Last Train Outta' Wormtown News

Howdy!

Patch Notes:

Reworked Worm Mouth Escape Mini-Game:
- The old spinning/timing escape mini game was a big friction point for some players (and it wasn't very fun, I'll admit). So I'm excited to announce a complete rework! The new mini game requires you to hit a series of directional and jump inputs in a row, slowly filling the escape meter. Missing an input will lose progress on the escape meter, so both accuracy and speed are important.
Design insight: The new mini game is *MUCH* more fun and feels more like you're frantically trying to escape, instead of the slower pace of the previous game.

Changes to Damage and Healing:
- Pardners now take 10% of their current health when they get grabbed by the Worm. **The health loss per second during the mini game has been reduced to counteract this.** It can be frustrating for the Worm to grab an experienced Pardner, and have them escape super quick, so this should guarantee a small amount of damage, while still incentivizing quick escapes.
Note: This is 10% current health. At 100 health, you'll take 10 damage. At 10 health, you'll take 1 damage etc. I still want there to be dramatic last second escapes, so it made sense to do it this way.

- The rate at which the Worm auto heals underground has been slightly reduced, but you now gain a burst of health when entering a new healing ring. This hopefully will further incentivize not focusing the Pardner that escaped your mouth. (or at least give them a few more seconds to recover)

- The underground Worm healing rings have been increased in size. Again, to incentivize Worms moving further away after a Pardner escapes.

Changes to Worm Visibility and Physics:
- The Worm can now push and move physics objects. This was always the case for host Worm, but due to how the physics are handled, it wasn't affecting client Worms. This should stop Pardners barricading themselves inside train or trapping the Worm behind a mass of physics objects.
Note: You can move objects by simply pushing up against them, or you can move them further by pouncing into them.

- The Worm now reveals props that are *very* close to them (basically touching them). This DOES NOT affect Pardners, only props - so standing still on the sand is still a vital strategy. This also means any prop you pounce and hit will instantly be revealed, instead of having to wait for it to hit the sand again. Note: any prop revealed this way will hide itself after a few seconds.

- Large props (crates, beds, tables, ladders - anything you hold above your head) that are on the sand will now always be visible to the Worm. Again, this is only for when they're touching the sand, and will be hidden if on a rock or train etc.
Design insight: There's been frustrations with Worms pouncing and being redirected by a invisible objects they can't see. This gets especially frustrating when lots of large objects are piled next to each other. This change should help with a handful of frustration points as Worm, while still keeping the "guessing game" of where Pardners are intact. Note: For anyone wanting a "lore" reason for this, anything heavy enough presses into the sand and the Worm is able to *sense* it. It's the same reason they can see houses, trains, rocks, etc. See! It makes sense, I promise!

Misc Changes:
- Added 5 minute intervals to the Sundown Timer match settings. It goes from 5 minutes - 40 minutes, with the additional "Never", if you don't want to play with it at all. Note: Sundown Timer is now 25 minutes by default (was 20).

As always, thanks for playing Wormtown! Feel free to leave any feedback here or in the Discord.

*tips novelty-sized cowboy hat*

Howdy!

This update brings a handful of new mechanics and reworks to the game, as well as engine and netcode updates to fix some lingering issues.

Sunset:
Pardners not gettin’ a move on? The sun slowly sets in Wormtown now. Once nightfalls, the Worm’s scream will detect Pardners globally, as well as having their ability cooldown reduced.

Design insight: One of the biggest issues I’ve seen lately is Pardners not having a time constraint, which can lead to very slow and passive playstyles. I wanted a way to incentivize the Pardners’ completing their tasks quickly, without it being a strict “the game is over when the clock hits zero” kind of timer. This is the first iteration of this mechanic, so expect changes based on player feedback! Note: Time until Sundown can be set in the match settings. (10 min/ 20 min/ 30 min)

New Worm healing mechanic:
When being injured as the Worm, you’ll heal automatically over time, but you’ll heal faster the further you get from the place you took damage. The 3 purple rings on the ground below you will show the different healing speed regions. Simple move outward from where you burrowed to heal faster. You’ll also see a number of arrows on the filling health bar to indicate which region/how fast you’re healing. This description may sound confusing, but it’s fairly easy to grasp once you see it for the first time in game!

Design insight: First off, the collecting orb mechanic wasn’t great. It was far too random to accomplish what it was intended for. Which is, to guarantee time for an escaping Pardner to get to some sort of safety before the Worm resurfaces. The randomness of the orbs meant a Worm could easily resurface a second later or 10 seconds later. This new variant guarantees a minimum time before the Worm can resurface, while still giving some strategic planning for the Worm while underground. It also disincentivizes “tunneling” or focusing on one player, which can be frustrating for Pardners.

Changes to Train Cars:
Both the main train’s caboose and the blocker trains have now been redesigned so they aren’t 100% safe. The back door of the caboose (not an innuendo…) cannot be entered by the Worm, but the front and side doors have been widened, allowing room for a Worm to dive inside. The blocker trains front and back entrances have been removed, allowing Worms to dive completely through, and their side entrances have also been widened.

Design insight: Standing inside the train was supposed to be a brief respite from the chaos, but many Pardners would simply camp inside the train, waiting for the Worm to move… while the Worm would be waiting for the Pardners to leave the train… it’s a complete stalemate. These changes, as well as the Sunset mechanic, are to aggressively target these boring stalemate situations and keep the games moving. Note: If the Worm dives inside the caboose, it can take a few seconds to wiggle their way back out, so use this time to run from the train!

