Bowmen News

What's New?: Release Candidate (RC) v1.04 from v1.03
[h3]Major Game/Gameplay Changes[/h3]

• The level cap has been raised from 30 to 100.
  
• The damage of enemy projectiles has been increased across all difficulties.
  
• Some variability has been added to enemy accuracy, which means that they will miss more often than they did in previous builds.
  
• The movement speed of the skeleton knights has been increased dramatically. These enemies were initially intended to be a fast and immediate threat to the player, requiring swift action to avoid death. Their slow movement speed wasn't cutting it, and so we increased it.
  
• The "kill counter" time window, that is, the time window for which enemies can be killed and contribute to a double kill, multikill, etc. has been increased. This was because some enemies could be killed relatively close to one another and it wouldn't register with the current settings.
  
• The timer "between waves" is now more variable, and increases with increasing wave. This is so there isn't a large gap of time in between waves in the beginning of onslaught, and no "overlapping" waves later on.
  
• Items that can be "activated" have a 2 second cool down when they are equipped before they can be used. This was to fix a bug in RC v1.03 (see "bug fixes" below).
  
• Due to encryption efforts, we have changed how often the game autosaves game data. This is to increase game performance over previous game versions.
  
• Steam Cloud saves are now stored based on Steam user, rather than by computer. This was to allow multiple Steam users on the same local computer to have independent cloud saves.
  
  • Note: The next time you boot Bowmen, the game should automatically copy your saved game data locally to your new Steam user folder. If you had an issue, however, with your saved game data due to this update, contact us on the support forum for Bowmen on Steam and we will assist you further.

[h3]Skin Changes[/h3]

• The Panda skin has been added to the game, which unlocks for every Steam account that has purchased the game during Early Access. This skin will growl at enemies after receiving a double kill or higher during onslaught. Since this is an Early Access exclusive, this skin will be available for a limited time up until the game's official launch later this year.

[h3]Achievement Changes[/h3]

• The level requirement for the achievement Blood Soaked has been increased to 30.
  
• The level requirement for the achievement Inside Good, Outside Bad has been increased to 50.

[h3]Bug Fixes[/h3]

• We fixed an issue where some items could be picked up in an "activated" state. This meant that when they were turned off from the "activated" state, it in some cases readjusted the player's stats incorrectly. This issue was fixed by adding a short cooldown upon pickup to items that can be activated, and adjusting how items modify player stats.
  
• We fixed an issue where the chat rank (i.e. the rank that appears next to a user's name in Bowmen world chat) was not always updating correctly, especially when switching between Steam accounts.
  
• Steam cloud saves are now correctly being stored and updated on the Mac version of the game client.
  
• Fixed some minor GUI issues where you could spam the "back" button on some menus and re-trigger the fadeout repeatedly to another scene.

Greetings fellow archers!

The time has come to execute order 66... no wait, that's... that's not right hold on... *(Ruffles through papers)* Ah-HA! Here it is! *(Ahem)* It is time to release Bowmen online through Steam Early Access! After many years of development, it is finally out and ready for the world at large to play it!

As per our previous announcement, we had decided to delay the final launch of the game to March to allow for us to make a few more tweaks before publishing the game and pushing it to Steam. However, as we began to do this, we realized that there are a few features of Bowmen that likely cannot be tweaked through internal play testing alone. Some players may have invaluable feedback to give us that, had we left ourselves to our own devices, we would never know about. Perhaps some items are under-powered, perhaps some others are over-powered, or perhaps the game simply isn't fast paced enough. Perhaps our "hard" difficulty is too easy, and "inferno" is too difficult. Perhaps some enemy types are dynamic and fun to kill, while others are more mundane and in need of improvement. By releasing on Early Access ahead of schedule and allowing a few months of tweaks between now and the final release, we can address some of these concerns directly with the involvement of the players - of YOU - which will make Bowmen the best game it can be. Therefore, we have released the game on Steam Early Access, and pushed the final release date to May 3rd, 2021.

We are very excited to share this moment with you all, it has been a long road and the journey will be a bit longer still. However, we are confident that we can build an awesome game, together, and produce and even BETTER Bowmen come this May with your help. The game will continuously be updated for any bugs we catch and will be worked on as you play it all the way up to the May launch. So if you decide to get Bowmen and help us out, please provide us with feedback or report any bugs you find either to the Steam forums or our official website. We will be regularly addressing these issues with updates over the coming months.

