Hāyi saṭankaruvan!

This is (once again) a bit behind schedule, but I'm happy to announce that the latest update - The ARSENAL Update - is out now!

It's a pretty hefty update, too! Lots of good stuff in this one.

FIRSTLY, without further ado, let me introduce your new champion! Meet the Slayer:



She is a ridiculously nimble, whip-wielding, chakram-throwing vampire slayer who is all about dancing around enemies while keeping up the pressure!

Her whip is an unusual melee weapon with very good reach (and some other unique properties), but she has a whole arsenal of neat tricks to throw at foes!



In addition to the Slayer, every champion has an additional moveset option they can unlock!

Take a gander at the new additions to your arsenal:



Wonder what they do? Only one way to find out! :D

Nearly all of the new options can be chosen alongside the champion's existing moveset option - allowing you to experiment with different combinations in your search for your ultimate hero! The possibilities are endless!

(Okay, maybe not endless but really - there are a lot of new combos!)

Finally, I've been hard at work on improving stuff that should be better!

There's a lot of small tweaks here, but some of the important ones:

• Friendly fire has been turned off in the Rituals! So now you can MUCH more easily play with friends!
  
• When your character spawns in, you have a longer window of invulnerability, and your indicator is more obvious! Making it much easier to find yourself in the middle of a complicated fight!
  
• The shadowy enemy champions in the Dark Challenger rituals now indicate where they are going to teleport to - making it possible to avoid insta-kills when they would appear right next to you!
  
• Feeling bad about the start of a boss Ritual? Take advantage of the new Restart option in the pause menu!
  
• The Flight powerup is no longer horrible! Now instead of making your movement weird and floaty, it just gives you infinite double-jumps!
  
• And a bunch of little bugfixes!

Phew!

Blast Brawl 2 is finally shaping into its final form. There's only a bit of work left and then IT. WILL. BE. DONE!

And I can remove the "Early Access" flag.

My main goal is to add some more enemies/Rituals. Right now there are basically just fleshed-out zombie levels - there are a bunch of other enemies that are begging for more in-depth challenges!

So that's next on my TO-DO list.

[But after that - I'll be finally free!]

Hello, Brawlers!



After over a year and a half of hard work, the next update - The HORDE Update - is finally out.

Basically, everything has been polished and tweaked and is smoother and better than ever before:

• Wave mode (and the draft adventure mode) have been replaced by The Rituals - a mode where you must face strange, unpredictable battles.
  
• Every character has been polished and buffed! Everybody should feel snappier, more mobile, and all around more flexible in a fight, while still retaining their unique mechanics.
  
• There are a bunch of new enemies to fight! Be ready.
  
• The bosses have all been polished and improved! (And there's a new one, which you'll have to find within the Rituals!)
  
• Versus Mode - now called Dueling - now can have hostile enemies appear to complicate the fighting, and also allows for Powerups to drop!

Go try it an see!

I'm currently getting the XBox version of the update through the certification process - it should be out shortly! After that's done, the Switch and PS4 ports should follow. And I need to cut a new trailer since the game has changed so much.

Phew.

You may also notice the game is not launched from Early Access yet! While this update brings the game MUCH closer to full launch, there are still some things I want to do before considering the game "done." But more on that later.

Now go on, give the game a try!

Kaabo jagunjagun!

I continue to be hard at work on the new update! In fact, I recently put together a video showing two new things that will appear in Versus mode: Powerups and PvE enemies to complicate your fights!



Now, randomly during duels, enemies may spawn into the arena. They will be hostile to everything and attack whatever is closest. The enemies will match the "region" each arena is part of.

This is configurable (and can be disabled entirely if desired). You can control the rate at which they appear, and choose the difficulty that can be fought!



There are four main tiers of enemies:

• Weak enemies, who are simple nuisances,
  
• Strong enemies, who still die in one hit but are more capable and can put up a fight,
  
• Elite enemies, who take a few hits to kill and can be more of a danger than other players,
  
• and finally Champion enemies - minibosses that may slaughter groups of players and require teamwork between enemies to kill!

By default, the spawn rate is not too aggressive and only the first to tiers of enemies will appear. Good luck!

The more radical change is the addition of powerups!

I added these to the game to give players a new tool to overcome some of the harder Trials in this upcoming update. In those, enemies may have a chance to drop a power orb on death. Each orb will grant a player a special ability!

There are 10 different powers that can be granted:



What does each do?? I wonder...

Every powerup can be held in combination with the others, however. This should be rare in practice, but can lead to some unusual scenarios...



Whew! That's a lot. It's been a busy couple weeks on this stuff.

This update is almost donnnne 9_9

Hailō yōdhē!

As January comes to a close I felt I should share some more progress updates!

Recently, I was finalizing a new mini-boss - the Deathshead. He's-a spooooky sort.



