Welcome to yet another Red Algorithm game update newsletter!

Version 2.3 took a lot of time to complete, but it's here now and it offers quite a lot.

Here is a quick summary of what is new:

• +2 new heroes; 1 free and 1 premium
• +1 new weapon
• +1 new perk
• New music ːsteamhappyː
• Significant rebalancing of weapons (range, pen & weight nerfs) and heroes (new system)
• Weapon habit now reduces the malfunction chance (up to -25% with 10 habit)
• New Steam Leaderboards season
• Free DLCs for 1st season top players! Details are below, search "Free DLC" in this post
• Minor visual improvements, bug fixes, small changes, etc.

Thank you all for your positive feedback, Steam reviews, comments, likes, YouTube videos that you made, recommending the game to a friend or for just playing it.

Your support gives great motivation to continue the work!

Let's look at the new features and start with the most exciting one, 2 new heroes.

New Heroes

New free hero - Saanvi


She is a wise woman of Indian heritage.

Saanvi starts with Prototype gauss AR, a strange weapon with many flaws, but the only right weapon to enter the gauss weapons family. She has Meditation perk from the beginning, which has been reworked (now it only gives experience when your HP is > 90%, and its negative effect was removed). With this perk, she gains new levels passively (and even faster when you stand still), thus she will always be ahead of other heroes in terms of the level by 2-3 levels or even more. Unfortunately, Meditation is far less effective at high levels. Her consumables are 2 heals, which is unprecedented. This can help you to keep the HP high in order to keep the Meditation effect. Saanvi's favorite skills are gauss and SMGs.

Native strengths: [Crit +15%] [Accuracy +10%] [Experience +5%]
Native weaknesses: [Hit speed -10%] [Armor -5%]

Overall, she is a quite unique hero with great potential in the early game. However, playing well with her is not easy as you should stay in place as much as possible to gain 2x exp. from Meditation, and if you choose to stick to the starting weapon, you have to plan your movement and shots very carefully in order to keep the Kill Streak as the shooting and reloading speeds are bad.

New premium hero - Joy


He is a funny clown with a machine gun.

Joy starts with Rebel, a nice MG with good stats, which, however, you should eventually switch to another MG or something else. His starting perk is Infinite Ammo, which gives you a chance to instantly reload the weapon after a kill, an ability that is extremely helpful for machine guns. His starting consumables are 5 grenades and 2 barricades. Joy's favorite skills are MGs and ARs.

Native strengths: [Hit speed +15%] [Damage +10%] [Max HP +5%]
Native weaknesses: [Range -10%] [Splash -5%]

This premium hero is fun to play and quite comfortable in the beginning, but later his success is highly dependent on the next weapon you can find and your build. If you stick to MGs, you need to work on your move speed and try to reduce their weight, but you might as well pick an AR at any point, which is a much more versatile class of weapons. Another problem of this hero is the lack of heal from the start, so you should get some perks that address that issue.

As Joy is a new DLC, there'll be a 25% starting discount on it. Plus, it will be added to the Collection bundle, so, if this is the only DLC that you don't own, you can get it with a 50%+ discount. When you buy DLCs like this you support this game and its solo developer, so I can continue the work and release of new free game updates. Thank you for your financial support in advance!

Old Heroes

After almost a year in development, as many new perks, weapons, and other things were added, and with a lot of more testing experience, it become evident that old heroes should be changed.

Starting from this version, a simple system of each hero has +25% to a stat (damage, range, etc.) was changed to a more deep and complex system. Every hero will have 3 strengths (+15% to a stat, +10% to a stat, and +5% to a stat), and 2 weaknesses (-10% to a stat, -5% to a stat). What we get in total is 15 + 10 + 5 - 10 - 5 = +15% in total instead of +25% in the previous versions, so 10 points were lost, but because of one of the recent updates that removed the cap for runes (Version 2.2 - Diseases), you can easily compensate hero's weaknesses with runes. Also, I have a very interesting update planned in the future that will allow you to get up to +15% to the stats, but I can't say when it is going to be released.

The reasoning behind this change is that instead of showing heroes as typical superheroes with just one superpower, I want to represent these "heroes" as people, and people have a more complex set of strengths, and they also have weaknesses.

As you will see, the new system actually doesn't make most heroes weaker overall, but rather provides much-needed stats in a similar direction. Also, the new system is just less boring ːsteamhappyː

John's new stats:


Native strengths: [Max HP +15%] [Range +10%] [Crit +5%]
Native weaknesses: [Accuracy -10%] [Hit speed -5%]

John becomes much stronger with this update. He is getting a range boost and a crit, which will help him a lot with his second favorite skill - shotguns. If he stays with rifles, a small accuracy penalty won't be a big problem if you use aim and duck, and the hit speed penalty won't affect him at all as long as he is carrying a semi-auto weapon.

