Sweet Surrender News

Dear Beta Testers, we just pushed out a new beta with a whole bunch of improvements and bug fixes, thanks to all your feedback (Quest/Rift #1429, Steam #1428). This update has gotten kind of massive.

A full list of changes since the last beta are below, but I would draw your attention to the new graphics sliders, the new reset/unstuck functionality and the boss, which, for the first time in 3 years has seen a little love and attention. It's overall gameplay balancing has noticeably changed and we'd love feedback.

• New Bloom Intensity and Effects Intensity sliders. Bloom Intensity controls the baseline "static" bloom strength. Effects Intensity adjusts the visual 'strength' of explosions and any other animated or dynamic effects.
  
• Player is now reset if they fall out of the map. This should hopefully fix a large source of frustrations.
  
• New "Unstuck" button in pause menu, which will reset you to the start of the level
  
• Improved chip and weapon tool tips in homebase
  
• Extra visual indicator for undiscovered chips
  
• Increased Render Scale to 1.35 on default settings for Quest 2
  
• Boss fight improved by fixing broken attack phases, improving visuals contrast and various smaller visual improvements
  
• New Holster Settings Menu, unifying previously disparate options. Minor cleanups of other smaller inconsistencies. Does anyone use the horizontal offset setting?
  
• Adjusted shotgun behavior to allow pumping if secondary hand trigger is held. Try it out, it feels quite nice
  
• Improved the description of various weapons
  
• Adjusted blaster chip explosions (less harsh now)
  
• Adjusted revolver muzzle flash to avoid blocking sight lines
  
• Improved readability of holo map with bloom active
  
• Toned down glow of class hands
  
• Balanced bloom on several environment assets
  
• Performance improvements of certain rooms
  

• Bloom no longer offsets to the right on SteamVR
  
• Fixed list of chips in home base
  
• Security bots no longer run out of ammo with certain weapons after one magazine (Grenade Launcher, Burst Handgun, Heavy Submachine Gun)
  
• Fixed error when destroying an EMP'd turret
  
• Fixed some chips (Speed Boost II/III, Overload, Overheating) not spawning in levels and unlocking properly when picked up
  
• Fixed interaction of Blaster Chip with other chips that change bullet types (Firepower, Heavy Ammo, Acid, Mobile Malware)
  
• Fixed already defeated (and exploded) turrets "respawning" inactive when revisiting a room
  
• bHaptics suit works again
  
• Hopefully fixed a possible crash for some users that may have been due to bluetooth permission
  
• Fixed a number of null reference exception errors that had adverse side effects
  

Let us know what you think. Share with your friend

Thank you,
The Salmi Games team

We’re excited to share the next update to Sweet Surrender. You can try it right now in the Beta Branch (instructions below).

This update includes a full-fledged visual overhaul (with incredible results), long-requested improvements to the early game, a reworked weapon recoil system and a whole bunch of quality of life bug fixes.


We’ve unlocked incredible visual improvements thanks to the addition of bloom and HDR tone mapping.



These new visuals are available on PC, Quest 3 and even Quest 2! How we’ve managed to pull off such effects even under such constraints as the Quest 2, well, that’s a topic for another post. For now we just want to share the results.



We’ve been going over the game’s visuals top to bottom to make sure we’re using these new effects to the best of our ability. In particular, we’ve touched up almost all the particle effects and material animations used in the game and added quite a few more. You will see improvements in the bullets, shot reactions, smoke effects, explosions, sparks, and in many more subtle places.



Honestly, you should just go try it. We think it’s such a huge leap forward, we’ve left the old visual mode in for comparison purposes.



You can toggle through the different options in the Graphics settings.




We’ve done a full pass on the recoil system of the weapons to implement a better feeling positional recoil. We’ve then re-tuned every weapon to make them feel extra juicy. Finally, we’ve done some slight adjustments to the recoil behavior of certain weapons to bring them better into balance with other weapon choices.



Jump into the improved tutorial to try some of the old/new recoils side-by-side.


You can access the latest build on the beta branch by following these instructions:
Steam - Right click on Sweet Surrender in your library, select properties > betas. Then select the “beta branch” from the list, then you should be good to go!

On PC, the new post-processing effects are on by default.


Do you like it? Please recommend the game to your friends.

Did you find some issues? Let us know! The most helpful way to give us feedback is in our Discord server.

We would love feedback on:

• Which Graphics settings did you try, which did you like?
  
• How do the visuals compare with and without post-processing enabled? (you can quickly toggle them on/off with the Y controller key in the Beta build). Do certain areas look better without the glow? Did you spot any areas that feel overly bright (or too dark)?
  
• What other settings would you like to be able to control (intensity)?
  
• Did the frame rate drop heavily? => please send us your logs
  

We’ve improved our bug reporting system, to make it easier for you to let us know about specific issues (framerate drops, broken AI. This sends us a log of your run (stripped of any identifiable data). Please reach out to us in our Discord server so we can look further into specific issues.




We’re primarily fixing bugs and iterating on visual assets. The more we touch, the more there is to improve. Incredibly, we are still discovering more ways to both optimize our assets and achieve greater visual results. So expect further visual improvements and adjustments as we finalize the update.

We’re also working on removing some of the early game frictions that players can experience.

