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Roboquest News

The Spring Update is HERE!

Hello everyone!

The Spring update (0.4.0) has landed!

As usual, we thank all the playtesters who helped us get this update as stable as it can be. We also thank the community translators who worked hard to get the translation ready for the release! Though, a few translations are missing some terms and fewer of them are “in pause” while we find new translators for them. The missing terms will be added over time and the missing translation will be added when we find new translators for them. We’re sorry for the inconvenience!

We also thank everyone for your patience and support during the making of this update, we know it has been a long time between our updates.

Finally, we’ve talked about resetting the basecamp and we heard your complaints about the fact that we didn’t plan to refund your wrenches. We decided to take some time to develop a system to retroactively calculate the wrenches you spent and you’ll be refunded approximately all Wrenches you spent in the basecamp!

PS: The playtest branch is now closed and unavailable.

Now, let us introduce the highlights of this update!

Patch Highlights

[h2]Class Rework[/h2]
All classes have been reworked to differentiate their playstyle more than before. Most classes are keeping the same abilities as before, but we focused on creating mechanics within each class to tie them up with each other or/and with the class perks.
[h2]Perk Rework[/h2]
As a result of the modification of classes, all perks have been either reworked or removed entirely and new perks are coming into play. We won’t be going over the details of each of these changes in the patch notes as they are too numerous. Rest assured that we took extra caution to keep the most beloved perks, those we all love picking and playing.
[h2]Weapon Changes[/h2]
We added up to 7 new weapons, among them are brand new weapons but also older weapons that were removed from the live version at some point (which some of our veteran players will surely remember). In addition, weapons have been rebalanced overall and we modified their progression system. Finally, most weapon affixes have been normalized and/or renamed and new affixes came into play to prepare the future of the weapon affix system.
[h2]Level Polish & Rework[/h2]
Several levels have received updates regarding environment, random variations, ceiling connectors, enemy placement, challenge flow, rail placement and some other more discrete changes. The changes were mostly aimed at increasing the quality of these levels by spreading the different systems and designs we’ve developed for the newer stages of the game.

The full breakdown of the changes is available below, in the patch notes.

Patch Notes 0.4.0

🍉 These changes were requested or suggested by the community
[h2]Gameplay[/h2]
🍉 Increased Cell duration to 8.5 seconds (up from 7.5)
• Cell duration is now modulated based on the difficulty level
• Difficulty levels and metrics have been modified and should be harder than before
• Your deployed minions' health now scale up with the difficulty level
• The Damage Bar (the red part of the healthbar) now fades faster the bigger it is
🍉 Light and medium enemy attacks no longer knockback the player, large attacks as well as most Bosses’ attacks still do
• To compensate for the lack of feedback when taking damage, we added an animation to the player’s arms when taking damage
• Shock, Burn Cryo mechanics have been updated:
    • You can no longer Shock an enemy which is currently Shocked
    • Cryo is now split into two effects: Chilled and Frozen, when hitting a target with Cryo damage, it is Chilled (slowed) and it fills up a gauge, when the gauge is full, the target is fully Frozen (and can no longer take any action for a short duration)
    • Burn effects are stronger, last longer and deal less damage on direct hits
• The Assault stat now increases melee attack damage instead of increasing movement speed
• The shield mechanic has been reworked and renamed ‘Armor’, the Armor loads over time and resets if you take damage, when full, the Armor is activated and the next damage you take is reduced and the Armor is reset
Developer’s Note: We iterated a lot on the regular Shield mechanic, in the sense of having extra hit points which can periodically be regenerated. But we felt like it was damaging to the rest of the health flow (the rate at which you lose and recover health) and we decided to find another way to implement a “defensive” system.
🍉 You can now shoot the Repair-o-Bot as a battle dummy, it’s just a temporary combat dummy before we find a better way to try out your weapon wherever it seems necessary (and enjoyable)!
• Fireball traps’ damage now scale up the further you progress in a run

[h2]Classes[/h2]
• All classes of the game have been reworked from a minor to a large extent
• The user interface displayed for each has been updated accordingly
• Many perks have been removed or modified to follow the new classes’ rules, changes are too numerous and large that we won’t be covering them in this patch note

