Barotrauma

It's a grim, dangerous, and terrifying life aboard a submarine exploring the pitch-black seas of Jupiter's moon Europa. That's what you're doing in Barotrauma, the Early Access multiplayer side-scrolling survival game: steering a sub through the vast ocean beneath the ice and trying to complete missions while fighting off alien creatures and sometimes your own crew. A lot can go wrong: accidents, attacks, sabotage... and sometimes you open the door to your reactor room and discover it's simply exploded.

Barotrauma is incredibly moody and completely terrifying, but it's also an amazing comedy. Characters move around as if they got their training in QWOP, so even when horrible things are happening it's hard not to laugh.

And in Barotrauma, horrible things are always happening, and since you're often playing with complete strangers, every voyage is unpredictable. Here's every horrible death I've experienced (so far). Note: some of the action can be hard to see so you might want to click on the gif and then enlarge it to watch in full-screen.

I mistook welding fuel for oxygen

It's hard to think of a worse death than asphyxiating at the bottom of a freezing-cold ocean on another planet. But I managed to discover one! After putting on a diving suit and investigating some underwater ruins, I realized the oxygen tank was nearly empty. Always check your tanks before you go for a swim on Europa, is the lesson. The other lesson? Not all tanks are the same. In a panic I tried replacing my oxygen tank with an identical tank I had in my inventory, but it wasn't an oxygen tank, it was a fuel tank for my welding torch.

Imagine trying to gulp in oxygen and instead getting a lungful of welding fuel. It's an unpleasant thought and a terrible way to die. RIP me.

I was dumped out the airlock while wearing a clown mask after attempting to poison my crewmate

Yes, I attempted to inject a crewmate with poison and kill him, but I'm not a griefer! I swear. Barotrauma has a multiplayer option called Traitor, which when activated will give certain crewmembers a secret task to murder another player during the voyage.

It was only me and one other player on this particular voyage, and I'd signed on as a medic. I searched lockers and compartments looking for any weapons I could use, but couldn't find anything (except a clown mask, which I naturally put on). I decided to just take a bunch of medical injections from the sickbay and stick as much medicine into my target as I could, hoping he'd have an adverse reaction, or maybe just pass out until I could figure out a better way to murder him.

This was not his first rodeo, though (it was only my second rodeo). After quickly realizing I was injecting meds into him—my first injection only took away a sliver of his health and my second immediately healed it back up—he immediately battered me with his stun stick and wordlessly dragged me away, clubbing me as we went. He dumped me into the airlock and locked the inner door. With nothing else to do, I eventually just opened the outer door and drowned, embarrassed both for trying to kill him and doing such a terrible job at it.

I was eaten by an enormous sea monster

After encountering and being chased and eaten by an enormous sea monster, I was dismayed to discover that GeForce Experience hadn't been running and I didn't get the footage captured. So I was thrilled to witness it happen to someone else while I was spectating a match. Maybe it's poor form to be overjoyed at the death of someone else, but hey, it's a cold world.

Interestingly, the monster actually bit his head off, and even more interestingly the enormous beast itself died a few minutes later. Whatever this crewmember had in his inventory managed to poison the monster. Be careful what you eat, stupid giant monster!

I mistook a plasma cutter for a welding torch

A common theme of my deaths, as we can see, is me thinking I'm doing one thing (like breathing oxygen) but doing something else (like inhaling welding fuel). After monsters chewed their way through the hull on one voyage, the crew quarters flooded so I grabbed a welding torch, opened the door, and swam in to patch the holes. Unfortunately I'd actually picked up a plasma cutter instead, so I was just making the holes bigger—though I barely had the dexterity to even do the wrong thing the right way.

Anyway, the ocean rushed in and the sudden increase in water pressure simply and instantly crushed me to death. Ouch.

I was trapped in a room with a sea monster

There are big, terrifying sea monsters that can eat you and smash your hull full of holes, but there are also smaller ones that can chew their way right onto your ship. It's horrifying. Above you can see one of them making its way into the cabin as I ineffectively try to burn it with a welder. As it slithers around and pounces on me, I keep trying to close the door between compartments with it on one side and me on the other.

I did not manage to accomplish this.

I was beaten to death by an alien hermit crab

While investigating a distress beacon, I took another swim to what I think was a small sunken vessel. It's hard to tell what happened, but it looks to me like some sea creature had taken up residence inside it, hermit-crab style, because when I swam close the little sub began twitching. Then what I assume was an alien hermit crab proceeded to beat me to death with its improvised shell. Welcome to the neighborhood.

