boss Bat attack collision reduced

Bug Fixes

• Thorn ward visual glitch

• Jelly fish move speed bug

• Thundermine DPS rate slightly lowered (was ticking too many times)

• Numerous other boring bug fixes

Achievements

Some achievements have been removed with this update. As previously mentioned, Steam limits games to 100 achievements until your game meets a certain sales threshold, so no further achievements could be added without removing some existing ones first. More were removed than new ones added to allow some room for future additions (assuming the game doesn't meet the threshold).

Removed:

• 20 upgrades

• 30 upgrades

• 50 upgrades

• 60 upgrades

• 500 kills

• 2000 kills

• 4000 kills

• 6000 kills

• 8000 kills

• Stage 1, Wave 5

• Stage 1, Wave 15

• Stage 1, Wave 25

Added:

• Reach level 250 with any character in a single run

• Kill 20,000 enemies in a single run

• Kill the Bonus Stage 1 boss on any difficulty

• Survive 30 minutes of any stage on Cursed difficulty

• Kill any final boss on Cursed difficulty

• Unlock any bonus character

• Use a certain bonus character to defeat the final boss of Stage 2

• Purchase 25 G-Upgrades

Final note

Despite reaching this major milestone, Swarmcade will not be leaving Steam's Early Access immediately. The game is in a good shape now and the content goals for 1.0 have been met. But even with a lot of testing behind the scenes, with such a big update there could always be some things that could crop up that may need addressing before hitting that big Steam launch button. With all that said, it should be officially released sooner rather than later!