Survivor Mercs News

Commanders, the playtest is now live!

Join us this weekend up until Tuesday to test the upcoming "Pathfinder" update (0.9.13) for Survivor Mercs.

Please join our community Discord server to participate - it is the best way for us to engage with you and discuss details and feedback!



Once you have the access code from Discord and have Survivor Mercs in your library, follow this guide to switch to our "playtest" beta branch in Steam:

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3365937333

⚠️ IMPORTANT NOTE ⚠️
Your savegames are stored with different file names for the playtest version. Your existing savegames are NOT modified, but you will also start with a fresh game!


We are running this playtest to get your feedback on two major changes. Please read on for more details and how you can use the "cheats menu" in the playtest version (F1 key) to make faster progress:



[h2]NEW "STAGED" MAPS & OPS[/h2]
We mentioned with the last updates that we are planning a major structural change for how you play Operations (runs) in the game.

Instead of one full 20-minute-run, your Operations are now separated into multiple stages, each with different challenge configurations. The final stage in each Operation will be the Final Boss Fight.

At the moment, we have 4 different challenge types and a multitude of different enemy configurations for each one:

• Time Attack - reinforce your squad, get some loot, and collect some XP; but beware, you only have 3 minutes until an artillery barrage is nuking you! Conduit is marking an Extraction Point after ~1 minute to get you out before it's too late.
  
• Onslaught - kill a specified amount of enemies before the Extraction Point appears. You technically have all the time in the world for this, but this challenge deserves its name.
  
• Elite Encounter - the mini-bosses have their own challenge stage now. Make sure you are prepared to defeat it because Conduit cannot get you out before you are victorious.
  
• Boss Fight - the final stage in each Operation is the boss fight you're most likely already familiar with
  

After each Stage, your Danger Level increases. This will trigger Complications, random modifiers that will influence your run.

Please note that we only have implemented a few "dummy complications" for now. We will introduce more fun and complex complications, and are planning to add "advantages" you can get as a reward from certain challenge stages.

You can extract for good after you beat a certain number of stages. This "tactical retreat" will save you and your squad together with all your loot. This is basically what your Extraction used to be.

If you want to abort the operation earlier, you can always do so, but you will lose everything apart from a handful of Blood Diamonds and DNA.

Everything about the Extraction is still WIP, e.g. you will see the old menus and may also get some stats and numbers that are off. We are currently still re-working these menus into the new HUD/UI-style.

Every time you finish a stage, you will return to the map stages overview. Now you can spend your "skill points" (level-ups) to upgrade your squad. You can no longer pick upgrades during your run!

We are planning to replace the random rolls with a system where you can directly spend your "skill points" on your Mercs, Weapons, Gear, and generic upgrades. We want to reduce randomness in upgrades to let you make better squad-build decisions, In turn, we aim to bring more variety in challenges & operations, especially with more challenge types.

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⚠️ IMPORTANT NOTE ⚠️
The current maps are not 100% reflecting the progression and balancing we want to achieve.

Instead, we tried to provide different configurations with each map, so you can test different run configurations and lengths.

If you want to progress quicker and unlock the maps & ops fast, use the cheats menu (F1) in your run, go to "commander", and make yourself invincible, heal yourself, or extract for the current stage immediately (not the whole run).

You can also use the cheats menu in the bunker, go to "meta", and treat yourself to some resources to build rooms, buy new stuff, or research traits.

⚠️ Don't mess up your Steam Achievements!⚠️
Read about the cheats menu below and use it with CAUTION!
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[h2]NEW HUD & UI[/h2]
The second big thing we want to test with you is the new HUD.

You will notice that most of the UI & HUD during your runs has changed drastically. The goal is to not only make the UI more beautiful - it should also become more readable, easy to understand, and provide better focus on the action and support fast, tactical decisions.

This new UI style is also in parts coming to the bunker. But the bunker and all its sub-menus are still using the "old" UI. And you will see that some screens, particularly popups and the end-of-run screens, are also still using the old style.

Please let us know how you like the new style direction and how you rate it in regards to usability and clarity.

The new HUD & UI elements will receive further polishing and are still pretty much WIP. We want to understand how well it works for you before we rework everything and only then learn that we overlooked something important.

