Killsquad News

Bounty Hunters,

Welcome to the Killsquad Pre Release Update! This is our last step on our journey through Early Access. We've focused on polish and a few on-demand mechanics as requested by you. Of course, being part of our Early Access community, you guys get to enjoy it first.

Here’s a summary of what’s included in this update:

"Recovery" has been added to the game by popular demand, "Recovery" is a new mechanic where after being knocked back you can get up back into the fight faster, so you can avoid those nasty moments of knockback after knockback. This short opportunity to get back up by reacting at the right moment will help you keep the frenzy of the battle!

The economy of the game has been tweaked as well, balancing a bit the importance of the shop, leaning more towards contract rewards with the new "ambush chest". Inside of them you can find and earn that sweet rare loot. We also balanced the rewards for some contracts to smooth the progression throughout all the difficulties!

Single-player balance! All contracts from Recruit, Veteran and Plague contracts received a balance on time and difficulties. Now the progression curve should be a lot smoother. But don't worry, there are still some more harsh contracts for those seeking greater challenges!

WASTELAND 7A received its last flavour asset pack, with the laboratory theme now added to the map, giving it a unique identity to the world as a post-nuclear planet!

Also, there’s a lot more in there, such as polishing, more balance and bug fixing, a lot of bug fixing, and more bug fixing!

The update is now ready for you to download & enjoy. Please let us know your thoughts below. Finally, two last-minute requests:

• If you have friends who would like to try Killsquad, tell them to get it now. We will be rising prices soon for the public release, and we want you guys & your friends to enjoy it at the best possible price.
  
• If you haven’t done so already, and think we’re doing a good job, please consider leaving a review! We’re at a 69.50 review score now, we’d love to hit 70 before release, as that means the game moves to “Mostly Positive” reviews from “Mixed”. Every review counts, so if you have a spare minute or two, please leave one. You have no idea how much that will help us on release day.
  

Until next time, Bounty Hunters!

Your Novarama Team



[h2]Killsquad pre release Update v0.20.9.3[/h2]

RECOVERY

By popular demand, we've added a Recovery mechanic to the game. You have a small window of opportunity to get up back into the fight!

General

· Added the new Recovery mechanic. to use it, press the "Dash" key/button (Space bar by default with a keyboard), as soon as your character touches the floor when receiving a knockback. Your character will recover and it won't consume any Dash charge.

When the character is knocked back has a chance to get back up quickly:





Keep in mind that the window of opportunity is small (as shown with a different color in the next image), less than a second, so you will need to time it well and get skilled to be able to perform the Recovery.





· Added a Recovery animation for Troy.
· Added a Recovery animation for Kosmo.
· Added a Recovery animation for Cass.
· Added a Recovery animation for Zero.
· Added a Recovery animation for Ekaar.

ECONOMY TWEAKS

The economy of the game has been tweaked, with intentions of leaning more towards contract rewards than a shop buy item rush, specially players without too many resources, with the new "ambush chest" where you can earn rare loot and balancing the rewards for some contracts to smooth the progression through all difficulties to avoid needing grinding in certain parts of the contract progression.

General

· Added the new "Ambush Chest" mechanic. You can find special chests inside a contract, when opened you will face an ambush but not without reward: a rare piece of equipment!
· Modified all recruit rewards, now the contracts rewards the player with two pieces of equipment at the end of it.
· Modified the rewards at the loot chests from Veteran Contracts, now they can drop gadgets as well.

SINGLE PLAYER BALANCE

The map received a rework to give a more organic aesthetics to the planet, giving the map a more unique identity with a new biome. The intention is to make the player feel that he's walking over a living creature.

Recruit

· Knockin' On Heavens Door: Reduced the quantity of Medium enemies and increased the lifedrop drop chance.
· Doors Wide Shut: Augmented the percentage of enemies at the beginning of the contract by 20%
· Overprotection: Reduced the damage for the Enraged Myr. Only for this contract.
· The Dirty Work: The shield of the vehicle is augmented from 20000 to 25000.
· Hunted Hunter: Added a widget to the traps to better help players escape it.
· Crazy About Jade: The duration of the first Jade extraction reduced by 25 seconds. Now a vendor will always spawn between the first and second Jade Extraction.
· Pest Control: You win more XP during the contrat to reach faster the 10th level.
· A Hard Nut To Crack: Reduced the quantity of enemies at the firsts possible paths and augmented the XP gain.
· Hail To The Queen: Now you always will find 2 elite enemies, one at the begining and one at the end.
· Codename Guerrilla: Augmented the lifedrop drop chance.
· Augmented the lifedrop chance when you are at 10% and 20% of you HP to all recruit contracts.

