Hello there! Eugene is here, the Red Algorithm developer.

Today I am happy to announce yet another game update that introduces a new game type (mode) called "Sandbox". It's something players have been asking for since the game release. The implementation might not be exactly what you have expected, but it does offer quite a lot of freedom, creativity, and fun.

But wait, there is more :)

Here are key changes and new features in version 2.2:

• A new game type (mode) - Sandbox
• +1 new weapon
• +1 new weapon upgrade
• +1 new perk
• Habit mechanic was reworked; now it's fully passive and works after 30 level / minute
• New small ability for Fallens (1st zombie-like monster) to rise up after death
• New praying ability for Cultists that gives 100% armor and 10% reflection of hero's damage
• 14 new images for spawners' corpses were added (there used to be just one for all)
• Important visual changes of the main game screen (weapon upgrades, current game type, etc.)
• A horrible bug with splash damage was fixed
• A few other bugs were fixed, some minor visual changes, and more...

Thank you guys for all your support; for reviews on Steam, for purchasing DLCs, etc. it wouldn't be possible to continue working on the game without your help and good feedback!

Ok, so let's look at what is new closely and start with the Sandbox.

Sandbox

Initially, we had only one game type in the game, the one that is now called "Classic". A little bit later "Waves" game type with random monsters was added and some players liked it, but it's still a quite hard and serious thing. Also, a Tutorial was added as well for those good folks who wanted to learn everything in a proper step-by-step way.

However, what people have been suggesting for a long time was something easy, relaxing, fun, and maybe even a little bit crazy. People wanted to have some freedom, some people wanted to see the Steamworks integration, and some people even wanted to just have some cheats. Well, for the past few weeks I have been working hard on the game type that should, at least partially, satisfy those needs.

Hello Sandbox!

This new button leads you to this new screen with a bunch of stuff:

So many sliders...

What can you do in Sandbox?

Hopefully, pretty much everything you want to create a game you would like to play.

Regarding the monsters creation, you can adjust (from 0 to 50):

• The number of monsters that are created at the start of the minute
• The number of spawners that are created at the start of the minute
• The timing (at what minute they should be created)
• And, you can loop it (it will be created every minute and not just once)

You can also play with:

• Starting items / boxes (weapons, bionics, weapon upgrades, etc.)
• Map objects (trees, rocks, grass, etc.)
• Mechanics (you can turn on and off diseases, injuries, etc.)

And, to help players navigate all of that and give a few ideas there are also scenarios (7 + 1 that just cleans up everything). A scenario is a pre-set of the parameters that I just mentioned, each of them is kind of like a new game mode on its own. You can just fight millions of zombies (Fallen), or you can try to do something a bit more complicated and face some stronger dudes.

If you create a new interesting scenario, don't hesitate to share it (its screenshot, for example) on Steam, and if it's a really good and challenging one, I might include it in the game.

This game type is also amazing for game testing, for trying out different builds, weapons, etc.

This is a lot of new stuff to play with and it was not easy to implement (the whole game is not easy to develop and every update is hard, but this one was particularly hard), so I hope people will find a good use for it or at least try out a few pre-set scenarios.

I realize that the current implementation is actually not good enough if we are talking about proper game modifications, the editor, etc. I am also considering allowing to change the spawn direction (not only the top, but also bottom, left, and right), adding a "clean hero" option (a generic hero without runes and skills), and a few more things there later. Some people suggested an option to start with any hero level and to be able to pick weapons or perks from the list that contains all of them, but this was too hard to implement at this point. If you have any other cheap-to-implement ideas for this game type, please let me know.

Note that Sandbox is a testing ground, a simulation, therefore everything you do in the sandbox should stay in the sandbox, which means that stats can't be affected by those games. Also, you can't improve a hero's skills or get runes there, and, obviously, you can't do achievements there as well.

Perks

A new perk - Bright Future.

A light at the end of the tunnel...

