Cruelty Squad News

Just another minor patch, fixing problems in some levels.

• You no longer go out of water state when swimming through the pipe in mission 7.
  
• One of the targets was randomly disappearing in mission 7, making it impossible to complete. This is now fixed.
  
• Fixed an easy way to get out of bounds in mission 7.
  
• Mission 6 is now slightly harder to speedrun.
  
• Mission 6 target has new dialogue.
  
• Minor increase in fall damage to make some tricks a bit harder.
  

Hey everyone! Hope you're having fun with the game. The launch has been way better than expected, both in terms of sales and the extremely positive response. I've especially enjoyed all the speedrun videos I've seen so far and am really looking forward to seeing how those develop.

I decided it would be a good idea to actually release some patch notes to better keep up with what has and hasn't been done. There have actually been a couple of small updates since the launch but I didn't feel like they really warranted individual posts.

Some of the changes:

• You no longer receive fall damage just based on vertical velocity, the game actually checks the fall distance. This prevents weird situations where you just spontaneously receive damage.
  
• Weird full screen toggling issues should now finally be fixed. Full screen status actually saves.
  
• The save reset button has been fixed. It no longer crashes to desktop, and actually clears the save file.
  
• Field of view slider has a visible value.
  
• The K&H X20 aiming no longer has weird twitching. The scope still causes framerate issues, sometimes. I might have to figure out a completely different way to do it or just abandon the functional scope.
  

I'm looking forward to beginning work on new content again after I manage to recover slightly from the launch and no longer have to be on alert for critical issues.

Felt like this day was never going to come, but I'm really happy to say that Cruelty Squad is now out for purchase. Obviously this doesn't mean that the work is over, being an early access title and all, but it's a really important stepping stone on the way to making the game what I truly want it to be. Already in the current state I think it's fun, extremely replayable and challenging.



My work plan for the early access period is the following:

• Give all targets unique textures and written dialogue.
  
• A couple of levels still don't have their own music, the title screen is also missing a track.
  
• Keep creating new unlockable bonus levels.
  
• New weapons, enemies and equipment.
  
• Add more secret and unique content in the already existing levels.
  
• Persistent changes in the world.
  
• An alternate, "true" ending that requires more than just beating the levels in chronological order.
  

Basically it's mostly going to revolve around playable content, as gameplay wise everything more or less works. I'm going to keep fine tuning things as I see fit, and obviously fixing bugs. I will also be reading feedback and bug reports on the steam discussion section, twitter and discord. Not promising a rigid schedule but progress updates should become more of a regular thing now too.

I'd like to thank the incredibly supportive community, both on twitter and on the community discord, all the testers who gave really good feedback and found incredibly many bugs and issues in a very short amount of time and @doorofdestinies for extremely helpful initial work on the sound effects.

I hope you have fun with the game and stick around to see it grow. Remember to drop a review!

Hey everyone!

I haven't updated in a while but it's not because I haven't been working, rather it's because I've been too busy trying to wrap everything up for the early access release. That's right, the game is going to be out on January 4th. That's the big announcement.

Over the last month or so I've mostly been working on additional content, polishing some of the levels a bit more, getting rid of annoying lingering bugs and improving enemy behaviour. Apparently if you mix up the z and y coordinates when calculating enemy line of sight you won't necessarily notice it for a while, but it makes the enemies really annoying and unpredictable. Very bad for sneaking up behind them.



Some of the stuff I've done since the last update:

• 6 new regular levels, a tutorial level and one unlockable bonus level. My original goal was 15 base levels but I realised I'd rather polish the ones I have and work on more secret levels (and other hidden content). I'll try to squeeze in one more bonus level before release but it might not make it. More levels is the primary goal for the early access period.
  
• There's a total of 17 weapons now. Two of them are non-lethal alternative starter weapons, a dart gun and an expandable baton. Non-lethal gameplay is fun but not very fleshed out yet, don't expect to do a completely non-lethal (minus targets) playthrough just yet.
  
• Lots of new equipment, different grenades, armor, speed boosters, jump boosters, double jump item, stealth suits and more. Some of these can be purchased, others have to be discovered in the levels to be unlocked. I'll be adding more of these whenever I can think of something interesting.
  
• Cryptic death mechanics and divine communication.
  
• Performance settings for low-end computers, AI distance and civilian count sliders.
  
• Intro and ending cutscenes.
  
• New enemy types, including the psychosis inducer.
  
• You can now talk to NPCs. There's unique ones who have their own story to tell, generic ones get a random line based on the level.
  
• The game now grades your perfomance depending on level completion time, you can unlock ranks from C to S for each level, S being the best.
  
• Punishment mode. You receive 100% damage (you're as fragile as the enemies) for a hidden benefit.
  

It's all shaping up really nicely, and I've received a lot of positive feedback from the testers. While the initial early access version won't be exactly the game I want it to be yet, it's close, and I'm looking forward to working on all the stuff I have lined up.

Hey everyone! Progress with the game has been a bit slower for the last few weeks due to non-game development related obligations, I'm hoping to get back on track now that there's nothing distracting me.

Here's what has happened since the last post:

• Got two new levels into a completely playable state and started working on another one. They still need polish but the general layout is done.
  
• Added three new enemies, one with new poison mechanics.
  
• New weapon, an autoshotgun.
  
• Implemented equipment system with purchasable items. (Armor, Skullgun, etc.)
  
• Steamworks integration now works which means the game can actually be released on Steam.
  
• Preliminary support for time based ranking system. (for unlocking cheats etc. special stuff)
  

Other than that I've also done a lot of testing and general tweaking of the gameplay. There's still a lot of work to be done but I feel the game is on a good track to completion, just a matter of putting in the hours. I'm aiming for 15 levels which is more than twice what I have right now, but with each new one I have to spend less time making new assets and programming new game logic so in some ways it's getting faster. The dream is to release something before 2021 but it might be a bit optimistic, we'll see.