We can finally say that the latest version 0.7.8 is a direct improvement over previously available Sipho version 0.6.9 and time has come to make it available for everyone! There are loads of new content and tweaks in this update:

New and higher resolution graphics for all environments. Deeper objects are now affected by parallax effect. Some of new objects have special properties - Bones spawned in Advena areas are breakable, Cra'Than Holes spawn food if they are unblocked. And all of these environments are no longer visited in fixed order - this improves replayability and allows us present more varied enemies. Previously, Saenus Beefuorus were only seen in first levels and they barely fought back. Now, you might encounter them in later giving a much better fighting chance for that breed.

Sea creature in its comfy coral-decorated environment waiting to snip you

9 new bosses were added for each difficulty tier, adding up to a total of 13. Some of boss designs were based on the winners of community boss design competition. Boss fight arenas also use new environment features to spice up the strategy. We will be further polishing these fights - we want to these fights to encourage varied strategies and break pace from regular open-area battles. Boss fights are also great for experimenting with different mechanics in isolated area which we might bring later to the rest of the game.

One of new Advena breed bosses found in Level 3 "Secondary Crater"

Extended connections for structure parts was a small change which unlocked exponentially more possibilities of designing your SIpho. It was once a cursed growth technique of experienced players, which required placing and removing structure Zooids in a specific way to create farther connections than usually possible. Thanks to our community, it has been implemented to work out of the box:

Here you can see Advena structures placed further apart to allow Spikes sliding through

Special properties for movement Zooids were added to differentiate movement zooids further. They have the following effects:

• Advena movers regenerate energy on hit - we hope that this will play well with Advena's aggressive idea
  
• Saenus movers have much stronger Dash skill effect - acting like real-life squid jets
  
• Buginis movers decrease cooldowns of neighboring zooids by 10% - plays well with Buginis skill
  oriented breed. Since skills are not separated for each zooid and connections can be more intricate, mean value for cooldowns is used. For example if you have a Flak with 110% Cooldown Recovery and another with 120% CR, skill cooldown will be reduced by 15%.
  
• Cra'Than movers have additional connection points - crazy, we know, let's see how this works!
  
• Vagorian movers regenerate health - destined to bump into spiky things, Vagorians have evolved to regenerate their wounds,

Improvements worth mentioning:

• Rebalanced energy use of skills to scale better with smaller and larger Siphos. Read more about the change in previous announcement
  
• Added new Cooldown Recovery stat which improves your Skill cooldown duration
  
• New type of Siphonophore enemy - Polyp, which are stationary, turret-like Siphos. They don't think much and certainly don't move. Currently they can be found in single boss fight and spawned in Aquarium. In future versions we might use them as enemies in regular areas as well as in different boss fights.
  
• Zooid unlock drop options increase with each level - first boss drops two zooids to choose from, second one drops three and so forth - we hope this gives more freedom and incentive to continue playing in further levels.
  
• You now keep all adapted Zooids throughout runs. It means that with every replay extra Zooid selection list grows with new zooids. We thought that previous behaviour was just unpleasant for inexperienced players and nothing of value for experienced ones.
  
• New powerups - Melee and Ranged Damage, Cooldown Recovery and Range

Known issue:

• With increased amount of environment objects performance can get worse once Area is Cleared. We are looking into how to improve both performance and experience of being told that the level has ended.

