Survivor Mercs News

[h2]Live and in Person[/h2]
It’s Official Commanders! Survivor Mercs will be available to play alongside other Wandering Wizard titles at PAX West, and for a limited time beginning today 11am PST, we are reactivating our demo until next Friday! So if you can’t make it live and in person, be sure to log onto Steam and play!


In celebration of PAX and the live demo, we will be hosting an online giveaway for all of our loyal remote Commanders as well! Show us your highest amount of kills! Submit a link to your social media post with a screenshot of your highest scoreboard/leaderboard kills with #SurvivorMercs #SMkillchallenge tags via the Weekly Events Channel! The Highest amount of kills wins. Our 5 Winners will be determined the morning of September 8th and will be dm’d with their keys via Discord on the 14th when Survivor Mercs releases early access. Winners will also receive the "Elite Commander" title on Discord so everyone knows you're a pro. *You must be a member of the Wandering Wizard Discord server in order to enter.*



The latest version of the demo will also feature a "lite" version of our Twitch integration for streamers to test out! At the moment, Streamers can activate Twitch Integration and have their viewers vote for which mercenary and upgrades to pick! Boss encounters may also appear with a random viewer's name! More fun Twitch integration interactions with viewers are also being planned as we continue into Early Access and 1.0!!

Here's a guide to Twitch Integration set-up: https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3028048673

Come 11:00am PST these Twitch Integrations will be live! We hope you have fun playing Survivor Mercs with your viewers, and would love to hear your feedback!


And for those of you who are able to make it, we can’t wait to have you play our demo in real time, and maybe even win a special Wandering Wizard PAX booth giveaway. Here are the requirements:

1. Play Survivor Mercs live and in person at the Wandering Wizard Booth 608 lvl 4
2. Play West Hunt, Expedition Agartha OR post to your socials and tag Wandering Wizard
   
3. Sign up for the Wandering Wizard mailing list
   

Once you have completed all three tasks you will have a chance to spin the prize wheel for a very special Wandering Wizard hat and other prizes! But don’t wait too long, there is a limited number of prizes available per day, and we want you to have the opportunity to access this loot drop before supplies run out!

Wandering Wizard will also feature an exclusive in person Survivor Mercs Leaderboard that will reset at the end of every day at PAX. The Commander with the longest survival time and most amount of kills will receive a Survivor Mercs key day of launch, all the glory, and an Elite Commander title in the Wandering Wizard Discord Server. Be sure to join the Wandering Wizard Discord beforehand so if you win you will be able to receive your title!

https://discord.gg/naZB3ANXjF

[h2]Additional Raffles/Giveaways[/h2]
It’s worth noting Wandering Wizard is featuring multiple giveaways this weekend highlighting some of their different titles as well, which bears mention the West Hunt Partner in Crime Giveaway! ~Win a copy of West Hunt and a Random Item bundle for both you and your friend! Just quote tweet the Wandering Wizard giveaway announcement, tag your bestie, and use the hashtag #WHpartnerincrime and #westhunt to enter! So if you’re interested in any other Wandering Wizard titles or free keys, there’s plenty of opportunities to win.

https://twitter.com/OfficialWWGames/status/1696651276174430644?s=20


There’s also even MORE ways to win via Gleam.io ! Wandering Wizard is hosting a large online giveaway where 10 winners will receive codes for all 3 WW games featured at PAX West. Follow, Retweet, and more! There’s many ways to enter. Click on the link below for more information.

https://gleam.io/L2gTq/wandering-wizard-2023-pax-west-giveaway


With all these giveaways we want to give as many opportunities to our community as possible and celebrate our favorite soon to be released Bullet Heaven/Roguelite game. Time to launch Commanders, we salute you. And don’t forget to join the Wandering Wizard Discord for more details, events, and giveaways! https://discord.gg/naZB3ANXjF

Commanders, this is your last chance to play the Survivor Mercs demo over the upcoming weekend!

We are extremely grateful for all the input, feedback, and insights we received from all our demo players.

We chose to take the demo offline - for now - on Monday, August 7, 2023, to focus on improving the game and preparing for the Early Access launch.

The announcement for the EA release date will be coming soon!

The demo helped us a lot to create awareness for our game, make well-informed design decisions, and guide us in our development efforts for the current and upcoming features. We are currently working on improving the system around Commander Traits & cloning, re-balanced a lot of the Mercs and Gear, and are finishing up the work on performance improvements and meta-progression, e.g. building your Bunker HQ, unlocking new stuff via Missions, playing different maps with different bosses, and much more.

Thus, the demo no longer really represents the game as it will come to Early Access.

Will there be a new demo? We don't know, yet.

Are we running another playtest? Most likely, but only with a selected group of playtesters. If you want in, join our Discord server to stay in the loop.

If you are a streamer or creator who wanted to preview the game, get in touch with us on our Discord server. We have exciting plans and are happy to add you to our mailing list to let you know when the next chance to play and feature the game is coming.

Lock, load, and loot, Commanders!

First of all, thanks a lot to all our Commanders who provided valuable insights, feedback, and who reported bugs and issues in the Steam forums, on Youtube and Twitch, and on our Discord server.

