Escape From Mandrillia News

• Overclock can now be applied to Coop Drones: makes them invulnerable to damage, increases the rate of fire, reduces recoil, increases turret turn speed, triples the stomp attack area of effect. After the overclocking ends, the Drone will catch fire. Overclocking a drone that is already overclocked/on fire will deal heavy damage to it.
  
• Overclock can now be applied to Sentry Turrets: makes them invulnerable to damage, increases the rate of fire. After the overclocking ends, the turret will go into "jammed" status. Overclocking a turret while its already overclocked will destroy it.
  
• Overclock no longer explodes Mandrillians; it will just set them on fire
  
• Overclock now sets Insectoids on fire
  
  
• Drones appear on the Multitool, Robot appears on the Drones' minimap
  
• Halved the time the Fire Extinguisher takes to start self-reloading
  
• Doubled the speed at which the Fire Extinguisher self-reloads
  
• Coop Challenge 1 now also gives you the "extra" inventory slots modifier
  
• Increased Drone's weakpoint welding spot hitbox size
  
• Reduced maximum amount of simultaneous Drone Weakpoints from 6 to 4 (and you will rarely see more than 3 - the drone will need to take some heavy damage after being already messed up to get in a 4-weakpoint situation)
  
  
• Added QoL tweak for the Drone's camera so it does not clip into the Drone when backing up to a wall: it will slightly rise above the Drone
  
• Added endgame stat stuff for Coop mode: Mandrillians killed, Insectoids stomped, per-player accuracy, per-player "friendly fire incidents"
  
• Slightly increased the volume of Mandrillian Bot footsteps for the Drones' listeners
  
  
• Fixed bug preventing the "extra" inventory slots from accepting the LMG box magazine
  
• Fixed bug that made the Flamethrower tank from the item spawner to spawn with physics disabled
  

I know what you're thinking: "this dude will do ANYTHING before actually finishing the firing range" -and you'd be right!

Introducing the Coop mode, conveniently in time for Steam's Couch Coop Fest.


Sometimes you don't want your friends to smash your head in. Or maybe you find the Mandrillian bots too scary to face alone. With coop, your friends will take the role of helpful Drones, in a mission to help the Robot escape.

You can enable this mode at any time by switching VERSUS To COOP on the Main Menu.

Coop is a feature I started thinking about after the second round of improvements for the Mandrillian Bots. At a point, I considered adding it as post-release content, or even as DLC, but in the end I thought having it be part of the base game would be the best way to do it.

I liked the idea of taking advantage of the fun interactivity you can get with VR and bringing it to the asymmetric field. I did experiment with a "coop" mode back at the Murderbot Halloween Event, where PC players took the role of helpful Mandrillians. In the end, the Mandrillians were never meant to be something you interacted with for too long, and the only thing you could do for them was giving them a Repair Kit to heal them. That's why for this mode I wanted to ramp up the PC-VR player interactions.

[h2]THE COOP DRONES[/h2]
These funky little dudes are not as sophisticated as the Robot, but they pack a punch and are pretty tanky.



And they come equipped with quite the versatile arsenal! (switch weapons by using the d-pad/number keys) Drones can't rearm themselves, so the communication is vital between the VR and PC side; the Robot player will need to find extra ammo and reload the Drones when they're running on empty.

You can also use RB/E key to stomp nearby insectoids.

[h3]MACHINE GUN[/h3]
A portable version of the Turret Sentry gun, using a higher capacity version of the Sentry's magazines (which are cross compatible). A Drone can equip 2 separate magazines at the same time, switching between them with the O button / R key.

To improve accuracy and rate of fire, crouch (LB/Right Mouse Click), which will put the Drone into Sentry Mode.

[h3]FLAMETHROWER[/h3]
A similar device to the Robot's own portable flamethrower (with its tank also being a cross-compatible, higher capacity version). Excellent to fend off angry Mandrillians and/or swarms of insectoids, but careful not to step on the flames! O button / R key will switch the pilot off, for situations where you want to be extra sneaky.

[h3]ROCKET POD[/h3]
A two-tube rocket launcher that takes different kinds of ammunition. Use O button / R key to switch between the upper and lower tube. When active, a laser reticle will activate for rocket guidance.

Microrockets come in packs of 9, and they offer great stopping power against armored targets, with a very small and weak blast radius.

Poison rockets come in packs of 3, and offer you the functionality of poison grenades. Remember that, as always, poison gas clouds are flammable, so use that to your advantage with your flamethrower or even with the exhaust of your microrockets!

You might find other rocket munition around the facility. Use at your own risk!

[h2]DRONE REPAIRS[/h2]
Drones can be quickly fixed with a good ol Repair Kit, just like the Robot -a Repair Kit will fully heal a damaged Drone, and even overheal it up to 130% if it's not too banged up. However, you might want to save those for yourself (or for an emergency fix).