The most recent changes that haven't been mentioned in previous updates:

• Spawn Cra'Than boss 3 whirlpool in the middle of arena
  
• Fix save updating to new version
  
• Support child colliders in Object Eraser

• Reduce crazy amounts of nutrition in Advena areas
  
• Serialize Zooid rigidbodies so they're always available
  
• Deactivate Zooid Reposition UI Stack if we are coming back to it dragging nothing
  
• Add optional debugging to UIModuleStack
  
• Remove duplicate event system from Aquarium menu
  
• Serialize Canvas reference in Growth Manager so it can have Growth Point UI recreated early
  
• Fix Spike throwing skill errors when becoming dead
  
• Bump year label

• Update obsolete Bone Ball Obstacle references in scenes
  
• Refactor achievements to support nonlinear levels
  
• Add environment type analytics
  
• Stop spike damage once it has exceeded pierce count and is still not retracted to simulate previous behavior
  
• Spike weapon improvement - track damage time per damaged collider rather than per-spike
  
• Debug improvements: add optional logging, allow turning off AI in debug enemy spawn menu, instantly spawn them
  
• Spikes pierce all colliders when retracting. Tweak spike forces
  
• Fix author of Crabs

All of changes made since 0.6.9 can be found here.

As we are getting closer to 0.7.x release to wide masses we are focusing on doing last touches of polishing roughest edges. Remakes of Cra'Than areas and boss polish will be coming after we release this update to the default branch - they are good enough to not lower the quality bar compared to widely available version 0.6.9.

This version can be played after updating to Steam's beta branch called [staging]. Find it at: Library -> [Right Click] on Sipho -> Properties -> Betas

• Enemies now remember who damaged them and treat them more cautiously
  
• Fix Zooids instantly exploding on death in previous commit
  
• Refactor Zooid health change events
  
• Add Siphonophore debug info to Development UI
  
• Destroy blocking rocks and other environment features once Seanus Boss Fight 3 ends
  
• Destroyed Sinkable Environment Objects handle being sunk
  
• Tweak gamepad/camera code
  
• Tweak Twister Narrows area - wider gaps, less food spawns, nicer bone spawns
  
• Dirty Project Settings
  
• Support controller with Camera Follow
  
• Remove Input workarounds for controller inversion. Use built-in Input System UI Input Module
  
• Use more generic IsPointerOverUI calculation code
  
• Put tentacle sprite pivot at the tentacle base. Adjust all prefabs and placements of tentacles
  
• Fix dead zooids throwing errors on whirlpool sink
  
• Alphas should spawn without extra nutrition
  
• Reimport all prefabs to populate serialized data
  
• Cra'Than boss battle arena layout tweaked
  
• Environment spikes remember damage time per-object - should feel much more consistent. Tweak damage values - damage more often, but require more velocity for full damage
  
• If ungrowing a Zooid would leave some Zooids detached, ungrow them too
  
• Fix glitch that allowed stacking zooids
  
• Remove silly Saenus layout from built-in
  
• Add powerups and Bone Balls to Aquarium UI
  
• Update object database
  
• Allow skipping objects from inclusion to the database
  
• Create new Bone Ball prefabs with new prefab workflow
  
• Decorate Cra'Than first Boss arena
  
• Ignore .vsconfig
  
• Upgrade Unity engine to 2020.3.0f1

• Make Advena Boss 2 rotate instead of constantly facing player
  
• Skip a frame when registering for Sipho Inventory so that anything that sets up inventory doesn't trigger Zooid unlock popup
  
• Rename Powerup Range to Range Powerup
  
• Currents should not affect Ignore Raycast layer - fixes leeches being affected
  
• Fix destructible object becoming almost invisible while damaged. Scale mass and hit damage with size
  
• Set local scale to Poolable objects before spawning them
  
• Do not lower clamp zooid decay to 0.01
  
• Re-enable save compression

• Reduce spike launch and chip forces to accomodate for lower mass
  
• Spread out enemy spawners a bit
  
• Change Eating powerup to become Range powerup - it also increases zooid range. Make powerup IDs consistent, add save upgrade path.
  
