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Boss Rewards Update

Hello folks,

I've released yet another patch, but this time a meaty one. This one has a little bit of new content, namely the new boss rewards. Next week, we'll get a content update as I'm already almost done with it. Just playtesting right now to balance some stuff.

Let's get into today's update.

[h3]Boss Rewards[/h3]
After beating a boss round, you'll be able to pick one of 4 random perks:



These perks are for increasing your base stats: damage, max shots, max health or money.
On higher level bosses, you get better chances for high tier perks.
In the future, the 4th perk will serve as the utility or fast-track perk and will have perks which don't buff your stats but instead which increase risk and reward for the following rounds.

[h3]Minor Balancing[/h3]
Although I intend to do major rebalancing soon, I've still adjusted things in this update. Namely, the kind of stuff that tends to instakill you without you realizing or just create an impenetrable wall to break in terms of difficulty.

[h4]Wheel Spins[/h4]
You now have 2 weapon wheel spins on each round finish at the start of the game. Makes weapons easier to obtain in the early game.

[h4]Necromancer Rework[/h4]
The purple necromancer enemies that resurrect all other enemies that die in their range will no longer ressurect them at full health, but rather at the remaining health they had when they died.

It seemed kind of unfair to have them fully heal the enemies at resurrection.

In addition, they now have a small 0.5 second cooldown on their resurrection. They can resurrect multiple enemies at once, but after each batch, they'll take some time to recast their spell. This makes it possible to kill groups of necromancers even with weak weapons, provided you time your shots right. This would've been harder to do without a debuff (like stun or necro block) or a big damage explosion that kills the entire group completely.

Finally, I think I've solved the necromancer infinite cloning crashes. These would occur when you'd partially destroy a group of huddled necromancers. The remaining group would resurrect the other half multiple times (say if you kill 5 necros out of 10, the other 5 will resurrect the 5 that died, leaving you with 25 new necromancers to kil in addition to the 5 that stayed alive).

That would easily cause crashes, but not anymore! From now on, resurrected necromancers will be weaker (with smaller range). This still keeps them fun, but no longer leads to infinite loops of cloning.

Look at the video below to see the difference:
[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]

[h4]Spiker Instakills[/h4]
Spiker enemies will now only deal 1 damage to you, but still full damage to the enemies with their spikes. Should prevent frustrating instakills. Also, since you now start with 5 health, makes it even easier.

[h4]Spike Balls[/h4]
Spike balls used to inherit the damage of the last thing that hit them, so if you hit a spike ball with a powerful weapon and it hit you, you'd take your own damage! Dumb design decision.

Now the spike balls only deal 1 damage to the player at all times and deal 1/4 of the enemy's remaining health when it hits them. This way they actually become useful so that you can chop off a large portion of a boss' health by placing a smart shot.

This is all explained in the updated how to play section in the game.

[h3]Expanded 'How To Play'[/h3]
Some enemies have weird ways of behaving, so instead of having to risk death multiple times to probe the enemies just to learn what they do, you can read their descriptions in the how to play screen. Should remove some frustration. I've also added details about other mechanics which were missing.





[h3]Better Mouse and Camera Controls[/h3]
The mouse controls kept bugging me, they felt a bit janky, so I've reworked them.
Now you'll be able to aim even from outside the arena, unless you're hovering an UI element.

This also allows for better peeking and camera controls in bigger arenas. Here's a sneak peek at the hexagon arena I'm currently working on:


You can look around further by holding down shift or ctrl or middle mouse button while moving the mouse.

[h3]More to come![/h3]
That's it for now.
I can't wait to get the new arenas and challenges into everyone's hands.
Oh and new cannons too, hopefully all will be done by the end of this month.

Cheers!

- Niko

------------------------------------------------
[h3]Changelog for v1.0.1[/h3]
  • Clearing a boss round now grants you rewards. Pick a perk from one of 4.
  • Spike balls only deal 1 damage to the player and deal 1/4 of remaining health to enemies.
  • Enemy Spikers only deal 1 damage to you.
  • Necromancers now resurrect enemies with the remaining health they had at death, not their full health.
  • Necromancers also now have a small 0.5 second cooldown before they can resurrect another group of enemies. This makes them less frustrating to fight.
  • You start with 5 health.
  • You can no longer farm your own summons infinitely for money.
  • Added a section on enemies in 'How To Play'.
  • Added a separate shop section in 'How To Play' and expanded the general section with more details.
  • Decreased enemy health a bit.
  • Get 2 weapon wheel spins per arena clear.
  • Some wording for a few mods/perks improved
  • Game autosaves even when the window is closed manually..
  • Fixed rendering glitches at non-standard window sizes. No more cutoff.
  • Crash fix: final bout mod would crash the game when it activated. Thanks Tato for the report!.
  • Bug fix: leaper enemies sometimes would ignore collisions with grenades and bouncy balls.
  • Bug fix: exploders no longer deal only 1 damage when hit during explosion. Should deal the correct amount from now on.
  • Fixed some bugs with counting money at the end of the round.