We are extremely grateful to see so many people care about our game. So we do our best to improve it based on your feedback, and this is our first major update for the demo, with more to come!

[h2]Major UI Improvements[/h2]
We continuously work on the UI and HUD to make the game more beautiful and self-explanatory.

You can now check the Merc's skill trees in the Pause menu during a run or in the Barracks when inspecting your Merc roster.



This is a very early implementation and it is still in development. We will improve the visuals and usability in future updates. But we already believe that this helps a lot in planning your squad build and level-ups.

Additionally, we made all menus look nicer by adding more animations and details, as well as fixing issues with navigation and how information is presented.

The Pause menu now shows your current Commander, Mercs and Gear. You can make better decisions for your squad build and see the effects that upgrades will have on your squad.




[h2]New Commander Cloning[/h2]
Cloning a new Commander now works more like we intend it to do.

The average, basic Commander is now only appearing for your first run. After that, all Commander clones are randomized with the Traits you have unlocked from the Genome Lab.
You get two free Commander clones before every run. After that, the DNA cost for additional clones increases with every clone.



Be aware that clones will not be saved!
Once you pick your Commander for the next Operation, all the other clones will be "discreetly discarded".

Surviving Commanders will be available for the next Operation, but they will also be discarded if you choose another one. Commanders that are KIA can be revived for DNA. All your previous fallen Commanders are stored, so you can revive multiple dead clones - if you have the DNA for it.

The Commander cloning will receive additional updates which are currently in development. With these, you will be able to have more control over which Commanders you want to play, e.g. by pre-defining certain Traits.


[h2]Balancing Adjustments[/h2]
We saw that a lot of you really disliked the penalty for extraction, so we removed it! The amount of Blood Diamonds and DNA you will find was adjusted a bit to keep it balanced with the unlocking prices.

This is an intermediary change, as we are working on a more complex loot & inventory system with different materials that you will need for building more bunker rooms. Also, we're working on changes to how Traits are unlocked, so stay tuned for future updates.

You can now also upgrade the Treasury with fewer Blood Diamonds and up to a 75% saving of your unspent Blood Diamonds.


[h2]Visuals Improvements[/h2]
We adjusted some of the rendering effects for Traits like "nostalgic" and "colorblind". They appear now less extreme. We also improved some graphical assets and effects in some areas like the objectives.


[h2]General Fixes and Optimizations[/h2]

• "Survivor Bonus" is now only shown in the end-of-run screen if you get a bonus level for a Merc.
  
• When recruiting a Merc with a "Survivor Bonus", the free level-ups are now titled accordingly to help you differentiate them from regular level-ups.
  
• Reduced default volume for all audio to save the ears of headphone users.
  
• Adjusted the sandbags around the objective sentries to reduce the probability of Mercs getting stuck.
  
• Added an option to adjust the settings in the Pause menu.
  
• All Mercs are now extracting as intended. No one is left behind!
  
• Fixed various localization strings for EN and DE.
  
• Fixed multiple smaller UI glitches.
  
• The Commander is invulnerable for a bit longer after capturing objectives.
  
• Fixed the scale of Commanders in the Clone Bay and other menus in very high or very low resolutions.
  
• Reduced flickering in some UI elements.
  
• Fixed a bug that healed your Commander randomly after pausing the game.
  
• Defender shield can now be aimed freely and is no longer axis-aligned.
  
• Fixed an instance where the Extraction Point would not trigger after capturing it.
  
• Made vampiric aura and some other effects more transparent for better visibility.
  
• Slightly improved rendering performance of particle effects.
  
• Added shadow proxies for all enemies and Mercs to improve rendering performance.
  
• Fixed an instance where you could start with a Merc from a previous operation.
  
• Fixed an issue where your Commander could be glitched out of bounds.
  
• Added V-Sync and frame limiter settings
  

[h2]What's next?[/h2]
We are already working on the next update for the game which will also go into the demo. Our main priority is performance improvements. We made great progress over the last weeks and are already seeing good results. But we didn't want to delay this update while we're wrapping up development and testing on the performance improvements. Thanks for your patience and for giving us some more time to make it good!

As always, we are looking forward to hearing your feedback on our Discord server, or here in the Steam forums.


Lock, load, and loot, Commanders!

Commanders, tune in to watch us play Survivor Mercs!

We are trying to survive in the demo while talking about how it came into existence, explaining some of the features, and giving an outlook on the features that are coming in the near future for the Early Access launch.

[h3]Lock, load, and loot, Commanders! Play our demo - now in English or German - and wishlist the game.[/h3]

To leave your feedback and get in touch with us directly, please join the community on our Discord server

Commanders, tune in to watch us play Survivor Mercs!

We are trying to survive in the demo while talking about how it came into existence, explaining some of the features, and giving an outlook on the features that are coming in the near future for the Early Access launch.

[h3]Lock, load, and loot, Commanders! Play our demo - now in English or German - and wishlist the game.[/h3]

To leave your feedback and get in touch with us directly, please join the community on our Discord server