• Improve Cra'Than Boss 1 fights
  
• Add proper save versioning and upgrade path
  
• Change base time to spawn to 8 of Cra'Than Hole and scale it by their size - larger holes spawn more often
  
• Scale Destructible Container drop amount and health by their size
  
• Tweak Gemini boss, add its down aggro effect
  
• Never scale zooid size below 0.01 - fixes rare cases of leech tips disappearing
  
• Fix leech tips staying visually attached to pooled objects
  
• Reduce camera change speed in growth mode
  
• Print Siphonophore spawn log entry in Start instead of Awake - allows Enemy spawners to set Siphonophore name for better debugging
  
• Refactor how Enemy Spawners gather their settings. Clean up lots of parameters. Add scaled Alpha Enemy spawning to all areas. Tweak enemy Layout value level ratios
  
• Tweak spike
  
• Tweak spike to be less wiggly
  
• Fix Cra'Than mover "hands" being below their elbows
  
• Fix connection visuals not syncing correctly while dragging introduced in previous commits. Do not discard valid position when ending drag very close to zooids of that position (makes placing a bit nicer)
  
• Use absolute position values when moving child zooids through repositioning in growth mode
  
• Obliterate Zooid.transform references in Zooid Button UI - use Zooid.Position/Rotation instead
  
• Allow setting Zooid rotation through its property
  
• Add missing Peapod audio clip
  
• Fix skill bar being limited after certain width. Also stretch it down if it doesn't fit the screen
  
• Fix hole sprite bone references

Another fight based on boss design contest has been added to the game! This time it's The Gemini, create by Popcorn Dust!
The original design was solid - boss behaviour promotes interesting strategies fighting them. And there is a lot of potential for lore. We deviated a bit from original by making the second Gemini an invert of the original design:

The fight might be fiendishly hard or cake-walk easy. We will be monitoring feedback and tweaking this boss in the future!

The arena features new Cra'Than environment objects which will be added to existing levels to spice up variety. We are very happy how Tentacles have turned out to be. If they prove to be stable enough for such physics-based action as Sipho has, we might add stronger interactions with them - some might get annoyed and push objects away. We have also added Holes which sometimes spit out useful powerups to aid you in your fights.

Aquarium Layout Browser has gotten a little bit of love - it can now be searched and sorted by names or values of Layouts. More Aquarium functionality improvements are planned in the future.

Have a go at all changes we've made:

• Enable random motors on tentacles to make them move
  
• Cra'Than boss battle 2
  
• Set up Cra'Than holes which spawn food
  
• Turn off batching on tentacle sprite skins to attempt fixing flying vertices
  
• Conver "bulp" audio file to ogg and trim silence
  
• Add minimum delay option to Audio Player
  
• Support looping audio on following effect
  
• Turn off always update on sprite skins of tentacles and holes
  
• Spawn bonus nutrition where the boss was
  
• Tweak tentacles
  
• Set Ragdoll layer to not collide with Default layer
  
• Set up Hole sprite bones
  
• Add new environment objects to environment object collection
  
• Polish tentacle physics
  
• Improve Cra'Than Twin boss fight
  
• Fix layout author search not being lowercased
  
• Add sorting and filtering to Layout browser
  
• Add joints to tentacle objects
  
• Generate sprite bones for tentacles
  
• Allow rocks to set different solids layer than Default
  
• Add Ragdoll layer
  
• Add random motor speed script for Tentacle use
  
• Add music beat detector script
  
• Add 2D skinning package
  
• Do not use Growth Point UI while Sipho structure is dirty - fixes rare cases of entering bad UI state when quickly doing growth things
  
• Add multiple boss support
  
• Add Rect extension to incorporate Rect expansion
  
• Tweak depth colors so that mid depth is not as desaturated and dark
  
• Set up Cra'Than obstacle colliders
  
• Add Cra'Than prefabs and gallery scene
  
• Add new Cra'Than environment sprites
  
• Fix camera having slower zoom change speed than intended

Initial release of so-called Swarm - Buginis third boss fight has shown several things it needs to be improved upon. Its AI was tweaked to have a goal inside the Boid-brain to attack its current target Siphonophore - you, the player. Previously it would override Boid flocking behavior to go straight to its target, if it is in vision, and it would cause clumping together with other agents. Clumping up should now happen much less often.
Another interesting change was addition of Camera position and size overrides for boss fights. We can now increase zoom range in arenas without having to design environment outside of playable areas - the camera is simply pushed away from the edge, towards arena contents. This increases vision of important arena parts and allows us to tell the story using the environment more clearly.

