Hey Killers!
This flavor blasted update is our last major one, we hope this update brings new life to the game for our existing players as well as new with many new additions, bug fixes, rebalances and quality of life changes.

We’ve had an amazing and challenging time developing STRAFE® but we finally feel the need to shift our focus to new things! Support for the Gold Edition will continue but this will be the end of substantial updates.

We appreciate everyone who has played the game and/or recommended it to friends and/or given us a positive review/feedback. You were our motivation to make the game and the fuel to support it for this long. Special thanks to all our amazing volunteer beta testers who provided great feedback and helped ensure the quality of this update.

Thanks!
Thom & Stephen

Change Log:
+ Optimizations to enemy pathfinding.
+ Added a NEW ENEMY, the ACID WRETCH.
+ Made secrets more accessible.
-- Trappy Mine no longer requires a battery to play
-- Less rats need to be exterminated to access the rats map secret level
-- Gungeon 3D Blast only requires finding the cartridge to play
-- Made the vase more visible to access “Going Home”
+ Fixed bug where number of rats exterminated was inaccurate.
+ Updated the game's default length to 2 levels per zone instead of 3.
-- This will lower the time to beat the game and hit our desired length of 30-40 minutes for average players. Also we hope this will help more players see more of the game while learning how to play.
+ Added a “New Game +” option after beating the game which will add 1 more level to each zone.
+ Added the ability to loop runs. As a reward to beating NG+ once all subsequent runs after completing the boss you can continue your run on a loop by jumping into your ship's core and avoiding the cockpit.
-- You will keep your weapons, items, upgrades.
-- Damage taken increases by base damage x 1.25 to the power of loops ex: loop 1 = 125% damage, loop 2 = 156%, loop 3 = 195%, loop 4 = 244%
-- Each loop increases the chance that a secret fuse box will NOT spawn during level generation, chance is 50% on first loop splitting the remaining chance in half each additional loop.
-- Benches increase in price per loop.
-- Food dispensers start disappearing from levels per loop.
-- Break the game, have fun.
+ Balanced the benches so that the cost to craft items increases per zone.
+ Head “key cards” are now more rare.
+ Added mirrored variants of existing rooms to the level generation.
+ Fixed issues where the secret weapon beetle would aggro prematurely and not be seen by the player.
+ Added Hit-stuns to most enemies.
+ Added ability to extinguish most fires with enemies blood.
+ Added ability to fill most vats of acid/toxic with enemies blood to change its composition.
+ Fundamental changes to how enemy movement is calculated resulting in much better performance.
+ Fixed issue where blood mapping could cause a major performance hit in ICARUS and ATHENA.
+ Miscellaneous crash fixes.
+ Players should no longer fall through the floor on rare occasions.
+ Added "Mercy Frames".

After triggering mercy frames you will only take the greatest amount of damage during that period. EX: (If hit by 3 gluttons for 5 damage all within the window you only take 5 damage instead of 15. If you get hit by a glutton for 5 and get hit with an explosion for 10 within the window you will take 10.
+ Lowered the explosion damage radius for the player, which also gives higher skilled players some leeway to perform rocket jumps within the force radius without taking damage.
+ Changes to Keycards.
ex: in Icarus if you stepped into the room with the keycard and backed up into the previous room it would start triggering "backtracking" monster closets. Now backtracking closets that are on a keycard branch require you to pick up the keycard or a keycard head.
+ Picking up items can now trigger a trap by opening close by monster closets.
+ Lowered the Bricks base HP.
+ Increased feedback to the player when taking damage.
+ Richoshot’s reflection angles improved and early explosions prevented.
+ Airbud Changes:
-- Airbud will no longer deal damage if he shoots you.
-- Airbud will now instantly activate when purchased from a traveling merchant.
-- Fixed a bug where Airbud could cause damage to the player when in a fire.
+ Removed the frame limit and low resolution filter from the Devolver Logo Intro.
+ Fixed issue with Soldiers getting blasted vertically from rocket launcher.
+ Fixed issue preventing the traveling merchant from traveling to later levels.
+ There are new houses added to the burbs.
+ Changes have been made to how enemies aggro at the beginning of Black Canyon levels to prevent them trying to shoot through or come through the first doorway.
+ Enemy spawns have been added to the starting rooms of some canyon levels.
+ Fixed level 3-1 where enemies would not spawn in the courtyard.
+ Fixed invisible walls spawning in the murderzone.
+ Fixed most issues where invisible acid could hurt players.
+ Gluttons in the secret developer room will no longer aggro too early.
+ Sneaky Turrets that pop out of crates should less frequently get stuck in world geometry. .
+ Turrets now have a delay and more pronounced unfolding animation when coming from crates.
+ Carriers now retarget the player better after jumping.
+ Fixed small issue with barrels in ICARUS exit rooms.
+ Added decorations in the players ship to celebrate beating secret levels and some other challenges.
+ Fixed issue where the player couldn't collect rewards from the prize safe outside of the rats map secret.

