Hello Survivors!

First off, we have reset the leaderboards due to changes with the new random leveling affecting scores.
Secondly, abilities are now capped at 3 per run

With launch week coming to a close, we wanted to talk about what went right, what went wrong, and what we're doing next.


Almost 150 players completed 1,600 runs during the first week! We're thrilled with these numbers and really look forward to expanding and continuing to work on the game.

Here's a breakdown of the player's class choice for all runs in the game:
Wizard is the most popular, while Shaman is the least picked. This could be due to Shaman being the last class unlocked or just Wizard being too strong.
Our goal is to try and have equal pick rates for all classes across the game.

Level Breakdown:
Desert seems too tough at a 42% win rate, balance adjustments are planned for an upcoming patch.
We may modify the balance of Arctic and Garden to increase their difficulty as well.

When we make balance adjustments leaderboards will be reset to keep the competition fair.

Halfway during the week we pushed an experimental change to the main branch to randomize upgrade tiers. This was in direct response to a negative review on Steam, and while I think the game is a lot more fun, the balance is now all over the place. Going forward I will not be as reactionary, and we will be using the weekly challenge as a playground to experiment with new ideas and mechanics. The goal is to deliver a patch every 1-2 weeks timed around the weekly reset (like this patch)

Checkout this weekly reset for a our first experiment 😉

We have a lot planned for the future. These may never make it into the game but here are some of the things we are currently planning:

• An "abilities update" adding new abilities to all classes in the game
  
• An "Endless" mode
  
• Weekly Modifiers for the weekly challenge
  
• A UI Expansion / Overhaul
  
• Map obstacles / props
  
• Elite enemies / new enemy AI
  
• New Classes
  
• New Maps

Thank you all for taking the time to play our game
- Carina & Mark ❤️

Hello Survivors!

We've made some major changes to how leveling works in SurvivalScape. Upgrades are no longer linear and the upgrade tiers are random. This is an experimental change while we further investigate how this affects scoring.

Again, the weekly challenge mode has all RNG removed so each player has the same exact run.

Enemy projectile size increased
Enemy projectiles now have variable speed

Leveling Rework:
10% white upgrades removed
Leveling tiers are now randomized and are no longer linear
Stats and Cooldown upgrades will now show Pre->Post upgrade information
This is to better explain the new upgrade system is additive and does not replace or lower your power.

Fire Rate now shows as per second:
Example: 0.67 -> 1.3/s

Abilities now shows as seconds on cooldown:
Example: 3->2.67s

Scale now shows as size increase
Example: 1.0 -> 1.35x

Tier's renamed:
Tier-2 (green) is now Uncommon
Tier-3 (blue) is now Rare
Tier-4 (purple) is now Epic
Tier-5 (gold) is now Legendary

Bubble Shield rework:
Bubble Shield cooldown from 20->15s
Breaking bubble shield no longer removes Flawless
Bubble Shield now creates an iframe when breaking
Rewrote ability cooldown timer for Bubble Shield to now be accurate

Controller / UI
Weekly reset timer now properly displays "Resets in 1 day"
You can now exit the pause screen with B/Circle on controller
Stats screen button has been changed to X/Square on controller
Leaderboard now selects -50 above and +50 below on the leaderboard to try and always show first place

Bug fixes:
Bosses not having cooldowns fixed (thanks for the report @Gonk)
Fixed an issue with picking up Health Pots occasionally crashing the game
Fixed an issue with damage numbers only showing on first instance of damage

Yesterday was a fantastic launch, but we noticed some issues that arose and hopefully our first post-launch patch addresses most of them!

Obelisks:
Leaving an obelisk circle will no longer despawn the obelisk until the first "light" is lit, this is to prevent accidentally despawning obelisks before you are ready to capture them.

Enemy telegraphs
Enemies will now flash yellow before firing attacks

Overhauled Enemy Projectile attacks:
Enemy cooldown is now based on a psuedo random range to avoid projectiles firing all at once
Enemy cooldown is now tied to framerate
Enemies will wait to start cooldown until game begins, this will prevent mass firing at the start of boss rush

Player Default Range: 300 -> 400
Increased Twitch Level up timer to 15s
Added new Twitch chat commands to avoid 30s timeout:

• !1st, !first, !2nd, !second, !3rd, !third

Fixed boss projectiles being behind enemies on Desert
Closing options with a button will no longer prompt to exit the game
Fixed being unable to select Class Only / Friends Only leaderboard options
Fixed multiple crash issues with leaderboard failing to retrieve results or Steam avatars.

Wizard:
Starfall cooldown nerf: 3s->4s

Volcano:
Lava font was dealing double damage, this has been fixed
Lava font lifetime is no longer random
Players will no longer target the lava font like an enemy

Garden:
Background contrast darkened to see projectiles easier

Fixed weekly challenge crystal trail crash
Various logging cleanup

Optimized performance of enemy damage number popups to avoid framerate drops when a large group is hit

Camera zoom-in scale changed from 2.0 -> 1.5
Steam detection rewritten
You will now see a "Steam Not Enabled!" message on the main menu when we fail to connect to Steam

Attention, Survivors!

