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/

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The Core 2 Update is here! This patch comes with major changes. The skill and upgrade system has been reworked. Now, you can preview, buy, and equip from the skills menu to combine them in new and exciting ways. You will be able to explore these new features with the revamped UI, new interface, interactions and new functionalities such as shop rerolls or ways to save your preferred skill arrangements.

PROGRESSION

In this update we have focused in reworking the core system of the character skills allowing full customization of your build using the new skill tree. Also, and maybe the more important change, your abilities are automatically upgraded inside a contract using the upgrades and skills you preselected at the skill tree.



TECS

A new unique currency is added to the game: TECS. They can be earned and found in contracts. Use these TECS to unlock Skills and Upgrades for a specific character in the Skill Tree. Look for them carefully as they exist in a specific amount for each character.

Skills tree

Added a skill tree to each character, use TECS to unlock Skills and upgrades. Equip them and combine them in new and exciting ways to achieve the play style you like. You will need to buy at least one upgrade from one level to unlock the purchase of the next level, after that you can equip whatever you want even if they are all level ten upgrades. Fully customize your build!

NOTE: Veteran players will get all the TECS rewarded by contracts after downloading the patch, but all the hidden TECS will need to be found.

Builds and presets

Heroes have 10 cores that allows to assign skills and upgrades to their build. Each of them will have a cost, higher tiers will cost more than low tiered upgrades. Combine them in different ways to create the playstyle of your choice! Save the arrangements in one of the five available preset slots to switch between your skills and upgrades!

SKILLS AND UPGRADES

With the new system we have taken the opportunity of balancing existing upgrades and adding new ones. Also, all descriptions have been overhauled to improve readability and give more information to the player.

· Kosmo has received a new upgrade: Turbo Whirlwind.
· Cass has received a new upgrade: Ultimate Hunter.
· Troy has received tree new upgrades: Karma Card, Last man standing and Sleight of Hand.
· Cass's In and Out upgrade has been removed from the game.
· Troy's Gotcha upgrade has been removed from the game.
· Troy's Dodge Master upgrade has been removed from the game.
· Troy's Dead Man Walking upgrade has been removed from the game.
· All descriptions have been updated giving more information on the skill/upgrade.
· Some skills and upgrades names have been changed.
· Some skills and upgrades received a numerical rebalance. It's not a definitive number, and it may change

NOTE: This section is still in progress, it might change in the public release.

UI

A new design comes to the game alongside major changes at quality of life.




Shop

A new Reroll mechanic is added to the shop as a quality of life improvement. Now you can pay a little amount of credits to manually reroll the shop stock to look for your desired equipment, we hope this change will ease your grinding for the perfect piece of equipment. Also, as requested, we added a weapon and gear comparison.

General Changes

· Added an icon to show how many TECS can be found in a contract and how many you already found there.
· Added a new message in the contract selector screen when the host of a game chooses a contract notifying all group members.
· Added new upgrade icons at the skill tree.
· Added an outline to all intractable items to give more feedback to the player.
· Added particle effects in the lobby when a player is ready.
· Added a new special TEC pickup. These items can only appear on contracts indicating it.
· Added new hover popup on currency sections as the lobby, shop and in contract game showing the important currencies for that section.
· Added a new start splash art at the begining of the game.
· Changed the color of the rebel faction from red to blue.
· Updated the UI at the lobby. New visuals before starting a contract improving the feedback to the player.
· Updated the UI at the heroes section. A Centralized section of all the statistics, inventory, character progression, cosmetics and vanity items for all characters.
· Updated the UI at the shop. A clearer interface able to show more information of an item alongside a new reroll system.
· Updated the UI at the player profile. Better view of your statistics, reputation levels and vanity badges/icons.
· Updated the UI at the contract selector. Easier to navigate between plague and normal mode and to select a contract to play.
· Updated the UI at the ESC menu inside a contract. New visuals showing current equipment and your selected upgrades ordered by level. You can keep track on your stats and when will new upgrades be available inside a contract.
· Added tutorial videos to preview all the skill and upgrades. You can also watch those videos in the ESC menu inside a contract.
· Updated all controls UI icons.
· Updated the items upgrade Icons. Three new status showing when the weapon/gear is updated, when you have enough resources for the upgrade and when the weapon can be upgraded but you don't have enough resources.

