Hey Killers,

We’ve been quiet recently and it’s because we’ve been hard at work on the next update for STRAFE®. We’ve taken our feedback (both praise and criticism) and used it to shape the direction of this update within our vision for the game. You can read a bit more about that HERE.

This update changes the game quite a bit. We’ve added 2 new game modes, new enemies, updated AI, polished weapons, your run can now be saved (but only loaded once) and a persistent unlock system of game mutators along with a shit-ton of other changes. We’ve made sure to keep our vision of STRAFE® intact but worked to deepen the best parts. STRAFE®: Millennium Edition will be free for everyone who owns STRAFE®.

We wanted to release this update in the middle of September but did not because it needed more time. Our team is currently 3 people so our speed is dictated by that. We feel it’s better to release it in a solid state then land on an arbitrary date so we’re psyched to say that we found a compromise.

If you’re interested, you can play the update right now and help us test it out. It is beta and you may run into bugs. It’s very helpful to us to document them and send us details. We can only fix what we know about.

You can find details HERE.

When we feel that the update is ready we will roll the changes into the main branch for everyone to play! We feel it will not be too long, but who know what people will find.

Here’s a list of the major changes coming in the next update, we are still at work on fixes & balance so this list will get longer by the time we release the update. When the update is finished it will be coming to Steam & GOG first and then we will focus on bringing it to the PS4. (beta access only on steam, and a reminder that the SPEED ZONE and STRAFE ZONE are only available on steam as well)

Big Additions:

+Added StrafeZone (Daily Challenge)

+Added SpeedZone (Week long speed running challenge)

+Added ability to save runs

+Crashed runs can be recovered

+Added 20 new unlockable game modifiers

Big Head Mode

Rocket Arena

Hardcore Mode  

Hyperdrive

Enemy Blood Blasters

Scrambled Cache

Lil Chumps

Instagib

Traditional mode

Blood Lust

Threes Company

Near Sighted

Scrambled Baddies

Moon Walkin’

Get rich or die tryin’

Call me Lil Joby

Game of Guns

QB

Can’t Stop, Won’t Stop

STRAFE® Abridged

+Added 11 new room modules to ICARUS

+ Added 3 new enemies (with unique a.i.)

+ Added the traveling Merchant

Balance & fixes:

+Split soldier and Host into two enemy types each because skilled players only saw their initial behavior before their ai switches into melee mode

+Removed some rooms from ICARUS that were considered unfair

+Revamped enemy aggro

+Can no longer acquire multiple primaries by spending clip

+Fixed bug related to weapons switching when out of ammo in primary weapon

+Fixed issue causing inconsistent turning speed on glowbrites

+Fixed issue stopping Carriers from leaping at the player multiple times as intended

+Fixed issue that was causing more path calculations than needed

+Improved performance of enemies that fire multiple shots at once

+Lowered the time it took the Leper to transform into bomber mode

+Fixed issue causing some enemies to dry-fire when startled

+Made the different glutton skins more different from one another

    -Pale glutton is faster and lower health

    -Soldier glutton is slightly slower

+Fixed issue causing the host to aim unreliably

+Improved side to side aiming of Host

+Fixed black flash when quick restarting

+Fixed issue that would cause favorite weapon to always show as machinegun

+Fixed issue that would incorrectly show playtime in the post game stats

+Fixed issue that could cause save files to corrupt

+Reduced initial spread on machinegun and rebalanced rate of fire perks for machiengun

+Fixed bug resulting in enemies showing less blood impacts than intended

+Fixed bug causing frame drops when using the empty machinegun

+Fixed bug causing the nailguns bullet to become frozen in some instances

+Rebalanced HMG - Lowered warm up time, slightly lowered reload time, increased max fire rate

+Fixed global stat to correctly show total player deaths

+Fixed bug stopping the “Completionist” achievement from popping

+Reworked Richoshot - Pierces enemies and slightly increased initial damage.

+Increased damage per tick on the shotgun gas

+Lowered damage on initial spin fusor upgrade

+Lowered max damage on nail gun explosions

+Fixed bug causing Airbud to be less powerful than intended

+Trappy robot appears longer before teleporting

+Made the blood bags easier to see on their way to secret doors

+Improved issue allowing turrets to get stuck inside one another

+Lowered ammo use per tick on the lightning secondary for the railgun

+Fixed issue causing an older version of the turret to be present rarely

+(possibly) Fixed issue softlocking burbs merchant

+Fixed specific issue causing levels to fail while generating causing an infinite load

+Added another fix for a case where train tracks could intersect level geometry

+Able to speed up end credits

+Fixed bug allowing the player to jump while credits rolled

+Fixed bug causing the black hole launcher to make zombie corpses

+Fixed bug allowing players to Kill the merchants defense turrets without triggering a robbery

+Fixed bug allowing fire to spawn too close to keycards

+More to come before this is officially live!

