Enter the Chronosphere - Version 133 (Big Next Fest update!)
Big update today! We've been busily working on a couple of major projects for the last few (several?) months, and we've polished them up and put them in the demo for Next Fest!
[h2]Dedicated demo page[/h2]
Just quickly, we now have a dedicated page for the demo. If you've been enjoying the demo, please leave us a review. 🙏
https://store.steampowered.com/app/2162560/Enter_the_Chronosphere_Demo/
[h2]Starseer[/h2]
Introducing "The Starseer", our heroes' spaceship home.
If you've played older version of the demo you'll have seen the illustrated view of these rooms in the narrative sections. Now you can see the crew hanging out space, and what they get up to between missions.
The Starseer acts as a hub between runs, offering a chance to listen on conversations between the crew to learn more about them and the universe.
[h2]Cinematic[/h2]
Ever wondered how Marcia and Urtar "Enter" the chronosphere? Turns out they jump right out the door and into its pupil.
Now you will see your character do just that before each run.
[h2]Maps and balance[/h2]
This release includes a big update to map generation, resulting in much more interesting (and challenging 😅) combat. We've introduced a lot more wide-open areas, creating a lot more truly bullet hell situations.
We've also pulled back on areas where maps would be more dominated by corridors and mazes, creating more opportunities for enemies to flank.
This really change the feel of combat and how enemies engage you. It's a pretty transformative change that really enhances the moment-to-moment gameplay. But I'm biased, so tell us what you think!
[h2]New trailer[/h2]
[previewyoutube]https://youtu.be/Ly1tTAeixKs[/previewyoutube]
[h2]UI[/h2]
Our UI improvements have continued!
The mission screen has received a glow up, with new styles for missions, including new character illustrations and biome-specific styles for missions.
A long-needed update to the weapons UI has dropped too. This has repeatedly confused new players, so it should help to differentiate which of your weapons is held and which is holstered.
Left: Old weapon UI; Right: New weapon UI
Beyond that it's the usual dump of bugfixes, improvements and quality-of-life features. Thanks to our lovely and dedicated Discord users for reporting these!
Just a reminder that we want to hear your feedback (good or bad) via Discord and Steam Discussions.
[h2]Changelog[/h2]
[h3]🦋 Progression[/h3]
[h3]📖 Story[/h3]
[h3]🗺️ Level Generation[/h3]
[h3]🏓 Gameplay[/h3]
[h3]🖼️ Art[/h3]
[h3]✅ UI[/h3]
[h3]🔊 Audio[/h3]
[h3]🤖 Tech[/h3]
Check out the full changelog.
—Chronosphere team
[h2]Dedicated demo page[/h2]
Just quickly, we now have a dedicated page for the demo. If you've been enjoying the demo, please leave us a review. 🙏
https://store.steampowered.com/app/2162560/Enter_the_Chronosphere_Demo/
[h2]Starseer[/h2]
Introducing "The Starseer", our heroes' spaceship home.
If you've played older version of the demo you'll have seen the illustrated view of these rooms in the narrative sections. Now you can see the crew hanging out space, and what they get up to between missions.
The Starseer acts as a hub between runs, offering a chance to listen on conversations between the crew to learn more about them and the universe.
[h2]Cinematic[/h2]
Ever wondered how Marcia and Urtar "Enter" the chronosphere? Turns out they jump right out the door and into its pupil.
Now you will see your character do just that before each run.
[h2]Maps and balance[/h2]
This release includes a big update to map generation, resulting in much more interesting (and challenging 😅) combat. We've introduced a lot more wide-open areas, creating a lot more truly bullet hell situations.
We've also pulled back on areas where maps would be more dominated by corridors and mazes, creating more opportunities for enemies to flank.
This really change the feel of combat and how enemies engage you. It's a pretty transformative change that really enhances the moment-to-moment gameplay. But I'm biased, so tell us what you think!
[h2]New trailer[/h2]
[previewyoutube]https://youtu.be/Ly1tTAeixKs[/previewyoutube]
[h2]UI[/h2]
Our UI improvements have continued!
The mission screen has received a glow up, with new styles for missions, including new character illustrations and biome-specific styles for missions.
A long-needed update to the weapons UI has dropped too. This has repeatedly confused new players, so it should help to differentiate which of your weapons is held and which is holstered.
Left: Old weapon UI; Right: New weapon UIBeyond that it's the usual dump of bugfixes, improvements and quality-of-life features. Thanks to our lovely and dedicated Discord users for reporting these!
Just a reminder that we want to hear your feedback (good or bad) via Discord and Steam Discussions.
[h2]Changelog[/h2]
[h3]🦋 Progression[/h3]
- 🚀 Added the Starseer, which acts as a hub between runs.
- The "Irregular Coordinates" mission now completes as soon as you collect the coordinate instead of when the run ends.
[h3]📖 Story[/h3]
- 🎥 Add cinematic before starting a run!
- Added conversations to hub, you can now listen in on the crew in the Starseer.
- Add slight parallax to story backgrounds.
- Fix issue where story pane wouldn't disappear immediately after completing story, allowing user to click "continue" button multiple times.
- Fix issue where narrative characters wouldn't animate out when skipping story.
[h3]🗺️ Level Generation[/h3]
- More levels appear with open space and bullet hell gameplay.
- Enclosed maps have more shortcuts and are less mazelike.
- Enemies have more opportunities to flank you in combat in most maps.
- Reward rooms are better defined.