The idea of this perk is simple, yet interesting. It gives +1% damage every minute to the hero, which means that you must take it as early as possible to enjoy its effect fully. This is a very greedy perk for the late game, and in most cases, it'll pay off only if you survive at least 15 - 20 minutes (and if you took it very early). However, it does address one important issue of dealing with the last monster, Machina, which HP depends on the current game minute. So, in the super-later game, it is quite helpful.

Perk Athlete was changed. Now, instead of giving the immunity from injuries for 10 levels and reducing speed each hero level, it does so every minute. Before it was possible to take this perk after level 20 and get the immunity from injuries forever, which was clearly an OP (overpowered) thing.

Perk "Drone T-69" was renamed to "Drone Master" as it's a more appropriate name.

All perks that give or improve your health regeneration now have a warning. In the case when you are sick and attempting to pick such a perk, there will be a red message that the health regeneration won't work while you are sick, which should be useful for new players.

Perk Mechanic has got a new additional bonus, now it improves Renaissance's damage by 5 because there is already an achievement in the game that uses this combo (Virtuvian).

The Fire Bullet that is created by the perk with the same name now has 50 penetration instead of 5.

Perk Healthy is now considered a good thing, it reduces Wickedness by 10. Choosing to be healthy is a morally right choice, isn't it? Better than to be sick...

Perk Legend is now considered a bad thing, it adds 50 to your Wickedness. This perk is something that you generally should avoid.

The extra bonus that Specialist perk has (always getting 10 habit after 30 minutes) was removed. This bonus addressed the problem of not being able to get any habit points after you reach the maximum hero level, but now, with the reworked habit mechanic, everybody can get Habit at any level and any minute as long as they keep using the same weapon.

Perk Berserk was changed. Now it also gives you 25 more HP, however, it will have a negative effect on your dodge, subtracting 25% from it (because it's quite hard to dodge when you are berserk in rage).

Perk Ninja was nerfed. Now it gives +15% to dodge instead of +25% before, and +30% with Primitive weapons, instead of +50% before. Dodge is one of those things that is quite sensitive to high numbers, it can be an OP, and +50% dodge from just one perk was really too much. Plus, this old perk was created before runes were added and therefore the ability to get an additional 10% to dodge.

Weapons

A new weapon - Rapier


This is a top (30) level weapon in the primitive category. It's a fixed-range weapon, which is a rare thing. Rapier has a very high damage per hit (and 50% crit chance), but its hit speed is very slow; 2.5 seconds. Also, it has a very slow (0.25) habit gain speed, and it's considered a "good" weapon (Wickedness -50).

The hero with rapier has a unique elegant sprite:

Fencing roleplay xD

This weapon is very special and in many cases not that practical. It does kill almost any monster or spawner with just 1-2 hits, but the cost of a miss is incredibly high, plus, armed with that, you can't really deal with the crowd. In the late game, however, it can do quite a lot of work against mobs with high HP and "fat" spawners if you plan everything correctly.

There is already a more conventional and versatile primitive weapon at this stage, Omega, so rapier is just an alternative for someone who wants to try out a different game style.

Weapon upgrades

A new weapon upgrade - Eco-friendly Model


This upgrade simply gives you a +1 HP Reg while you are carrying the weapon. In some cases, it's better than Life Recycling, and in other cases, it's worst. Also, this is a "good" upgrade, it reduces your Wickedness by 25.

Weapon upgrade Overclocked Mechanism was nerfed: it now improves your shooting speed by 15% instead of 25% like before. This weapon upgrade was too powerful before.

Habit

This version changes the way weapon habit works in the game. Before that, you would get Habit every time your hero level up, but this created a problem of not being able to get any habit after the maximum level (30 or 33). So, there were situations when you waited a long time to get a nice level 30 weapon at the end, but when you got it you would realize that you won't get any new levels and the habit will be 0 (or 50% of the previous value if it was a clean switch). Before, getting a higher habit, in that case, was possible only with the perk Specialist.

