Athena Crisis News

Community Map of the Week: First Puzzle

Our first Community Map of the Week is First Puzzle from Flak! Not every community-made map in Athena Crisis is meant for PVP fights: some of them are intended to give your brain a bit of exercise by requiring you to beat them in one turn, or use the mechanics of the game in unique ways to solve a puzzle. The aptly-named “First Puzzle” map is one example!

In this devious puzzle map, you have one turn to defeat all of the enemy units on the map. You are not allowed to use skills! This is a test of anyone’s combat acuity as you will need to perform your actions in a specific order to achieve victory.

Give First Puzzle a try right here! (If the link doesn't work for you, try selecting New Game from the main menu and use the Search function to find First Puzzle.) If any of the enemy units are still standing at the end of your turn, you lose! You can always try again with the Undo Turn button, though.

If you’re stumped, try revealing these hints one at a time:

1. You can pick off four enemy units by using only four of your units to attack them.

2. After that, one enemy unit will require two of your units to attack it to destroy it, and one enemy unit will require three of your units to finish it off.

If those don't help, here is the full solution:

Fighter destroys Sea Patrol from the west.
Anti-Air destroys X-Fighter from the west.
Heavy Artillery destroys the APU.
Cannon destroys Infantry unit.
North Copter and Rocket Launcher destroy Small Tank.
The three remaining units destroy the Anti-Air

Monthly Update: Meet The Zombie!

Meet Gharf! As the leader of the Zombie faction in Athena Crisis, some call him The Dead Honcho, the Brain Gourmand, Gharf…Esquire?!? If you need someone bitten, infected, or just plain eaten, Gharf is your…thing.

It’s not just about conspicuous consumption, though: Gharf has trained its troops to be *extremely* effective on the battlefield. They are persuasive fellows, capable of infecting anything they touch and turning them to the zombie’s side with a single attack. We’re not just talking infantry units, either: these zombies can turn *anything* they hit into a friend, whether it’s the lowliest Pioneer or a Mammoth tank trundling down its rails. The targeted unit will take damage from the Zombie’s attack, and will also manage to use the last shreds of their sanity to counterattack the Zombie (if capable of doing so), but after that, you will now have a slightly dinged-up new unit to use on your next turn. Needless to say, if you can convert your enemy’s most expensive units to your side, you’ll both negate a large resource expenditure of theirs, and also hopefully use your new toy to turn the tide of battle.

But wait, there’s more: Zombies are capable of all of the battlefield actions that the Pioneer units are, meaning they can construct new buildings at construction sites, Capture buildings, build rail tracks, and Rescue neutral units that they come across. They’re *mostly* about eating brains, but don’t think that that’s all they have to offer.

(Thanks to Legend on the Athena Crisis Discord server for naming Gharf!)

[h2]August Updates[/h2]

[h3]Beta Campaign Now Available![/h3]

If you missed it earlier this month, the entirety of the main campaign of Athena Crisis is available in Beta form! You can find it by going to Campaigns, then Official Campaigns at the bottom of that screen, then selecting The Athena Crisis - Beta. We’re still working on balancing changes to the campaign to ensure that it is both fair and challenging, so if you play, please drop by the Campaign channel on [the official Athena Crisis Discord] to give us your thoughts!

[h3]New[/h3]

Based on a random reddit comment suggesting to change the water color for the desert we brightened up the water colors for the desert, and darkened them for the snow biome. This should give both of those biomes a more distinctive look.
Added an explanation for how many units need to be defeated to achieve the Power star.
Spaceship biomes now have a building that corresponds to Barracks so you don't have to rely only on the HQ/Command Center on those maps.
`no-skills` and `no-fog-change` labels: Add these labels to a map, and players won't be able to select skills or change the fog setting when creating a new game. The `no-skills` tag also works for campaigns. This should be very useful for puzzle maps.
A “Try Again” button has been added when giving up or losing in a PvE map.

[h3]Balancing[/h3]

The Maximum Sniper skill was changed to only apply to the current leader unit. The passive power is still applied to all snipers.
Increased Anti Air defense from 15 to 30, increased Anti Air attack against Low Altitude by 10, and increased Sea Patrol attack against Amphibious and Ships by 10 each. Without skills, an Anti Air will now beat a Helicopter that attacks the AA first.
Low Altitude units can now enter Space in the Spaceship biome. It makes no sense, but is more fun to play.
Increased charges for "Bazoo's Bond" from 3 to 6.

[h3]Fixes[/h3]

Action Cards in the editor were showing units that had "self", "team" or "opponent" colors as neutral.
Moved the button to show the opponent's attack radius from `shift` to `a`.
Medbays can now be placed in the Spaceship biome in the editor.
Gaps between multiple skill selectors were fixed in the player selector on the pending game page.
Fixed an issue with Research Labs showing through fog in the game preview on the user profile.
Units that are not allowed in a specific biome no longer show up in the unit or tile cards.
The game no longer applies poisong twice when reloading a map with poisoned units at the begin of a turn.
App Scaling: The Athena Crisis app should now automatically scale the game much better on 4k+ screens with a low device pixel ratio. No change is expected on small screens or on screens with a high device pixel ratio (often referred to as "Retina Displays").
Fixed a bug where selecting a map in local mode with a gamepad would navigate to the main menu instead of the create game screen.
My Games Menu Button: The "My Games" menu button should now correctly show up both in the main menu and in the overlay menu if you only have local games or if you only have finished games. The logic for the button in both places was aligned, cc
*@CoconutTank**.
My Games list: The "Finished" button in the header now also shows up if you only have local finished games.
Snow Biome: Fixed a small pixel bug with single Rail Track fields that were broken in the recent water color update.
Sandbags: Sandbag decorations were recently limited to trenches only, but there are many existing maps with sandbags on plain fields. The change was reverted and sandbags can be placed on many regular fields again.