This is the first of a few pieces I intend to write about STRAFE®’s design and how we are working on the game post release. It’s a mix of post mortem, dev blog and an attempt to transparently develop the next update since it’s taking a bit of time. We are using the feedback from dedicated fans while addressing existing issues or adding to STRAFE®’s content.

We began our development of STRAFE® because we wanted to make the roguelike FPS that we didn’t find in the marketplace. The genre at that point in 2014 seemed to have found it’s own language but we felt that it could be approached differently with the end result feeling more like an authored FPS than a collection of challenge rooms.

One of the biggest wants we had was to play a RLFPS with levels similar to the ones you would find in an authored shooter, not a collection of rooms that lock you in, teleport in enemies and then repeat the process. We also wanted a collection of enemies that complimented each other like the classic shooters we loved.

We worked hard to pursue our vision, and when we were finished, we felt that we had achieved our goals. We had four unique zones, level generation that was procedural without gating rooms and quickly navigable, and a total of twenty enemies that all behaved differently. Most of our feedback came from press, developers, or convention attendees, but when we received praise, it was often directed at these specific features.

For that reason, we were surprised at launch that a significant portion of our player base criticized the game as playing slowly, or for lacking enemy variety. The feedback was hard to swallow for many reasons but it left us trying to figure out how we were receiving this feedback when the game played fast for us and our testers and we know the work and diversity we placed into the enemies.

In a lot of cases, it matters far more what is perceived about a game than what the factual information is.

It doesn't matter how many enemies are in the game if the general consensus is that there isn't much enemy variety. This was a problem we had to address, alongside the similar criticism that the game played slowly.

We have been working hard for the past months to consider achievable solutions and implement them.

LEVELS

With the levels we believe that we found the major issue and as we work on our next big update it’s been the one we’ve been wrestling with the most.

When a new player jumps in, if they aren’t confident with strafing and offensive movement they take damage quickly and die. After a few times we call this “hitting the wall”. At that point they start to make decisions on how they are going to play and try out new strategies. Some of the players decide to move more and for them the game becomes relatively easier to play (this is what we had designed for). To others, they decide to play it safe, moving more slowly and methodically, drawing enemies to a choke point to kill them.

We believe this latter form of play is not only less fun but also deceiving to the player. The player in this situation believes they are getting a leg up on the game but in most cases they are actually making the game harder for themselves and taking more damage since we have balanced the game around strafing and offensive movement.

The seamless levels we worked so hard to design also allowed the choke point strategy to be utilized since we don’t gate the player in each room.

ENEMIES

We have 7 enemy types in the first zone of our game. Some drop at you from ceilings, some fly at you, some pursue to melee, some run away to shoot and some pursue you and shoot. We thought this mix was a good balance of diversity but upon release we saw issues that weren’t apparent in testing.

We use the GLUTTON in the game as our Goomba. They are fun to kill and not that threatening if you know how to deal with them. Because of that they are the most common enemy. Due to that we believe they stick out in the players mind a lot more and facilitate the perception that we have fewer enemies than we do since most of your interactions are with them.

Outside of GLUTTONS we believe that other enemies behaviors were not extreme enough from one another.

SOLUTIONS

There are many things we have done but I will focus on a few of the interesting ones.

We have broadened the behaviors between the 3 Glutton types as well as lowering the general population of them.

Pale GLUTTON - runs faster but has half the health

GLUTTON - standard speed and health

Armored GLUTTON - Must shoot off armor to kill him, runs slower

We have also modified the pathfinding so hordes of enemies are able to spread out a bit more taking wider and deeper formations.

We have modified the aggro for enemies to make it harder to empty out rooms and fight a single horde.

We are modifying the behaviors of a large number of our existing enemies and adding 3 new enemies into ICARUS that will be specific to the zone.

The new enemies will be significantly slower in an attempt to keep rooms populated and lure the player into a fight with them.

We are removing problem rooms from the spawn pool and implementing 11 new rooms into ICARUS. Although we will never have a perfect solution for players who want to bottleneck enemies (we even support it at rare and appropriate moments) we are trying to encourage players to play more actively and show them the fun that comes with high level STRAFE® play.

We have taken in your feedback and considered it all and we are working on making STRAFE® the best it can be. We have a ton more than this coming in the next update. We will share more news soon.