However, because of great feedback from testers (all of whom are mentioned in the game, you can find it if you click on the small plus at the bottom-right corner near "a game by..." in the main menu), and another special shout-out to Two-Nuhh who suggested this and many other great ideas, now it will be possible to gain habit after the maximum hero level and after 30 minutes.

Starting from this version, your weapon habit will grow every minute and not every level (the perk Specialist will still double that speed), which is a much better way for this mechanic to work.

Monsters

Cultists have got a new praying ability, it looks like that:

They also have a new special simple animation, kind of like a rotating shield

The way it works is as follows. When a cultist loses 50% of its HP, it starts to pray. While at it, his all resistance (armor) is equal to 99%, which means that it's almost impossible to do any damage to him. Praying lasts for 15 seconds. If you attempt to damage them while they pray, 10% of the damage you do will be returned to you, and it can even kill you. This includes splash-type damage, which in some cases when you deal with multiple cultists can be devastating to you. After 15 seconds they stop praying and with full speed chase you, all slowing down that you cased is reset. On the bright side, after praying their armor drops down to 0, so it will be a bit easier to kill them (their starting resistance is quite high, 25% physical, 50% fire, and 75% energo).

The reason to add this ability was not only because it can be interesting and create a few fun game moments, but it's also because of the game balance. All melee monsters are quite weak against a skilled player, you can easily keep a safe distance, run around and shoot them. Cultists with all their decent HP, high DPS, bash, and good resistance, weren't powerful enough for the game stage when they appear. This new ability will make a life of a player (especially with all splash-type builds, both plasma and explosions) a bit harder in the mid-late game, and the fact that they return 10% of your damage and not a fixed value means that this reflection ability will always be relevant.

Machina's spawner has got 120 basic HP + 60 per minute, so it wouldn't die at 0 minute in Sandbox.

Fallens have got a new rising up ability. There will be a 1% chance that after you kill one it will just imminently rise up with a full HP (technically speaking, it will be a new monster...) and attack you again, so you need to kill it one more time. This won't make your life much harder, but it can occasionally create a few fun moments.

Grenades

Now, in addition to the regular grenades throwing by pressing 3 one by one, you can just throw all of them at once in all directions when you press the G key.

No matter how many grenades you have, 10 or 100, all of them will be thrown!

This new feature is intended to solve a number of problems first of which is that sometimes you just don't need grenades and you are looking for some other type of consumables in the grey box. In that case, you would want to get rid of these stupid grenades asap, but you can't because when you press 3 there is a CD (cooldown) that prevents you from throwing them out quickly. This can happen in the Sandbox, in the late game when they are just less effective, or even in the regular game when you picked them up by accident and their weight slows you down by too much. Now these problems can be solved with just one button. Also, sometimes you just want to create a lot of damage around you in a similar way, but there is no Nuke, so now you can create your own Nuke.

Note that all unique ways to throw grenades (to a short range while holding Shift and to a long range while holding Space) also work with this new ability.

Settings

Now you can change the way the experience gain modifier is shown in settings.

It's the orange text with "(x1.25)", which means 125% experience growth speed

Here are your options:

• always off
• always on
• show on hover (the only option that existed before, now it's the default)

This was not quite evident that you should hover the mouse to the top of the screen to see how fast you gain your experience, and it wasn't always comfortable to do so during a hot action in the game, so now you can just set it to "always", or even turn it off completely.

Graphics

Corpses for all spawners were added:

For instance, here is a dead Imps' spawner

Before that, I just used one image for all spawners' corpses, and the Demons' spawner didn't have any corpse at all. Now they are all different and unique, yeah?...

The way the active weapon upgrade is displayed on the screen was changed:

_The Flawless Feeding System upgrade installed here, [Malfunction -100%]_

Now it's a separate small icon on the left side of your weapon. This is a much clearer, cleaner and nicer way to show them compared to what it used to be (just a lazy frame around the weapon with different colors). And, it's symmetrical to another new element on that screen...