Drones are built for war, so they can be quickly repaired in the field. Open the Maintenance Hatch and you will be given instructions in how to get your Drones back to working order.

[h3]CALIBRATION[/h3]
If your Drone's Hull is below 90%, it will be unable to self-repair. Re-calibrate it to fix it. Be aware that calibrating a Drone won't fix whatever accumulated stress it might have been subjected to; at some point the Drone will start breaking apart even after small hits.



[h3]STRUCTURAL DAMAGE[/h3]
If your drone has taken a beating, it will start suffering structural damage after being hit. Structural damage prevents you from calibrating, so you will need to fix this first. You'll know if a Drone has structural damage when the red warning light starts blinking.

The Drone Diagnostics System will point you to the areas that need to be reinforced. Pick the Drone's Portable Welder and get to work! After fixing all the weakened points, you'll be able to run calibrations to repair the Drone's hull.



[h3]FIRE[/h3]
Extinguishing a fire should be your main priority. Pick the Drone's fire extinguisher and aim at the base of the fire (or fires!). You will need to do this before being able to proceed with further repairs. A drone will take steady damage while it's on fire.



[h2]COOP CHALLENGES[/h2]
With the addition of Coop Mode, there's now also Coop Challenges, accessible through the same screen you'd access the Solo Challenges. While all Solo Challenges tried to emulate regular matches against humans, Coop Challenges are more action-oriented. So far there's 2 of these challenges: Coop Challenge 1 is limited to 1 Drone, and unlocks the Light Machine Gun. Coop Challenge 2 is an intense fight that is recommended to be played with 2 Drones, and rewards you with the Soldier Helmet.

To go with the trigger happy theme of Coop Mode, I've added a weapon I've always wanted to have in Mandrillia that would be too annoying to have in the regular weapon pool: the Light Machine Gun! It's on the spotlight for both the Challenges, and you can unlock it as a selectable Starter Longarm if you complete the Coop Challenge 1.

Besides being a good introduction to the Coop Mode, I've used them as a testbed for some Mandrillian Bot settings...

[h2]MANDRILLIAN BOT ADDITIONS[/h2]
The Mandrillian Bot behaviors keep improving! This update includes some neat addiitons for them, and the groundwork for some tasty mechanics for the near future.

[h3]EXTRA MANDRILLIAN[/h3]
Coop mode allows for up to 2 friends to help you. This means that for the first time you can outnumber the Mandrillians... unless they call for backup, that is.

I've added the option to increase the maximum concurrent Mandrillian Bots to 3 instead of 2. And yes, this means you can combine this with human Mandrillians to get a whooping 5 total Mandrillians roaming around. If you're into that sort of thing. I'm pretty sure it will feel like a traffic jam though.

The third Mandrillian Bot is mostly meant to balance Coop mode, especially when playing with 2 friends.

[h3]WAVE MODE[/h3]
By default, Mandrillian Bots use the same rules as human-controlled Mandrillians in order to spawn. That is, they will spawn as soon as their respawn timer allows them.

This is great for more stealth-oriented gameplay, but for coop it proved to be a bit difficult to balance. If the respawn timers were too high, it ended up with a drip-feed of Mandrillians quickly dispatched by the Robot and Drone combined firepower. Too low, and it became extremely opressive, with no time to repair the Drones.

With the new Wave Mode setting, I took a more "videogamey" approach to Mandrillian spawn. Their respawn times will be quite long, but certains actions (or sometimes randomly) will trigger "waves" that will put some pressure. I'm pretty proud of this one!

[h2]COMING SOON: MANDRILLIAN BOT UPGRADES[/h2]
Right now, the only upgrade Mandrillian Bots have had access to is the Armor -after all, the Armor started as a crutch to make the OG Mandrillian Bots challenging. Still, until now it has been a simple on/off switch. You either played against armored Mandrillian Bots, or unarmored Mandrillian Bots.

In preparation for me making more upgrades avaliable to the Mandrillian Bots, I've added a couple new settings to their upgrade style. RANDOM will be a weighted roll (which means right now roughly 1 in 10 mandrillians will appear with armor). DYNAMIC is where the juice is at -it simulates earning (and spending) points on upgrades, just like against human players. I included "fake" spending to offset the bots not having anything else to spend their points on other than the armor, and the result is quite similar to the frequency you'd see real Mandrillians with armor. DYNAMIC mode will also play along with the new wave mode, so you might get some surprises!

[h2]FULL CHANGELOG[/h2]

• Added COOP MODE
  
• New (unlockable) weapon: Light Machine Gun (win Coop Challenge 1)
  
• Added two coop mode challenges
  
• Soldier Helmet now unlockable by playing Coop Challenge 2
  
• Increased maximum concurrent Mandrillian Bots from 2 to 3 (not recommended outside of coop)
  
• New Mandrillian Bot setting: spawn style. By default, they will use the same respawn timer as their human counterparts. The new "wave" settings will have them spawn more slowly, with increasing "waves", both random and triggered by critical events.
  
