This has felt like a productive update for me. In addition to adding some new content, polishing parts of the game and fixing bugs I have been doing a bunch of work under the hood to get ready for new features that in their planning stages. Hopefully I'll have more announcements soon in regards to my plans for narrative, more art asset polish and the custom soundtrack soon!

This update has some visual polish both in-game and across the UI. One part of this is a first pass at the co-pilot dialogue popup. This is currently showing some early dialogue after certain events happen in the game. In the future it will be the source for some more narrative developments and gameplay features associated with them. The second biggest change was a re-working of the final battle, both to make it clearer what is happening in this scenario and also in preparation for future features. The final battle now has endless waves and the game only ends with the player dying or deciding to enter the Vactics mainframe. Finally, I've added a couple of new tech mods, one for Decoys and the other for all tech, that have been fun for how they can change up a mech build. There are also 6 new achievements in the game to discover and unlock.

If you are playing Vactics and have spare time I have a couple of requests (as I do each update):

• If you are enjoying the game, please leave a review. These are really helpful for letting Steam inform other players that Vactics is cool as well.

• Tell your friends and tell some strangers. Word of mouth is the main way I have for Vactics to find people who might enjoy the game.

• If you have any things that aren't working for you, make a post on the forum or use the in-game feedback button. These features have helped me make big improvements and fix some bugs this release so I do keep an eye on them.

Thank you to everyone who has been playing, giving feedback, reporting bugs and leaving reviews. I really really really do appreciate it.

Cheers,
Gerard / The Lemur Conspiracy

Client Versions

Early Access: #0.300.3900
Demo: #0.300.3900

Changes

• Achievements: implemented 6 new achievements in the game.

• Gameplay: enemy attacks are now able to destroy Magnets placed by the player.

• Gameplay: removed the Skip Recharge mod from the game. It's use was very limited and was therefore was never a good choice as an upgrade.

• Gameplay: re-worked the gameplay flow of the final campaign battle to support endless score chasing and to be more clear about what the player needs to do to win the game.

• Grappling Hook: increased the animation speed of the grappling hook when activated.

• Logo: updated Lemur Conspiracy logo to use new art assets.

• New Tech Mod: Tech Use Recharge. This mod reduces the current cooldown of the assigned tech by 1 turn when any other tech is activated by the player.

• New Tech Mod: Teleport Trap. A new mod for the Decoy tech, the last enemy to hit a decoy is teleported to its position when the decoy is removed.

• Shield: shield visuals now move to targets faster during gameplay.

• UI: Added new hover popups to multiple add more information about game and button interactions.

• UI: cleaned up the size and layout of some text elements so that important information is more clearly displayed.

• UI: implemented first pass at a co-pilot popup feature which can show some flavour dialogue from your co-pilot during gameplay. This will be developed more in the future when the narrative and co-pilot features are fleshed out further.

• UI: Updated the gameplay flow when completing daily challenges to always show the leaderboard position.

• Visuals: updated some effects activation and timing when the player is using hacking and when the final battle is successful.

• Visuals: updated special tiles to animate in when created during a gameplay.

Bugfixes

• Arcane Cores: fixed incorrect name and description text being shown for the Push Out core introduced in the previous update.

• Gameplay: fixed behaviour on dash enemies where they would not attack players position when player would leave a special tile behind. This would happen consistently when the Danger Zone escalation was active.

• Gameplay: fixed bug where decoys would not get cleaned up correctly if they were in the playfield when completing the final battle.

• Gameplay: fixed bug where ranged enemies would still show active attack zones when scanned even after they had been hacked and would no longer be able to attack that turn.

• UI: fixed bug in the loadout panel that would allow for interactions to occur after the launch button had been confirmed.

• UI: fixed bug in the loadout panel that would break the salvage animation if the player would back out of the screen before it had run fully the first time.

• UI: fixed glitch in visuals when showing the loading animation on the daily leaderboards for the first time.

• UI: fixed sprite alignment issue on the mech in the loadout, upgrade and inventory screens.

• UI: updated the text reveal animation so that there isn't any layout updates / changes as the text is shown on-screen.

Note: Any relevant fixes and improvements will also be in the updated client for the demo version of Vactics.