Beef Cat Ultra News

Hello Beeflandians!

As we approach launch, a short few days away on September 23rd, we wanted to make sure everyone coming around knew Beef Cat Ultra is fully compatible with Steam Deck!

One of our main beta testers played the entire game, and has over 30 hours of playtime exclusively on the Steam Deck. Every step of the way, we made sure the game was ready to go Day 1 on Deck. And we also made sure to include Cloud Saves! So whether you are on your Deck or PC, your save file will be there for you to pick up.

We'll see you on launch,
Kyle :)

Howdy howdy,

I am going to re-kick off the showcases of simple things in Beef Cat Ultra as we approach our Launch Date of September 23rd! To start, I want to go over key UI changes and systems we added as a direct result of Steam Next Fest.

First, let's take a look at what you see when you first load in.



Nice chunky text. The bold pink lettering is a key communicator of information. Whether it's the world you are in, the character you unlocked, or the single word objective of the stage you selected.



After that fades away you are met with the main Overworld UI. A level description, a checklist for clears with each character and something new! High Scores! In every single stage, a specific stat is saved to show off how cool you are. These high scores are important for achievement hunters because there are 30+ achievements dedicated to defeating developer high scores in each stage.

On the left side of the screen you can see some icons with button presses. Let's check out the big bad Beeflandopedia.



This dozen-page information treasure trove includes everything you'd ever need to know about the power ups you find, the characters you play as, and the enemies you destroy. There's plenty of into to digest in here and it's invaluable for that one item you keep finding and can't figure out what it's doing.

So yeah, lil brief tour of some UI. See you next time!

Kyle

The release date and time is set for September 23rd, early in the morning EST.

With the release officially one month away, I figured it would be a good time to start going over some of the cool things you will be doing in Beef Cat Ultra. From the outset, the goal of development was variety, and I believe we managed to deliver.

At launch, there will be 8 different modes, or objective types, spread across 32 stages and 4 worlds. These modes include the classic Survive - a take on the Survivors style gameplay that is most recognizable for this kind of game, and also Volleyball - a 1v1 brawl to spike volleyballs into your opponent. You'll traverse linear stages for keys in Gauntlet, and explore open ended spaces in Collect. Take on a swarm of specific enemies with a limited loadout in Horde, and take on fearsome baddies with even more limited kits in Boss stages. Stages are designed to last 5-10 minutes for a single play.

The mode that has received the most love in the late-stage of development is Endless. These gargantuan hand-crafted arenas task you with surviving a whopping 20 minutes for a "clear" but the difficulty continues to scale well beyond that point. Traversing the map and pickup up damage buffs in the only way to survive a difficulty curve that increases the health and speed of the ever-increasing size of the spawning hordes of enemies. At launch, there will be 4 Endless Stages. These are grand stages, comprising the land-space of every other stage in the World the Endless Stage is set in - with extra areas sprinkled on top.

Every single stage will track the clears for all 6 characters, encouraging the checklist enthusiasts out there. Challenge enthusiasts will be happy to hear that we logged one of the developers high scores for every single stage - and we made a Steam Achievement for every single stage which requires you to beat his high score. But don't stop there. After launch, we will host on Steam, official challenges to compete for the highest of high scores in a particular stage - just for personal glory.

The Original Soundtrack will be made available for sale on September 23rd as well - clocking in at 1hr and 9mins worth of cool chiptune rock. A discounted bundled option of the game and the soundtrack together will be available the same day.

We have a lot of work to do this last month to ensure the most polished release possible but we are super proud at what we were able to accomplish and can't wait for everyone to play the final release! Until then, the demo is available to download if you want to check it out! Help us in the algorithm and give us a wishlist too if you are feeling kind!

Thanks,
Kyle

All of us here at Team Beef Cat are absolutely stoked to be in the last legs of our journey with Beef Cat Ultra. So stoked that we've set a date - September 23rd - as the day Beeflandia is available to the public.

Next Fest was an amazing event for us to take part in and we obviously loved hearing all the great feedback people had. We are confident that BCU is a highly polished, highly entertaining title. The feedback from Next Fest led to some huge upgrades to the game as well!

Most people struggled to find the Beeflandopedia - the book of lore and stats - so it's easier to find now. A simple button press from a simple UI prompt anywhere on the World Map! Neat!

Some people thought leveling up could get a bit stale - so we added the Sticker system which adds an extra layer of RNG on top of our Paper Mario style level up screens. You still choose from 1 of 3 character specific level up options - but now they can be adorned with stickers that further grow a slew of stats each match.

We added high scores that are recorded and can be chased for every single stage. These will be bolstered by Steam Achievements for beating a developer score on every single stage. Adding another level of replayability for those more competitively inclined.

We added two local multiplayer modes - Volleyball and Deathmatch. No, there will not be local co-op of the main game of BCU but these simple, bite sized party style games will whet the whistle of folks looking to beat their friend at BCU.

And we finalized the Soundtrack album art, which will also release on September 23rd. I'll show that at the bottom of the post.

As for the other bullet points? I'll do an in depth dive on each one in the coming weeks to show off the several layers of added depth we've heaped onto the BCU experience!

Thanks everyone for following along, we will see you on September 23rd!!
Kyle

I had some redonk technical issues that meant I missed 45 minutes of my special Next Fest stream. Steam was kind enough to give me another shot - thank you! I will be streaming the Demo endgame, doing some endless stage and varied character stages. It'll be a fun time. Tonight. At 9 PM!