[h3]Guardian[/h3]
Developer’s Note: The Guardian has been slightly redesigned to strengthen its defensive entity while making it fit better in Roboquest’s fast pace.
Ability - Energy Barrier
• The Energy Barrier now has a battery system and can be recalled in one press of a button to save up its battery. It means it no longer has a flat cooldown and instead the battery regenerates at a set rate. It makes the Guardian able to choose when to use it in a more tactical way than before.
Passive - Armor
• The Guardian now passively has a regenerative Armor. It works like described in the Gameplay section above

[h3]Recon[/h3]
Developer’s Note: The Recon gained a new mechanic called Combo to tie up its Stealth and Slash ability but also to strengthen its burst and single damage potential.
Passive - Combo
• The Recon now gains Combo when destroying enemies with any tool except its melee attack. He gains one point per enemy destroyed and can stack up to 5 points
Melee Attack - Slash
• Hitting enemies with Slash now consumes all Combo to deal extra damage depending on the amount of points consumed
Ability - Stealth
• Using Stealth now instantly generates 3 Combo
Others
• Using Stealth no longer cancels reload

[h3]Engineer[/h3]
Developer’s Note: The Engineer has been modified to require more proactivity to the players in order to spawn drones and to give more personality to its engineering entity.
Passive - Scrap
• The Engineer now has a unique resource called “Scrap”. It can gather it in different ways and by default it is only used to summon Drones
Melee Attack - Mining Laser
• Instead of a Taser, the Engineer now has access to a cooling, short-range, channeling laser. When used on enemies, it gathers “Scrap” over time
Ability - Drone
• Drones now cost a fixed amount of Scrap to be deployed, without any cooldown. In addition, they are more mobile than before and should no longer stack on top of each other. They should also be more vulnerable to Bosses’ attack. Their maximum health now scales with higher difficulty levels, making them more viable in Heroes+. Overall, Drones should feel less like a simple button to press every now and then and more like a tactical tool.

[h3]Commando[/h3]
Developer’s Note: We had a hard time with the Commando, mostly because we feel like its entity is kinda lackluster right now. We will probably modify more extensively this class in the future. In the meantime, it gained a passive ability to tie it up with Perks and kept its Rocket and Shorty abilities.
Passive - Fire Sparks
• Dealing damage with Rocket or Shorty now loads Fire Sparks. Shooting with weapons unleashes those homing sparks towards your crosshair
Others
• A new interface cooldown indicator has been added below the crosshair for the Shorty
• The Rocket cooldown has been reduced
• The Rocket no longer has a “homing” component but an increased collision radius
Developer’s Note: We felt like using the Rocket was lacking a bit of skill-requirement, mostly because of the homing component (the fact that the Rocket was automatically heading towards any enemy in its trajectory). In addition, this homing component made it difficult to aim in between two enemies in order to optimize its area of effect (the Rocket was heading towards one of them automatically). Though, simply removing the homing effect made it feel bad because so many shots were missed because the crosshair placement was just a little bit off. Increasing its collision radius felt like a good middle ground to make it a good area of effect ability which feels good to use.

[h2]Basecamp[/h2]
• Basecamp upgrades have been modified, some have been deleted, others have been added, most of these changes are aimed to follow the bigger gameplay changes, this is still not the final version of the basecamp or its upgrades
• All your basecamp upgrades and artifacts have been reset as a result. All classes and difficulty levels you previously unlocked are still available
🍉 You have been refunded approximately the amount of Wrenches you spent to upgrade your basecamp. There might be slight discrepancies, but nothing too big
• The basecamp arrangement has been updated to make it more convenient to navigate
• The class selector has been revisited and now contains the artifact selection, the UI has been updated as well
• The difficulty selector is no longer located in the class selector, instead it has its own interactive item. It also contains a 🍉 breakdown of the difficulty stats as well as the record of your best time and overall rank at each difficulty (not retroactively, you’ll have to complete them once more)
Developer’s Note: The difficulty records as well as other systems will likely need a reset from time to time.
• The “Boots” allowing to headbonk enemies is no longer an unlockable upgrade, you now start the game with it
• The Toy Box has been removed from the game
Developer’s Note: The Toy Box has been creating gameplay issues since the addition of level-up consoles. You could “loop” a weapon and upgrade it over multiple runs, and this issue will only aggravate with the addition of other sorts of weapon consoles. In addition, it was conflicting with some of our iteration process. Therefore, we decided to remove it for now. Another system or a different iteration of the Toy Box will be implemented later down the road.
Gadgets (Artifacts)
• Artifacts are now called ‘Gadgets’
• You start up the game with 1 Gadget slot and a basecamp upgrade allows you to increase your slots to 2
• Some gadgets now take up to 2 slots, making you able to only carry one at once
• Instead of finding gadget blueprints in the levels, there is now a Gadget upgrade at the basecamp. It can be purchased multiple times and unlocks Gadgets in a specific order
• Spare Head has been removed from the game
Developer’s Note: The Spare Head was generating several issues, noticeably when it comes to estimating the lifespan of a player but also in terms of implementation and multiplayer. In addition, Spare Head is lacking the kind of “fun” we’re looking for in Gadgets. As a result, we decided to remove it from the game. It might be replaced by another system in lower difficulties to help players completing the game.
• New Gadgets have been added to the game, we won’t cover the details here and we will let you discover them in the game instead
• The interface to equip Gadgets has been updated and is now located in your Class Selector