- Reduced some very slow map generation cases that were confused for softlocks.
[h3]🏓 Gameplay[/h3]
- Purifiers have gone back to boot camp, and have a newfound appreciation for survival. They are smarter, stronger, immune to burning, and no longer self-immolate with attacks.
- Possibly fix issue where player would get "stuck" in a state where they were interacting with a station, door etc. (Reported by @silentj28)
- Increased the range of stick input available to move when using a gamepad.
- Fixed a bug where airburst shot was consumed by non-projectile strikes. (Reported by @ninmonkey)
- Fixed a bug where the Harvesting mod was incorrectly appearing on status weapons, like the siege microwave. (Reported by @ninmonkey)
- Overclocked bugzapper no longer targets your own projectiles. This wasn't a bug, but was far more irritating than its synergies were good. It now has less charges, as well.
- The explosive effect from Powder Horn is now inheritable by weapon sub-projectiles. Happy hunting!
- The mighty Porber now has a minimum aim distance, to minimize players accidentally sticking porbs into their own faces.
- Black Market Stims no longer has a reload penalty. This buff also indirectly fixes the displayed reload reduction being incorrect. (Reported by @jake321987, @silentj28, @ninmonkey)
- Fixed a bug where Urtar's Bearzerking passive could heal unexpectedly on the first enemy killed in a floor.
- Fixed a bug where TNT's Bad Bundle unique mod was not correctly triggering on quickdraw. (Reported by @ninmonkey)
- Fixed a bug where certain boss attacks would spawn too far from the attacker.
- Fixed an issue where Black Market Stims and Power Cycle could cause infinite stacks of powerful.
- Fixed a bug preventing Urtar from deflecting certain rocket attacks with Kinetic Surge.
- Fixed a bug where bullets from the Trickshooter's Impossible Trick unique mod were not inheriting certain effects. (Reported by @GoogleFrog)
- Reverse Gun can no longer get the ricochet mod. (Reported by @silentj28)
- Fixed a bug where catching the ball from Clockwork Slugger could result in unlimited stacks of speed.
- Rocket and missile weapons no longer do cursory amounts of impact damage: it's all in the explosion now.
- Clockwork fan is now less adept at firing through environments, to minimize a particularly boring exploit.
- Fixed a bug where the Longbore's Laser Drill unique mod was broken. (Reported by @ninmonkey)
- MoleTov can no longer get mods such as torturing.
- Pilebunker secondary flames are now short duration so players don't set themselves on fire as often.
- Certain flame projectiles were incorrectly doing hit damage. This has been fixed.
- Porbs no longer porb when cleared by a non-porb pojectile.
- Removed some aim / move indicators from enemies which shouldn't display them.
- Fixed a rare softlock caused by the miniboss being knocked out of the arena and over a hole.
[h3]🖼️ Art[/h3]
- Reduced the lower height of the outside wall to improve visibility when playing at the edge of the world.
- Mr Stim's projectile colour is now pink.
[h3]✅ UI[/h3]
- Explosion indicators have a new look and are visible through walls.
- Move indicators are now faintly visible through walls.
- Aim indicators are now faintly visible through walls.
- Fixed some key bindings appearing as text instead of icons when overridden.
- Fix issue where a "?" would appear in place of a binding on the intro message screen.
- Fixed the run summary image from showing white as you return to the menu.
- A description is shown when picking up a stabilizer if you've not used one before.
- Equipment now lists which biome it's from (if present).
- Gameplay UI now shows the maximum number of floors in the current sphere.
- Fixed mods appearing disabled when weapons were out of ammo.
- The unused text area on a character level reward is now hidden.
- Restyle mission UI.
- The world select background animates every time the world is changed.
- Move aim indicators to correctly reflect position during a lunge. (Reported by @silentj28)
- Added a loading bar during level generation.
- Missions are now shown on world callouts where relevant.
- Improved transition back to title.
- Fixed narrative being unskippable with mouse.
- Fixed menu button alerts overlapping with their control prompts.
- Fixed the last character level showing as level 1. (Reported by @silentj28)
- Fixed a missing variable in Molestone Shot status text. (Reported by @ninmonkey)
- Updated the HUD, making the equipped weapon clearer, and updating the style.
- Updated theme of various panels.
- Improved various lists of buttons to join the clickable areas, removing gaps in interaction.
- Fixed cooldowns failing to mask within gadget buttons.
- Updated sphere mission callout names/icons to match the loot that they unlock instead of the mission name.
- Disable hover tooltip on used transporters.
- Hide "BossLanding" hover tooltip in the middle of the boss arena.
[h3]🔊 Audio[/h3]
- Fixed some cases where UI button audio wouldn't play.
- New menu SFX and Foley. Updated Logo Sting by @atezian.
- Speed buff statuses now only play sound when the thing they are applied to moves.
[h3]🤖 Tech[/h3]
- The game runs in the background more thoroughly during loading screens. (Reported by @ninmonkey)
- Remove hang when loading CTA screen on quit, and (hopefully) fix crash bug on quit. (Reported by @wompod, @silentj28)
- Log current time when launching and saving game. (Reported by @ninmonkey)
- Compile VFX shaders on launch to reduce stutter. (Reported by @2dfrud)
- Updated the list of preloaded shaders, reducing hitches during initial gameplay. (Reported by @2dfrud)
- Input is disabled when Steam overlay is open.
Check out the full changelog.
—Chronosphere team