Mega Knockdown News

This patch contains a mix of new features, quality of life improvements and some extra visual polish.

Enhanced Survival Mode

• Survival now has a power-up system to make the mode more fun and dynamic. They are simple stat upgrades this version, but I plan to expand these offerings later on.
  
• After winning a round you can either heal yourself for +500HP, increase your max HP by +200 and heal yourself by 100, increase your regeneration between rounds by +100, or give yourself a stacking %20 Damage boost.
  
• Opponents will gradually get stronger. Right now they will gain 1 level of Max HP every other fight, and 1 level of Damage every 3 fights. The progression of the AI's strength may be tuned up with time.
  
• This is a very new feature that has not gotten extensive testing. We'd love your feedback on it, and your ideas for interesting upgrades for the player and AI opponent.
  
• High scores for Survival (and Paul Zone) are now tracked separately by difficulty. In Normal or Hard mode, you'll now be able to submit your high score to a Steam Leaderboard, to demonstrate how cool you are to the world.
  

New Menus!

• The Arcade Menu for selecting single-player modes has updated art and designs by our artist Alan.
  
• Loading up a new mode will now display a Versus screen with character key art.
  
• We will likely do some tweaking on the design and behaviour of these screens based on testing and player feedback.
  

Balance Changes

• B attacks are now -20 if they whiff just outside of max range (was -10).
  
• This is actually a pretty big change as previously, there was not much universal counter play to just spamming B beyond the commital option of walking up and blocking it. Most characters have at least one "anti B" option, but in testing, this change seems to have really expanded players' options in the neutral game. B is still an amazing normal, but you can now lose significant offensive momentum if you're throwing it out there too predictably.
• Billy jC now travels 2 spaces, but has 1/1 ground/air range, as opposed to 2/0 before. It now does 100 chip, as a currently unnamed special move.
  
• This gives him a risky way to move 2 spaces in one turn to get past things like repeated Noel vines, which previously he could not avoid at all. It is still a slow option that is beat by basically any anti-air attack, so use it wisely.
• Marv jC does 100 chip now. It was the only special move that did not do chip.
  

Visual/Animation Changes

• The standard "being hit" animation for most hits has been shortened to improve game flow.
  
• The pushback effect from B combos has been increased in speed.
  
• The "delay" icon will no longer show up during replays.
  
• Characters won't delay as much before blocking a jump in.
  
• If you block a "minus" attack, you won't visually appear to be stuck in blockstun for as long.
  
• Noel plant animation is now slightly longer so that it has the same duration as the vine grow animation
  

Performance Improvements

• A few oversized textures (such as the "cash splash" in some endings) have been reduced in size.
  
• The hard disk footprint of the game has been reduced by about 25%, to roughly 830MB!
  
• The pushback effect from B combos has been increased in speed.
  

Online Lobby Improvements

• The code that syncs up the round count between players should now work better. This should also fix an issue with the round syncing code that could rarely lock up an online match.
  
• The Online Mode console is a little more verbose, giving you more information about the lobbies you are joining when you attempt to connect.
  
• You should no longer be able to join a lobby if the host is running a different version of the game, even via invite. The invite should fail and the game will now warn you in the Lobby console if you try to do this.
  
• The Online Mode "cancel" button now leaves the target Steamworks lobby in addition to cancelling your client connection.
  
• If you attempt to join a nonexistent lobby, the operation will now fail with an error message instead of putting you in a new Steamworks lobby.
  

Bug Fixes

• Fixed issue where Steam Cloud would not sync properly. It should work now.
  
• Fixed Noel's position "popping" off-axis when someone blocks Vine and Fightning Flail at the same time.
  
• Fixed a rare issue where the training dummy would lock up when hit by a Vine off of a Backflip when Noel is cornered.
  
• Fixed training mode not displaying damage sometimes.
  