[h2]Weapons[/h2]
• New weapons have been added to the game: Blast Gun, Blast Shotgun, Blast Minigun, Elemental Cannon, Shock Rifle, Triple Shotgun, Fire Gun, Dual Guns

[h3]Shock Rifle[/h3]


[h3]Blast Minigun[/h3]


[h3]Blast Shotgun[/h3]


[h3]Blast Gun[/h3]


[h3]Triple Shotgun[/h3]


[h3]Elemental Cannon[/h3]


🍉 Weapons’ level now increases their damage instead of being tied to the affix system. Each level increases the base damage of the weapon by 15%. The further you are in your run, the higher level weapons are
• You can find “Level-up Consoles” to increase the level of your current weapon at different locations
• Challenge rooms now contain an “Affix Console” which makes you able to add one affix to your current weapon
• Most weapon affixes have been reworked, some have been deleted and a few new ones have come into play. We’ll be adding more of them as the game continues to develop, especially more intricate ones
• Most weapons have received a balance update, the changes are too numerous to be listed though
• Shotgun damage calculation have been modified to feel better to use and make their damage more consistent, their floating damage text have been updated accordingly
• Warmup weapons now instantly shoot at a slow rate and their firerate increases over a second or less to reach their regular shoot rate. This should help them fit more than before with the high pace of Roboquest
• The Throwing Knife has received new animations and a new 3D model
• You can now cancel your reload by using your weapon alternate fire
• Several weapons alternate fire has been removed, we’re planning on adding a new system which randomly adds or modifies alternate fires to any weapon
• Scoping no longer deals bonus critical damage, instead it collects cells from afar if destroying enemies with a critical hit
• Several weapons have their camera shake and recoil pattern updated (either increased or decreased) to improve their gunfeel and usability

[h2]Enemy[/h2]
• Enemies spawn at a faster rate in battle rooms, basically maintaining the same intensity over the course of the combat instead of slowly reducing it
• Many enemies attack patterns have been tweaked, whether that’d be in terms of preshot duration, attack behavior or consistency
• You should encounter more diverse groups of enemies (not directly related to the addition of new enemies)
🍉 Wallpods can now be targeted by deployed minions
🍉 Enemies should launch mines in a more consistent and predictable way
• Mine radius has been decreased
• Diggy Mole mines’ radius has been increased
🍉 When an horizontal laser projectile goes through the wall, the part going through the wall is now cut and therefore no longer goes through it
• Aggro rules have been updated, it should behave more consistently and feel more natural both for multiplayer and deployed minions
• Flying enemies no longer instantly die when staggered or shocked
• Flying enemies now fly above or below their initial height, based on player’s position
• Enemies now try to position their feet in a more fancy way when moving or standing on slopes
🍉 Guardpawns no longer stun you when using their melee attack
• Rocket Pods in Energy Center now stun you
• The Hookbot is a new enemy pulling you towards him when he hits you
• JudgeBall now spawns two Hookbots instead of instantly rooting you in place and forcing you to destroy the ‘hook pillars’ during his laser attack pattern
• Jetpawns (teleporting humanoid in Haven City) now have a unique model and animation set
• Jetflies (speedy flying enemy) now have a unique model and animation set