REBALANCE

Major overhauls

· The toxic fallout in "Overprotection" contract now launches a healing area inside the shields to help during the struggle.
· The palace of pain received more monster variation in enemy waves and also added more time to the hold area segment.
· Balanced some HUB segments at SKUA Maps by adding more enemies and pickups. They were empty before the rebalance.


General overhauls

· Rebalanced all game Recruit and Veteran contracts, focusing on shorter and more fun games.
· Rebalanced all SKUA Enemies.
· Rebalanced all credit rewards after the second time you play a Recruit contract.

AUDIO

· Troy received a SFX rework for his guns, with more than 30 new gun SFX.
· Zero received a SFX rework for his laser gun, with more than 10 new gun SFX.
· General Overhaul to the ambient sounds at SKUA maps, adding more than 25 new SFX.
· Added sound feedback to UI.
· Added sound feedback to the Steerable Ball skill.
· Added sound feedback to the Mass Execution skill.
· Added sound feedback to the Emergency Shield skill.
· Added footsteps sound to all SKUA floor types.
· Added footsteps sound to all THE PALACE OF PAIN floor types.
· Added footsteps sound to all WASTELAND 7A floor types.
· Added missing audio in the Queen Maggoth's boss cinematic entrance.
· Reduced the volume of the starting music at the coliseum.

GENERAL

· Updated the particles when destroying a SKUA ball in an area.
· Changed the color of Kosmo's Berserker Taunt skill.
· Added a new death SFX to the S.K.Y.F.E.D BOSS.
· Added a new SFX in the Toxic area of the Overprotection contract.
· Added new particles to the barriers of the Overprotection contract.
· Added four new entrance animations to each hero at the start of a contract.
· Added destructible rocks to WASTELAND 7A maps
· Added a new dash animation for Lilith.
· Added a new dash animation for Zero.
· Modified the dash animation for Kosmo.
· General review to all "WASTELAND 7A" maps fixing holes or collisions.
· Added a fire spark particle to SKUA maps.



BUG FIXING

Crashes:

· Fixed a crash that might occur to hosts after selecting a skill with ZERO.
· Fixed a crash that might occur after a group dissolves and a client tried to play a contract in single player afterwards.

· The bug "Unreal Engine is exiting due to D3D device being lost" it's a common error from games made with Unreal Engine. We have created a steam discussion with some guidelines on how to fix the problem: https://steamcommunity.com/app/910490/discussions/0/5673948479035084906/

Major Issues

· Fixed a bug where some clients stayed in an infinite loading screen after finishing a contract.
· Fixed a bug at M.A.G.N.U.S boss fight that after 10 minutes, the enemies with the laser balls stop spawning.
· Fixed a bug at M.A.G.N.U.S boss fight that ocurrs after the party died in the boss fight. After respawning some clients couldn't see the boss HP bar.
· Fixed a bug where some enemies in an ambush spawned outside the barriers blocking the player from clearing the ambush.
· Fixed a bug where the "Lucky draw" skill from Troy was blocked after using it at close range.
· Fixed a bug at "WASTELAND 7A", where the generation of the map sometimes had no route to the end of the contract.
· Fixed a bug at "WASTELAND 7A", where the player could get stuck with a collider.
· Fixed a bug at "Doors wide shut" contract, when the boss Alpha Gorus could get stuck at the stairs.
· Fixed a bug with the GPU performance, even if the game was tabbed. Now the game is capped at 144FPS avoiding the GPU to reach its maximum capacity for no reason.
· Fixed a bug where starting a contract in a group, the game kept loading until a client was kicked out automatically.
· Fixed a bug at the "TROUBLE IN PARADISE" contract that could make the player fall from the map.
· Fixed a bug at the elevators from "KEMMEKH": Now the objects such as heal packs from Zero will follow the elevator while moving.
· Fixed a bug of "Queen Magoth's" that occur in the middle of the fight, deforming her 3D Model.
· Fixed a bug of the "Suriken Ricochet", that ocurred sometimes in the second hit, not teleporting to the second target.