Starting from this version, the current Game Type will be always shown during the game:

This means that you play in Classic, and the red frame here means Hard Mode

It's shown on the right side of the hero's avatar. I feel like someone who looks at the screen or the game screenshot should imminently be able to tell what Game Type that is.

Now the legend (the explanation of the events, symbols on graphs) is hidden by default:

Hover the mouse over the question mark in the left-bottom corner in order to reveal it

Declarations were added to the Game Type screen (that they are available or not available).

The “Hard Mode” button colour on the Game Types screen was changed. Now it's grey if not active, and red (maroon) when active. This option will be less visible when inactive.

The description of the perk Outnumbered was corrected in the game and on the website. It used to say that it gives +25% damage per every 50 monsters (and double that for John), yet the actual effect was +15% damage per 50 monsters. I was meant to nerf this perk a while ago, but I found out that I already did, yet I forgot to update the description. This perk was too strong in some cases, that is why +15% per 50 is the better number.

The blood particles that are created by perks Spikes and Mortal Spon were reduced because there could be too many of them during games in Sandbox.

Perk Ninja was redrawn (a small compensation for its nerf):

The image there used to be really old and unpleasant

Game Type buttons were rearranged and slightly redesigned to fit the Sandbox button there.

Bugs

A huge bug with splash damage was finally fixed. In short, this bug caused 20% splash (explosions and plasma) damage reduction, which is a big deal, but it was incredibly hard to pinpoint and it was not reported by players. This is understandable because testing damage is not an easy task, especially when it comes to splash-type weapons, and I was able to find this bug only by accident (I knew that a certain weapon with splash should one-shot a spawner, but it didn't). My apologies to all who were affected by this bug, players who liked to use various launchers and plasma weapons, and players who played as heroes that prefer such weapons (Ivan or Osiris). This bug was incredibly hard to notice and the reason for it was completely not intuitive. To put it simply, it's all because of the weird and complicated way splash damage works in this game. That is why in the past like 5 updates there was always something about splash and bugs... Now, finally, all splash weapons in the game will deal the damage they are supposed to do. Hooray!

Omega's range penalty was changed from 50% to 0%. It shouldn't have any range penalty in the first place (and it didn't work anyway) at all because it's a splash-type weapon.

There was a small bug that you would get +1 habit point every time you pick perk Specialist. This was because a while ago you would get +1 habit with any weapon, thus to get a double bonus at the level you pick this perk, you would also receive +1 (the same logic still works for the perk Prospective, the level at which you pick this perk also counts and you get additional health). Now, with the new passive habit mechanic, this +1 bonus is not relevant at all.

Now it's not possible to skip tutorial missions by doing something that is supposed to be done later. In this game version and later you have to do all tutorial missions in the right order one by one.

In the previous version, it was possible to enter the tutorial with an active mission, which shouldn't be possible. The tutorial is there to learn the game and not to do missions.

Monsters (every second) and spawners (every minute) were not generated during the freeze before, which is not the way it should be. Freeze should not stop the monsters generation, however, it still stops all monsters' activities and spawners' production.

The warning “X weapon range won’t be affected” was drawn a little bit below from the point where it should be displayed (a lint was skipped). Now it’s fixed.

Other

There is a new Weapon Warning that says: "This is a weapon with slow attack speed". It appears for weapons with a hit speed higher than 1 (mostly rifles, and some melee weapons).

The "language flag" was removed from the main menu, now it's just a red button. The reason is that a language isn't necessarily associated with one country. For example, English is spoken in the US, the UK, multiple other Commonwealth realms, and by people in almost any country. The same goes for other languages. This issue was already addressed before as there was a setting that allowed you to change “the flag of the English” language (US, UK, Canada, Australia, etc.), which is now removed.

A new short guide was about Skills was written on Steam.

A few guides on Steam were updated to reflect the recent changes (the one about Habit, etc.).

A number of old random advice were changed to reflect recent changes.

A few new random advice were added, they are mostly regarding the new features.

The official game website was updated.