Veteran

· Arachnophilia?: Is now a vector 90 contract and the rewards are from vector 100.
· Cleaning is my thing: Is now a vector 90 contract and the rewards are from vector 100.
· My humble abode: Is now a vector 90 contract and the rewards are from vector 100.
· The profane: Is now a vector 100 contract and the rewards are from vector 110.

Plague

· Plague Doors Wide Shut: Is now a vector 80 contract and the rewards are from vector 90.
· Plague A Hard Nut To Crack: Is now a vector 80 contract and the rewards are from vector 90.
· Plague Crazy About Jade: Is now a vector 80 contract and the rewards are from vector 90.
· Plague Hunted Hunter: Is now a vector 90 contract and the rewards are from vector 100.
· Plague Codename Guerrilla:Is now a vector 90 contract and the rewards are from vector 100.

General

· Added particles to different mechanics such as the Vampiric Link to further increase the feedback to the player.
· Added a 3D UI to the trap at "HUNTED HUNTER" to further increase the feedback to the player.
· Added a warning to the infinite wave at "POPULAR REQUEST" contract to further increase the feedback to the player.
· Added more minor changes and tweaks to balance some segments of contracts.
· Now you can have only 2 lifedrops at the floor at the same time, a third will not spawn until you use the others.

WASTELAND 7A FLAVOR PACK 2

The map recieved it's last flavor asset pack, the laboratory theme is added to the world with a total of a new 125 assets contributing to the feeling of a desolate planet.

General

· Added 14 floor assets.
· Added 3 new shadebars assets.
· Added 5 new watchtowers assets.
· Added 1 new Light prop assets.
· Added 1 new Alien structure assets.
· Added 1 new SM box assets.
· Added 6 new prison tubes assets.
· Added 21 new scaffolding assets.
· Added 53 new generic assets (trashbags, papers, lab equipment etc..).
· Added 2 new barrels assets to the "LAST BASTION" theme.
· Added 7 new cables assets to the "LAST BASTION" theme.
· Added 1 new concrete assets to the "LAST BASTION" theme.
· Added 6 new fences assets to the "LAST BASTION" theme.
· Added 5 new metal plates assets to the "LAST BASTION" theme.
· Added 5 new silos assets to the "LAST BASTION" theme.
· Added 5 new materials to different assets.


AUDIO

· Added new attack voice lines to all characters.
· Added a voice line to all characters when they are ready at the lobby.
· Added all the new voice actor to Cass and Kosmo. Now all the characters have all the voice lines from the voice actor.
· Added a new ducking/sidechain system allowing all voice lines of characters, NPC's and contracts to be priority over combat sounds allowing the player to hear even in the most intense fights.
· Added a new ducking/sidechain system, giving priority to the character sounds and voices over the enemy.
· Added a new sound for the Ambush chest.
· Added a new sound for the Leave/Disband party.
· Added a new sound for the secondary gear "Kormos4994".
· Modified 40+ SFX from attack, abilities, environmental, movement and animations.
· Modified and improved some attack and weapon sounds.
· Balanced all the attack, movement and voice sounds of all character.
· Improved the randomization of the attack voices.

LIGHTNING

· Modified all the main menu lightning to change the mood and character visualization.
· Optimized the new lights of the main menu.
· Modified the "PALACE OF PAIN" maps, adding some lights to better give better feedback of doors to players and adjusted some focus lights that were too intense burning some textures.
· Improved render target on the profile menu.
· Improved the lightning of all "PALACE OF PAIN" maps.
· Improved the lightning of all dark "WASTELAND 7A" maps.

GENERAL

· Added destructible assets to all planets. Now all the maps of Killsquad should have destructible assets.
· Added a shrinking animation to the DNA drops when they are about to disappear.
· Added the possible rewards that can be earned in a contract at the contract card, so players can check and decide before going into a contract.
· Added the maximum vector item that the player can be rewarded in a contract at the contract card, so players can check and decide before going into a contract.
· Added more keyboard bindings to allow players without a QWERTY keyboard to play normally.
· Modified to upper case, the "press any button to continue" for clarity.
· Modified cursor speed while using a controller.
· Modified the life ability feedback from the "ALPHA DOLEM" to give consistent feedback to the player.
· Modified all "DASH" videos from all characters to show also the "RECOVERY" Mechanic.
· Modified the videos for "DISINTEGRATE!" and "CEASE TO EXIST!" videos, the new ones have the new particles.
· Increased the chances to spawn the second generation of the "OVERSEER MK2" at "PALACE OF PAIN" maps.
· Removed all the extra space on the right side of the plague contracts view.