I recently got together the draft of his dedicated Trial (most of the enemies have a stage that introduces them, adding them to an assortment of enemies you'll have already fought against). Check out some draft gameplay!



Yeeeeah, the final stage may be a bit too much. I'll probably remove the Flameskulls from it so the only ranged attacks come from the Deathshead.

I officially have drafts of most of the stages I'll add in 1.5!!! There's still a chunk of TO-DOs before the full release though:

• Still need to add draft stages of ~8 other stages
  
• Need to finish some enemy polishing (mainly on the bosses as I've saved them for last)
  
• Need to do a final polish pass - tweaking level graphics, adding visual clutter (steam grates everywhere!), some FX work, and finally
  
• Need to add a couple of power-ups that can drop when enemies are killed during certain Trials!

And then I can get the full actual update out! The end is in sight 9_9

The Powerups note may surprise some of you, since that's (basically) a new thing. I'm still finalizing exactly how I want to define this, but I've intentionally balanced the more "end-game" trials a a bit hard with the intention of giving players some form of drops that can help turn the tide. So watch this space, I'll post some more info when I have some examples!

Anyway, back to work

Pershendetje luftetar!

I hope you had a good holidays! I certainly did. ːsteamhappyː



But in addition, I've been still working on the game! And an updated beta build is now available.

The main thing is that the beta includes a Mac build! So those of you with OSX can now get a preview of the upcoming update.

The main other changes are:

• More character updates/buffs!
  
• Some AI changes!
  
• Some animation tweaks! (Mainly a squash-n-stretch system for moving characters that makes the game feel a bit more dynamic)
  
• Various bugfixes

Cheers!

Hei taistelijat!

I have been frantically trying to finish up this update! Unfortunately, I'm about to leave for the holidays @ home and not be able to work any more for two weeks.

That said, I WAS able to put together a preview build that will let you play an early, draft, not-finished, possibly-broken version of the next update!



It is out now in the new "beta" update channel! The change is only available for Windows right now (didn't have time to get the Mac builds going today)



Please be aware of a few things!

• I have fundamentally rewritten how saves work. It's backwards compatible, so you should be able to just download and play, BUT THE PREVIOUS BUILD WON'T SUPPORT YOUR NEW SAVES. So you'll be wiping your save if you try to run the old version.
  
• This is all still very much in progress. I've tried to have things be fairly polished, but it's NOT done. Expect some bugs and stuff (though imo it's very much playable/better than the previous version!) For example, the Boss Rumble mode is currently non-functional, I haven't had time to update it. :/
  
• This is Windows-only. I am literally packing today and don't have time to go through the Mac build process. :(

Going forward, I'll try to update this build more frequently (Ideally at least 1/month instead of 2/year).

If you play the beta branch, PLEASE GIVE FEEDBACK!! On, like anything. I'm very open to suggestions! :D

Mhoro varwi!

Apologies for the long silence. I've not been idle - far from it. It's just been a lot of not-visible work for the Steam/PS4 ports.

With that said, I HAVE been working on major gameplay changes. It's still in-progress, but here's some unedited gameplay footage you all can take a gander at!



As a side note, I also finalized the design for the next character I'll add - the Slayer. She will be a very mobile character that wields a whip and throws out chakrams that will orbit and bounce around her. Behold:



She will not be in the next update though. I may have the next update be a bunch more character moveset options, they're fun to make, give new ways to experience all the existing fighting, and I have quite a few ideas of what to add.

I also really need to update the Steam page for the new store UI... but due to priorities that's gotta wait until I am actually pushing the Steam update.

Hēyi raṇaśūra!

Once again, I'm sorry I don't post here more. Work's been reeeeally busy lately, and what free time I have I generally spend in Unity/Inkscape.

I'm still working on the next update! It's coming! Current honest timetable is probably in July.

In the meantime, here are some tasty screens of what's in-progress!





I'm also trying to get BB2 onto Switch! But that whole process is taking a while. :/

Saighdearan fàilte!

It's been a fair bit, ya?

Well, work on Update 1.5 - the HORDE Update - is well underway. I currently think I'm ~halfway done!

This update will dramatically update Wave Mode, bringing it more in line with what I expect the "fully finished" experience to be like - more enemies, more stages, bosses, etc, and an overall revamped experience! Here's a trailer showing some of the current progress, and the general shape of what to expect!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SD55KJ1jE2s

This particular update primarily focuses on the "Metropolis" region (the one with the zombies) - I go into the reasoning for that at the end of this post. So don't expect any changes that are toooo crazy in the other stages - for now, the undead are getting all the love.

With that said, the main changes I'm working on are:

One of the biggest things I want to do is flesh out a bunch more enemies! I've got a bunch of cool designs, it's time to actually get them in the game!

