Skillshot City News

This version introduces a new progression system called "Battle Royale Challenges". There are 60 challenges to complete, starting off easy and becoming increasingly difficult as you progress through them. When you complete a challenge you'll discover a new item, such as a weapon or skill, which can be used in-game. Players are now rewarded for pulling off ridiculous stunts and impressive feats of skills. If you actually manage to knife 3 people while falling from the sky, you're gonna get rewarded for it dammit!


One cool feature about this new challenge system is that it changes how players discover and unlock items. Previously items would randomly spawn in the map and all a player had to do to was just pick them up. That's rather uninteresting and unsatisfying. Now however, certain items can ONLY be discovered if you complete the appropriate challenge. This gives a sense of exclusivity to certain items. If you want to use the Flamethrower you will need to complete the "Plasma Strike" challenge to unlock it. This is a nice way to show off to other players how much you've achieved.




This challenge system gives players a sense of purpose and progression while playing the new Battle Royale mode. It effectively adds dozens of hours of singleplayer content for those who wish to complete all the challenges. It also gives you something to do when fighting against bots. The challenges are fun to complete and require a lot of creative thinking, and now you'll have something to show for our efforts. Your challenge progression is also shown in-game to other players, so you can show off how much you've accomplished.


In other news, I've played around with the lighting engine to make the game look significantly brighter, cleaner and more colourful. There are also more particle effects and the Battle Royale circle is now blue in daytime maps to make it easier to see. Check it out!




Based on feedback over the past 2 months I've continued to refine the new Battle Royale mode, tweaking drop rates, bot behaviour, and the cash system. One significant change is the new focus on buying your own items, relying less on random loot drops and more on smart cash management. Items have been made cheaper and cash drops have increased to make this possible, and I think it should make the game play a lot more strategic.




You may notice that Geneshift now has a "Complete Edition DLC". This is in preparation for the full release sometime next year, but for now doesn't really change anything. Everyone who previously owned Geneshift gets this DLC for free. Anyone who buys the game during the sale this week also gets the DLC for free. Right now it's simply a way to separate the Battle Royale from the rest of the game.


Geneshift is on sale for 30% off right now. Get it while it's hot! Anyway, enjoy the new challenges, please leave feedback in the Discord, and have fun!

Everything is better with a friend. Just one ally is all you need to get that magical splash of teamwork - and that is exactly what this new version does! This version introduces a new server type for Battle Royals called "Duos", where you play with a friend in a 2v2v2v2v2. First team to 30 points wins!

I added this after noticing that friends were playing together in FFA and purposefully not killing eachother. Up until they were the final 2, that is, then they had to stab eachother in the back. Now however you can share a victory condition and truly have your buddies back.

You will share vision with eachother, see eachother's chemicals, and can heal eachother too. The game will automatically pair human players together, but you can choose a specific ally in-game by holding ALT. If you pair up with a bot you can even control them by pinging into the map!




The barrier that protected you when you held CTRL has been removed and replaced with the Self Repair healing skill. That is to say, holding CTRL will now heal you instead of merely reducing incoming damage! Because of this change I have reworked and replaced a few skills that depended on the old barrier mechanic.

This is a pretty big change and might make a few skills unbalanced.. but it's a necessary fix that makes the game more elegant and easier to play. One less key to remember, right? This is the benefit of getting new players into the game and listening to their feedback - they point out glaring issues that had gone unnoticed by me this whole time.


I've also done a bunch of polishing based on feedback on the new Battle Royale mode. You can now pick up loot while driving a car. Bots are signifcantly smarter, including hunting as a pack in the new Duos mode. I've removed any Pay2Win restrictions on demo users, making for a fair playing field. You can now increase the amount of phase shifts with the new light shifting skill. Lots of fun!




In general, it's been a pretty good 2 weeks for Geneshift since Battle Royale was launched. We've had articles written on Rock Paper Shotgun, PC Gamer, and a 33k upvoted post on reddit!

New players seem to really enjoy the Battle Royale mode, and with their valuable feedback this version really polishes everything up. I'm now ready to get start emailing streamers and youtubers and reach a wider audience. Stay tuned!