• Beautify Buginis boss 3 arena
  
• Add plant Nest formation
  
• Add damaged effect to Sipho container
  
• Fully zoom out when using custom views - makes boss fight zoom consistent
  
• Make Buginis Swarm boss movement fully boid based with goal support
  
• Sipho eggs spawn siphonophores using their own direction
  
• Tweak Buginis Boss 2 arena camera limits
  
• Add Camera Follow Overriders to boss arenas to limit vision only to relevant area and allow zooming out further
  
• Tweak Buginis Swarm boss behavior to include player as goal in Boid simulation
  
• Workaround Sipho size being very large after boss area load by skipping a frame
  
• More Rect utility tests
  
• Add Camera Follow Overrider to enable custom camera control for boss fights
  
• Remove explosive sweeping from Sipho container

After many tweaks, third Buginis boss fight is now in the game! It is based upon Murderswarm design by TIC. We have let ourselves experiment with it a bit and we feel that it is going to be yet another unique boss fight.

The boss fight implementation differs from original by being Buginis, rather than Vagorian breed. On paper, swarm-based AI might sound easy to do, but it required quite a bit of tweaking to get it somewhat right in the game. It turned out alright and we are pretty happy with the result - the Swarm behaves believably in confined arena and is a threat to the player.

While tweaking and improving Swarm's behavior we saw potential of using the same method of control for friendly Siphos in Aquarium. Smaller Siphos would follow larger ones, including player's Sipho, which would have some influence upon the rest of the Swam. That would turn into a herd-management minigame if you want to keep your own Swarm together and fight other Siphos. These Aquarium improvements would come after we finish with non-linear levels in 0.7 versions.

• Less error prone way of applying zoom to view margins
  
• Reduce duration for camera animation if there is no spawn animation
  
• Use boss battle zoomout for other bosses
  
• Allow overriding zoom level for camera follow. Use zoom overrides for boss battle initial camera animation
  
• Swarm AI and arena improvements
  
• Add Buginis Boss 3 Swarm Layouts
  
• Do not save game while boss fight has not ended yet. Deterministically select zooid unlock drops
  
• More appropriate way of saving Boss Battle state
  
• WIP Buginis swam boss - swap arena art to Buginis environment, boid movement improvements, spawn swam from destroted eggs
  
• Add Destructible Sipho Container which spawns Siphos upon destruction
  
• Add HUE shift property to environment shader
  
• Add test for finding duplicate Environment Object IDs and fix them
  
• Swarmer Boid AI is now Faction based - boids will follow anyone in their faction
  
• Add Intended Rotation property to Siphonophore
  
• Update Siphonophore physical radius each frame instead of on Structure change

We had a little hidden update with several improvements:

• Use automatic Graphics API for MacOS
  
• Move LUTs to Textures directory out of PostProcessing
  
• Show Builtin layouts first if there are no manually saved layouts in Layout Browser
  
• Rename few particles options
  
• Re-gather shader
  
• WIP Buginis boss
  
• Add some particle graphics options
  
• Remove two unused texture lookups in whirlpool mist shader
  
• Choose another enemy spawner layout if enemy spawner fails to spawn in 100 tries
  
• Increase level end timeout to 30 minutes

Greetings everyone! Happy past holidays and new year! Now that the festive distractions are gone we can go back to improving Sipho.
One thing that has been bothering us for a while, was how hard the game is when your Sipho is little. It is hard to balance the game to play well when your creature colony is small, made out of few movers and a weapon, and large, having dozens of buffed-up(tm) weapons, efficient energy regeneration... and skills cost the same fixed amount. So we have finally gathered our courage to attempt at balancing that through skill cost. Now, most of the skills have a lower base cost and grow their cost with each zooid:
As you can see, new skill costs match old ones are around 4-5 zooids. We hope that this skill cost rebalance will feel more realistic and allow better difficulty scaling for different Sipho sizes. We will monitor experience and adjust these skills costs accordingly - let us know how they feel!