The Athena Crisis Campaign is now available!

The full campaign currently features 34 unique maps with many rewards and unlocks. Please keep campaign spoilers out of all the public channels. If you add your Discord username in the game's Account Settings menu, you'll be added to the private channel for campaign feedback. We are looking forward to hearing from you how you like the maps and units that you'll discover in the Athena Crisis, and what you think of the story. There is also a unique unlock for beating the campaign! You can find the new campaign in the official campaign list: https://app.athenacrisis.com/campaigns

Now that the Athena Crisis campaign launched, the rift in the Prequel Campaign closed again and there is currently no crossover to the main campaign. The Prequel Campaign now features the original 10 maps again.

Features:

New: Campaign Map Replay Upon finishing a campaign ("100% completion), you'll be able to replay any map in any order.
New: Unlocked biomes now show up on user profiles as part of the total completion percentage.
New: Sneaky Sabotage Skill: Arvid and his Saboteur squad now finally receive a fitting skill! Charge the power of the Sneaky Sabotage skill and for one round anything that a Saboteur touches gets converted to that faction.

Balancing:
The Super APU skill now also unlocks the Super APU unit.

Fixes:
Fixed various bugs related to the game info panel and a map's challenges.
Fixed an issue with alignment between boxes on the Main menu that's been bothering me.

Athena Crisis now Steam Deck Verified, full release with single-player campaign in September

Athena Crisis is a modern retro turn-based strategy game inspired by Advance Wars, and not only is now Steam Deck Verified but they've announced the full release is coming soon.

Read the full article here: https://www.gamingonlinux.com/2024/07/athena-crisis-now-steam-deck-verified-full-release-with-single-player-campaign-in-september

Monthly Update: Dion The Dinosaur

[h2]Monthly Update: Dion The Dinosaur[/h2]

There are girls who are clever, and then there are…clever girls. The Dinosaur unit in Athena Crisis has mysterious origins - perhaps one of the many universes connected to yours simply never saw the fall of the dinosaurs, and they’ve been roaming their planet for millions of years, just waiting for the walls between worlds to weaken, freeing them to seek new, tastier prey. Whatever event spurred their arrival, they’re here, and you’re going to have a tough time asking them to return home.

As a secret unit, you’ll most often find the Dinosaur roaming the jungles and plains of Athena Crisis, free of allegiances to any side or faction, simply aiming to disrupt the best-laid plans of commanders everywhere (and snack on your infantry units). As you might expect, the Dinosaur brings to bear its mighty Bite attack on opposing units: at full strength this will generally be enough to defeat any unit it’s capable of attacking, which includes most infantry and armored units. Its tough skin makes it difficult to take down without suffering fearsome counterattacks, but if you have a Flamethrower in the area, one spray of fire should result in some tasty BBQ back at HQ after the mission.

[h2]Athena Crisis Is Now Steam Deck Verified[/h2]

Our friends at Valve have issued a full Steam Deck verification for Athena Crisis, meaning that you’ll have the same wonderful experience on your Steam Deck when you play Athena Crisis as you would on your PC or Mac. You can try it today, and please let us know on the official Discord if you have any issues.

[h2]Coming Soon: Athena Crisis Merch![/h2]

That’s right, you will soon be able to show your Athena Crisis pride with a variety of t-shirts at the Null Store. Featuring some of our fabulous in-game art, these fine wool-spun t-shirts will surely make you the envy of your peers at your next game night. Keep an eye on the Athena Crisis Community Hub on Steam for more details as they get closer to production.

[h2]New Features And Updates[/h2]

[h3]Per-Map Player Achievements[/h3]
You can now rank yourself on each of the Prequel Campaign maps! You’ll earn stars in four different categories after each map.
Pace: How many rounds it takes to win.
Power: The ratio between destroyed and lost units. A 10:1 ratio is best.
Style: An adaptive goal that might be different depending on the map, like for example capturing a certain amount of buildings, how many units a player can lose or how many "one shots" a player did, ie. defeating a unit with full health in one attack
Bonus: Whether an optional objective was achieved or not.
You can review your Stars progress on your profile page, and you can also build Star rewards into your own campaigns using the map editor. There’s even automated suggestions for each metric that goes into the Star rating if you want to let the computer handle the decision-making.

[h3]New Additions[/h3]

Many new skills were added to unlock special units such as the Alien, Bazooka Bear, Acid Bomber and Super Tank.
We added many new decorations so you can design maps that are even prettier.

[h3]Improved Gamepad Support[/h3]
You can now use a gamepad or controller on the main menu, portrait selector, and when typing out a character name. If you’re interested in playing with a controller, check out the updated button mapping here:

[h3]
Status Effects[/h3]
Units in Athena Crisis are now capable of afflicting status effects on their opponents. The Alien's poisonous bite will wear down a unit's health over time; unless you heal the unit, it will continue taking damage every turn until it collapses. Other units may earn the ability to deal status effect damage in the future, where appropriate.

[h3]Balance Changes[/h3]
A number of balance changes were implemented based on player feedback, including:

Alien attacks will deal less outright damage (to account for the new status effect indicated above).
Zombies and a number of other special units can now attack low-flying aircraft. (Zombies can also now take over enemy units with a unit ability called “Convert.”) Aim for the stars, Mr. Zombie!
The AI will now build fewer Jeeps and Support Ships. They’ll still build some, but they shouldn’t flood their supply lines with easy-to-destroy units anymore.
The AI will now also hold onto their Skill activations until it makes more sense to use them: earlier in turns, and when more units will be affected by the Skill.