Also, we have another update to share with you all within the coming weeks, but we will keep that under wraps for now until it is ready. Keep your eyes peeled on the Bowmen news and announcements!

Thank you SO MUCH for checking out the game, and if you decide to get it, we hope it provides you with the same level of entertainment and joy as it did while we were making it.

Sincerely,
The Bowmen Team

What's New?: Release Candidate (RC) v0.1.0.3 from v0.1.0.2

[h3]Major Game/Gameplay Changes[/h3]

• The way the game handles loading new scenes has been modified so that transitions should be smoother. This includes "minor" loading screens between menus.
  
• How Lord Pain spawns has been modified to ensure he does not spawn around an Infernal Balrog.
  
• The Forgotten skin now unlocks by achieving the Hunter rank or better during the Season of the Phoenix.
  
• The Ghost skin now unlocks by equipping every item in the game at least once.
  
• Some minions will no longer spawn if Lord Pain is active (i.e., aerial enemies and ranged enemies). This makes it a bit easier to kill enemies during the final boss fight because Lord Pain has such a large hitbox.

[h3]Achievement Changes[/h3]

• The achievement Two Thousand has been added, which is awarded for reaching a score of 2,000 or better on inferno difficulty.
  
• The achievement Five Thousand has been added, which is awarded for reaching a score of 5,000 or better on inferno difficulty.
  
• The achievement Ten Thousand has been added, which is awarded for reaching a score of 10,000 or better on inferno difficulty.

[h3]Item Changes[/h3]

• Hypermace
  • The spirit stat on this item has been increased to +26 (up from +8).
• Rico's Cheté
  • The cleave damage now has a sound effect associated with it.
    
  • The cleave radius has been reduced from 10 to 6.
• Sword of a Perfect World
  • The stat bonuses on this item have all been increased to +4 (up from +3).
    
  • The EXP bonus on this item has been doubled to +20 EXP per kill (up from +10).
• Captain's Mace
  • The damage effect from the summoned ghost ship has been increased (142-208, up from 80-110).
• Masfury
  • Your arrows no longer have a 20% chance to generate flames, but instead, your missed fire arrows have a 100% chance to set the ground on fire. This change was made to help the weapon feel a little less variable.
    
  • Since the fire arrows have a long cooldown, we've increased the damage of the fire from Masfury substantially to 32-67 (up from 7-10).

[h3]Bug Fixes[/h3]

• The fire effect from the item Masfury has been modified so that it properly aligns on the ground.
  
• The +EXP effect from Sword of a Perfect World is now correctly being calculated upon enemy death.
  
• Adjusted the Vol, Sword of Justice positioning so that it will spawn out of view if the camera is zoomed out.
  
• The summary screen no longer loads while your character is dead during Onslaught. This was to prevent a movement bug from occurring that we noticed during play testing.
  
• Fixed an issue where the "Aerial Mage" enemy would sometimes stop out of the field of view, making it difficult to target and kill.
  
• Fixed an issue whereby the player could be moved by game objects upon death. Also, we fixed a minor player positioning issue so that he aligns correctly with the ground now.

Hello fellow archers!

Some of you may have noticed that we pushed back the release date of Bowmen from its original release date of December 31st, 2020 to March 1st, 2021. I would like to take a brief moment to explain the reasoning behind that decision, the current state of the game, and where we plan to go from here.

First and foremost, the development of Bowmen has been an incredibly awesome and rewarding journey for myself (the lead developer), and a handful of other individuals who have helped work on Bowmen. It is a relatively small indie game with an even smaller development team, but it has been one of the most rewarding and challenging journeys of my life, and it is awesome to see the project begin to come together as we approach the final release. Due to my other obligations as a scientist, and being almost exclusively the only person working on the game, development and bug fixing has been slower than desired. As such, we did not reach our intended state of polish for the game by the December 31st target date, and so we decided to push it back two months. Due to the uncertainty of the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, job responsibilities, etc., this date may shift again in the future as things over the next few months unfold.