For additional context: the bunker menus will stay somewhat solid and skeumorphic, meaning they try to mimic actual displays, physical controls, or displays. The in-game UI is meant to look more like a holographic overlay. Since you and your Mercs are remote-controlling clones in battle, imagine you're jacking into a retro-VR-arcade-machine to steer your clone from a satellite view.

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⚠️ CHEAT MENU DANGER ZONE ⚠️

If you don't want to unlock everything regularly, open the "cheats menu" (F1 key) in the bunker menu, go to the "missions" tab, and unlock the individual maps & operations, or Mercs, Gear, and Traits.

[color]⚠️ WARNING ⚠️ - DO NOT "UNLOCK EVERYTHING"[/color]

If you do this, you MAY OVERWRITE YOUR STEAM ACHIEVEMENTS!!
We currently DO NOT have a reliable safeguard in place and you may end up unlocking all Steam Achievements by accident.

USE THE CHEATS AT YOUR OWN RISK!

We cannot stress this enough!

The playtest is meant for feedback on the new HUD & Operations. Many of the other things are still pretty much the same as in the current live version.
If you mess up your achievements with the cheats, we likely cannot fix this!
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[h2]YOUR FEEDBACK MATTERS[/h2]
This is the first public playtest we're running like this. Please let us know anything you like and dislike, and report any bugs or issues you encounter.

We have dedicated channels on our Discord server to discuss with you and really understand your feedback to make better design decisions.

There will be more playtests like this, ideally before every major update. So hopefully you will enjoy it and we can not only run even better playtests in the future, but also improve our updates even more!

Lock, load, and playtest, Commanders!

Commanders, you're invited to join our first (extended) Playtest Weekend!

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The upcoming Major Early Access Update #7 "Pathfinder" is bringing a big change to the game - the new Maps & Ops system!

Work-in-progress Screenshot

We're breaking the current 20-minute-runs down into multiple stages to bring more variety to the maps and improve the overall experience by separating the frantic action and the more tactical squad-building.

Alongside this major systems rework, we also introduce the first part of our UI overhaul with a facelift for the in-game HUD and some menus.


[color]We want to hear your feedback on these changes![/color]


[h3]WHEN[/h3]
The Playtest will be running this weekend from Nov 15 (Friday) until Nov 19 (Tuesday).

[h3]HOW TO JOIN[/h3]
Please join our community Discord server and grab the "Playtester" role to get access to the beta branch on Steam.



[h3]FAQ[/h3]
Q: I am a Playtester on Discord, how can I play the game now?
A: We will share a guide that explains how to switch the game to the "playtest" beta branch in your Steam Library (and back to normal).

Q: What happens to my savegame when I join the playtest?
A: We are storing the playtest savegame in a different folder. The playtest starts with a fresh savegame, your existing savegame will NOT be modified! You can manually copy over your existing savegame to the playtest (and vice-versa), but beware that this can potentially corrupt them, so do it only AT YOUR OWN RISK!

Q: Is there a way to speed up my progress during the playtest?
A: We are enabling the cheat menu for the playtest version. It allows you to try different things without having to play through the game at regular speed.

Please, be mindful that using the cheat menu can cause issues and bugs. We want to primarily get your feedback on the regular game and balancing, so please DO NOT use the cheat menu initially.

Q: What happens after the playtest?
A: We are going to deactivate the playtest beta branch after the event is over on Tuesday, Nov 15. Your game will automatically switch to the current live version.

Q: Will there be more playtests in the future?
A: Yes. We want to do these more regularly over the rest of the Early Access period. You will hear of upcoming playtests here and on our Discord server.

Q: Will there be bugs?
A: Yes. And some areas will be work-in-progress, we're trying to mark these.

Q: Can I play in my language?
A: If it's EN or DE, totally. The other languages will only contain translations for the existing text, any new features may only show up in EN as "fallback language".

But we're happy to take your feedback for existing translations and, in general, for texts you find misleading or ambiguous. We're already preparing the Community Translations Project which will allow you to directly suggest translation improvements.

