Inside the Artifacts & Chill Update

https://youtu.be/ATIMuQlacVM

Every good game needs a snow map so we've created one for you. Sub-Zeroni was designed with a focus on streamlined mission flow, clear landmarks and freedom of exploration. To aid with navigation we've also added an ice rail track connecting the different zones. Sub-Zeroni has been added to the Random System queue so please check it out and let us know what you think.

[h2]Read the full patch notes here. Read on for an insider take from our devs about the biggest changes in this update. [/h2]




[h2]Ultimates Rework – The Return of Artifacts[/h2]

• Ultimate Abilities were part of our original design because SWAPMEAT originated as a co-operative hero shooter before we decided to lean into the roguelite genre and before we came up with the meat swapping mechanic
  
• We designed equipment, which is the loadout that you select at the bolt burger, to give player’s something to build around. In a game about always changing abilities, we couldn’t really make sense of Ultimates being part of your equipment. Why can’t you swap it out during the run? Why can’t it be more powerful? Why can’t you have special ones for a short period of time?
  
• Starting today, you’ll no longer have to choose your Ultimate at loadout selection. Instead, Mystery Meat Cubes will randomly drop when you defeat an enemy. We’re taking inspiration from Kart Racers, like Mario Kart, and when you interact with one of these Mystery Meat Cubes you’ll be granted a random Artifact Ability. That’s right, Ultimates are Artifacts again (shoutout to the real ones who’ve been here since Meat Lab testing).
  
• We’ve removed the Ultimate Terminal from the ship
  
• These will be added to the Employee Handbook (Codex) in the future
  
• Your Luck stat will play a part in determining how powerful of an Artifact that you randomly receive
  
• All Artifacts are single-use
  
• This change allows us to create abilities that we can’t put onto Meat, like a self-heal, which we’re also adding today – “Weird Injection” will heal the player 50HP on use
  

– Game Director, Jamie “OMG\_Stormbreaker” Stormbreaker



[h2]Time To Kill (TTK)[/h2]

We’ve made some changes to enemy spawners in the game to reduce the rate at which enemies spawn and in turn reduce the amount of enemies on screen.

#### Player feedback on difficulty

We found feedback from players that the game was too difficult and the difficulty curve too punishing. The team struggled to find ways to address this feedback while maintaining a rougelite identity. What we believe might help alleviate this issue is reducing the rate that enemies spawn so that that it doesn’t feel so overwhelming from the start. Enemies will continue to trickle in at objectives at a rate that we think makes the game more manageable.


#### Easing new players into the game

With the new spawn rates we believe the game will become easier to understand and interact with. Giving players more breathing room to understand objectives, enemies behaviors and meat abilities.


#### Allowing enemy design to shine

We found it difficult to create enemies with distinct behaviors and have them stand out amongst the masses. With so many enemies to deal with, it's tough to create a punishing attack without having it be unfair, with reduced enemies we hope that this will give us more design space to let enemy behaviors and personality shine.


#### TTK and gun/ability feel

We felt that there was some room to make gunplay more impactful. By reducing spikes in damage from abilities and adjusting some enemy health value we hope that weapon and abilities synergize better than before. Having less enemies on screen means we can increase health on some enemies so that gunplay feels meatier and gun identity can stand out a bit more.

Quick example: Wasp Health was increased.

In the previous iteration of the game on Standard difficulty a pistol and magnum both took 2 shots to kill a wasp.

With Wasp health increased it now takes 4 pistol shots to kill a wasp and magnum maintains 2 shots to kill.

The goal is that these weapons fulfill different roles. These effects were a result of only changing enemy health and not by changing weapon damage.


Spawndeck changes to increase enemy variety
Made some adjustments to the cost of some of our enemies and where they spawn from. This was to address some issues where you were seeing some enemies spawn more frequently than intended which reduced enemy variety. Some objectives now have a mix of spawners that will spawn easier enemies at a particular rate and another spawner will spawn tougher enemies at a slower cadence.

• An example of this change in variety is our spider egg events on casual difficulty. Wasps were spawning almost exclusively due to their low cost. Now spiders and wasps spawn at roughly the same rate which adds some texture to the fights so that you have to worry about ground and air enemies.
  
• Another example is our Alien Jars, we now have a particular larger alien jar that spawns tougher enemies at a slower rate while the smaller jars focus on spawning easier enemies at a lower rate.
  

It’s important to note that the goal isn’t necessarily to make the game easier. We still want to maintain our roguelite design ideas. But we do believe that the dense number of enemies players were encountering was difficult to manage and sometimes created a frustrating experience for players, particularly new ones.

We also didn’t add health to all enemies. In some cases we reduced health so that they felt less spongey.

There were also instances in events where we added enemies, this was to address some objectives that felt a bit too void of combat. We added an initial spawn to some objectives so that it also made the planet feel a tad more lived in.

– Animator and Designer, Brady “OMG\_Brady” Gutierrez


[h3]Read the Entire Patch Notes Here[/h3]