However, the game in it's current state is very close to being finished. We are considering releasing Bowmen ahead of the listed March 1st, 2021 date using Steam's Early Access feature. We are unsure at this point if this is the route we will eventually go, but it is looking increasingly promising. This is for two reasons:

1. Early Access would allow us to get the game out to interested players for a discounted price, and allow us to finish the final touches on the game with player feedback.
   
2. Early Access would allow us to make Bowmen the best possible game it can be, by adjusting gameplay based on player wishes and more extensive play testing.
   

Early Access would also allow us to identify bugs and balance items to a greater degree that can be done in-house, where we only have 3 beta testers. Again, this is not set in stone as of yet, but we are considering this option going forward.

Whatever we decide, we will let you know here within the next month or so. We are looking forward to putting the final touches on the game and getting it out to eager players as soon as possible. If you have any thoughts or suggestions about how we roll Bowmen out going forward, you can certainly provide us with feedback on our forums at etherealgem.com/support.

Thanks again for all your support and interest in Bowmen. We promise it is on the way!

Sincerely,
The Bowmen Team

What's New?: Release Candidate (RC) v0.1.0.2 from Beta v0.0.135

[h3]Major Game/Gameplay Changes[/h3]

• Season one ("Phoenix") has officially started, moving forward from the Beta. This effectively resets any ranks earned through the Beta and paves the way for the first season available during Early Access and the game's launch.
  
• Resetting your game data will now only reset your player's stats, but not affect leaderboard scores or Steam Achievements.
  
• We've transitioned game data saves away from a registry based system (which is native to the Unity engine) to a file based system. This is to allow for steam cloud saves and synchronization across computers.
  
• Users now have the ability to join and leave the global chat channel using commands (type /help into the chat channel to see the commands, or go to the support forum). Also, chat moderation tools have been added to GM accounts, allowing GMs to ban, warn, and unban players from the chat channel.
  
• The final boss Lord Pain has been added to the game, who will spawn on inferno difficulty if you survive long enough.
  
• EXP earned from enemies now scales with difficulty (i.e. more EXP is gained per kill on inferno difficulty than on hard).

[h3]GUI Changes[/h3]

• Some art assets have been updated to support the 4k (3840x2160) resolution.
  
• Chat GUI has had its positioning slightly modified so that text in the chat is no longer cropped.

[h3]Achievement Changes[/h3]

• The hidden "Beta" achievement is no longer attainable, since we are moving forward towards the first release candidate. It has been replaced with the hidden achievement "Vanguard", which will be given to players that play Bowmen during the first season and Early Access.
  
• The "Untouchable" achievement has been added, which unlocks for surviving 400 seconds on hell difficulty or higher without taking any damage.
  
• The "Masfury" achievement has been added, which unlocks once you forge Masfury.
  
• The "Epitaph" achievement has been added, which unlocks after you die 100 times (and thus, unlocking the Undead skin).
  
• The "So it Begins" achievement has been added, which unlocks after completing the tutorial.
  
• The "Overkill" achievement has been added, which unlocks after killing 15 enemies at once.
  
• The "Bowmaster" achievement has been added, which unlocks after fully upgrading the Multishot skill.
  
• The "Infernal Balrog Slayer" achievement icon has been modified to fit with the art style of the other achievements.
  
• The "Lord Pain Slayer" achievement has been added, which unlocks after defeating Lord Pain on Inferno difficulty.

[h3]Item Changes[/h3]

• The legendary item Rico's Cheté has been added to the game, which gives your single shot arrows a chance to cleave and hit nearby enemies in addition to the initial target. This item has no drop restrictions and can be found off any mob in the game.
  
• The item previously known as Shed, the Golden Savior and Prot's Golden Buckler has been renamed to Heavy Golden Buckler. The flavor text has been modified to match the change.

[h3]Bug Fixes[/h3]

• How high angle critical hits are calculated has been modified. This should fix an issue whereby some arrows, even if not high angle shots, would deal crit damage.
  
• You can now exit the "Options" and "Credits" menus by hitting the escape key in addition to clicking the exit button.
  
• Fixed an issue where old background music would play when returning from onslaught.
  
• Spawn locations and positioning of the Barbarian and Graybeard have been changed so that they no longer appear to "overlap" if spawned at the same time.
  
• How enemy health bars are ordered has been slightly changed so that the Infernal Balrog or Lord Pain health bars always appear above the others.