Sarah's new stats:


Native strengths: [Move speed +15%] [Reload speed +10%] [Hit speed +5%]
Native weaknesses: [Armor -10%] [Max HP -5%]

Sarah will have approximately the same power as before. She will be a bit more vulnerable, yet it will be fully compensated with nice reload and shooting speed bonuses.

Mr. Lee's new stats:


Native strengths: [Accuracy +15%] [Dodge +10%] [Move speed +5%]
Native weaknesses: [Splash -10%] [Range -5%]

Mr. Lee definitely became stronger with this update. His quite useless +25% accuracy was transferred to a nice dodge bonus and a small move speed boost. He lost a bit of dodge from Ninja perk because of the nerf in the previous update, but now it's partially compensated. The splash penalty for him will be not important at all in many cases (thought plasma is his favorite skill too), and a range penalty is not that big of a deal.

Fernando's new stats:


Native strengths: [Reload speed +15%] [Hit speed +10%] [Range +5%]
Native weaknesses: [Dodge -10%] [Accuracy -5%]

Instead of a simple +25% reload boost, Fernando gained a great hit speed bonus and a small range bonus as well. He will lose his dodge a bit, which won't be a problem if you won't try to improve it after that, and a small accuracy penalty is not that important. These changes will help him a lot when it comes to most of the shotguns and rifles.

In addition to that, now Fernando will start with Renaissance shotgun instead of Dunali, as "Dunali" is more of an Indian-sounding name, when Fernando is a Spanish/Portuguese/Latin leaning character.

Lucy's new stats:


Native strengths: [Experience +15%] [Move speed +10%] [Damage +5%]
Native weaknesses: [Max HP -10%] [Reload speed -5%]

Lucy will become a little bit faster and do more damage, yet her health and reload speed going to be reduced. She will still have the best experience bonus among all heroes.

Osiris' new stats:


Native strengths: [Damage +15%] [Experience +10%] [Splash +5%]
Native weaknesses: [Crit -10%] [Move speed -5%]

Osiris now will not only have a damage bonus, but he will learn faster and get a small splash boost at the expense of a crit and movement speed penalty. As this hero mostly uses plasma weapons with splash, the crit penalty will rarely affect him.

Also, Osiris' starting perk was changed in this update. Instead of Reset, now he will start with Crowd Control. Reset was a decent perk that actually gave this hero a lot of value, but it didn't quite fit the hero's personality and its effect was still too random. Crowd Control addresses one of the biggest problems that this hero face in the mid-game, the fact that you are often overwhelmed because plasma weapons don't have enough DPS to deal with spawners.

Ivan's new stats:


Native strengths: [Armor +15%] [Max HP +10%] [Dodge +5%]
Native weaknesses: [Reload speed -10%] [Crit -5%]

Ivan's old +25% armor bonus got distributed around to Max HP and dodge. The new reload speed penalty isn't nice, but the crit reduction won't matter for his splash weapons in most cases.

Samara's new stats:


Native strengths: [Range +15%] [Crit +10%] [Reload speed +5%]
Native weaknesses: [Experience -10%] [Dodge -5%]

Samara started with a +25% range before, which, based on a number of tests, was one of the best possible bonuses a hero can get. Now, she will still have a very decent range, but she will also get an additional crit and a bit more reload speed. The crit bonus is especially important as this +10% practically mean +30% for assault rifles (because they launch 3 bullets per shot). She will still be very powerful, but now she'll be a bit less of a sniper and a bit more of a range damage dealer. The native weakness that she got is one of the worst ones, but it can be compensated with runes and by keeping a good Kill Streak. It won't slow her down by a lot if the player is skilled.

Weapons

A new weapon - Dreamer


It's an elegant-looking top-level (30) mixed-class (Assault rifle + Rifle) weapon. This is a good alternative to Shark when it comes to the end-game weapons. Dreamer has a good range, good DPS, and penetration, but its ammo is a bit lower than other ARs, and the malfunction chance is a little bit higher. Also, its habit gain speed is low, just 0.25. Before that, the only top-level rifle was Oasis, which is a quite decent thing, but its level is 28 and not 30. ARs are still the most versatile class of weapons that open many opportunities to perform a clean switch to/from another class.

Many weapon stats were changed in this update.