BUG FIXING

Crashes:

· Fixed a crash that might occur when picking the green explosive balls at "CODENAME GUERRILLA".
· Fixed a crash that might occur when doing a hold area mission.
· Fixed a crash that might occur when the "NIGHTBRINGER" uses his life steal ability.
· Fixed a crash that might occur when using any drone from Ekaar.
· Fixed a crash that might occur when using the "GRAVITY SHOOT" skill from Troy.
· Fixed a crash that might occur when killing "IB'HU, THE PROFANE" at the same moment of a crystal explosion.
· Fixed a crash that might occur when finishing the three SPEC OPS contracts as a client without going to the contract menu.
· Fixed a crash that might occur when the player respawn at certain checkpoints.
· Fixed a crash that might occur when the savegame is corrupted or modified incorrectly.
· Fixed a crash that might occur when loading some contracts.
· Fixed a crash that might occur when loading enemies.
· Fixed a crash that might occur when opening a chest.
· Fixed a crash that might occur when using the "GRAVITY GRENADE" Skill from Troy.
· Fixed a crash that might occur in the coliseum.
· Fixed a random memory crash when using the any character.

Major Issues

· Fixed a major bug where the navigation between menus are blocked if you equip a gadget or a talisman.
· Fixed a major bug where the ranged characters could get blocked if you swapped guns while shooting.
· Fixed a major bug where the loot chest rewards were wrong when opening automatically as a client.
· Fixed a major bug where the loot chest rewards could give the same gear or a lower vector gear.
· Fixed a major bug where the traps at the "PALACE OF PAIN" were not rendering for clients.
· Fixed a major bug where the player could not see other players when teleported to the boss area.
· Fixed a major bug where the second part of the "THE PLAGUE IS HERE" quest was not completed at plague contracts.
· Fixed a major bug where the pills from the Zero Skill "SELF MEDICATION" went through walls.
· Fixed a major bug where the "EXTRA SPEED AFTER DODGING" did not work with the "EXTRA SPEED AFTER DODGE" from "CELERITASMOD" gear.
· Fixed a major bug where the HP bars and quest widget are not visible at the "DOUBLE TROUBLE" contract.
· Fixed a major bug where the "HIGER VECTOR LEVEL CONTRACT" curse reduced the damage of your equipped weapon.
· Fixed a major bug where the inputs to increase gadget quantities at the shop are the same for changing character.
· Fixed a major bug where the bosses "CLYDE" and "BONNIE" did not render some decals marking where they were about to attack.
· Fixed a major bug where the music at "TROUBLE IN PARADISE" was getting stuck in a loop.
· Fixed a major bug where the reward was a weapon from V105 at the first contract.
· Fixed a major bug where the lights at the world "PALACE OF PAIN" in plague version where too bright.
· Fixed a major bug where the description of "SHOWS SECRET CHESTS" didn't explain the intended effect of the perk.
· Fixed a major bug where the player could brake the "CRAZY ABOUT JADE" contract mechanic by walking back to the beginning of the contract.
· Fixed a major bug where the player could skip the tenth round of the coliseum.
· Fixed a major bug where the basic attack and the skills from Kosmo where blocked if you got knock backed while using "STAMPEDE" with the upgrade "CHARGE".
· Fixed a major bug where the player could not get a contract completed after finishing one if he joined mid-contract.
· Fixed a major bug where the quest "HELLDORREN THE EVEN CRUELER" was not completed after finishing "MY HUMBLE ABODE" contract.
· Fixed a major bug where the players in a coop game could not see if another player changed his weapon.
· Fixed a major bug where the UI showed you had your second weapon equipped when you had the first one.
· Fixed a major bug where the mines of "HELLDORREN" boss did lower damage than intended.
· Fixed a major bug where the player could use abilities at the end of loading screens.
