Killsquad News

Hello there!

We're deep in the trenches working on three updates simultaneously, so we wanted to share with you guys how things are looking in a general update. This supersedes our previous roadmap. And adds a few hints of cool things to come. As usual, we have good news, less good news, and cool things on the horizon:

1) Today, as planned and discussed, we drop 0.7.3, which includes the new contract browser. This won't cure cancer in itself, but as you'll see shortly, it's part of a larger strategy we're rolling out during the next few weeks. For the time being, you can now find all contracts and resources in a more useful display.

2) Oct 11th we will drop FEDERATION, our next large content update. This includes:

• All Fed units seen in our Gathering: commanders, artillery, turrets, barricades
  
• A Fed-themed Special Ops contract, vector 150. Wanna suffer? We know suffering!
  
• New Fed ambushes across veteran with using all these units, which should enrich the Fed / Veteran experience
  
• The new profile screen & career path for your heroes, which includes portraits, badges, skins, whatnot. This is a big system that should provide many hours of fun.
  
• The new Hero Rank metric as described in the Gathering
  

3) Oct 18th we plan to drop our 2nd Community Update, as discused with you guys. We could be wrong, but we feel this one includes THE cure to (we hope) our core problems:

• On the new contract screen, we add the abiity to "jump in" an ongoing public contract, so gone is the time when you had to wait alone in the lobby. All ongoing games become candidate sessions for you to join. This is taking a long time to implement, but we hope to attack the core of our community problem with this
  
• Also, allow teams to stay together after a contract, so the squad is not disbanded. Again, trying to make it easier to build squads and keep them having fun.
  
• We will drop this update or parts of it via a Beta if available earlier, so stay tuned.
  

4) A separate team is working on PLAGUE, our Halloween themed update: new contract types, curses and damnations. This is the update where we will delay Eekar the Engineer, our fifth character, as we agreed to give priority to the Community Update. Sorry about that guys


5) And Christmas should see our REFUGEE update, which:

• Upgrades our weapon systems as described in the Gathering
  
• Adds quest systems to support the new weapons
  
• Adds Eekar the engineer
  
• Adds new semiboss creatures as shown on the Gathering. These are of a similar statute as the Nightbringers, so with this our Veteran level should feel quite rich compared to Recruit, with Nightbringers, Feds and 3 special semibosses there.
  
• If time allows, add a lobby chat to reinforce even more the achievements of the Community update. If you're LFG, say so in the chat!
  

As a small thank-you gift for reading this far, we got a lot of requests at Trade Shows for Killsquad merchandise. We are very much working on this, talking with several candidate partners who wanna make you guys look cool. Expect news soon, very exciting times ahead.

BTW, we're trying to publicise our Twitter account as we see a lot of people here on Steam are not even aware we DO have Twitter. So, go follow @killsquadgame if you can. Very appreciated!

And as usual, report bugs on [email protected], and drop a review if you can. It helps keep the team motivated!

Best,

Novarama

Here is our first Gathering video, we hope you guys enjoy it!

[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]

As we announce on the video, the Gathering comes with a fresh build, which focuses on the "most reported issues" by you guys, the community. Here are the full patch notes for this update, available now:



Thank you for all the feedback in our first "The Gathering of Bounty Hunters" event! Here are the updated areas on this build:



Steam Cloud

- The game now properly supports saves on the cloud using Steam Cloud. This should prevent losing your progress, even for those who change PCs frequently or playing on Cyber Cafés.
- Added a pop-up warning if you don't have Steam Cloud enabled.
- Updated Steam Cloud to save automatically during gameplay. An autosave icon will appear each time it does this.

Updates to the Colosseum of the Unseen

- Colosseum Contracts now appear all the time in the contracts section.
- We have distributed the rewards of the Colosseum contracts to earn them after beating the waves 3, 6 and 10, so it's easier to collect them.
- We have rebalanced some waves as per user feedback.

Resurrecting bugs

- Fixed the bug where disconnected players could be resurrected.
- Fixed the bug where in the Toxic Fog contracts, resurrected players could respawn inside the toxic fog area. Now they respawn near the Vehicle if they are revived by themselves
after 60 seconds. This doesn't happen if they are resurrected by another player.


