The Anacrusis News

Happy New Year! This update adds backend support required for the impending Epic Store version of the game and gameplay fixes for Episodes 3, 4, and 5. Once The Anacrusis is live on the Epic Store, anyone will be able to download the mod tools for free.

• Fixed multiple areas where players or aliens could get stuck in the Ep5 stadium event
  
• Fixing collision on a handful of doors in Ep4 and 5
  
• Reduced the chance that common will get stuck on the first Ep5 door event, reducing the intensity of the event
  
• Extended length of Ep3 Apartment and Medbay events to make them more impactful
  
• Did backend work required to make the mod tools available publicly (coming soon)
  

We’re on sale for 50% off this week, and we managed to squeeze in one last update before the holidays! We've also enabled the holiday hats for Survivors for anyone who logs in in the next few weeks. This week’s update includes the following changes and bugfixes

• Dramatically increased the intensity of the Episode 5 Stadium finale. Getting those corn dogs off the Isolode should now be as challenging as we intended
  
• Redesigned the barrier at end of the gantry at the start of Episode 5
  
• Fixed several lighting bugs in the Episode 5 finale
  
• Fixed several holes in the world in Episode 5
  
• Fixed a variety of forced spawns in Episode 5 that would allow aliens to spawn in front of players
  

This patch iterates the changes to the Brute we introduced in Update 59. The Brute charge's AOE attack damage and range are much larger, and the damage falloff is greater behind the Brute than in front of the Brute. We've also increased the damage that happens when a Survivor is hit by a charging Brute before the pounce.

This week's patch fixes the following issues:

• Generally increased the intensity on the first level of each episode
  
• Prevented Mr. Brute from despawning in the holdout finale
  
• Fixed the closed door that players can traverse in Ep4
  
• Increased the maximum volume for music in all levels. You can adjust the volume in settings to suit
  
• Versus AFK penalties are adjusted down
  
• Disabled the ability to turn the Brute during a charge in Versus
  

Today marks our 58th update since launch, counting everything (aside from a few hotfixes here and there). It’s been a busy 22 months! Between Xbox and PC, more than a million players have tried The Anacrusis. In that time, we’ve added a dozen new weapons, a handful of new enemies, asymmetric Versus mode, Holdout Mode, full Steam Workshop support (including shared mods), and we also reworked the gamepad controls, reworked enemy AI, rebalanced the sound mix, added two new campaigns, and squashed literally thousands upon thousands of bugs.

And yes, we’ve improved performance so much in the last 22 months we’re not even sure how to effectively quantify that improvement. The game runs really well on a shocking range of hardware now.

We’ve made some big behind the scenes changes too. Last year, we switched from dedicated servers hosted in a handful of data centers around the world to peer-to-peer hosting, so that people who lived far from those data centers can still get good games. We improved our back-end systems this October, giving us more reliable matchmaking.

And we’ve done it all with help and constant feedback from our community. Without the thousands of players on Discord and the Steam forums, we wouldn’t have been able to make the game that The Anacrusis is today. Whether you were a regular in our daily playtests or just left a note about something you loved at launch, we really appreciate your help. It’s been a long road, but we’re so proud of the game that we’ve built together.

All this hard work has culminated in a 1.0 version which is a great place for both new and old players alike. It’s fun! Everyone, regardless of skill level can have fun with it, and we’re ready to bring more players into the fold, take more feedback, and keep building out this game that we’ve made together.
What’s New In 1.0

• Episode 5 - Episode 5 is our first take on a fast map. It’s designed to be a playground for Versus players, but it plays great in Co-Op too, of course. One of the things Chet learned working on L4D was that players love having different length campaigns to play. Ep5 is designed to pack all of the intensity of one of the other Episodes into a 30 minute Versus session. It’s difficult but we’re excited about where it’s at. We’re going to do some more difficulty tuning in coming patches, so please join the Discord and leave feedback!
  
• Versus – Stop the Survivors from reaching the end of the map, then try your best against the Alien team as a Survivor. Play with 1-8 players, the Survivor bots will handle the rest. Learn to play all five Aliens classes in a private game against the bots in Training Mode
  
• Steam Workshop Support – We support modded campaign maps, character skins, character hats, player emotes, gun charms, sound packs, holdout maps, and more!
  
• Added more than 40 achievements – Unlocking many of the achievements unlocks a cosmetic item as a reward. Get new player skins, gun skins, gun charms, and emotes by achieving!
  
• Episode 4 – We launched Episode 4 in beta last October. It shows the late-stage alien overgrowth and shows that The Isolode is in a state of alien-created disrepair