Q: I have feedback and want to share it with you, but how?
A: That's awesome, we're happy to hear from you. Please leave the feedback in the Playtest channels on our Discord server. We chose Discord specifically because we can have a conversation with you and other playtesters directly, ask questions, and easily share files like savegames or screenshots if we encounter bugs.

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We are looking forward to having many of you join the playtest and share your feedback with us!

Commanders, we're truly grateful for your detailed bug reports on a troubling issue in our latest major Early Access update 0.9.12 "Storytime".

You weren't able to unlock Commander Weapons because the room building was broken if you tried to build a room that in turn would unlock a new weapon. Although the rooms appeared under certain conditions like building a new empty room slot, the unlocks weren't correctly registered.

This was a tricky thing to fix but thanks to your detailed reports, we found the issue much quicker than otherwise. Thanks you, Commanders!

Apart from getting the weapon unlocks & room building to work again, we also fixed a layouting issue with Mammoth who was covering part of the dialogue text.

Currently known issues we are investigating and working on:

• You can still equip "no weapon" by canceling out of the weapon selection window/list. This will be fixed in a future patch with a dedicated "unarmed" option for your Commander.
  
• Trying to capture the Extraction Point at just the right "wrong" time can get you stuck in the current run with only an option to abort the operation or restart the game. We're work on a fix for this with high priority.
  
• There may be a new way to get PhenX to glitch out of his arena (after we fixed others before).
  
• The game's performance can potentially degrade heavily when playing at very high screen resolutions (UHD+), please lower the resolution to a maximum of 1440p if you encounter this. We are still trying to find the root cause of this problem.
  
• Menus may sometimes scroll erratically when the game falsely selects a UI element at the top or bottom, e.g. in the Bunker menu or the Awards room (anywhere you have scrolling lists). We already identified the root cause within the automatic input device detection and fixed some cases of that, but few occasions remain erratic.
  
• The distortion effect from black holes can erase various markers around explosive barrels and mines, making it hard to spot them in certain circumstances.
  
• In certain situations, you can already substantially damage a boss between its spawn cutscene and the dialogue popup.
  

As always, join our Discord or post to the Steam forums if you encounter any issues or want to leave some feedback!



Lock, load, and loot, Commanders!

In honor of our first story quests being implemented into Survivor Mercs, we want to hear your best Commander Comebacks in a good ol fashioned Smacktalk Smackdown! What would YOU say as winning dialogue to our salty post apocalyptic bosses? There’s nothing quite like vicious mockery, so join us Commanders and let’s tell that M.E.G.A corps to choke on our dust.

Post your Commander’s Comeback to the Survivor Mercs Community Events Forum in the Wandering Wizard Discord and use the tag “Commander Comeback” to participate!

Submission Rules:

• Post your Commander Comeback to the Survivor Mercs Community Events Forum in the Wandering Wizard Discord
• Be sure to tag the post “Commander Comeback”
• React to other submissions to support your fellow Commanders
  
• One submission per user
  

Commanders, meet the bosses in this smaller-yet-major Early Access update!

Update 0.9.12, codename "Storytime", primarily lays the groundwork for the next major update. BUT it also introduces the lore of Survivor Mercs and why you fight M.E.G.A. Corp.

Meet the Bosses of the different subsidiaries, uncover their secret to eternal life, and feel twice the joy when crushing their ridiculous robot monstrosities in battle!

The various improvements under the hood show up, for example, in a more streamlined menu flow to start the battle and unlock conditions (read: mission preparations) for the Commander Weapons.

And, of course, it's Spooky Season, so we're back with some Halloween-themed content. Make sure to check that you have "seasonal content" enabled in the Settings.



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[h2][color]⚠ SAVEGAME NOTICE ⚠[/color][/h2]

This update adds various dialogues and new unlocks to the game. If you continue playing with an existing savegame, you are potentially not experiencing all of the new content.

We built a better system for the "savegame reset" prompt when starting the game for the first time after an update. Now you will only see the warning if your savegame is from version 0.9.10 or earlier.

We still recommend and offer you to reset your savegame in the Settings menu.

If you do reset, you will start fresh and a backup of your last savegame is created in your local game folder.