· Added an icon in the QuickPlay contract to know if there is a player online requesting Quickplay.
· Reduced the prices of unlockable skins down to 15 tokens. This was a long-requested feature on the forums. To make it fair to people who collected them already at the higher price, they have now their tokens refunded, 65 for each skin. Please remember that in the future we will give these tokens more uses, so make sure you collect them.
· Extended the duration of the Summer event to unlock the skins. We will announce in the future the new time limit.
· Updated the orbital Lasers and the falling Meteors to avoid hurting the players if they are near or inside a vendor. You don't need to be buying, just being near to it. This does not affect enemies: you can still be attacked by enemies inside a vendor, so make sure you clear the area before going shopping.
· Updated the localization files

What we are doing right now

· Adding a decal to indicate the trajectory of orbital Lasers, to avoid insta-death scenarios.
· Balancing the Colosseum in both Singleplayer and Multiplayer.
· Fixing gears and upgrades that doesn't work as intended if you are not the host of the server.
· If your game crashes, please send us your saved folder (C:\Users%USERNAME%\AppData\Local\Killsquad\Saved) here at [email protected]

Hello all,

Summer's over. We released Unseen last Friday, our first Killsquad update. The office smells of code being written and art being crafted.

Now, we want to communicate with you, the fans, in a more direct & bidirectional way. To do so, enter The Gathering of Bounty Hunters, a community event we hope becomes a tradition soon among the Killsquad crowd.





Every now and then, we will open up a Gathering period. During Gathering periods, We would like you guys to tell you what you like, what you dislike, to propose features, to voice concerns about the game.

We will then collect all these, and produce a video, so we can answer questions, show you where the game is headed, and generally speaking discuss Killsquad and its future.

Our goal is to stream Gatherings live from our offices in Barcelona, Spain. However, for the first one, we will pre-record it to make sure we get things right and learn along the way (hey, we're new at this!).




Good question! This is about all of us, together, discussing Killsquad. You DO have a voice, so, if you love Killsquad, and want your voice heard, please post your questions to us as a response to this message. You can also find this post in the Events section of our forums.

You can discuss ANYTHING, and we promise to answer everything directly, in our usual no-bullshit way.

Only one request though: please do keep things constructive and civil. In other words, if you want to say "I hate the lasers!", that's totally fine with us, we really want to hear about that. But if you want to say "I hate you, and hate the game, and I hate the world in general", we'd recommend other places: we can't help you there.

So, to provoke debate, here's some initial questions:

• What existing system needs a rework/redesign?
  
• What is great, and we need more of?
  
• What should we totally remove from the game?
  
• Which are things you've seen in other games, that you'd love to see in Killsquad?
  

Of course we may group questions together, as most likely several people may be interested in the same area.

Aside from this, we promise to keep the event full of information and goodies. As a sampler, we promise we will tell you everything about these guys here:



And we will also talk about this other guy here:





Easy! The Gathering will be posted here on Steam & on YouTube. And, of course, on the day of the posting, we will be answering questions live! Stay tuned as we will create channels for that.




For this first Gathering, we'd love you guys to post questions until the end of this Wednesday, so we can produce our video on time for the weekend!

• This is your game, we want to hear your voice.
• Post your questions & ideas until end of Wednesday, Sept 11th, by simply responding to this post.
• Expect our first Gathering video with answers and goodies this weekend!
• 
  

Welcome to Killsquad update v0.7.0 / Unseen!

[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]

• During veteran contracts, a portal can appear to challenge players. That is the gateway to the Colosseum of the Unseen, a mythical race of warriors. This is the ultimate training, but you can't enter if there are any Nightbringers and The Federation around.
  
• These Colosseums that appear inside contracts will award you with Unseen Trinkets, extra loot and EXP... if you survive!
  
• The Colosseum is also available in two new end-game Colosseum contracts at Vector 110. They can award you with items up to vector 110.
  
• Colosseum Contracts award you with Unseen Trinkets, extra loot and even more EXP for your reputation.
  
• Remember the Unseen want to test your skill, so this is our most challenging area.
  
• Also, remember the rule of the Unseen: if one squad member enters the portal, all the squad enters the portal. So make sure you discuss what to you want to do if challenged.
  
• Remember: every time you beat the Colosseum, you get EXP... if you survive!
  

We have added a new reputation system, which is a glimpse of things that will come in our next Update, Federation. Expect many more progression systems, but we wanted to give you this one right away:

• Each time you complete a Colosseum challenge, you gain experience. Level up to earn ranks that can be displayed under your nickname.
  
• This is a sneak peak of what we are working right now for future updates, where players can earn more titles after they hit a set of varied milestones.
  

We have added a new vendor inside veteran contracts, the Wanderer. The Wanderer will sometimes appear near the end of the mission, and he will offer you weapons and gears which go well with the player's current Vector. These items are more expensive, but you can see which upgrades they will unlock right away.