I was scissored to death by a malfunctioning door

There was so much going wrong I'm not entirely sure what actually killed me, but as the sub was filled with water and creatures were burrowing their way inside, I tried to swim to safety by opening a door. The door immediately slammed shut on my head. I mean, that's what it looks like. It could have been the water pressure that crushed me, too, but I'm pretty sure it was the damn door.

I wasn't crushed between the submarine and a rock (but someone else was)

This isn't one my my deaths but happened to a crewmate while I was spectating and it was too gruesome not to include. The sub had crashed and settled partially on an undersea ledge and a crew member swimming outside was trying to re-enter the sub via a hatch below. Only the hatch was pressed up tightly against the rock.

As the crew member swam under the sub he realized he wouldn't be able to get back in. And then the sub shifted, just a tiny fraction, and instantly squished him. Brutal. I mean, yes, you can hear me laugh if you turn on the sound, but still. Brutal.

Barotrauma - Dynamoon
To make Barotrauma’s development easier to follow, we have just published a roadmap on Trello. Here you can see known issues and workarounds, our immediate todo list and longer-term plans.

Summertime Bundle
While we are not able to participate in the Steam Summer Sale directly, Barotrauma is featured in the Daedalic Survival Bundle along with CryoFall and Witch It. Take a look, CryoFall in particular could be of interest to anyone who likes Baro!
Barotrauma - Regalis
Our second post-launch patch is out now! Here's a summary of the most important fixes. The full changelog can be found on GitHub and it's also included in the game folder in a file called "changelog.txt".

  • Fixed a networking problem that occasionally caused clients to get kicked out in the multiplayer campaign, usually with an error message warning about a missing item.
  • Fixed servers using a local campaign save path sent by the client setupping the campaign, preventing the campaign from starting up if the path does not exist at the server's end.
  • Fixed radio communication occasionally not working between characters in the multiplayer campaign. Characters that had made it through at least one round were not able to communicate through radio with characters that have just been spawned for the first time.
  • Kick votes persist during a multiplayer session even if the client disconnects (= disconnecting and rejoining just before you get kicked doesn't work anymore).
  • The server sends a "this client previously used the name xxx" message when a client rejoins with a different name.
  • Replaced WinForms with SDL which should resolve most of the fullscreen/resolution issues. It's also now possible to change the resolution when in fullscreen without having to restart the game.
  • Fixes to the DXGI crashes during startup.
  • Fixed an issue that caused modded character files to affect the game even when the mod was not enabled, leading to various issues such as characters failing to equip items if the mod changes the number or type of inventory slots a character has.
  • Fixed a bug in monster/item spawnpoint logic that occasionally caused perfectly valid spawnpoints to be discarded when there were floating ice chunks in the level, sometimes causing monsters to spawn very far from the submarine (which often lead to the player not running into them at all).
  • Fixed items applying their status effects twice if they're put into a container by swapping them with another item. For example, replacing a fuel rod in the reactor by dropping a new fuel rod on it caused the reactor behave as if it had two rods in it.
  • Servers only report content packages with files that cause multiplayer incompatibility to the master server. Fixes servers showing up as incompatible in the server list if they have custom sub files (or other types of files that don't cause compatibility issues) installed.
  • Dozens of smaller bugfixes; see the full changelog.

Please note that this patch includes networking changes that make the game incompatible with servers running on the old version of the game. If you're getting error messages about an incompatible game version when trying to join a server, it's most likely because the server host has not updated their game yet.

In other news, to give you a better idea of our future plans and what we're working on now, we're setting up a public Trello board with a roadmap of our plans for the Early Access period and a list of known issues (and possible workarounds). More about that in our next community announcement!
Barotrauma - Dynamoon
Hi everyone!

We've just published our first official guide for the character editor – find it here.

Please keep in mind that the character editor itself is still a work in progress, and creating your own monsters will not be all smooth sailing. That said, we hope to see all your monsters!

And in case you missed it before, we now also have a manual for the submarine editor, in Steam guides.

We're heading out of the office for an extended weekend. Happy midsummer!
Barotrauma - Regalis
Server hosts ahoy!

We've now got Barotrauma's dedicated server available as a separate app that can be installed and run using SteamCMD in anonymous mode. This means that you can now hosts dedicated Barotrauma servers on your server machine without having to log into Steam. You can find instructions for installing and running the server in this pinned post on the Help & Support forum. Do note that this method of hosting servers is a little more complex than hosting servers via the in-game "Host server" menu or the dedicated server executable included with the game. It's mainly intended for people who want to run a dedicated server 24/7 on a remote machine.