Wickedness now has more game applications than before, so a couple of old weapons will affect it now as well: Lotus: 0 > -25, Veteran: 0 > -25, Phobos: 25 > 50, Separator: 25 > 50, Patriot: 0 > -25, Renaissance: 0 > -25, Apocalypse: 25 > 75, Amigo: 0 > -25, Shaitan: 25 > 50, Fixer: 0 > 50, Splitter: -25 > 0, Icarus: 0 > 25.

In addition to that, many weapons in the game were weakened in terms of their range (-25), weight (+0.05 / +5%), range penalty, and penetration.

The reason for this change is that the initial range that was assigned to most of the weapons allowed the player to pretty much shoot across the map with almost anything, except for the pistols, shotguns, and SMGs. Also, many other bonuses were added to the game that potentially can increase the range from the time stats of many weapons were initially set. Once a player achieved a long-range and a high move speed, he would practically become invincible and even range shooters wouldn't make a difference. This range reduction is actually minor, it's just -25, however, it will make a difference because, considering many possible bonuses, this small change will force players to stay a bit closer to monsters, make them hit you a bit more often, and make the game more exciting to play.

Here are the weapons that have been affected by -25 range reduction: Shark, Dictator, Patriot, Fukuoka, Peacekeeper, Shenzhen, Sheol, Veteran, Guardian, Veles, .50, Frontier, Icarus, Amigo, Tsunami, Apocalypse, Pulsar, Minigun, Defender, Rebel. It's mostly ARs, MGs, Rifles, and some pistols.

Range penalty changes: Defender: 0.25 > 0.3, Minigun: 0.5 > 0.45, Amigo: 0.3 > 0.35, .50: 0.25 > 0.3, Veteran: 0.25 > 0.3, Peacekeeper: 0.25 > 0.3, Fukuoka: 0.25 > 0.35. This mostly affects ARs and MGs and the reason being that 0.25 (25%) range penalty should really only be applicable to the rifles and gauss type of weapons with some rare exceptions.

Weight changes (mostly a minor nerf of +0.05 (+5%)): Shark, Dictator, Patriot, Fukuoka, Peacekeeper, Shenzhen, Sheol, Vandal, Cleaner, Shaitan, Oasis, Guardian, Icarus, Weight, Rebel. This mostly affected ARs, some low-mid tier launchers, and a few starting MGs. You will move a little bit slower with these weapons now, so the running (while holding space) and smart consumables use planning becomes more important, as well as the perks that you choose. The weight of pistols, SMGs, shotguns, and primitive weapons wasn't affected, they are still very light.

Lastly, a few weapons got a penetration nerf. Penetration is one of those things that could work better in the game, and in one of the next updates I will try to improve the system. Right now, there is a HUGE difference between penetration 1 and 2, but the difference between 2 and 3 is not that significant. Penetration higher than 3 is not actually useful in most cases because of the way things currently work (you can't penetrate 2 targets that are close to each other, there has to be some distance, and right now this distance is too high, something around 50 pixels, and it will be later reduced). Because of that, weapons with a very high penetration of 5 - 10 or more weren't strong in this regard, they might as well have penetration of 3. This quite broken system made a few penetration upgrades not that useful. At this time, I am just reducing some of the penetration: .50: 8 > 4, Frontier: 4 > 2, Minigun: 4 > 3.

Habit

This is a small, yet important update. Starting from this version, your weapon habit will affect the malfunction rate, reducing it by 2.5% per 1 habit point (up to -25% with 10 habit). So, if the weapon like Veteran had a 3% jam chance, with 10 habit the jam chance will go down to 2.25% per shot.

Weapon Upgrades

Extended Barrel weapon upgrade was nerfed: range +25% > 15%.

Uranium Inclusion weapon upgrade was nerfed: damage +25% > 15%.

Perks

New perk - Hatred


If you take this perk, every monster and spawner in the game will have a chance to receive 666 pure damage every second, which in most cases will result in its death, unless it's a very high-level monster/spawner. Unfortunately, this ability doesn't come for free, your hero will also have a chance to receive 666 damage every second, which, in most cases, will kill you as well. Death from this perk is always sudden and unexpected, which probably will be quite frustrating for players.

This perk is very risky and isn't recommended for a long-term game, but in case you don't have enough DPS this could be a great help.

Perk Kevlar now has a bonus with Counsellor pistol, as there is a special achievement for that.

Perk Solider was nerfed: range +50 > +25. ARs range was too high before and that +50 could be turned to like +100 or more with bonuses later on.

Perk Berserk was nerfed: armor -50% > -75%.