• Fixed Noel inexplicably knocking Lewis across the screen if PileDebunker trades with Fightning Flurry and Vine is active.
  
• Fixed Noel just absolutely shredding health bars with 1000+ damage combos under very specific and unintended situations.
  

Demo

• The free Demo is back on Steam until roughly the end of the Steam Remote Play Together Fest. I may keep it longer if it looks like people are downloading and playing it on Steam.
  

This patch will break many of your old replays. To play the previous version and play back old replays, enter the password 'rollinrollinrollin' in the 'private betas' menu under 'properties' for this app. This will enable the "backup-jan8patch" beta branch, which will remain open for a couple months at least.

Music

• This update replaces instaces of "Metalicious" (thrash metal BGM) in-game with "THE CALLOUT" (that one BGM with the horns ).
  
• "Metalicious" by Alexander Nakarada was previously used as the theme for "The Paul Zone" and "Strive Mode." While we have a license for this use, a few streamers informed us they were getting ContentID flags for streaming or making videos about parts of the game that use this song. After getting ahold of Alex he let me know that this was not intentional, and caused by a transition to a new copyright system. Still, we've started the process of commissioning an original music track to replace "Metalicious."
• A temporary beta branch (access code 'breatheinbreatheout') will allow you to play the game with the "Metalicious" music track intact, until we're able to replace it and/or introduce an option that lets you choose whether you want to use it or not.
  

Bug Fixes

• If you air throw Noel while she jumps in with vine active, this can no longer cause a trade. Noel will just get thrown (as intended).
  
• Fixed a situation where Noel Fightning Flurry could do multiple combo hits trading against Lewis using Fist of Euphoria on wakeup.
  
• A "smart tip" related to punishing correctly will now correctly show up when you're the one doing the punishing, not the other way around.
  

System Changes

• A recent change gave Noel bonus damage if she hits with an A or B attack when her vine is active, but not hitting directly. This was intended to increase only her combo damage, but it was also making her trades hit harder. For this reason, this bonus now only takes effect if her attack lands first. Vine will no longer make her do more damage during a trade.
  
• Knockdowns now appear visually to advantage the attacker by +12 instead of +14. This is to bring the perceived frame advantage closer to the actual frame a advantage of a knockdown used for calculating which attack wins in a clash. That number is unchanged at +10 (or +20, as Billy). The visual change was implemented in part to fix the issue noted above with Fightning Flurry.
  

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These changes will break some replays involving Noel. A temporary beta branch (access code 'breatheinbreatheout') will allow you to watch replays from this version.

If you ever encounter a bug in-game, or you just have some feedback for the dev team, simply press F8 in-game to send us a message directly.

We've been putting a lot of effot into improving the game this year as Early Access rolls on. We released about 20 patches this year! We'll recap some highlights, then share some of our plans for 2024.

2023 Recap

All year long, we have been revamping the game's visuals. We still have a ways to go on this front, but every character now has work in progress sprites hand-drawn by our illustrator Alan McMillian, and they're at a higher level of detail and quality than our first art update in January.



We also implemented a new HUD and conversation UI, clickable mouse controls, a new main menu, and a few new stages (Marv's, Lewis's, and the training stage). Attacks now have hitstop and hitspark effects. Side switches and chip damage look a lot more natural than they did at launch, too.

On the audio front, we have 3 new music tracks (Lewis theme by DankPasta2099, options menu and character select themes by Nabil Anthony) and a new set of announcer lines recorded by Joe Dawson.

We also made some adjustments to the game balance. Paul was taken down a peg by reducing the chip on his Firepaul, and Billy was made competitively viable by a series of buffs. Noel got Vine Armor to make her vine set safer, Nick's Cheesy Dust Loop was made more consistent and given an actual animation.

The online has gotten a lot of improvements and new features. You can play timed variants or select a random character online now. The lobbies have more quality of life options now, and matches are now listed on the Steam's more robust lobby system instead of our matchmaking VPS.