You can find a guide on how to restore savegames from older game versions here: How to access & restore savegame backups (Steam Forums)
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Let's get into the details of Update 0.9.12 "Storytime":


[h2]It's Storytime![/h2]

M.E.G.A. Corp. - Maximize efficiency, globalize anything.

This is your target, Commanders. M.E.G.A. Corp. operates with multiple subsidiaries all around the globe. Intel identified three primary branches:

1. GLXY Inc. building a massive spaceport in the desert - CEO codename "PhenX"
   
2. Fraxxoil Inc. drilling for oil in the arctic - CEO codename "OilRig"
   
3. aniXss Inc. operating a giant waste plant - CEO codename "GrfitLift"
   

Destroy the facilities and any projects you find. Prepare for heavy resistance. M.E.G.A. Corp. mass-produces various robot and cyborg security forces to protect its premises.

Your assistant, "Conduit", is a skilled helicopter pilot. She will drop you into battle and supply reinforcements upon request. If things go sideways, she can extract you and your squad from battle.

Hire mercenaries to aid you in your fight. You have access to prototype technology that let's you and your Mercs control clone replicants. A research facility allows you to decode more genome sequences to configure more versatile clones for yourself.

Make sure to loot anything you find on your operations. Your outfit needs to procure supplies from the black market, and upgrades to your bunker HQ require different components you may only find in the enemies' facilities.

We only have incomplete intel on the inner workings at M.E.G.A. Corp. Rumor has it that the bosses found ways to "upload" their personality and memories into some sort of networked cloud computing system to create digital twins for infinite replicants.

Good luck out there! Let's give the power back to the people.


[h2]Meet the Bosses[/h2]
Your fight against M.E.G.A. Corp. is now framed by story missions featuring the bosses of the subsidiaries you're attacking.



This update lays the groundwork with a first set of introductory missions and lore pieces. You will meet the bosses who pilot the machines you're facing at the end of every Operation.

These missions & dialogues are only the very start. More will follow with the next update(s), introducing also the Mercs and framing the action around additional maps and new operation types. Our goal is to tie most of the progression & unlocks into missions with some light narrative framing, revealing more lore and character background as we approach the v1.0 launch of the game.

While this update focuses on the current bosses, here's an additional glimpse at the coming Merc character illustrations:

A PERSONAL NOTE:
Last month, our lead artist, Felix, left the team to finally pursue his passion to become a school teacher. This didn't come as a surprise, and we remain friends and wish him all the best - he's going to be a great teacher and mentor!

Unfortunately, finding an adequate successor took longer than intended, but we're super happy to welcome Allan into our team.

He is now shaping the future look of our character illustrations and general art direction.

The new illustrations you're now seeing in the game are not fully polished yet. But we wanted to make sure you meet the Survivor Mercs cast how we and Allan are envisioning them. So expect not only more but also improved illustrations with every future update.

[h2]Improved Menu Flow & Ops Menu[/h2]
Along with the introduction of the M.E.G.A. Corp. subsidiaries and bosses, we started revamping the menu flow in preparation for the next major update.



You will now follow a more streamlined process to head into battle:

1. Configure and select your Commander clone.
   
2. Pick your destination and Operation type.
   
3. Start the operation.
   

The map & operations menu offers more details and narrative flavor, including some info about the corporate target, boss, and minibosses.

With the next update, these menus will evolve further. We'll introduce a whole new structure for the maps & operations with multiple stages, The stages will add much more variety to each run, including dedicated mission objectives, and separate the action and tactical squad building to improve the general game flow and experience.


[h2]Unlockable Weapons[/h2]
With update 0.9.11 "Arsenal" your Commander clones received weapons to grant you more control over your squad and enable new tactics. In this update, you'll start with the Leafblower and SMG as default weapons. The other weapons are unlocked by expanding your bunker.

(can you guess that weapon?)

Your weapons are now listed in the Armory. This change is also serving as foundation for the upcoming update(s). We are planning to introduce new weapons you can unlock via missions. So, currently we're overhauling our underlying engine systems for missions & weapon configurations to allow for more complex synergies and squad-building tactics with more versatile Merc skills and Gear items.