[h2]Levels[/h2]
• Most rails position and trigger areas have been modified
• Trail workers behavior and speed has been modified
Developer’s Note: Overall, trail workers trigger areas should be more consistent and drag you in the midst of a fight rather than dragging you from one to another.
• The Oasis gained new random chunk of level design
• The Canyon and the Oasis gained a new vertical layer
• Haven-City has been fully reworked, it has less cross-combat line of sights, easier navigation and clearer verticality layers
• Oasis safe zones (the zone containing the Repair-o-bot) has been moved into the secret area
• Updated challenge rooms and added a few new ones
• Haven City keys are no longer found in specific spots, instead you have to destroy the juggernauts to loot them

[h2]Cosmetic / Quality of Life[/h2]
• The ingame interface has received several changes:
    • The Health bar no longer scales with your maximum health
    • Perk icons are now around your ability icon and feedback the number of stacks and cooldown in a more visible way, they also display whether they are active, inactive or on cooldown
    🍉 You can display a FPS counter at the top left of your screen (available in the game settings)
    • The difficulty display has been moved to the left of the minimap
    • More and clearer icons are displayed on the minimap for enemies, chests and doors
    🍉 Weapon tooltips now display the base damage and maximum amount of affixes a weapon has
    • The Tab Overlay now displays your weapon, perks, current class and gadgets in three different tabs and you can swap between them using the scroll wheel
• Each class now has a specific color
• Being leashed or hooked now generates a feedback sound
• Freezing or Shocking an enemy now generates a feedback sound
• Clearing a battle room now generates a feedback sound
• New visual effects have been added to many gameplay elements, this is just our first take on the subject and we’ll add many more (and missing) effects over the course of the development
• Lasers’ glow has been reduced in various lightning scenarios
• Gamepad Dead Zone settings has been added
• Powersliding no longer cancels sprinting
• Powersliding should no longer make other sets of animation “jiggle”
• Loading screen’s van now has his thrusts animated
• You can now close the Perk Selector with Escape

[h2]Optimization[/h2]
• Loading times when loading new maps (black screens) and general loading screens should be faster
• Network traffic for enemies and players has been reduced in multiplayer which should lead to less jittery and weird teleportation behaviors
• Many small optimization tweaks have been made to reduce CPU usage

[h2]Bug Fix[/h2]
• Removed memory leaks caused by deployed minions staying in memory when loading new levels
• Battle rooms will no longer be validated before entering them
• Battle rooms’ healthbar will no longer remain on the screen when leaving them
• You will no longer be stuck in the area before the boss fight in multiplayer and the boss will no longer fail to spawn
• Basecamp user interface is now properly displayed even in 4/3 resolution ratios
• Sentry turrets will no longer clip or fall through the ground when being deployed
• The hosting player should now always be able to interact with basecamp elements, even when the other player has disconnected or left the game
• In multiplayer, the game will no longer crash when a player dies at the exact same time the other player validates a challenge room
• The client player should no longer experience infinite loading times when restarting or returning to the basecamp
• Deactivating VSync no longer locks you at 1 FPS
• Many other small issues, bugs and crashes have been fixed


Public Playtest (0.4.0) is LIVE!

Hey everyone!

We’re finalizing our work on the incoming Spring update, in the meantime, we need your help to make sure the version is stable.
For that, we’re opening up our playtest system to each and everyone willing to try out the game in its testing stage.

In order to keep things neat and organized, we’ll ask you to post your feedback and anything related to the playtest in the associated channels on Steam and Discord, or to simply use the F10 report system in game (the latter being the easiest way for us to parse the different issues).
On Steam, a new forum category “Playtest Feedback” has been created specifically for that and dedicated text channels have been made public on the Discord.
Please make sure to post all your feedback about the playtest on these sections, it will make sure we can properly follow and fix the potential issues, thanks in advance!

The playtest will last until the official Spring update lands and you may stream it or create video content about it. Though, remember that there will be bugs, crashes and other issues.
Note that your progress will be completely blank on the playtest branch (regardless if you accessed it before or not) and will not be ported onto the full Spring release.