Training mode got some new functionality like "reset to corner," and you can now watch saved replays of your multiplayer matches. We've made some efforts to improve the new player experience by making a more forgiving AI on Easy and Normal and laying the ground work for a hint system. We've also started setting up text for localization, but there's not much to show there yet. Load times got a little faster thanks to the game now packing everything into atlases, and you can now carry your progress across different devices (and your Steam Deck!) because the game now supports the Steam Cloud. Finally, the game is now compatible with a wider selection of controllers thanks in part to some extensive testing by community member Sente.

2024 Goals

If all goes well we hope to continue development in 2024 at the same pace as 2023. In no particular order, here are some of the goals we're going to work on:

Continue developing character animations toward full color finished sprites and swappable palettes:


Begin testing one or two of these new characters, perhaps with placeholder art at first:


Revamp the menus. Here's a preview of our upcoming tutorial menu redesign:


Introduce new character stages:


Implement new ending animatics (which are partially done, just not implemented:


Start prototyping an enhanced survival mode with roguelike elements:


Localize more game text into more languages:


As a disclaimer, we have a very small team with one programmer, one artist and no publisher money, so we may or may not make as much progress as we'd like toward these goals. Still, we expect to be on track to leave Early Access by 2025 or so. If you want to support our continued work on the game, one great way to do that is to join our Patreon.

* * *

Finally, we're announcing that the price of Mega Knockdown will go down to $9.99 USD or regional equivalent after the Steam Winter sale is over. Our goal with this price reduction is to lower the barrier of entry to playing the game in order to grow our community of players. It's also to give players from certain South American/Middle Eastern countries a little bit of a break, as they have been seeing huge price increases all over Steam thanks to changes in Valve's regional pricing policies.

Thanks for your continued support!

A few things couldn't make it into the game in time for the MEGA Update. We didn't want to sit on them until the next content patch, so we're releasing them now in a bonus update!

New Noel Animations!

• Noel's animations and sprites have been improved across the board! We upgraded about half of them in the last patch, but now all of them are at a higher level of detail and quality. Future sprite updates for Noel and other characters are planned as we continue in Early Access.
  
• Noel's throw now has a special new animation when Jerma mode is on.
  
• Noel's special anti air combos now do twice as many hits, but less damage per hit. This is a purely cosmetic change as the total damage is unchanged.
  
• There is a new vine animation replacing the old programmer art.
  
• If a vine doesn't directly hit, it will be drawn behind the players.
  

New Hint System!

• There are a few game mechanics that are covered briefly in the tutorial, but players miss or forget about. For this reason, we are adding a hint system to Arcade mode.
  
• Under some specific conditions such as getting counter hit, anti-aired, etc, the game will very briefly pause, issue a chime, and display a text box explaining what happened.
  
• These hints will only be shown once each, as they are usually just repeating some information from the tutorial. If you want to see the hints more than once, you can reset them in the game options.
  

Other Changes

• The input display now says "next move" in single player when it's showing a prediction. This is because players often don't notice (or forget) that the game gives information about the AI player's next move, unless you're playing on Hard. Feel free to drop a comment below if these patch notes informed you about this feature for the first time.
  
• If you're anti-aired by a ground attack, the game now says "anti air" similar to other notifications like "counter."
  
• Strife Mode no longer gives a bonus to combo damage. This was causing certain moves like normal attacks to do disproportionately more damage than single hit specials. Plus, damage was a little too high in Strife Mode anyway.
  
• Noel's throw animation now uses two sprites: one for her, one for the plant. This should have a slight positive effect on performance.
  

Bug Fixes

• Fixed an issue where a player using j.B would not get a full combo against Marv j.C in some very specific situations.
  
• Fixed a bug where a vine would sometimes not appear if you planted it twice in a row too quickly.
  
• Attempted a fix for a rare training menu bug that would send players back to main menu at inappropriate times.