• Correctly decrease poison duration by 30% for each stack
  
• Balance sum skill costs around 4-5 zooids rather than 2-3. Generally makes skills cheaper
  
• Heads by default have 0 melee damage, but can deal damage if buffed.
  
• Set poison duration to 3 for real this time
  
• Fix some environment objects remaining collidable after level ends forcefully
  
• Fix environment some objects not fading out correctly

• Add Fixed set class for future use
  
• Muck and Poison clouds are now colliding with environment
  
• Remove Rock component from Environment Spike
  
• Fix Swarmer minion animations lagging behind. Movement Force stat no longer affects Swamer Minion speed
  
• Tweak Saenus boss 2 arena to make it unescapable
  
• Add Important setting on spawners and mark obstacle spawners as important. Do not spawn enemies inside chunks of important spawners that have not been loaded yet. Fixes rock-squished enemies
  
• Fix error when kill point receiver tries to unsubscribe from nonexisting Siphonophore
  
• Swarmer minions now crawl on top of obstacles
  
• Add timer based melee damage to all heads
  
• Kill point receivers (Soul Eater and Swarmer) kill dead Zooids on collision
  
• Pusher Penetration stat allows pushing more objects at full force by 30% per stat
  
• Improve whirlpool particles
  
• Zooid description shows Penetration stat as relevant if Ranged stat is non-zero
  
• Twister Penetration stat increases Swirl lifetime by 30%
  
• Poison debuff now has a duration of 3 (was 1) and scales duration down by 70% with each stack.
  
• Allow buffs and debuffs scale duration depending on stack count
  
• Enemy Spawner bases spawns on current wealth rather than Recent Wealth. Fixes Aquarium spawners not adapting quickly enough
  
• Add world position scale parameter to Scrolling Texture shader and use it for Muck clouds
  
• Muck doesn't affect its owner anymore. Increase Muck cloud duration to 5 (from 3.5) and radius per range to 0.3 (from 0.25)
  
• Dash now costs 20 Energy + 5 per zooid
  
• Added tooltip translations
  
• Show skill cooldown difference in tooltips. Tell players how to rebind skills
  
• Move GameKey beatifying code to String Beautifier
  
• Round energy capacity bonus instead of flooring it down. The effect is most noticeable with Energy powerup
  
• Change how extra cooldown is displayed - show delta in tooltips
  
• Cooldown translations renamed
  
• Rebalance skill costs so they scale with the count of zooids with that skill
  
• Proportionally increase skill cooldown if it is more costly than max Sipho energy. Display skill cost energy breakdown in tooltips
  
• Gray out energy regeneration buff if it's irrelevant
  
• Fix growth points improperly registering themselves at manager
  
• Improve skill tooltip to show skill energy costs
  
• Reduce flak shoot audio latency
  
• Update Burst and Collections packages
  
• More speedy Growth Point generation
  
• Forcefully end level if player doesn't clear it in 5 minutes
  
• Change object layer to Ignore Raycast when sinking to avoid unnecessary raycast hits
  
• Stagger sinkable sinking
  
• Serialize Zooid connection angle masks
  
• Remove duplicate standalone input module
  
• Set Growth Point parent to be the same as zooid button parent
  
• Do not despawn growth points that are going to be used - improves growth performance
  
• Fix incorrectly caching zooid button children
  
• Use growth manager to store growth points instead of searching globally
  
• Use lazy initialization for Zooid Buttons when Sipho structure gets changed
  
• Use Burst to calculate growth point positions
  
• Use Burst compiled MatrixUtility outputs as out rather than ref so they can be inlined
  