Perk Big Boom was nerfed: Splash: +100% > +50%

Perk Explosives was nerfed: splash +1 > +0.5 & weight: -15% > -10%.

Perk Plasma Boy was nerfed: splash +100% > +0.25. The splash bonus was too big before.

Perk Prospective was changed. Now, instead of the double effect for all female heroes, it gives +2 HP per level for all female heroes, and +3 HP per level for all pistols. There hasn't been a special perk with a bonus for all pistols before, so this should be a nice addition.

Perk Another One was changed. Now, instead of a single extra bonus for Shaitan launcher, it will have a double effect for all launchers.

Perk Meditation was changed. The negative effect of -10% hit speed was removed, however, now there is a requirement to have more than 90% of the maximum health in order for the main perk effect to work (you should stay healthy to gain experience).

Perk Thin Red Line was nerfed. Now it also has a negative effect of reducing your experience gain speed by 25% when you take it. Also, "The" was removed from the perk's name. This perk was too strong and could easily turn the game the other way around, and I don't think that just one perk should be able to do that easily.

Monsters

Savages now can hide on trees:

That should be annoying xD

There is a very small chance that a savage will decide to become "a climber". In that case, he will find a nearby tree and sit on it for a few minutes. When you get close to that tree, he will throw the spear at ya, the same spear they usually throw, but in that case, he will have an unlimited amount of them. Shooting at the tree won't help to take them down, but when you use your talk ability (by pressing the T button), they will get down. In any case, after a while, a savage will climb down and chase you as they usually do. This ability won't make the game much harder, but it will add a small fun element to it.

Runes

The rune that improves hero HP now gives you additional health as the % and not a fixed value. Every rune now gives you +1% to the maximum health instead of +3 HP. The new system will be more consistent, as almost all other runes improve the stat by a %, and not by a fixed value. This change means that perks like Healthy (that gives you +30 Max HP) will also have an improved effect; with 10 runes this perk will give you 33 Max HP instead of 30.

The rune that improves hero accuracy now gives +1% to it instead of +2% for consistency's sake.

The rune that improves hero splash now gives +1% to it instead of +3% for consistency's sake.

Steam Leaderboards, Season 2, and free DLCs

The time has come to start the next season and to add 4 new leaderboards:

• Classic [ Season 2 ]
• Classic in HM [ Season 2 ]
• Waves [ Season 2 ]
• Waves in HM [ Season 2 ]

Old leaderboards for season 1 will still stay there for the record, but from now on all your results will be uploaded to the new season 2 leaderboards. Leaderboards that store stats like runes, skills, achievements, damage, and hours won't be affected by this change.

The reason for introducing seasons is that this version has a lot of balance changes that will make the game different from what it used to be, plus, since the game release in June 2021, there have been many updates that changed the game a lot and some of the old top results wouldn't be possible in the current game state. Lastly, new players should also have some opportunities to enter the top.

Seasons won't be based on the time, it won't be like "+1 season every 10 months", but it will rather be based on the pace of the balance changes that are introduced in new game versions and based on the number of players and their activity. That being said, it's highly unlikely that a new season 3 will start in the next few months, most likely it will be after 4 - 6 months or even later.

As season 1 ends, players who did well there should be properly rewarded. That is why, if you took a high place in one of the season 1 leaderboards, you can get free DLCs.

• Classic [ Season 1 ] - TOP 45 can get a reward
• Classic in HM [ Season 1 ] - TOP 30 can get a reward
• Waves [ Season 1 ] - TOP 30 can get a reward
• Waves in HM [ Season 1 ] - TOP 15 can get a reward

Congratulations and shout-out to: Artzom, Two-Nuhh, Demetrio Zannetti, eujax, toyota, trapper174, Exodaass, 0R21H90N3, Sakuga, 雨里带刀不带伞, -sEx +press[𝖃𝖝𝖃]ツ, Spooky, Hunk Von-Strangle, tpgus7361, Jay Ozney, MataramaSugo, mirth, Orionplay, matthew.vincent, unownram, trollentime, MaRSot, Rockuncuk, Lanaryx, VVS步兵, 陶大师, ChElOvEk312, raymondarmody, Eddie, Hobowithrpg, Edris_nzr, Fantasm, hoanvuhhg, and other players who made it.

The rewards are:

• A premium hero DLC of your choice (unfortunately, only 1, even if you made it to the top on more than one leaderboard)
• Book DLC
• Pickaxe DLC

So you can continue training your heroes in the new season fast and even try out a premium one if you didn't have it before.

if you already have all the DLCs in your collection you can still request the reward if you want (maybe you can share the Steam Keys with a friend or something).