If you’re interested in helping us, all you have to do is to join the alternative branch called “Playtest” in your Steam launch settings. Please note that other languages than English are currently work in progress.
You can find the instruction below to access it:

- Restart Steam
- Right-click on Roboquest in your Steam Library
- Go over to the "Beta" tab
- Select the beta you'd like to opt for
- Choose "RQ Test Build - Play Tester"
- Close the window, it will start downloading the playtest branch
- Play as usual

The playtest is available from now on, feel free to hop in to start helping us at making this update as great as it can be!

Happy robot testing everyone, we wish you’ll be numerous to help us out :)

About the Spring Update

Howdy Guardians!
It’s been a month since our Spring Update Spotlight and we wanted to keep you in the loop about where we’re at.

As you might guess, we’re hard at work to deliver it. We’re aiming at the end of March but we’re keeping the possibility to delay it a bit to make sure it’s as entertaining as we want it to be.

As we’ve said in our previous news, we’re reworking many aspects of the classes and we’re spending a lot of time playtesting and iterating to make sure the new classes are as unique as they can be.

In the same time, we’re working hard on balancing the game and we're adding some new weapons and enemies!

But we’ve already discussed this a bit more thoroughly in the previous update, so what else?

[h2]Basecamp Upgrade Reset[/h2]
We’ve been adding several new basecamp upgrades and reworked others. It’s not a full basecamp update yet, but it’s different enough that we have to reset the upgrades you’ve purchased and the artifacts you’ve unlocked.
We’d like to give you compensation for that, but unfortunately, we have no way to track the Wrenches you spent for now and therefore we can’t refund them. We’re sorry about this and we’ll obviously be adding a tracking system so we can refund you the next times we need to reset such progression.
We won’t reset the amount of Wrenches you currently have in stock, the difficulty levels and the classes you’ve unlocked (so you get to keep all of that!).

[h2]Playtest Branch[/h2]
Now, on to the fun stuff: we’ll be conducting an open playtest branch accessible to each and everyone. The date at which we’ll be opening this playtest is yet to be defined but it will last between one and two weeks. We’ll be back with more information about this!

[h2]VFX Update[/h2]
A few months back, Dmitry joined our crew at RyseUp as our only VFX artist. And today we're glad to say that with his help, we're finally coming up online with VFX adapted to our artistic direction. For now, this mainly means adding more juicy effects to everything related to the player, whether it'd be perks or class visuals. Of course these neat additions will spread to the all the other aspects of the game over time. You can expect constant upgrades on that side from now on.
Here's a sneak peek of one of the new effect:



And that’s going to do it for this news!
As usual, we remind you that you can step on our Discord server or Steam forums if you want to participate in the conversation, we would be glad to have you on board!

We wish you a good start of the week and a happy robot bashing!

Illustration by Igor

Hotfix v0.3.2

[h2]Bug Fixes[/h2]

• You will no longer be stuck in an infinite black screen on the first initial loading (the issue was coming from a corrupted save game)
• You will no longer be locked in the pause menu when it’s open on top of the “upgrade weapon” UI
• Players will no longer be stuck in front of boss rooms when their brobot has left the game
• Speculative Fix: Client players should no longer be stuck on riding splines
• Speculative Fix: You should no longer be stuck in battle rooms without any enemy spawning to complete it
• Speculative Fix: You should no longer find “ghost” weapons in chests

What are we working on?

Hey everyone :)

We’re sure many of you are wondering… when is the next update? What are we working on? What can you expect?

So here we are, to walk you through some of our design intentions for the next update and to talk about some of the fancy things you can expect.

The next update will land in March. We usually like to release an update every month or so, but this time around we needed more time to deploy the changes we’re aiming for.

The main goal of our next update is to settle many of the game systems in order to be able to serenely inject new content in the future. We’re basically setting the stage for all the incoming updates in terms of content.

But before we dive in, we wanted to say a few words for the overwhelmingly positive reviews you posted. Few days ago we reached over a thousand reviews, this is a huge milestone for the game and our studio in general. We’re humbled by your support and it gives us even more motivation to make Roboquest the best it can be. We can literally boost our morale by simply going on Steam and reading all the positive things you have to say about Roboquest… Big thanks to everyone, thank you!

So… what are we working on?



[h2]Classes[/h2]
We’re looking to improve the classes for a long time now. We weren’t fully happy about them, mostly because they don’t feel unique enough right now. So in the next update, we’re looking at giving them more flavor, more personality and most important of all, give them a more distinct playstyle.