Wanna see more updates? Please share the game with your VR friends.

Thank you,
The Salmi Games team

Hello everyone,

We're currently hosting a gameplay stream from Omnituens on our store page. Make sure to check them out at twitch.tv/omnituens.

Cheers,
Salmi Games

Hello everyone,

we're excited to release our Long-Term Progression Update where our focus was on giving you, the players, more long term motivation. We wanted to include a way to reward you for playing the game regularly.

In this update we introduce:

• Upgrades to the new Vending Station: invest the gears you can find in each level and unlock more vending machines, better loot and even discounts at later levels
  
• Improvements to the tutorial to make it easier for new players to start with the game
  
• Adjustments to the early-game balancing in the mines so that new players have it an easier difficulty ramp
  

[h2]Vending Station[/h2]
You all know the vending machines at the end of a level. Well, now you can make them even better by investing the gears you can collect during a run. Spend gears to unlock new levels for the vending station. With this, you can unlock more vending stations, better loot, discounts, items for free and you can also unlock the option to reroll the items available to buy.

[h2]Tutorial improvements[/h2]
We added visual indicators to many parts of the tutorial so that it’s easier for new players to follow it. Gears and Vending Machines are now explained in more detail.

[h2]Quality of Life[/h2]
But that's not everything we worked on. We continuously improve the game and do our best to fix any issues reported by the community. Aside from dozens of smaller improvements, we focused on the following topics:

• The amount of enemies that spawned in the first two levels of the mines was a bit irregular, it should be more consistent and easier for new players.
  
• We also fixed an issue where some players became invincible when they died because of the acid in the sewers.
  
• The chips on the left arm should now display their details properly.
  
• We fixed an issue where the Electrostatic Spear didn’t scale to its normal size when buying it from a vending machine.
  
• The leaderboards are now updating properly again. Unfortunately, we had to reset them to make this properly.
  

[h2]Thank You[/h2]
As we mentioned last time, we regularly run community polls and dev discussions with our Discord community. If you want to participate in future polls (and have a say in Sweet Surrender’s direction), get access to beta builds or just want to talk to us about the game, you can do so by joining our discord.

We are always happy about everyone who joins and are very thankful for your feedback and support.

You can also check out our public roadmap, where you can get a better look at all the updates we've already released and what we have planned for the future.

As always, thank you for your support!

Cheers,
Salmi Games

[h2]Full Patch Notes[/h2]

[h3]Improvements[/h3]

• Upgradeable vending station
  
• Unlock more vending machines
  
• Unlock the option to reroll all vending machines
  
• Unlock shop discounts for all future runs
  
• Update to the tutorial to make it easier to understand for new players
  
• Adjusted the amount of enemies at the beginning of the mines for a better start for new players
  

[h3]Bug Fixes[/h3]

• Fixed an issue where some players became invincible when they died because of the acid in the sewers
  
• Chips on the left arm should now be displayed properly
  
• Fixed an issue where the Electrostatic Spear didn’t scale to its normal size when buying it from a vending machine
  
• Fixed an issue where enemy robots got stuck in a level and stopped doing anything
  
• Players don't accidentally clip into the ground after beating the final boss anymore
  
• The console to summon enemies in the homebase isn't flickering anymore, it was also adjusted to fit the height of the player better
  
• The last upgrade on the vending station now shows properly what it gives the player
  
• Updated the ProTubeVR plugin which caused issues with disconnecting the provolver device
  

We're excited to announce a new udate for the melee update beta. Thanks to all the feedback and bugreports of our testers, we could identify and fix a lot of bugs and did some tweaks and changes to the melee weapons, so that melee combat feels better in general.

[h3]Changelist[/h3]

• Weapon Improvements
  
• Fixes to the progression of the Reaper (unlocks now progress more reliably)
  
• tweaked and added new sounds
  
• more particle effects
  
• improvements and fixes to existing rooms
  
• the Reaper now has own unique gloves
  

There are still some issues we are working on, but we still wanted to give you a more stable version with the updated weapons, so you can give us more feedback on them. If you encounter an issue, feel free to report even if you did report the same issue before already.

Thanks for your help in this and enjoy playing with the new melee weapons.

Play the beta of our upcoming melee update. We did various fixes and weapon improvements to make melee combat feel a lot better.

Cheers,
Salmi Games

Long Term Progression Update - Beta Preview 2

We're excited to announce a new update for the Long-Term Progression Update Beta. Thanks to all the bugreports we received, we could identify and fix a lot of bugs relating to all parts of the game.

[h3]Changelist[/h3]

• Fixed an issue where enemy robots got stuck in a level and stopped doing anything
  
• Players don't accidentally clip into the ground after beating the final boss anymore
  
• The console to summon enemies in the homebase isn't flickering anymore, it was also adjusted to fit the height of the player better
  
• The last upgrade on the vending station now shows properly what it gives the player
  
• Updated the ProTubeVR plugin which caused issues with disconnecting the provolver device
  

If any other issue occurs to you while testing, feel free to tell us about it.
We would also appreciate it to get more feedback about the vending stations and the upgrades.
Do the upgrades feel rewarding? Are the costs for an upgrade acceptable?

Thanks a lot for helping to test the game and make it better for the final release.

Cheers,
Salmi Games