• Also store zooid connection angles as bitmask
  
• Do not throw errors when no Area is loaded
  
• Remove unused trail renderers from movers
  
• Remove pushing capability from Saenus Jet. Change dash multiplier from 2 to 3, reduce drag from 0.25 to 0.2, increase health to 11, do not penalize turning force - set it to 1
  
• Parametrize Dash multiplier
  
• More robust way of instantiating System Callbacks singleton
  
• Do not regenerate Drifter health when zooid is dead
  
• Update one of builtin Saenus layouts to be more menacing
  
• Reserialize sprite atlases
  
• Better utilities for Layout editing and refactor of layout selection logic for Campaign levels
  
• Only apply buff if base stats are relevant rather than current
  
• Update project to Unity 2019.4.17f1
  
• Tweak Spike and Santa hat to behave more controllably
  
• Serialize zooid component references in prefabs. Serialize zooid radius instead of calculating it from collider
  
• Update two Cra'Than layouts

Hey y'all, small weekly update is here! It features a new Buginis level 1 boss and has few gameplay tweaks/experiments to make fighting a little bit more pleasant. The update, as usual per 0.7.x is currently available only in [staging] beta branch: Here's how to get it:

• For timestamp of last input device use return minimum value when input device is unknown instead of zero - might fix controls sometimes locking up
  
• Plant boss 1 - Patroller
  
• Disable default collider on Tree_1
  
• Optimize initial spawner spawn to not sync physics objects when it's not necessary
  
• Delay forceful whirlpools by 5 seconds
  
• Experiment with quick heal distribution
  
• Prevent Layout corruption at rare cases when zooid repositioning happens very fast
  
• Reserialize all Environment Objects to ensure correct data
  
• More strict serialization validation of Environment Object to catch out-of-sync serialized values
  
• Grid spawner improvements
  
• Buginis boss setup and WIP arena
  
• Make Queen area use new sprites

As weather is getting colder in our Northern hemisphere, water starts solidifying into ice and so does our update!

We had a bunch of sneaky updates since our last update post. Most notable changes are:

• You now keep all adapted Zooids throughout runs. It means that with every replay extra Zooid selection list grows with new zooids. We thought that previous behaviour was just unpleasant for inexperienced players and nothing of value for experienced ones.
  
• There are new Powerups - Damage Increase and Cooldown Efficiency Increase
  
• And exactly this update features new sprites for Buginis environments.

Meanwhile movers have received some additional interesting mechanics:

• Advena movers regenerate energy on hit - we hope that this will play well with Advena's aggressive idea
  
• Saenus movers have a little pushing effect as their pusher - even better defensive Saenus capabilities, we'll see how this goes
  
• Buginis movers decrease cooldowns of neighboring zooids by 10% - plays well with Buginis skill
• oriented breed. Since skills are not separated for each zooid and connections can be more intricate, mean value for cooldowns is used. For example if you have a Flak with 110% Cooldown Recovery and another with 120% CR, skill cooldown will be reduced by 15%.
  
• Cra'Than movers have additional connection points - crazy, we know, let's see how this works!
  
• Vagorian movers regenerate health - destined to bump into spiky things, Vagorians have evolved to regenerate their wounds,

Our near future plans involve implementing new Buginis bosses, improving their environments and rebalancing skills, so they are more useful while your Sipho is still young. We will talk more about these once we actually do the work!