[h3]Quick Attack[/h3]
One of the first things we wanted to do was to open up more design rooms for melee attacks. We therefore decided to rename them “quick attack”. More than a simple name change, it allows us to make them more alike “secondary skill” and consequently makes us able to create more synergy between them and the rest of the character class kit.

[h3]Unique Mechanics[/h3]
To create those synergies, we thought we needed something more for classes, something unique. We decided to opt for unique class-mechanics, mechanics we can use in abilities, quick attacks or even in perks. This gives more depth to each class and helps make their gameplay feel unique.
As an example, let's talk a bit about the Recon. It still has the Stealth and the Slash abilities you’re used to, but we tied them together with a “combo points” system. These points are earned by using Stealth or by destroying enemies and Slash consumes them to deal increased damage. While it might seem simple on the surface, it makes us able to create perks and effects which trigger off of, regenerate, modify or play around with these combo points. This ultimately makes the recon feel different to play from the other classes and give more uniqueness to the build you’re going for.

[h2]Artifacts[/h2]
We think Artifacts play a large part in what makes trial and error and replaying fun and we’re working at improving the amount of content you can experience on that side.
We’re therefore currently testing and implementing a lot of different artifacts. Without spoiling or giving too much details, we can give you the example of a “Third Jump” and a “Glasscannon” artifact which we expect to spice up your runs.

[h2]Weapons[/h2]
Whether it’d be their balance, their progression, their names or the affix system, weapons are kinda “all over the place” right now. We’re looking at improving all of this to reach several goals: encourage picking up new weapons, obviously making more weapons viable, turning the act of leveling up weapons a positive and more logical experience (regardless of RNG) and finally make us able to drop a larger variety of weapon at each level (without breaking the balance).

[h3]Progression[/h3]
Currently weapon “stars” is a misleading concept, most players think it improves their weapons’ damage. So we’ve decided to do exactly that, each star now increases the damage your weapons deal. Each star corresponds to one “weapon level” and you’ll find higher level weapons the further you progress in the level.
Stars are now disconnected from the weapon affix system and any weapon has a chance to obtain random affixes. Not only does it make “leveling up” weapons a more positive experience (like mentioned before) it also makes people who wish to keep their weapon able to do so.

[h3]Quality of Life[/h3]
We’re cleaning up many of the weapon systems who weren’t quite “up to the level” compared to the rest, noticeably a better shotgun hit and damage system, a reworked warmup system (which instantly start shooting but increases its rate of fire as you hold the button) and other quality of life things such as being able to cancel your reload using your weapon ability.

[h2]Levels[/h2]
Not all levels are receiving the updates we’re talking about here, it will be an incremental implementation but we can already start talking about our intentions regarding them.

[h3]Verticality[/h3]
We’re adding another layer of verticality (the same one you can find in the Oasis or Haven-City right now) to some “flatter” levels (starting with the Canyons). It increases the number of angles you can negotiate the hostile encounter from and puts the lights on mobility artifacts such as the jetpack.

[h3]Randomness[/h3]
Several people have been asking us if the level design was actually randomized. The short answer is “yes it is” but we’re missing some parts to make it clearly varied. We’re hard at work to provide you more diversity on that side (starting with the Oasis).

[h3]Encounter Diversity[/h3]
We’re not directly talking about “enemy diversity” (in the sense of more enemies) but rather the way enemy encounters are built-up (what enemies they contain). We’re improving the systems and implementing new ones on top of it to generate more varied enemy encounters, which we internally call “bouquet of enemies”. This makes the tactical approach of each encounter more interesting and reduces the likelihood of fighting the exact same bouquet several times in a row.

[h3]Environment[/h3]
Finally, we’re applying some “polish” pass to several levels (starting with the Canyons, the Oasis and Haven-City) to finally give a more flavorful touch to each of them. We hope you’ll be enjoying your time more than ever there :)


And that covers some of the important things we've been and are still working on.
We also just released a hotfix to some of the more gamebreaking issues such as being unable to play the game :D. We're sorry for the inconvenience these issues have caused and we thank everyone involved in reporting and sharing their "crash dumps" and "corrupted save game" with us!

You can find the patch-note of the hotfix here:
https://steamcommunity.com/games/692890/announcements/detail/3034832842295249993

We wish you all a great week-end and happy robot bashing!