· Fixed a major bug where the "PHOTON BURTS" trowed.
· Fixed a major bug where the coliseum "THREE LITTLE NIGHTMARES" spawned some enemies of a wave outside the playable map.
· Fixed a major bug where the "TELEPORT SHURIKEN" skill did not cancel the invisibility of the "PHASE SHIFT" skill.
· Fixed a major bug where the clients of a multiplayer didn't see some attacks from the "NIGHTBRINGER" boss.
· Fixed a major bug where the curse "HIDASTËA" (slow outside a circle) didn't work for Zero and Troy.
· Fixed a major bug where the "RECOVERY" mechanic was not working for clients in a coop contract.
· Fixed a major bug where the decal for the upgrade "HEALING KIT V2.0" was not rendered. Now you will have feedback on when the healing kit is at full growth.
· Fixed a major bug where a player joining as reinforcement to "CODENAME GUERILLA" during the ultimate of the boss fight could not see any HP bar.
· Fixed a major bug where a player could have a different skill/upgrade loadout or no loadout at all if he joined a game when all players were ready.
· Fixed a major bug where basic enemies appear at any contract after a restart.
· Fixed a major bug where Kosmo could have both ultimate equipped.
· Fixed a major bug where some assets where loading physics when they didn't need to.
· Fixed a major bug where some skills went underground at some unleveled parts of "KEMMEKH" maps.
· Fixed a major bug where some players did not unlock new contracts when playing contracts as clients in coop games.
· Fixed a major bug where the weapon “BARRACUDA” from zero had at lvl 40 Vector 3000% proc instead of 30%.
· Fixed a major bug at the "PEST CONTROL" boss fight where veteran "BREEDER WYPRAS" could spawn.
· Fixed a major bug at the "PEST CONTROL" boss fight where the player resuscitate inside the venom area instead of a safe place.
· Fixed a major bug at the "KEMMEKH" maps where after using a vendor the textures resolution were downgraded.
· Fixed a major bug at the "CLEANING IS MY THING" contract where you could fall between a door junction.
· Fixed a major bug at the upgrade gear view, where the player could still interact with the swap/equip buttons using a controller.
· Fixed a major bug at "WASTELAND 7A" where a collision blocked the player from advancing.
· Fixed a major bug at "HELLDORREN" boss fight door. Zero's ray was hitting an invisible collision at the door.
· Fixed a major bug with the recently added assets, provoking some enemies to spawn out of bounds.
· Fixed a major bug with the "ECSTASY (KOSMO)" weapon perk. It was not working for client players in a coop game.
· Fixed a major bug when the player opens the menu while moving or shooting. The character kept moving or shooting with the menu
· Fixed a major bug when the "CURSE OF KAEJJTU" (damage if separated). Was doing damage if a player enters a seed at "POPULAR REQUEST" contract.open.
· Fixed a major bug when refreshing the shop that could restock with the same items. Now they will be always different.
· Fixed a major bug when equipping a prototype gear. Sometimes when doing so, the support gear will change for another random gear.
· Fixed a major bug when having more than one screen. Now the mouse will not move to another screen without tabbing out.
· Fixed a major bug when a client player in a coop game stops seeing the meteorites falling after activating the car.
· Fixed a major bug when a client can't see any enemies after dying inside a crystal of the "IB'HU, THE PROFANE" boss battle.
· Fixed a major bug when stacking cooldown reduction blocking the dodge from working.
· Fixed a major input bug where the player while shooting or activating some skills opens the ESC menu. Blocking the player from attacking automatically again.
· Fixed some hard to reproduce memory corruption issues.
· Fixed a controller input bug where the player could not click on the pop-up buttons.
· Fixed a controller input bug where the player could not equip or upgrade gear.
· Fixed a controller input bug where the player could not do basic attacks.