Known issues:
- Game performance drops drastically while levels are collapsing. We are investigating how could we fix this while also evicting players from levels more gracefully

Changelog megalist:

• Add experimental Bouncer script
  
• Always create new campaign state if it's not present after loading
  
• Do not flip current spawners in Plant 2 area
  
• More plant objects renamed
  
• Tidy Plant Obstacles. Now all Plant objects are Obstacles
  
• Do not error out when there are no zooids in inventory
  
• Branch leaves fade with depth correctly
  
• More user friendly spawner depth settings
  
• Linear campaign level size scaling rather than exponential
  
• Plant 1 area using new sprites
  
• Add WIP sine wave spawn function
  
• Various noise textures and import setting tweaks
  
• Allow scaling spawner tiles to rectangular shapes
  
• Add a bunch of patterns for noise
  
• Correct collider references
  
• Tweaks to leaves
  
• Make branch leaves a nested prefab and set it up
  
• Add leaves to plant branches
  
• Tidy up skill names

• Always allow selecting all adapted zooids ever
  
• Revert "Decompose Zooid instantly if it gets overkilled"
  
• Show sonar in Freeroam
  
• Decompose Zooid instantly if it gets overkilled
  
• Fix some non-damaging debuffs having damage over time set to non-zero
  
• Don't unlock pop zooids that have been disconnected from Sipho
  
• Fadeout environment objects render above player
  
• Fixed rare occasion of Head Selection throwing error when enabling UI before Head Selection was initialized
  
• Correctly fully fade-out decorations when close to them
  
• Update rotation in deformable when adding first zooid
  
• Hard limit Spike distance to 2x of normal distance
  
• Missing verlet meta
  
• Add experimental Verlet Constraint based soft body simulation

• Fix input not working when hovering objects in game

• Do not display multiples of same skill in tooltips
  
• Show tooltips for world objects - specifically zooid unlock drops
  
• Add ReadOnlyInspector attribute
  
• Report when game fails to load Input Manager
  
• Add reference to the names
  
• Add community event participant names
  
• Attempt to fix breaking input after update

• Change buginis mover bonus show up as percent
  
• Increase buff duration to 20 seconds (was 10 seconds)
  
• Fix Siphos not starting rotated correctly
  
• Remove greaser buff effect from other effects
  
• Add test to check for zooid prefab reference validity
  
• Rename Buginis mover buff asset to conform to new buff naming pattern
  
• Do not allow kill point receivers (Soul Eaters and Swarmers) have negative charge
  
• Attempt to fix errors on level leave
  
• Fix Whirlpools popping into existence
  
• Fix missing reference to Cra'Than boss zooid
  
• Cooldown recovery is now 1 for all relevant zooids
  
• Make some buffs only become applied if stats are relevant
  
• Allow skipping applying buffs if buffed stats are irrelevant
  
• Cleanup buff code
  
• Organize buffs and debuffs
  
• Make Advena Boss 1 cage openings more varied
  
• Make tutorial toggle On for new players by default
  
• Advena Lava 3 obstacles were missing rigidbodies and caused lag
  
• Make Spike feel better - increase launch force to 200 (was 150), make launch direction based on Zooid direction rather than tip direction
  
• Fix default dash button to be Left Mouse
  
• Return default skill cooldown if there is no skill group (for example if zooid is dead)
  
• Advena mover regenerates energy when damaged
  
• Update mover descriptions
  
• Vagorian mover regenerates health over time
  
• Add Pusher functionality to Sea mover when it dashes
  
• Put Cra'Than mover connection point inwards so it looks good from any connecting angle
  
• Add additional connection points to Cra'Than mover
  
• Add skill cooldown reduction buffing to Buginis mover

• Return default skill cooldown if there is no skill group (for example if zooid is dead)
  
• MegaDebug buff buffs all stats
  
• Fix Despawner breaking due to referencing deleted food prefab and not respawning anything when it's empty
  