This is the biggest version of Geneshift yet and plays like a whole new game! This new mode has all the usual features of a Battle Royale: orbital drops, looting, a shrinking circle of death, and last man standing. But there are a few unique twists on the BR genre too. The main one being that each round is only two minutes long!


Check out this brand new trailer showing off some of the cool new features in this mode, including orbital drops, looting and a sexy, orange, shrinking circle of death.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iaVP1udAiVk


In this Battle Royale each round only lasts two minutes. You spawn in the air, fly to a safe location, and begin looting for weapons, skills, health kits and more. The circle is constantly closing in, creating a sense of urgency and pushing you towards the big show-down in the centre.

Two minutes worked best in our testing. It gives you just enough time to loot, but not so much that you feel like you're in a walking simulator. The winner of each round gets +10 points (and +1 point per kill) and the first player to 50 points wins.




Another twist is that when you die you don't get kicked back into the menu lobby. How boring! Instead, you respawn as a zombie with only 30hp and a melee attack. If you actually manage to kill a remaining player, you will respawn as a human and be back in with a chance to win the round!

Being a zombie also makes you unaffected by the circle of death. This means you can loot for rare skills, chemicals, and cash in areas that are unsafe for humans to travel. You have something productive to do while the round is going on, and can set yourself up to do better in future rounds.




This mode completely changes Geneshift because of looting, and it actually makes the game FAR more accessible for new players. Geneshift has always had a complexity problem. With over 30 skills to read, new players were overwhelmed with too much choice and information.

This new looting system solves this by restricted access to items. You can only unlock a skill after you have discovered it, which means that you learn how to play the game GRADUALLY. This also gives a great sense of progression, where you get excited to discover a new item and see what new skill you've unlocked.


Another thing I love about this mode is that it's able to use the massive GTA2-like maps from the campaign. If you've only played the multiplayer, you'll really enjoy running around these massive new maps. The vehicles and chemicals play great on them and really give a big open-world, survival experience.

Talking of vehicles and chemicals, it's really interesting to see how they behave with these new BR mechanics. Vehicles are a great way to escape the circle if you get trapped while looting. They'll provide just enough speed and protection to get you to safety. Meanwhile, chemicals like Warp Field give you the ability to teleport to the single, central buy zone. This lets you spend your cash on ammo and prepare for the final showdown.




This is the mode that Geneshift shall be known for. It's so much easier for new players and streamers to get into the game without being overwhelmed. So now that this is out I'm officially shifting gears into 100% marketing mode. We're going to start having a lot of streams and players, and I couldn't be more excited! A big thanks to everyone who has helped develop this mode in the Discord. Now it's time to play!

Alright internet, you win. Geneshift is hopping on the BR bandwagon and I'm pumped!



The reason I'm making this mode is because of this gif, and this 5800 upvoted reddit post. I spent an afternoon chucking together this mock-up Battle Royale circle to see how it would play, then posted it on reddit. The response was overwhelmingly positive with hundreds of people saying I should make it and they'd buy it. So let's do it!


I'm still working out the details in the Discord and this Steam forum post. But here's what we have so far. The game will consist of multiple rounds. You get +1 point for a kill, +10 points for being the last man standing. First player to 100 points wins.


Each new round will start with you falling from the sky at a random location in the map. You'll be armed with nothing but your knife, and will have to loot for unlocks. You'll loot for ammo, weapons, health kits, cash, phasers, skills, vehicles, experience points and more. All the unlocks in the campaign basically. You run around, looking for the best weapons possible, and leveling up your mutant with skills and extra phase shifts.


Eventually you come across an enemy. You shoot, you kill. You come across another enemy, and this time you die. Unlike in PUBG, you actually get to respawn, but you'll come back as a zombie only capable of melee attacks. If you manage to kill a real human you get a second chance at life.


Each round will only last about 2 minutes, with the circle rapidly shrinking. We will be playing on the maps from the campaign, because they are bigger and have a lot more space to hide and explore. Imagine playing on a huge map like this. True GTA2 style!




One reason why I'm so keen to make this mode is because it's an opportunity to remake Geneshift's multiplayer in a far simpler way. I love me some Conquest mode but it is admittedly quite overwhelming. The buy menu, the skills menu, there's over 80 things you can unlock. New players and streamers get confused. This new mode however will remove the buy menu and the skill menu. You have to loot for items one by one, meaning you can learn as you go. This new mode should make a great first impression for new players, and hopefully will be fun to watch youtubers play as well.