Fixes:

· Fixed a bug where the invisibility icon at the minimap from cass shill "PHASE SHIFT" was not shown.
· Fixed a bug where the MVP cinematic from all contracts of "THE PALACE OF PAIN" where from the coliseum.
· Fixed a bug where the UI Armor display shows a wrong value when you equip and unequip the "ARMORER'S SAFEGUARD" talisman.
· Fixed a bug where the sound for the skill "GAMMA SWIRL" was not reproduced to client players.
· Fixed a bug where the armor and shield buffs given by a talisman are removed from the UI statistics when the player returns to the lobby after a contract or exits the game once.
· Fixed a bug where the weapons "ACE OF SPADES" from Cass, "STINGER" from Zero and "COGNITA FINEM" from troy did not do extra damage.
· Fixed a bug where the white line that unlocks contracts did not work properly at some occasions.
· Fixed a bug where the description of the skill "INSULATING SHIELD" from Ekaar was not shown.
· Fixed a bug where the player can't open the chat with the mouse when a contract is selected.
· Fixed a bug where the damage for "RANGED EXPLOSION PROBABILITY" was not 150.
· Fixed a bug where the equipped skills where shown greyed if the player skipped any tutorial.
· Fixed a bug where the "new weapon" marker was not shown when buying a weapon from the shop.
· Fixed a bug where the upgrade "BETA SHIELD COST REDUCTION (EKKAR)" was showing a wrong percentage.
· Fixed a bug where the emotes gained by a chest did not appear in the top right corner as pickables do.
· Fixed a bug where the rarity shown for emotes at the reward view was common (gray color) instead of rare (blue color).
· Fixed a bug where the contracts "DOORS WIDE SHUT" and "THE DIRTY WORK" showed the possible reward duplicated at the contract card tooltip.
· Fixed a bug where the destruction of the new destructible box asset did not replicate to clients.
· Fixed a bug where the voting number at the plague totems were showing a parenthesis instead of a number.
· Fixed a bug where the yellow dot alert was not showing to new skins.
· Fixed a bug where the scale of the discord logo was wrong.
· Fixed a bug where if a player sends you an invite just before joining a game, the invitation will stay in the screen during the contract.
· Fixed a bug where not all upgrades were being shown for an item at the detail of the shop.
· Fixed a bug where an empty slot was selected when there is no cosmetic at the shop.
· Fixed a bug where confirmation pop up of the settings was not being shown after a change.
· Fixed a bug where target description was not being shown at "DOORS WIDE SHUT"
· Fixed a bug where particles of the "EXTRA SPEED AFTER DODGE" were misplaced.
· Fixed a bug where trail of the drones were not being rendered at the MVP animations.
· Fixed a bug where a vendor was not reachable at "POPULAR REQUEST" contract.
· Fixed a bug where the player could not decline the curse voting with the mouse.
· Fixed a bug when you have all factions at max level. Sometimes they show as level 0.
· Fixed a bug when reaching the level 45 of a Faction. The pop-up informing the player of the cosmetic gained was shown 5 times.
· Fixed a bug when using any animation with the "SHARP SPIKES ARMOR". A spike of the armor was not animated.
· Fixed a bug when joining a coop game or leaving a coop game where an empty map was shown for a moment.
· Fixed a bug at the contract "POPULAR REQUEST" where the distance to the objective was not shown correctly.
· Fixed a bug at the reward screen. If you had the chat opened, you were able to swap menus using the keys.
· Fixed a bug at the quest screen. If the player pressed the ESC button repeatedly, it could remove the first quest from the list.
· Fixed a bug that opens the "ESC" menu if the player clicked in the top left corner of the screen.
· Fixed a lot of holes, blocks and collisions from all the maps.
· Fixed a lot of junction errors between parts of some maps.
· Fixed a lot of navigation meshes bugs, making some enemies to get stuck.
· Fixed a lot of collisions at WASTELAND 7A maps.
· Fixed the location of some unreachable pickups.
· Fixed some minor collision errors at WASTELAND 7A.
· Fixed some bugs from Ekaar drone animations.
· Fixed some UI widget overlapping bugs.
· Fixed more holes at "WASTELAND 7A" maps.
· Fixed more holes at "SKUA" maps.
· Fixed localization bugs in English.
· Fixed localization bugs in German.
· Fixed localization bugs in French.
· Fixed localization bugs in Italian.
· Fixed localization bugs in Spanish.
· Fixed localization bugs in Portuguese.
· Fixed localization bugs in Russian.
· Fixed localization bugs in Chinese.
· Fixed localization bugs in Japanese.
· Fixed localization bugs in Korean.

What are we doing right now:

PS: Please remember that the progress you've made in the beta isn't shared with the public version.

· More bug fixing.
· If your game crashes, a Crash reporter will appear. Please add the details of what you were doing at the time of the crash and send it to us. If you want to, feel free to contact us directly here at [email protected], with your "Saved" folder (C:\Users%USERNAME%\AppData\Local\Killsquad) attached.

PSA: Please remember that the progress you make in the beta, won't be shared with the public version. The public version will be available in a couple of days.

To learn more about betas, please check the following FAQ:

https://steamcommunity.com/app/910490/discussions/0/3093383255707217200/

[hr][/hr]

GENERAL

· The early access chest now have a 100% chance to drop "EARLY ACCESS TOKENS"
· Modified all "DASH" videos from all characters to show also the "RECOVERY" Mechanic.
· Modified the videos for "DISINTEGRATE!" and "CEASE TO EXIST!" videos, the new ones have the new particles.

BUG FIXING

Crashes:

· Fixed a crash that might occur when the player respawn at certain checkpoints.
· Fixed a crash that might occur when the savegame is corrupted or modified incorrectly.
· Fixed a crash that might occur when loading some contracts.
· Fixed a crash that might occur when loading enemies.

Major Issues

· Fixed a major bug where the player could use abilities at the end of loading screens.
· Fixed a major bug where the "PHOTON BURTS" trowed.
· Fixed a major bug where the coliseum "THREE LITTLE NIGHTMARES" spawned some enemies of a wave outside the playable map.
· Fixed a major bug where the "TELEPORT SHURIKEN" skill did not cancel the invisibility of the "PHASE SHIFT" skill.
· Fixed a major bug where the clients of a multiplayer didn't see some attacks from the "NIGHTBRINGER" boss.
· Fixed a major bug where the curse "HIDASTËA" (slow outside a circle) didn't work for Zero and Troy.
· Fixed a major bug at the upgrade gear view, where the player could still interact with the swap/equip buttons using a controller.

Fixes:

· Fixed a bug at the reward screen. If you had the chat opened, you were able to swap menus using the keys.
· Fixed a bug at the quest screen. If the player pressed the ESC button repeatedly, it could remove the first quest from the list.
· Fixed more holes at "WASTELAND 7A" maps.
· Fixed more holes at "SKUA" maps.