• New Mandrillian Bot settings for Upgrade Type: instead of being just OFF and ARMOR ONLY, it can now be set to RANDOM and DYNAMIC, with the latter emulating the Mandrillian Bots gaining points -yes, this means Mandrillian Bots will have access to upgrades other than the Armor in the near future
  
• Fixed long-standing bug regarding Mandrillian Bots not getting poisoned by gas
  
• Improved Mandrillian Bot behavior and added failsafes to avoid them getting stuck when running into each other in narrow spaces.
  
• Fixed a series of hilarious bugs related to the Mandrillian Bot number / max number
  
• If Mandrillian Bot's max number is higher than the Mandrillian Bot total number, the Mandrillian Bot total number will be automatically set to the selected max number
  
  
• Increased Sentry Turret magazine capacity
  
• Flashlight starter item now also counts as a "weapon", so you can use it to toggle sprint (lowering/aiming it)
  

Hello there and happy new year! Starting up with another round of Mandrillian tweaks (I promise this is the last "big" one for Mandrillian mechanics)

During all these years of development, I managed to balance the game around the idea of "close call situations" (say, getting a killshot on the Mandrillian right as it was about to connect a hit). While this is pretty exciting for the VR player, turns out "getting shot in the face repeatedly" was not as engaging for PC players, especially newcomers going against a more experienced friend.

The problem with tweaking this is that just making the Mandrillians have more health would turn these situations into the VR player getting outright killed, so I had to find something that could keep things tense for both sides without turning it into a slugfest of the Robot and the Mandrillians trading blows.

After some iteration (and there's probably some more iteration needed), this is what I've ended up with.

[h2]STAMINA-BASED DAMAGE REDUCTION[/h2]
Mandrillian's 6 stamina points now act as a sort of regenerative shield that reduces damage taken by a little bit; at full stamina there's up to 30% protection, and then a sharp falloff. This means it's smarter to wait until you have full stamina before charging against the Robot.

To play around with this, the Robot has a chance to take away stamina points from the Mandrillians by dealing damage: there's a high chance of stamina loss when hitting limbs (guaranteed with harder hitting weapons), and a lower chance when hitting the face, all of it also multiplied by the projectile's own damage value. Until now, limb shots were basically wasted bullets (at least until limbs go critical), so hopefully this will bring up some tactical plays in some situations.

[h2]UPGRADE SWAPPING[/h2]
Mandrillians can now swap upgrades without needing to die. Until now, there were especially jarring endgame situations where players had enough points to buy beefy upgrades but did not have the means to buy them unless the Robot killed them.

To swap your upgrades, go back to the Vents and get away from the vent entrance; you will get a text popup telling you the Upgrade menu is available (A on controller, SPACE on keyboard). You won't be allowed to swap upgrades if you don't have full stamina, if you are burning/poisoned, or don't have enough points to buy the cheapest available upgrade. You don't need to be at full health, but you won't get any health back from it.

This one is quite the game-changer, letting Mandrillians be way more reactive with their strats, like quickly swapping to a jammer to defuse mines, smoke to obstruct a sentry turret's targeting, a healer to bypass poison clouds, etc.

[h2]BACKING OUT OF UPGRADES[/h2]
This one is a very small QoL feature. After buying an upgrade, you used to be locked into it while you selected your spawn. Now you can simply back out of it (B on controller, R on keyboard) before spawning, getting a full refund.

[h3]FULL CHANGELOG[/h3]

• Mandrillian stamina now acts as damage reduction (up to 30% at 6 points and then a steep falloff)
  
• Mandrillians can now lose stamina when taking limb damage or heavy head damage
  
• Getting shocked now takes away all stamina points from a Mandrillian, but shock duration decreases depending on how many stamina points you had when you got shocked
  
• Increased base stamina recharge initial delay by a couple seconds across all modes
  
  
• Upgrades can now be swapped on live Mandrillians by going into the vents; you will get a little text popup telling you if it's available (A on controller, SPACE on keyboard)
  
• You can "back out" of upgrades by pressing B on controller, R on keyboard at the spawn selection screen
  
  
• Sentry Turret magazine back to 20 bullets from the previous 15, as Mandrillians now have many ways to counter it
  
• Adjusted shrapnel effective distance for c4 and grenade launcher explosions, as it was too easy to get domed by a single fragment
  
  
• Standard Mandrillian respawns reduced to 10, to account for increased survivability
  
• Infestation Challenge time limit increased from 20 to 30 minutes
  
• Fixed sneaky bug that caused stamina to not recharge if you quickly tapped the attack button without actually starting the charge
  
• Made Main Menu stamina recharge speed the same as the "fast" recharge speed for Mandrillians
  
• Improved the feel of WASD menu operation on Mandrillian upgrade/spawn selection screens