We want to make it easier to build squads, and we will be rolling out a host of features in that direction. As of today, we are bringing you Recruit/Veteran Quickplay: Players who join Quickplay, will be able to connect with other players who are inside the Quickplay contract. Players with higher vectors will earn weapons/gears based on its current vector, even if they are paired with someone with less vectors.
And remember: the Quickplay contracts always give more credits, so you have an incentive to use them and socialize!



We have added 21:9 UltraWide Screen support, which was heavily requested by the community. Please report any issues on the forums or on Discord!



Being our first major update, a good amount of time has gone into general bug fixing. Here's the complete list of issues solved:

• Added new enemy buffs.
  
• Added the descriptions of Upgrades that aren't unlocked yet in the inventory menu.
  
• Buffed the stats of OHGUR's Weapons.
  
• Balanced the speed of the black spheres that some enemies can throw to players.
  
• Balanced the health increase of enemies in multiplayer with 2P, 3P and 4P.
  
• Fixed the players being able to receive duplicated upgrades on their gears (Extra Loot Chance From Rank S Enemies).
  
• Fixed the bug where the Upgrades: Damage Dimensional, Damage Phase Thrust, Damage Stop and Extra Damage Against Armor didn't work.
  
• Fixed the bug where players in multiplayer could receive rewards from other planets.
  
• Fixed some Zero's projectiles being heard in multiplayer even when the player is far away.
  
• Fixed the bug of the Vector numbers not being updated in their Hero icons.
  
• Fixed the bug where players in multiplayer couldn't see the charge trail of fire of Blood Arisera.
  
• Fixed the bug where clients couldn't distinct in multiplayer the Abomination's green spiders.
  
• Fixed the issue where the GAME OVER screen appeared even if the last remaining player successfully revived a teammate before dying.
  
• Fixed Zero's skill, Big Heal pack not disappearing after a while and players being able to stack a pile.
  

• Added sounds in Blood Arisera when they are preparing to charge towards a player.
  
• Added sounds in the walking animations of Jotun and Thunder Jotun.
  
• Added sounds in the enemy Gorus during their stunned animation.
  
• Added sounds on Zero's walking/running/strafing animation.
  
• Added sounds on Queen Moggoth's WingedEarthRay attack.
  
• Added sounds on the Turret shooting projectiles.
  
• Added sounds on Cass's Shuriken
  
• Added sounds on the Palace of Pain's alarms.
  
• Added sounds on enemies's explosions when they die.
  
• Added sounds on Nightbringer's Shadow ball attacks.
  
• Updated the sounds of Cass's dash attack animation.
  

We met with Valve at PAX to discuss our issues with cyber cafés and lost progress. As a result, we are working on a new implementation of the services to work consistently, even with players who are playing from internet cafes. This is on public beta now, will be published to the community at large hopefully next week.
We are fixing gears and upgrades that don't work as intended if you are not the host of the server.
We are working on a blacklist for players and discussing on more options to combat griefers.
We will publish on Monday the second part of Unseen, which is the Federation Forces reveal. These will be part of our next update, but we wanted to show you how things are shaping up.
Last, but not least, we will publish during next week an update to our roadmap. We're adding many things. Moving others. We have more details on things we announced. And we want to share it all with you.



We hope you have fun with Killsquad, and we hope you see our game grow. We met many of you at PAX last week and, as we said then, we're not gonna stop until this game is perfect.

Still, of course, this is an Early Access, so much as we'd love the game to be finished, this is a product in development. Which means we need a bit of your patience, and which means there may be bugs. If you encounter one of these, please report it on [email protected] or on the Forums or Discord channel.

If your game crashes, please send us your saved folder (C:\Users%USERNAME%\AppData\Local\Killsquad\Saved) here at [email protected]

If you like Killsquad, please say it, it feels great to hear your support. Last, but not least, thank you for all the beta testers that helped us in this update!

See you on Killsquad!

Hello all,

Just a quick update to say the Beta of our next version, called "Unseen" is out. We're testing it throughout the weekend, and then if all goes well will release it to the general audience sometime next week. Sorry we're a few days late, but that's due mostly to Steamcloud fixes (we want to give rock-solid support to players who play across several computers) and ultrawide screen support. We felt those 2 had to be part of this update as they have been requested by a lot of people.

If you want to try some of its features right away, just remember to sign up for our 100% Beta program, which gives access to preview builds. To do so, all you need to do is contact us at [email protected] with Beta as the subject line.