Patch Notes v.0.50: Trials and Tribulations

This week's update brings a whole host of new challenges to test your mettle with. Combine them in any way you like to create the perfect difficulty or push yourself to the edge of madness. The choice is yours. Early game balance, and level up experience has also seen a significant rebalance for a more meaningful early game, and a smoother late game. I'll keep an eye on feedback and adjust balance and challenges as I collect data, in future updates.

Speaking of the future, I know you're all hungry for a new zone, bosses, and the endless mode, and I'm already taking a deep dive into that. The third zone will be my most ambitious yet! The endless mode is also shaping up to be something quite special, and isn't simply about removing the end game from the current zones, but I'll talk more about that after the 3rd zone is finished.

One more note: Another patch is planned for later this week with updates to how upgrade choices are generated, as well as a few other things not quite ready in time for this patch.

As always, if you're enjoying your time with the game, please leave a review.



New Feature

• Trials: A customizable difficulty system and new way to score. Trials allow you to add additional challenge to your runs. Each trial has its own challenge score, and completing a zone with trials activated will save the combined challenge score total for that zone.
  - There are 20 trials to start, with challenge ratings 1-5
  - Once you beat any zone, trials becomes activated for all available zones. You can select between a basic and trial run in the deploy menu once trials are unlocked.
  - Trial scores are now also displayed alongside high scores in the deploy menu
  - You can see your current Trial Score below the high score in-game
  

Quality of Life

• Asteroids have been recolored to a redder color that should be easily distinguishable from gems
  
• You can now click and hold selections in the upgrade menu to quick confirm, without needing to click the confirm button. This works with rerolls as well.
  
• Pilot specific augments are now crossed out for pilots you do not have selected
  
• There is now a visual effect and reveal for regular upgrades and rerolls like there is for Symbionics.
  
• The Pulse Cannon's Level 1 text was incorrectly stating that bullets did 25 damage each, but actually do 17. The correct information was already displaying when selecting Badger, but not when finding the weapon in-game as another pilot. The actual balance of the weapon is unchanged.
  

Balance

• It now takes more experience to level up for the first 11 levels, but afterward it takes less. Gem drops now scale more slowly in the first 5 minutes.
  
• The action now ramps up a bit more right at the start of the game with more possible enemies on screen
  
• A new basic enemy has been added to both zones
  
• Princer class ship's mortar damage reduced from 10 to 8
  
• High Roller grants an immediate extra reroll
  
• Force Field is now more likely to spawn in front of your ship
  

Bug Fixes

• Fixed a bug that could generate a non-functioning duplicate upgrade choice if you had less than 3 available left in the pool.
  
• Fixed a bug where hit boxes and effects could get stuck on screen if the game or window was interupted
  
• Fixed other edge-case issues related to minimizing/moving the window during gameplay
  
• Fixed a bug that could cause the game to get stuck between a paused and resumed state in rare instances
  
• The Sting King has been given a code update that should prevent soft-lock situations where he never becomes vulnerable and no longer attacks