What are we doing right now:

· Last steps for the 1.0
· If your game crashes, a Crash reporter will appear. Please add the details of what you were doing at the time of the crash and send it to us. If you want to, feel free to contact us directly here at [email protected], with your "Saved" folder (C:\Users%USERNAME%\AppData\Local\Killsquad) attached.

PSA: Please remember that the progress you make in the beta, won't be shared with the public version. The public version will be available in a couple of days.

To learn more about betas, please check the following FAQ:

https://steamcommunity.com/app/910490/discussions/0/3093383255707217200/

[hr][/hr]

AUDIO

· Modified 40+ SFX from attack, abilities, environmental, movement and animations.

LIGHTNING

· Optimized the new lights of the main menu.

GENERAL

· Added the Steam DRM to the game.
· Increased the chances to spawn the second generation of the "OVERSEER MK2" at "PALACE OF PAIN" maps.
· Removed all the extra space on the right side of the plague contracts view.

BUG FIXING

Crashes:

· Fixed a crash that might occur when the "NIGHTBRINGER" uses his life steal ability.
· Fixed a crash that might occur when using any drone from Ekaar.
· Fixed a crash that might occur when using the "GRAVITY SHOOT" skill from Troy.
· Fixed a crash that might occur when killing "IB'HU, THE PROFANE" at the same moment of a crystal explosion.
· Fixed a crash that might occur when finishing the three SPEC OPS contracts as a client without going to the contract menu.
· Fixed a random memory crash when using the any character.

Major Issues

· Fixed a major bug at "WASTELAND 7A" where a collision blocked the player from advancing.
· Fixed a major bug at the "CLEANING IS MY THING" contract where you could fall between a door junction.
· Fixed a major bug at "HELLDORREN" boss fight door. Zero's ray was hitting an invisible collision at the door.
· Fixed a major bug where Kosmo could have both ultimate equipped.
· Fixed a major bug where some players did not unlock new contracts when playing contracts as clients in coop games.
· Fixed a major bug where the "RECOVERY" mechanic was not working for clients in a coop contract.
· Fixed a major bug where the decal for the upgrade "HEALING KIT V2.0" was not rendered. Now you will have feedback on when the healing kit is at full growth.
· Fixed a major bug where some skills went underground at some unleveled parts of "KEMMEKH" maps.
· Fixed a major bug with the recently added assets, provoking some enemies to spawn out of bounds.
· Fixed a major bug with the "ECSTASY (KOSMO)" weapon perk. It was not working for client players in a coop game.
· Fixed a major bug when refreshing the shop that could restock with the same items. Now they will be always different.
· Fixed a major bug when equipping a prototype gear. Sometimes when doing so, the support gear will change for another random gear.
· Fixed a major bug when having more than one screen. Now the mouse will not move to another screen without tabbing out.
· Fixed a major bug when the player opens the menu while moving or shooting. The character kept moving or shooting with the menu open.
· Fixed a major bug when a client player in a coop game stops seeing the meteorites falling after activating the car.
· Fixed a major bug when the "CURSE OF KAEJJTU" (damage if separated). Was doing damage if a player enters a seed at "POPULAR REQUEST" contract.
· Fixed a major bug when a client can't see any enemies after dying inside a crystal of the "IB'HU, THE PROFANE" boss battle.
· Fixed a major bug when stacking cooldown reduction blocking the dodge from working.

Fixes:

· Fixed a bug where the emotes gained by a chest did not appear in the top right corner as pickables do.
· Fixed a bug where the rarity shown for emotes at the reward view was common (gray color) instead of rare (blue color).
· Fixed a bug where the contracts "DOORS WIDE SHUT" and "THE DIRTY WORK" showed the possible reward duplicated at the contract card tooltip.
· Fixed a bug where the destruction of the new destructible box asset did not replicate to clients.
· Fixed a bug where the voting number at the plague totems were showing a parenthesis instead of a number.
· Fixed a bug where the yellow dot alert was not showing to new skins.
· Fixed a bug where the scale of the discord logo was wrong.
· Fixed a bug when using any animation with the "SHARP SPIKES ARMOR". A spike of the armor was not animated.
· Fixed a bug when joining a coop game or leaving a coop game where an empty map was shown for a moment.
· Fixed some minor collision errors at WASTELAND 7A.


What are we doing right now:

· Last steps for the 1.0
· If your game crashes, a Crash reporter will appear. Please add the details of what you were doing at the time of the crash and send it to us. If you want to, feel free to contact us directly here at [email protected], with your "Saved" folder (C:\Users%USERNAME%\AppData\Local\Killsquad) attached.

Greetings Bounty Hunters,

The WAHLA Corporation created two new emotes just for you. Emotes “Look at my skin” and “Respect” are here, just in time for the weekend. Use them to communicate with your squad. And if you are missing any members of your Killsquad, or you want to be a part of one, join our discord server and find yourself talented Bounty Hunters.