Patch v1.0b

Hello Glass Cannon enjoyers,

I'm coming at you with another small update.

[h3]Enemy Health Scaling[/h3]
I'm reading your feedback - game's too difficult indeed.
After I add the new areas and challenges, I'll definitely tone down the absolute difficulty of the base game.

I'll also tune the enemy health scaling to be exponential as opposed to linear all across the board. Right now, the earlygame is hard and the lategame becomes easy. This is because the players' strength scales exponentially. Once you get a few combos going, they play off of each other combinatorically which scales it even faster and you start to outpace enemies really quickly, usually towards round 19 or so. Unless you get cocky, surviving round 19 basically means you'll win round 24 too, even though at round 24 the average enemy health is like 8 points higher than at round 19.

When you have no combos, you're relying on the base weapons and stats, which scale slower than the enemies, so the early-mid game becomes hard to bypass. The healths here should be lower so you actually get a chance to get to the part of the game where even weak earlygame combos get a chance to start popping off.

[h3]Boss Rewards[/h3]
Another thing I'll add is stat boosts after boss battles: pick between 4 stats when you beat a boss round. Health, damage, max shots or money. This will further make the first 10 rounds more engaging.

[h3]Changelog[/h3]
  • Increased the drop date of the max health perk by 5%. I'll turn it back once I add the flat stat boost on boss clears.
  • Adjusted the enemy health a bit. Will be changed to the scaling described above in the next update once I test it well.
  • Bug fix: unlocks showing they're available even though they're not added to the game yet.
  • Crash fix: lots of summoned zealots exploding all together would sometimes crash the game. Same for other exploding entities.
  • Crash fix: summoned brawlers getting cleaved by the cleaver mod and then them attacking enemies would crash the game.


Thanks to Edible Banana, NTripleOne and CageTheGnome for the bug reports.

Keep the feedback and bug reports coming, helps make the game better for everyone.

Cheers!

- Niko

Patch v1.0a

Hello folks,

Just a small patch with hotfixes. I'll probably push out many more of these as players come in and discover new bugs. Let's squash them all!

[h2]Changelog[/h2]
- fixed a crash caused by a summoned brawler (which was resurrected by an enemy necromancer) attacking an enemy. Thank you Tato and CageTheGnome for the report!
- fixed some more potential bugs around summoned brawlers.
- fixed potential crashes around summoned zealots and wizards when resurrected by necromancers.
- improved crash errors, which should make them easier to track down by me.

Make sure to send any crashes or bugs to my email (nikaoto at gmail dot com) or on Discord.

[h2]Also...[/h2]
I'm looking at everyone's feedback and reviews and I take all of them into consideration. I want Glass Cannon to be a challenging game, but not too difficult. I've gotten some feedback that the game may be a bit too hard, so if enough people think it's too frustrating in that regard, I'd be willing to bend the balancing so the game can be as engaging as possible. So, leave your feedback in our Discord, my email or in the reviews and I'll definitely read them all.

Cheers!

- Niko

Glass Cannon is my next indie obsession, a chill turn-based shoot-em-up roguelike with wild weapon combos

I cannot stop myself clicking play on Glass Cannon, it's a properly great and unique shoot 'em up experience that twists the genre in a fun way that's too easy to get obsessed with.

Read the full article here: https://www.gamingonlinux.com/2025/05/glass-cannon-is-my-next-indie-obsession-a-chill-turn-based-shoot-em-up-roguelike-with-wild-weapon-combos/

Glass Cannon is out now!

Hello everyone,

I'm happy to announce that the full version of Glass Cannon is now available on Steam!

After much work, the game is ready to play.

[h3]Future Plans[/h3]
I have a few updates already planned for the game and you'll be able to see a few things in the game now that allude to the extra content.

As discussed previously, the extra stuff will be new maps, different cannons and interesting challenges. All unlockable by progressing through the game.

Even if only 50 people play the game like it happened with the beta, I'll still make the update because I believe it'll be a really interesting exploration of mechanics - I think I can do something novel with what I already have.

The extra content will give me a way to set guidelines for players who are not experimentative on their own. These unlocks will provide restrictions and force you to experiment and play with the game's systems, which should make the experience much more enjoyable.

Also, I've not done as much playtesting with the new cannons, so I don't want to rush them out just for content's sake.

All of the updates should come gradually in the next 3 months, including...

[h3]Achievements[/h3]
Of course, no roguelike is complete without them. I don't want to rush them either, as I want them to all be meaningful. I've kind of put them on the sidelines in my previous games, so this time I'll really try to make them interesting. Expect them in the coming months as well.

[h3]Discord[/h3]
In the meantime, enjoy the game and the hundreds of builds it has to offer!
And join the discord to share those builds with the community: https://discord.gg/cJu4SVVtDx

Cheers!
- Niko