+ Visual improvements to the Black Canyon.
+ Added a backup to save files. Now play sessions save a backup of last known valid save. If a save fails it will restore from backup.
+ Increased the default speed of the end of level doors in ICARUS (when players don’t shoot the terminal)
+ Made balance changes to the Thruster power up.
-- No longer does damage.
-- Lowered the distance traveled per thrust.
-- Activation time using double-tap is now more strict.
-- Visualized when the cool down is over.
-- Look direction now has a partial influence when thrusting forward.
+ Improvements made to level cleanup which should help performance.
+ Fixed issues with the “Mute audio” option not working as intended.
+ Fixed issues with some sound effects not being affected by the volume slider.
+ Fixed issue where the Heavy Machinegun could cause the audio to cut out.
+ Fixed issues where the “Rate of fire” powerup would break audio feedback.
+ Improved performance of audio clips played in quick succession.
+ Rebalanced Hardcore mode.
-- Previously enemy HP in hardcore mode was 300% it is now 150%.
-- Projectile based enemies deal increased damage.
-- Projectile based enemies shoot faster bullets.
-- The price of items from benches is also increased in hardcore mode. such that each benches price reflects a zone two higher than normal mode.
+ Removed VR Soon text.
+ As this is our last big update we removed the continuous update text intro.
+ Fixed a bug where the bench sounds would loop endlessly after use.
+ Fix UI Clipping issues in the “Totinos Quest” secret.
+ Increased the distance for override activation in Athena.
+ Removed the wingun from daily challenge, Lol.
+ Fixed the presentation of some sprites in the “Totinos Quest” secret.
+ Now enemies are less willing to attack immediately when loading into Athena from a save.
+ Minor changes to secrets in oneDOS and the STRAFE®: the motion picture script.
+ Adjusted maximum fire rate for machine gun and shotgun 10 -> 7 shotgun shots per second is max shotgun, 33 shots per second -> 25

+ Adjusted the fire rate perk curve, curves out smoother at the base instead of hitting cap abruptly.
+ Fixed issue where tapping fire rate wouldn't scale with fire rate stat increases. (primarily affecting the railgun / railgun upgrades)
+ Increased the value of the railgun’s base fire rate upgrades.
+ Fixed scenarios where you could rob the merchant without consequence.
+ Fixed inconsistencies with different weapon upgrades shooting the end boss’ turrets.
+ Small changes made to optimize pathfinding.
+ Cleaned up pathfinding on level transition.
+ Fixed performance related bugs with AirBud.
+ Highest loop count added to main menu stat screen after completing first loop. + Added loops to death stats screen when looping.
+ Fixed issue where glutton would show as cause of death when beating the game in last run stats.
+ Removed some seeded rng drift making glitch merchant only possible once per run instead of once per level. (Supposed to be extremely rare event anyways and shouldn't be a source of health and items to exploit)
+ Updates to Stalker AI to give better combat experience.
+ Fix bug in the Speedzone that could generate levels in Athena that show dev textures in some areas.
+ Quality of life changes made to the boss fight.
+ Fixed small visual bug with end credits sequence
+ Fixed rare bug with scientists in the end area