Do you have what it takes to conquer the leaderboard of SurvivalScape? We’re thrilled to announce our Boss Rush Contest where you can showcase your skills and win free keys to the full game!

Start Date: Friday, July 19th 2024
End Date: Monday, July 22nd 2024 9am EST

1. Download and launch the SurvivalScape demo from Steam
2, Clear the dungeon level to unlock Boss Rush
3. Complete Boss Rush for your chance to win!

Scores will be verified after 9am EST, winners will be contacted via Steam.

Top three players on the Boss Rush Leaderboard will receive keys to the full game.

Have fun, and good luck!
- Carina & Mark ❤️

Hello, 你好. Привет, 안녕하세요,

We have now expanded SurvivalScape to be accessible to more players around the globe!
The game has now been fully translated into:

• Simplified Chinese (简体中文)
  
• Korean (한국어)
  
• Russian (Русский)

The game detects your Operating System's configured locale and will automatically set itself to the correct one. This process may have mistranslations and mistakes, please use this forum thread to help us fix any translation issues.

SurvivalScape is also now officially available on Mac OS X!
Mac users can now dive into SurvivalScape and enjoy the full experience on their platform.

Thank you for your support and we are greatly looking forward to launch Monday the 22nd!

Thank you,
Carina & Mark ❤️

v0.654
--
Druid's Entangle cooldown changed from 3->5s

Previously, players who did not reach the boss on a level received a "time penalty." I noticed the scoring was not different enough between a player who died at 1 minute, compared to others who died at 5 minutes.

We now have "survival points" which accrue with each second survived.
HP scoring has also changed from a flat rate to a percentage.

Level completion speed, boss damage, and boss kill speed still apply.

* All leaderboards have been reset due to this change

• Daily Challenge difficulty rebalanced
  
• Flawless bonus reduced from 150->69
  
• Boss rush now has piercing enabled by default
  
• Challenge mode now has magnet enabled by default
  
• Damage Reduction has been removed as an upgrade
  
• Enemy projectile attack rate changed from float->int, and randomized to +0-7s
  
• Damage rate reduced from 45->33
  
• Font changed on Stats screen

* Please understand I do not wish to reset the leaderboards unless necessary. I appreciate all of you playing the game during this testing phase before NextFest. The data has been invaluable and I hope to not reset at all during the event.

Thank you,
Mark

Boss rush leaderboards have reset due to the following changes

Taking a look at classes' win rate for the last day, it shows Rogue is an overperformer. It's the top selected class with the highest win rate, so I've adjusted some of the cooldowns to hopefully bring it inline with everything else.

Additionally Wizard has been underperforming since the last round of nerfs, while both Druid and Shaman have low win rates.

• Sprit wisp speed increased from 169->250
  
• Wildfire base scale increased from 1.0->1.2
  
• Wildfire area increased from 20->30px

• Splinter cooldown increased from 3->4s
  
• Poison cooldown increased from 3->5s

• Fire totem cooldown decreased from 13->12s
  
• Fear totem cooldown decreased from 12->11s
  
• Earth totem cooldown decreased from 11->10s

• Splash now targets enemies at the center of the sprite instead of the bottom tip
  
• Splash area increased from 40x69->64x82px
  
• Lightning area increased from 40->50px
  
• Starfall cooldown decreased from 4s->3s
  
• Starfall area increased from 25->35px

Fixed an issue in "normal mode" where waves would stop spawning during boss phase. Waves should spawn every 15 seconds again.

There is an issue with the Rat Ball where killing him on the frame he gets promoted to Rat King makes it so you cannot complete the run. While it will take some refactoring to fix the issue there is a temporary fix to end the run if this occurs. **Your score will be less** because we now take boss damage into account, but at least the run will still be scored.

Boss rush can now be toggled on/off from class select screen and on restart level if unlocked.

Scoring Change:
Increased level time penalty for not reaching boss from 1000 -> 2500.
Sewer's top score has been removed due to this issue

Daily challenge update:
We now select the "last" class in the random list, instead of first. This hopefully stops Knight being the class everyday.

Challenge mode level range now -10/+5 (from -5/+5)
How to play updated to say "Daily Challenge" instead of "Weekly Challenge"

v0.632
--
Health is now displayed on Game Over screen
Added Discord button

v0.629
--
Fixed an issue with Boss Rush not showing it's selected, and allowing you to Boss Rush levels you had not yet cleared.

v0.627
--
Adjusted transparency for Knight's Shield Spin and Druid's Spirit Wisps to try and create less visual noise.

Flawless score bonus has been lowered from 250->150
Flawless scores have been reset

Wave timer now 15s in all modes once boss spawns

Dungeon
Skeleton Warrior's HP Increased