Killsquad Official Discord server: https://discord.com/invite/killsquad



Have a good weekend Bounty Hunters!
May your contracts be fulfilled.

Novarama Team


P.S. If you’re enjoying your time with Killsquad, do leave a Steam review. They help us gain more visibility on Steam which for an indie dev like us means the world. If you have a spare minute, write a Steam review. You have no idea how much that will help us out.

Hello all, Dani here, Game Director on Killsquad. As we move closer to launch, I wanted to look back, and share a bit of an Early Access post-mortem with you, the community. Talk about Killsquad. What we did right. What we did wrong. What I would do differently. And, of course, explain what we want to do next. So, I hope you enjoy it, and of course let’s all comment and discuss this below!


Early Access – Good stuff

Killsquad was born on the last months of the Kickstarter phenomenon. You will all recall: a team goes into Kickstarter, says “hey, we want to do game X, give us Y cash”. And off they went, with the cash. Sometimes they returned with a great game, sometimes they failed. Due to this second group of broken promises, Kickstarter lost traction soon for large games: when some games didn’t release at all, or released underwhelmingly, fans ran away, understandably. It’s a shame, as the idea of the community backing a project sounded really good on paper (and to give credit to Kickstarter, that has been fixed since).

Meanwhile, here in Barcelona, we were watching. As we’ve said a few times, we’re an ex-Sony studio, we were used to being funded by a publisher, and for a long time we had wanted to do something on our own. But we lacked funds. We had some money, but not all we required to build a good game. That game we were dreaming of was Killsquad, a Diablo / Left4Dead / Gauntlet hybrid. And, looking at the issues with Kickstarter, we thought: hey, Early Access is a much better idea: instead of selling “hope only”, we could actually give a running game demo, so fans could *play* and *see* the potential for real. We thought: people will try Killsquad, and say “yes, this has potential, so I’m going to back it”. Early Access was our way of saying “we won’t let you down, we will give you a really good game, please trust us”.

For us, Early Access was Kickstarter on steroids. Do I think the same way, now, 2 years down the line? Generally speaking, YES. I feel EA allows us to 1) prove our worth 2) raise money to keep working on the game. For those who know me, I’m not one to shy away from data. So here’s some numbers: Killsquad has sold approx. 110k units in Early Access, resulting in a revenue for us of roughly 1.5M USD. Does this cover costs? No, not completely. Does this help cover costs? You bet!

So YES, Early Access was for us a way to be able to make this game. In that respect, we are super thankful to every one of you, those who backed the project, be it on the first day of EA, or yesterday. This game exists because of YOU, simple as that, so thank you. We’ll never get tired of saying that.
Another positive aspect of Early Access is you get constant feedback. God, it’s SO hard to figure out what is the best game you should do. And, you know what? When you have 110.000 players, it becomes easier. You realize faster that your progression system sucks. You realize sooner that we need in game items. That your missions are too long. And so on. Both with regular updates, and Betas, we had 110.000 pairs of eyes telling us what to fix next. And this proved invaluable.

Last, but not least, as we say in Spanish, sometimes the destination is not the goal, the goal is the path you take to get there. This 2 years of EA are SO full to the brim with good conversations, discussions, fights (yes, those are welcome too!), that we wouldn’t change it for anything. It’s been a wild ride, YES, but one we will remember forever. Early Access gives you a deep dive into communities, and it’s great to have been part of this community of Bounty Hunters.


Early Access, the not so good

Of course every rose has thorns, and Early Access is no different. Through months and conversations, many of you in our community have shown interest in the “inner workings” of game development, and some of you actually work in games. So, I feel it’s honest and important to show you the ugly side of things as well. Maybe some of this can be useful to you! So, here are our not-so-positive learnings from all this crazy wild adventure

The first downside to Early Access is that it’s REALLY hard to commit to roadmaps when you’re doing live development. Say you think goals A, B and C are important. Then, you release an update with goal A in it. And, seeing the feedback, you realise B and C are not that important anymore, and you should do D instead. This is extremely frequent because games are dynamic things, and we don’t know how the game will respond to each change. And, when we need to do these changes to the roadmap, it’s really hard to communicate them to the community. During our 15 updates (yes, 15) we discovered many things, changed plans, and tried to explain the best we could why we were doing these changes. I hope now, in hindsight, you guys feel a) we knew what we were doing all along b) we only did this to make the game better, no hidden agenda. But there were lots of really tough calls. Some of you guys would prefer us sticking to a certain roadmap, but knowing where you will be 2 years ahead is basically reading the future. We failed in this respect, maybe we should have communicated better. But we feel the whole “Early Access Roadmap” is a complicated matter.