Fixes:

· Fixed a bug with the "Hatch Guy's Very Special...'Soup'" quest. Now you should be able to finish it with one Nightbringer eye.
· Fixed a bug at "KEMMEKH", with render issues on the plagued area.
· Fixed a bug in the CODEX that didn't show some attack information for some enemies.
· Fixed a bug at the end contract view showing some items twice.
· Fixed a bug of the Trap Implosion skill that could render some particles in front of the camera.
· Fixed a bug that generated some plague segments at "THE PALACE OF PAIN" maps in normal mode.
· Fixed a bug that might occur when crossing some segments of a contract, rendering a white flash for one frame.
· Fixed a bug at some segments of SKUA maps that did not spawn enemies.
· Fixed the bug of the "Overprotection" contract, displaying the environment windows with a bright green color in the toxic fog segment.
· Fixed a bug when loading an audio or dialogue at the start of a contract with one or two seconds lag.
· Fixed a bug at M.A.G.N.U.S's boss fight that vibrates when changing his state between attacking and idle.
· Fixed a bug at "Overprotection" contract after respawning at the Toxic fog area the voice line reproduced twice.
· Fixed a bug involving the roughness rendering of the enemies at WASTELAND 7A.
· Fixed a bug at the last Black Box cube removing the sound from the dialogue. Now it will reproduce as it should.
· Fixed a localization bug regarding the Black Boxes dialogues.
· Fixed a localization bug at "KNOCKIN' ON HEAVEN'S DOOR" contract when delivering the battery spheres
· Fixed a localization bug in the skill tutorials.
· Fixed some holes at SKUA maps.
· Fixed a rendering issue at the CODEX, now the enemies will be rendered at good quality.

Others:

· Fixed the issue where Troy's "Luck of the draw" could be activated accidentally, after using Strong Shot. The sequence "Right click + Left click" has been improved.

What are we doing right now:

· New character Ekaar, bugfixing, factions and tutorials.
· 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 killsquad@novarama.com, with your "Saved" folder (C:\Users%USERNAME%\AppData\Local\Killsquad) attached.

Hello, Bounty Hunters!

We're happy to announce that the Beta of our next update is going to drop, if all goes well, next week.

This is our most important update since CORE:

1) It contains our new progression system, as announced in the Gathering of Bounty Hunters.



2) It brings the all new UI, which includes many community petitions, such as:
- Compare gear between shop and currently equipped
- A full revamp of the hero customization experience




3) It also brings a review to all the game contracts, focusing on shorter, more fun, more different.

The new build also comes with a few unnanounced surprises, which we're not gonna reveal as... you know... they are surprise!

So, rest assured, the wait is almost over. If you don't know what a Beta is, or how to join, here's a handy post on our Steam forums that explains all about them. Just CLICK HERE

So, one week to go. Can't wait to share what we have been working on with you all!

Hello all!

You had questions? We have answers!
Here is our part II of the Gathering video, with the answers to your questions. We hope you enjoy this presentation, and feel free to ask more questions on this post!



By the way, if you missed the original video, where we present our roadmap for the next few months, we add it here again, for your viewing pleasure.



Have a great weekend!

Ok, let's cut to the chase! Enjoy this presentation, and keep sending us your questions for next week's Q&A session! You can post questions as answers to this message. And don't worry, we also track any question on the Steam forums as well.

Hello all!

After the release of Skua, it's time for us to do a Roadmap update, as we usually do. So, next week, we plan to publish our 4th Gathering of Bounty Hunters video, which is a detailed update, straight from our game director, of what we are working on, features, details, and all the nitty gritty you guys love. We can already advance to you guys that you we are sticking to our last published roadmap. So, rest assured, new features are coming your way, soon!