To claim your reward, please write me (Eugene) a personal message on Steam from the Steam account which you used to get your place in one of the Leaderboards (so I can make sure that this is you) and let me know what hero you would like to get (you can choose the new hero Joy too), I will give you the Steam Keys for the DLCs. Feel free to add me to friends if you wish ːsteamhappyː

There is no due date to claim the reward, but please don't wait forever to do so.

Graphics

Move speed, armor, and dodge are now color-coded:


Any negative values of armor and dodge will be displayed in red. When it comes to the move speed, it will be in red if it's less than 2.5 (and less than 2.875 in Hard Mode), which is the approximate speed that allows you to outrun Imps.

Now all shotguns will generate 6 times less blood particles (because there are 6 shots by default). The amount of blood particles with a shotgun caused FPS problems on some machines before.

New popup: "risen" (when Fallen rises after the death).

Additional blood particles will be generated added after a mob/spawner's death.

Minor size issue with the Kevlar perk was fixed.

The message: "wait, more are coming" was redesigned:

A slight visual improvement

Kill Streak messages were redesigned:


Now there are lines (scars?) at both sides of the message, each line representing 1 Kill Streak level. So, 4 lines as on the image above means level 4 Kill Streak (out of 5).

The personal story / bio of each hero was fixed:

The line above the story was corrected

“One second ago” message’s background was updated (it's the one on the death screen).

Valkyrie’s and VAndal's projectiles will be visible again.

Sounds

Grenades explosion sound effects now won't "stuck up" (only 1 can be played at a time).

All monsters' projectiles now have a sound effect.

Music

A number of new soundtracks were added in this version. The music in the game wasn't the best before, it was just a simple free track and 9 other variations of it.

As it's an indie game with no budget, I can't afford to buy proper music on Fiverr or elsewhere as one decent 60-second track would cost approximately $100, and I need at least 10 of them (ideally, 15+). And I also can't record decent music. I do everything else for the game, but the music is just out of my range of competence. Later, if the game grows and brings a little bit of income, I might consider purchasing professionally made music.

Now, thanks to the good work of Eric Matyas and his website soundimage.org, the game got a bunch of new music tracks that fit much better than what we had before.

The game didn't just get a few new tracks, there is now a special track for the main menu (dark ambiance), a special track when you choose things (weapons, perks, etc.) that pauses the main track and resumes it when you are done, and there is also atmospheric music on the death screen.

When it comes to the main game background music, the game got 17 new tracks and, what is more important, now the track that is being played depends on the current game minute. Every 5 minutes you will hear a different set of tracks (2 or 3 in the playlist). The first minutes will start with a bit of quiet music, but then it will get darker and faster to reflect the game situation better.

The music might not be perfect at this time and could be changed/adjusted in the next versions, but I think that it's definitely better than what we had before.

Thank you Eric for your great work, vision, and for offering such music to indie game developers! I have mentioned you on the Credits page in the game as well as you require.

Settings

The default volume of the background music was changed from 10% to 30%, however, if you are not a new player, this won't be set for you automatically, so you'd better go to settings and set it to this value later. This change is made because all old background music was replaced.

Stats

New cause of death: From Hatred

Bugs

Antisocial perk description was fixed, some symbols there weren’t displayed properly.

Phantoms and their spawners were invisible when close to the hero, yet they should become more and more visible as the distance to the hero is getting closer. This should be fixed now.

It looked like the results and stats were uploaded to Steam after a game in Sandbox, which actually wasn't the case. Now it won't even be displayed as so as games in Sandbox shouldn't affect Steam.

Skill 6 (plasma) gain for Samara was shown incorrectly.

Skill 6 (plasma) gain for Ivan was shown incorrectly.

Other

The credits screen was updated and now there is a proper big button that leads to it from the main menu.

The weapon warning that "this weapon is heavy" will be shown with 0.35 weight (35%) or more, instead of 0.3 as in the previous versions.

Developer / Publisher name on Steam was changed. Now, instead of the business name, there is the actual developer's name, which is more appropriate for an indie game like this.

A few old random hero phrases were changed.

New random advice was added about Savages regarding their new hiding/climbing ability.

A few old random advice were fixed.

A new guide on Steam about diseases was written.

A few old guides on Steam were updated.

The official website's main page was updated.

A new page about diseases was added to the website.

A new page about leaderboards was added to the website with convenient links to them.

DLCs descriptions of premium heroes on Steam were updated.