For example, this is the current set of zombie enemies players can fight:



Assuming I get them all done, this will be the zombie squad after the update:



They look pretty good, eh? All... pointy and shit. (View the full-res image if you want to see the details more easily)

Not all these zombies die in one hit. You may have noticed that two of the zombies in the current Wave Mode take 3 hits to kill - well, that number is going to expand. This is because I'm trying to establish rough enemy "tiers."

• Grunts - If you land one hit, these guys die. These are the main "meat" of the enemies you face, and will be by far the most numerous.
  
• Elites - Take a few (2-3) hits to kill. These guys are also generally much more dangerous than the Grunts, so if they're in a crowd
  
• Mini-Bosses - The name kind of says it all, right? These will be a major challenge and generally take more than 5 hits to kill, and when combined with a pack of enemies can ruin your day.

All things considered, you're going to have a much more... interesting... time of things!

With all these new enemies, it's a little overwhelming to fight ALL of them at once! Plus, they each have different strengths and strategies, so one map is hard-pressed to really suit them all.

So, there are now multiple different arenas per region! Each has a different environment, layout, and different palette of enemies to throw at you. They're arranged in increasing order of difficulty, and yes, you'll have to defeat one stage entirely to unlock the next one.

You can see some of the different new arenas in the linked trailer!

"Wait," I hear you say. "Defeat one stage entirely?"

Why, yes! I did.

These new stages now have a max round (generally 10.) In this final round, you'll face one of Blast Brawl's terrifying bosses, using the lives you've gained in the preceding waves. Defeating this boss is all that's required to complete that stage.



Good luck.

Oh, and for the truly hard-core out there, once all these "standard" stages are defeated, there will be an "endless" version for that region, with ALL enemies in the mix, and ANY of the bosses periodically appearing.

Additionally, with all these new challenges, it's become more and more apparent to me that certain characters aren't as good as others. I want to try and change that more comprehensively this update.

Planned Nerfs

The Gunslinger is a bit broken. Not because he's super elegant and flexible, but because his bullets can annihilate pretty much anything before it can touch him. So, I'm going to slightly nerf his bullets (for example, he'll have 3 shots before reloading rather than 4) and buff him in other ways (for example, his Pistol Whip move can use some work) to make him more nuanced and interesting to play.

Planned Buffs
Of non-broken characters, it's my opinion that the Ninja is the best/ideal character in terms of balance. He's simple but flexible, and it's relatively easy to do extremely well with him.

So, I gotta buff all the other chumps who are having a hard time keeping up!

This is going to vary on a character-by-character basis, but most of the changes aren't going to be simple flat buffs - I'm trying to increase character flexibility, not make them better at what they already do.


For example: The Warrior is a pretty strong character in my opinion! But certain scenarios can expect too much forward planning from the player. So, I'm making her Parry "priority-trump" her offensive moves (meaning she can deflect attacks/bullets while in the middle of a sword swing or bouncing off of the terrain) and making her Dash priority-trump even that. (This has pretty huge implications in play, I expect you'll see what I mean when the update comes out.) I'm also making her Parry take 0.6 seconds instead of 0.75, which makes it a bit less dangerous to whiff with (though it requires slightly more precise timing).

So, why only focus on the Metropolis? Don't the other stages need work too? Aren't there tons of non-zombie enemies and bosses you should be adding to the game?

They do! There are! I should! But all that will need to wait a bit.

As I've said many times, my end goal is a proper Adventure mode! And not the tiny little preview I have in the game right now, a full sprawling experience that you can get lost in. And though that's going to take a loooong time, I haven't given up yet.

And the next update is going to be part of that. After the Horde update is launched, why, next is Adventure Mode 0.1 - an update that launches the intro and first few areas that can be found.

My goal with this update is to get all the enemies and their AI and their mechanics figured out for the first region, so that the next update can focus exclusively on the level design, coding (open world exploration! woo! Save slots! woo!), character unlock mechanics, etc etc. Then, once this first update is in place, I can hopefully slap more and more content onto the game world until it's a big ol' sprawling bunch of awesomeness.

Then once the Metropolis is done it'll FINALLY be time to add in the demons... ːsteamhappyː

Heya, Face-Punchers!

For months, you all have looked to the skies and wondered when the next update would be out.

"Please!" you prayed. "Please give us more content! Anything will do!"



Well, ANYTHING is HERE! I'm pleased to announce that Update 1.4.3 is OUT NOW!



This mainly adds a new character - the CRUSADER, a mighty warrior who cleaves through foes with his deadly halberd while shrugging off blows like they were nothing!



His special ability is ZEAL, where he can absorb any one hit - while in the middle of other actions!

Tanking blows like this does NOT interrupt what he was doing previously, allowing him to charge up his slow spin attack and cleave groups of enemies!

This is extremely powerful, but requires precise timing - give it a try!