Thought I'd quickly mention that Geneshift is currently 30% off. Now that the campaign is done and I'm adding all this new content I might bump the price up to $15 soon, so now would be a cheap time to grab the game.

Anyway I hope to get this new version out within a month, so stay tuned!

All hail our robot overlords! This is perhaps the biggest version of Geneshift ever released. Why? Because multiplayer just became playable! Fancy that.. making a game that you can actually PLAY. Crazy! Previously if you joined an empty server there was nothing to do except run around a bit and shoot at boring, dumb gangsters. There was no challenge, no objective, no game. But just like in real life, AI has come to save the day.

These new bots are designed to play just like real players. They'll drive cars, level skills, place chemicals, capture objectives, and even shit-talk you. They're smart, use teamwork, and will give you a real challenge. It honestly feels like playing a regular PvP game. Half the time you won't even notice you're playing against a cold, heartless, silicon-fearing robot. They play a hell of a lot better than your average human, that's for sure.




Bots replace the old gangsters, and are meant to act and play just like real players. You can configure how many of them will play in the server. As real humans join and leave the server, the bots will disappear and reappear to replace them. This way you can ensure there is always a perfectly full and balanced 10 player game running at all times.

Bots play like humans and also follow the exact same rules as humans. They earn cash in the same way that humans do, and must manage their money to save up for super weapons and chemicals. They deal and take the same amount of damage as real players, with no hidden modifiers.

They also do not cheat. They can't see through walls. They won't try to neturalize your chemicals unless they actually SAW you place the chemical. I've even simulated a hazy sort of memory that fades over time. I've really tried to make them play as similar to real humans as possible.




Bots adjust their level of difficulty to make for a fun game. The skill of a bot is mostly determined by reaction time and accuracy. Their accuracy will go up and down depending on how well their opponent is playing. They have a target K:D ratio that they want to maintain, and this ensures that every game is a fun, healthy challenge.

A brand new player to the game can fight the bots and they'll naturally go easy on him. A veteran can fight bots and they'll 720 Tony Hawk Pro Skater no-scope him as soon as things start getting too easy. In general when fighting against bots alone you should end up with a K:D ratio around 2:1 or so.

Keep in mind that even though your K:D vs bots is guaranteed to be good, you are still going to be challenged. You might be getting more kills, but your allied bots will play worse to compensate. You get to carry your team somewhat, but with great power comes great responsibility. You'll genuinely have to fight to beat the enemy team from capturing the objectives. And of course you'll still have to fight other players.




In other news, I've made a number of sexy graphical improvements this version. I've added atmospherics like light rays and floating bits of dust that give the game a real 3D effect. Firing guns is far more satisfying with sexy new particle effects, debris, blood and muzzle smoke. Bullets now glow and look extra chunky too.


I've also copied a bunch of features from the campaign across to the PvP modes. The kill combo system from the campaign now also applies when fighting against bots/humans and awards you a bit of extra cash for getting combo kills. Awesome points also occur in multiplayer now, and give you +50xp as well as +2 phasers for the rest of your life. You'll occassionally get a free hp/mana drop when killing enemies too. And also killing an enemy with a chemical now causes the same chemical explosion effect as seen in the campaign.


A beautiful side benefit of bots is that we can really playtest the game now. In our latest test build we discovered that Bionic Gas, Lasing Orb and Self Repair were OP af. So they have been nerfed with the power of a thousand keystrokes (or at least like.. 20). Self Repair now auto disables once you reach max health too. And a few more tweaks that I can't remember.




The only thing more fun to fight than these new smart bots is actual players. And now that this version is out I am officially switching gears into 100% marketing mode. The campaign is done, the PvP is finally playable, and it's time to spread the word.

So stay tuned over the next few weeks as I start emailing youtubers, posting memes on le reddit and finding other ways to get players into this game. If you want to invite your friends to play the free multiplayer in the demo, now would be a great time!

Have fun and please give me feedback here or in Discord: https://discordapp.com/invite/geneshift