The second (really big!) downside of Early Access is review scores. Check it out: Killsquad has had +80 review score for ALL months since January 2021. ALL of them. So, you’d think this is the review assigned to our game, right? NO! If you look at the average review, it’s about 68-69. Why? Because Steam averages all reviews equally: recent or old, all matter the same. We feel this is unfair. We should get the score for the game we are TODAY, not the game we were 2 years ago. Check this out: No Man’s Sky just crossed 70 review score last week. More than 5 years after launch. With several million games sold, and a rock-solid reputation of commitment to quality. Why? They had 24k negative reviews during the first month. It’s not our job to judge other people’s work. But it’s obvious that, with that initial scenario, Hello Games had an extremely long and steep hill for them to climb to compensate for the early reviews. And so they did: they have done an awesome job, if you ask me. As a consequence, if you look at the data, No Man’s Sky has been with “Very Positive” reviews since August 2019. And only NOW they have a 70? Come on! It’s unfair it takes so long for developers who do a good job to compensate for early negative Reviews: if you’re in version 1.5, and it’s a great game, why do reviews from version 1.0 still count towards the final tally? You’re not even that game anymore!

Luckily, our case is less steep: we only have 2 thousand reviews roughly, but still seeing your game in “mixed” reviews land (68-69) when your recent reviews have been saying “very positive” for 8 months in a row sucks. Big time. Kills team morale. And it’s a shame, as it seems we push people for reviews (because we’re trying to compensate those early reviews) and hey, it’s not fair for you, our fans to feel pushed. I hate it, I really do. In an ideal world, those players from the early weeks would update their reviews, and some of them would move from negative to positive, to compensate. Well, truth is: that rarely happens. Reviewers often forget the games they played, and maybe we’ve managed to change a handful of reviews. And again, we’re not complaining about YOU, the fans. We’re saying the Steam review system penalises Early Access games, especially those with long Early Access times. And it’s a shame: Valve has done more than anyone for the PC games scene, and we think Steam is the best invention since bread came sliced. But, at the same time, we feel they should look into this: Early Access games are the lifeblood of indie studios, many of them having contributed killer games to our industry. Not rating their work appropriately is unfair, and will kill companies that are essential to keep our industry exciting and creative.

So yes, now I need to get pushy and ask for a positive review. Or for you guys to update your reviews if you feel we deserve it. Which I hate to do, as it’s unfair to you: it’s not your fault that the Steam system is biased. But having a game with a 87 recent review score and a 68 overall review score is so unfair: reviews are there to inform prospective buyers, who will buy the game TODAY. So, we should be valued for who we are TODAY, not for who we were two years ago. Our Early Access dream scenario would be to launch with a +70 overall review score: that means more visibility, and more sales. So, if you can devote one minute to giving us a thumbs up, it means the world to us. It’s really that simple.


Now what?

So most of you are asking: yeah, Dani, but what’s the plan? Ok, here we go: our intent is to release Killsquad out of Early Access on the first week of October, date still to be decided with Steam. The game will be exactly the one you see now, just with more polish, bug fixing, and minor updates such as the achievements drops we’re doing, balancing, etc.

As we warned, the game will come out slightly higher price, which we will announce soon. Raising price comes for 2 reasons: first, we want to make sure our EA backers got the game at the most attractive price. Second, we want to use this extra funding to keep improving the game. Doing games is expensive!

I think after 2 years in Early Access our commitment to Killsquad is proven. I remember back then, someone on forums saying “oh this game will go nowhere and you guys will abandon it”. Well, here we are. 15 major updates later. 80+ review score. No, we didn’t go anywhere. Not then, and not in the foreseeable future. We want to keep improving the game. Killsquad is a passion project, and a source of reputation for us: we won’t let you guys down. We will keep adding stuff.

And with that in mind, we will be announcing a whole post-release Roadmap soon, so that you can see that we are not done with the game even after it’s out. We will show you what our plans for the game are, and what you can expect from it in the future. Keep your eyes out for that News update.


Wrapping up

So, this is our post-mortem, and a bit of a plan for the future. As you can see, we still believe Early Access is a great tool to build great game, despite all shortcomings and downsides. We’re extremely happy to see the recent evolution of Killsquad, we feel the game is ready for big time, and we have exciting plans for the future.

At this point, our only request would be: please do post a review if you have a second to spare (or update your review if you feel we deserve it). As we’ve explained, we firmly believe Early Access games are at a disadvantage because they are dragged down by early review scores. And it’s a shame, as EA is a great way for developers to “break through”. If these games are dragged down, there will be less EA releases, and we feel that is bad for all of us.

That’s all for today, this was a dense post, but one we really wanted to share with you guys. It’s exciting weeks ahead, we hope you’ll live this adventure with us, and can’t wait to show you what comes next!