Camera fixes:
- Removed mouse acceleration. Moving the camera should feel much more responsive and accurate now.
- Fixed the over the shoulder camera being the jankiest thing on the planet. No more wiggly camera!

Engine and Netcode updates:
I updated to new engine and netcode versions, which will help with general stability and rare networking issues. For a small number of players, they were unable to join, host, or even play the tutorial. This should resolve that issue!

Smaller Changes and bug fixes:
- Added additional cleanup of burned objects. This should hopefully fix the late-game lag issues.
- The “failed to join server” pop up will now give you a reason why you couldn’t join.
- Fixed an issue where occasionally the Worm could see floating backpacks on hidden Pardners.

I hope you enjoy this patch! There’s a handful of new changes, so as always, you can post your feedback below or in the Discord.

I’m still working on a large content update featuring more Worm abilities and special Pardner equipment. So stay tuned for that!

Cya in Wormtown, Pardner.
- Vyv

Howdy! This is a small update fixing a few pesky bugs and some balancing/gameplay changes.


Gameplay Changes:
- Dynamite now spawns every 90 seconds. (Previously was 60 seconds)
- Climbing too high on the outer walls of the map will now tank your grip strength, forcing you to fall faster.
- You can no longer eat Cactus Fruits while at full health.
- Cactus Fruits now spawn a flat amount. (Previously, it was based on the number of Pardners in the match)
- Tweaked the values for the "Hard" worm escape mini-game. (It's slightly easier now)
- You no longer see your own sand particles as a Worm, which was occasionally obscuring vision.
- Added a version handler, which will make sure people on different builds won't accidentally connect to each other.

Bug Fixes;
- The "anti-tunneling" mechanic with the Worm escape mini game is working again. (Accidentally goofed it last patch, my b!)
- Fixed a rare issue where multiple levels were being generated and over-layed on top of each other.
- Fixed a Worm only visual bug in multi-worm games. (no more invisible Worms!)

As always, feel free to leave any feedback below or in the Discord!

Howdy!

The last two weeks have been crazy! We've seen waves of new players in Wormtown, many hoping to easily find public games together. Unfortunately, Quickplay was just... not a very good solution to this. So I'm excited to announce:

The Lobby Browser is now in game!
When hosting a game, you will see a button in the top left corner that can make the lobby public, allowing it to appear on the lobby browser for people to join. If you want to play with your friends + fill with random players, simply invite your friends and once they're in, make the lobby public.
If you're looking to join a public lobby, you'll find the lobby browser in the "Play" menu where Quickplay used to be.

Note: The lobby browser is not available in the Friend's Pass. If you're looking to try out the game before you buy, you can head over to the Discord, which usually has privately hosted games going!


Another benefit of the huge influx of new players is you all found a bunch of bugs for me to fix! (I'm very tired lol) This patch will hopefully alleviate most of the issues connecting to lobbies - and at least will give you an error pop up explaining why it's happening if not. Most importantly, it shouldn't soft lock your game on the "joining game" screen forever.

Additional lobby features:
- Added the ability to kick players from your lobby as the host.
- Fixed a bug where more than 8 players were able to join a lobby. (While this might sound like a good thing, it caused all sorts of unintended behavior/issues. I've heard feedback about allowing lobbies with more than 8 players, and I'm open to that in the future)
- Added a setting in the options menu for the speed of the map generator. This will hopefully solve crashing issues when the map is building for some players.

Gameplay related bugs/Changes:
- Dynamite now spawns a few at the start of a match, but will then spawn 1 additional dynamite every 60 seconds. This is regardless of how many are currently active on the map. (no more softlocks!)
- Fixed an issue in multi-worm games where other worms could eat your health orbs, trapping you underground.
- Fixed collision on the train "caboose" so the Worm can't dive inside and get stuck.


Now that the lobby browser is in game, I can get back to work on the large gameplay content patch that will feature new Worm abilities and special Pardner equipment items. So keep your eyes on future announcements about that!

As always, feel free to leave feedback either here or in the Discord and thanks so much for the overwhelming support for the game!
Stay safe out there, Pardner! :D
- Vyv

Howdy!

TL:DR - The lobby browser feature is being fast tracked.

The last few days have been crazy! We've seen a huge influx of new players to Wormtown and I wanted to say THANK YOU for checking out the game!
With that huge spike in player count, the planned lobby browser feature (which was planned for sometime this Autumn) feels like a top priority now. I'll be fast tracking the lobby browser and releasing it ASAP. (I'm hoping by the weekend, but I can't make any promises!)


When designing Wormtown, I knew it would be very difficult as a small indie game to maintain player counts needed to keep a matchmaking queue active. So I focused more on making the game a "party" game, and making it as easy as possible to play with your friends (like the friends pass!). I knew there would still be people who would want to hop into public games though, and added the quickplay feature to the game, but in it's current state... Quickplay is just bad.

The quickplay service splits players by region (which is a good thing for ping & lag!), but also doesn't give necessary information to the players waiting in a quickplay lobby - like how many other players are looking for quickplay games etc. It's just not accomplishing it's purpose in the game, which is connecting people together *quickly* for games. So, I've heard your concerns about Quickplay and agree! It will be replaced entirely by the new lobby browser, which will display any open lobbies, player counts and latency to the server.

Thanks again for all the positive feedback on this silly little game of mine
Stay safe out there, Pardner!