[h2]Community Translations[/h2]
When we introduced the new languages with the last major update, we considered them a work-in-progess without final proof-reading. You, Commanders, know the game better than any translator. So, we want to invite you to support us by directly improving the translations.

We are going to offer the translation files publicly as part of a Community Translations Project.

You gain exclusive access to that project via our Discord server to improve translations or even add completely new languages to the game. In turn you will receive exclusive benefits, e.g. access to playtest versions and a direct channel to our dev team.

We'll sharing more details on Discord soon - let us know if you would be interested in participating!


[h2]More Additions, Fixes, Adjustments, Improvements & Details[/h2]

• New multi-speaker dialogues for bosses and Conduit.
  
• Savegame Reset warning popup no longer appears with every major update if your last version is fully compatible.
  
• Maps no longer need to be purchased but are automatically available once you unlock them.
  
• Fixed resolution and rendering of various UI elements for better legibility and fidelity.
  
• Fixed a hidden stat with Spark that caused him to become too strong, firing much faster and further than intended.
  
• Various minor balancing adjustments to Critter, Hail, Chemtrail, Reaper, Scorch & Shredder.
  
• Fixed various incorrect icons around Commander Weapons.
  
• Changed various environmental assets to 3D objects.
  
• Various fixes to enemy and object spawning code to prevent errors.
  
• Fixed various typos in EN & DE.
  

[h2]Known Issues[/h2]

• The game's performance can potentially degrade heavily when playing at very high screen resolutions (UHD+), please lower the resolution to a maximum of 1440p if you encounter this. We are still trying to find the root cause of this problem.
  
• Menus may sometimes scroll erratically when the game falsely selects a UI element at the top or bottom, e.g. in the Bunker menu or the Awards room (anywhere you have scrolling lists). We already identified the root cause within the automatic input device detection and fixed some cases of that, but few occasions remain erratic.
  
• Automatic input recognition is still causing some nuisance with the mouse cursor sometimes interfering with controller input and vice-versa.
  

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[h2]What's Next? - Upcoming Playtest[/h2]
[color]Commanders, we call for your support![/color]

The next update is introducing some massive features to the game. Although we trust our game dev guts, your experience is what matters the most!

We want to gather your feedback on the new map & operations stage structure, major UI improvements, and the new weapons system and squad-build options - before fully releasing that update.

Here's a mockup of the ingame HUD as an example of what we're working on:



So we will be running a Community Playtest very soon to gather your thoughts on the new features.

To participate in the playtest, please join our Discord server and follow the information there (when it becomes available) to request access. You need to own the game to participate. The playtest will be time-limited and if it works, we'll look into running more such pre-release playtests in the future.

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[h2]Moving Forward[/h2]
"Storytime" marks our 6th major Early Access update for Survivor Mercs.

There is much more to come in the next two months and early 2025, so "Follow" the game to be notified when the next Early Access Roadmap Update drops Soon™.

Our plans for the next updates include:

⏩ more emergent synergies and squad-build options between Commander, Weapons, Mercs, and Gear, specifically:

• additional proc effects, e.g. things that happen when combining different status effects
  
• adjustments to dashes, projectiles, or attacks to behave differently
  

⏩ Map & Operations overhaul to provide more varied challenges, new Objectives, and better tactical and strategic squad-building

⏩ a visual overhaul to improve UI, readability of the action, and immersion in the game, including high-fidelity illustrations for more characters

⏩ more Story Missions framing your operations and fight against the M.E.G.A. Corp. goons and highlight the Mercs' personalities.

⏩ better performance and settings for input mapping and other accessibility options.

And, of course, we're getting closer to adding new maps & bosses, enemies, Mercs, and other content.
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Commanders, we are really grateful for every one of you who is supporting us with input and feedback during Early Access.

[color]Please don't forget that the game is still under development. All your feedback helps us make a better game and iron out some of the remaining rough edges, imbalance, and bugs![/color]

We hope this update gets you as excited as we are for the future. We are dedicated to listening to you and building Survivor Mercs into an outstanding game. Please, help us grow the community with a positive review and get involved in the development by participating in our community projects, and sharing your feedback, insights, and ideas on our Discord server (or the game's Steam forums).




Let's continue making a great game, together ❤

Lock, load, and loot, Commanders!