Hey blasters! We're proud to be launching our accessibility update! This will let more people get the full Beat Blast experience. This update includes a new inventory system, orange elite re-work, color modes and better controller support.

First and foremost, we've taken a long look at the gamepad experience and improved it significantly. Aim assist is now a tunable setting in the controls menu and should make it easier to aim with a dual-stick setup. We've also added an inventory menu (accessible via the right bumper, Tab for keyboard) that lets users of any control scheme see all of the passive abilities they've collected in that run. Previously gamepad users needed to use the mouse to browse tooltips, which wasn't feeling great to us.

We are also really happy to be including colour modes in the Visual menu! These colour modes will help people with protanopia, deuteranopia and tritanopa types of colour blindness see enemies against Beat Blast's many backgrounds. With any of these colour modes enabled elites will get icons on top of them to identify their powers. This is something we've been wanting to add to the game for a long time and we're thrilled to finally be able to offer it. We'd like to ask that anybody making use of these features can reach out to us on our discord or the steam discussion forums if they want to report any additional colour issues that make the game difficult for them to play. Nobody on our team is directly affected by this, so we've had to simulate the effects to improve the experience. We're always happy to receive feedback.

Orange elites have also been reworked. They will now give off light like all other units. When orange elites die they will leave behind a bomb that explodes into bullets several seconds later.

Lastly, we've improved the motion graphics of nearly every menu in the game to help draw the eye and add that extra layer of polish.

Enjoy the full changelog below!

Features

• Improvements to the feel of gamepad controls, including a new Aim Assist feature that can be adjusted in the gamepad control menu

• A new inventory screen, which allows you to see information about your collected items so far in the run. This should be a welcome addition for gamepad users that couldn't hover over on-screen icons! To access it, use the right bumper on gamepads or Tab on your keyboard

• New menu transitions and smoothed UI motion graphics

• We've added colour adjustment options for people with varying types of colour blindness. Protanopia, deuteranopia and tritanopia colour changes are now available to help everybody see those pesky elite enemies. In these viewing modes, you will also see icons above elite enemies' heads to let you know what type of powers they have

• Yellow elite overhaul! Yellow elites used to not give off any light. We found this was a bit frustrating for players and not very well communicated, so we've changed the yellow elite bonus to be bomb drops on death. Keep your distance!

Balance

• Players will now start the game with 50 bits. We've done this to help new players get a leg up in the first level and help them experience more abilities after coming across a store early

• The bits required to have a shop room appear is now scaled by the player's shop discount passive

• Bit costs increase 2% per level up to a maximum of 50%

• Time challenges can only appear with stack, passive or power note rewards

• Starstruck has been weakened to bring it more in alignment with the other power notes. After each bounce, it gains a 50% damage reduction

Bug Fixes

• Frenemies will only let elite enemies drop hearts now, as the tooltip says. Previously, it let any enemy drop a heart

• After the last update, spent notes were counting double towards the note cap. This meant if you spent one note upgrading your power note, the note cap increased by two, effectively removing the note cap in longer runs. This has been fixed

• Solo yellow notes can no longer trigger damage on spot from enemy shield projectiles