And now that we're on the subject of server hosting, a quick word about the hosting in general. We are aware that many people are having issues setting up port forwarding for the servers, and a solution to this is admittedly something that we should have made sure to include in our first public Steam build. We are currently working on using Steam's networking features to remove the need for manual port forwarding, so server hosting will become much more easier soon in upcoming patches. For the time being, if you're having issues hosting a server, please read the instructions on the Help & Support forum, and if you're still having problems please drop a message on the forums or on our Discord Server.
Barotrauma - Regalis
Hi everyone, our first post-launch patch is now out! Here's a quick summary of the most important fixes, and you can find our changelog in full in GitHub.
  • Fixed crashes during startup due to faulty/missing OpenAL installations.
  • Fixed Steam ID based bans causing all clients to time out from servers.
  • Fixed a networking issue that occasionally caused clients to get kicked from multiplayer sessions with a "disconnected due to excessive desync" error message.
  • Fixed inability to select a mic if the name of the capture device contains non-latin symbols (Cyrillic or Chinese characters for example).
  • Removed job count restrictions from multiplayer (so now it's possible to play as other classes than Captain, Engineer or Mechanic even when there's 3 or less players).
  • Numerous minor bugfixes: see the full changelog.
Thanks everyone who has already been playing Baro during this first week! Upcoming later today is a handbook to the submarine editor, which you will be able to find via Steam Guides and our Discussion forums.

As we announced earlier, we were able to extend our launch discount by an extra week, so you will be able to get Barotrauma at the reduced price for another 5 days, until June 19. Have a nice weekend!
Barotrauma - Dynamoon
Hello again!

On Wednesday, we only wrote a quick announcement here, thinking we would have the time and space to talk to you like we do via chats and forums. Little did we know we would get new messages faster than we could read the ones already in our inboxes! Additionally, there have of course been technical issues – wouldn’t be a proper launch if it didn’t keep the programmers busy straight after...

So we’re sorry if we haven’t returned your message; we promise we are going to read it, however. And most importantly, thank you for every review (the negative ones too, we really read them all!), purchase and wishlist addition – our first days post-launch have been amazing, if also crazily busy. Now we wanted to take the time to go a little deeper into what we actually released two nights ago.

And in particular the big question: what’s the difference between the game that everyone played for free for years and this one that we now have to pay for?

First, we should probably admit to having lived in a bit of a bubble here: since we’ve worked pretty openly with our community, with fairly frequent blog posts, our source code public on GitHub since 2017 and all new commits being automatically posted on our Discord, we didn’t actually anticipate this question! Like, of course everyone goes through these things with a fine-toothed comb, right? Well, of course you don’t. So here’s the short version.

Barotrauma blog

Tonight we’re going to live stream again here and on our Twitch channel, now at a time when we hope our US followers are going to be around to see it. So tune in starting in about 5 hours, around 1 AM CEST!

We’re also trying our best to react to the sudden explosion in the volume of Discussion posts, and there will be more sensible subforums soon. Let’s keep in touch!
Barotrauma - contact@rockpapershotgun.com (Nate Crowley)

I m pacing the dank, red-lit command deck, haggard even before the voyage starts, and worrying about my crew. They re an untrained bunch; a mob of roustabouts I hired at the last waystation because I couldn t afford anyone else. And in truth, I ve got barely more experience than them – but I can t let them sense my weakness.

(more…)

Jun 5, 2019
Barotrauma - Dynamoon
Welcome, friends both old and new!

To help you all get started in Barotrauma, we posted some time-tested tips on our own forums. Hope you find them helpful!

We look forward to hearing what you think about Barotrauma while we are in Early Access, because this is just the beginning – just as we have always developed Baro with our community, we will continue to improve and expand the game in the months to come. So let’s be in touch! You can use the Discussion forums here, or our dedicated forums and Discord. We may not have time to reply to everything, but we are avid readers and grateful for feedback.

You can find links to our other platforms as well as other info in the posts pinned to the General forum.
Barotrauma - Valve
Barotrauma is Now Available on Steam Early Access and is 15% off!*

Overcome crisis and the unrelenting pressure of a frozen ocean. Flee or fight alien lifeforms, explore a strange new world in Jupiter’s orbit, command your crew and craft equipment in a tense 2D experience.

*Offer ends June 12 at 10AM Pacific Time
...