• Tidy consumables
  
• Tweak Cooldown Reduction and Damage powerups
  
• Make Cra'Than Boss 3 spawner zooid regrowable
  
• When rebinding keyboard, ignore special controls as anyKey and imeSelected
  
• Add Cooldown and Damage powerups. Spawn them everywhere
  
• Add Health Regenerator script
  
• Remove accidentally added component
  
• Pusher tweaks to allow it being put on anything
  
• Serialize reference to Zooid in Zood component
  
• Support arbitrary connection angles for zooids
  
• Add Cooldown Reduction Powerup to destructible food containers
  
• Support cooldown scaling with most of the zooids
  
• Add cooldown reduction stat
  
• Make renderer cloner more silent
  
• Make Seanus boss 2 asymmetric
  
• Place Growth Point UIs in Zooid local position. Obstacles block new zooid growth
  
• Remove buffs before dead zooid is destroyed

After lots of judging and criteria-quantization we have decided upon winners of the Sipho Boss Design Contest!
Judging was not easy. To reach the decision we have tried to imagine how your creations will work in various game scenarios. Less violent boss fights, based on boss behaviour and its "decision making" were evaluated more highly. Some entries even felt like they have been mind-read out of our design ideas list and that gave a lot of confidence in both ideas and entries. We also looked at additional mechanics we would have to implement for some of entries to work and how well we could re-use them in the rest of the game. More re-usable game mechanics were rated more highly. Let's get to the business.
First place winner is:

You are in a maze with 4 - 6 boss Siphos. Each one aimlessly wander around until you are in their line of sight, where the one that sees you would chase after you. You have to maneuver the maze and not be seen by them, they can only see from their front side. You can safely attack them from the sides and easily kill them that way, but doing so will make all others seek to where the kill was, so you have to be careful.
When you wither it down to around 3 or 2 left, the rest will flee into a whirl pool and you win the fight.
You should not attack form the front side of them.

This kind of boss behaviour which is also arena-layout dependant should encourage players to take more cautious fights. Sneaking up on the boss and hiding from other bosses after a kill should make a nice pace-changing challenge. Congratulations!
The runner-ups are:

Twin boss idea was something that we kept in our backlog and this entry illustrates it very nicely. It also encourages us to expand Sipho screech vocabulary with "your turn" and "maybe I'll take a little break".

A boss slithering through small cracks and acting as a whack-a-mole, but the mole is pretty dangerous and lays exploding eggs is something we haven't thought of! It would be as if fighting an invisible enemy that can only be seen with "sonar" indicator. Very creative entry and hopefully won't be as hard to implement as it sounds.

Many small enemies instead of big boss? Yes please! Implementing boids-like behaviour which would flock the player or even try to open their own whirlpool? This should be fun.

Another award-worthy entry by z0mbiesrock. Potentially technically challenging, but absolutely awesome big boss idea of inter-connected Cra'Thancipede

Winners listed above will be getting Steam keys for each winning entry! We will contact you personally.
skipydog, Popcorn dust, z0mbiesrock, TIC, Salreix Von Otsuu, Max77, Camille, DrakonyxX, your entries have been great and inspiring in many ways. We hope to use this inspiration to push Sipho further than it has been before. Stay tuned for new content and let us know what you thought of this contest!

It features enabled Development mode which will report issues more visibly - both to you and for us automatically. If you find yourself looking a red text at the bottom-left corner of the game, please report it and tell us what you were doing! We hope to catch issues faster this way and stabilise faster.

• Graphics settings after build
  
• Preload Input Settings
  
• Track Burst compilation settings
  
• Allow Renderer Cloner be destroyed when scene is being unloaded
  
• Change linux build target to x64 - which is now only Linux architecture supported by Unity
  
• Upgrade project to Unity 2019.4.13f1 (518737b1de84) - this might cause various unexpected issues
  
• Grappling hook is now affected by Penetration stat
  
• Update zooid graphics when outline color changes
  
• Re-gather Environment Objects for spawning and automatically gather them on build. Fixes missing objects after save load
  
• Fix Side Popup double translating
  
• Play sounds when zooids are picked up, grown and placed
  
• Remove obsolete deformable synchronisations - we don't rely on world positions that much anymore