Next week, we will give you an inside look at our plans. Hey, that's what Early Access is for, right?

Here's what is on our plate for next week, for your reference:

1. Progression update, permanent progression
   
2. New hero
   
3. A full UI revamp
   
4. And some surprises we'll leave for then.

So, if you want a detailed description of the above, plus more, make sure you tune in next Friday here on Steam, as that's when we will publish it. Additionally, in the spirit of previous videos, we invite you guys, the community, to ask us anything you'd like us to cover on the video. Consider this your access-all-areas, our Ask Me Anything format. So, if there's something you want to ask about Killsquad, Novarama, or any other thing, NOW is the time. Just post your questions as answers to this article, and we will try to cover as many as we can on next week's video.

So that's it for today. It's Gathering of Bounty Hunters time once again!

Oh, and before I head off, let me thank everyone who has posted reviews on Steam recently. We are on a steady rise, and it's such a morale kick for the team. You guys rock!

See you next week!

We are happy to announce the release our our newest update: Skua, available now!




With Skua, we deliver our fifth game world to the Killsquad universe. After visiting Wasteland07, Kemmekh, the Palace of Pain and the Colosseum of the Unseen, you're going in against your toughest challenge yet: Skua, the orbital space station of the Federation. Their training ground for new weapons and battle tactics.

Skua brings a full new storyline to Killsquad: expect new locations, all-new enemies and bosses, and new contracts for you to take. And yes, there's also new quests, cosmetics for you to show off your skill, new victory animations... well, you get the idea. Go Play!


The Skua update also brings our biggest-ever quality of life boost: we have been hard at work to raise performance across all hardware configurations, so you can expect higher frame rates, more fluid gameplay, and an overall smoother experience. We have also been stamping out bugs like there's no tomorrow. As we advance in our Early Access, we want to give you guys the best experience, and we feel Skua is a huge leap forward.

So, whether it's for the all-new adventures, or to rediscover the game with the new performance boost, jump in! There's a universe waiting for you.

Follow this link to read our full patch notes for the Skua update.


SKUA is available in English, Spanish, Italian, French, German, Russian, Simplified Chinese, Korean & Japanese.

We plan to update our roadmap next week, to announce all the exciting stuff coming to Killsquad after Skua. So yes, stand by. We have more cool stuff coming. New hero? Yep. New progression system? Check. Cinematics? Yessir!

Killsquad is an Early Access game. As such, it is a product in development. Have encountered a bug? We are sorry. Please report it by joining our Discord community. Please do so here:

https://discord.com/invite/killsquad

You can report bugs on the #beta-bug-report channel. Please be specific describing the bug: the easier for us to trigger the bug, the faster we solve it. If you don’t like Discord, do get in touch directly at http://killsquad@novarama.com with the bug info.


Do you like our game? Would you like to help an independent developer? Here is what you can do:

This is THE single most important thing you can do. Reviews do magic to the Steam algorithm. Or, if you wrote a negative review back in the day, and feel we’ve done a good job, do you know you can update your review? Reviews are the blood that keeps us alive!


Discord: https://discord.com/invite/killsquad
Twitter: https://twitter.com/killsquadgame
And on the Steam forums

Stream Killsquad, post videos on Youtube. Tell the world about it. If you have a significant following, contact us at http://killsquad@novarama.com, and we’ll try to support you in any way we can.

Are you a member of the media? We want to meet you! Contact us at http://killsquad@novarama.com

Killsquad is an action-packed 4 player action RPG where sci-fi mercenaries raid planets seeking fame and glory. With four planets to explore, over thirty unique contracts to master, more than 100 weapons and 30 unique enemies, Killsquad offers an adrenaline-pumping journey into a dystopian future full of blood and black humour. Killsquad is now on Steam Early Access, with an approximate launch date of Summer 2021.

Killsquad is developed by Novarama, a Barcelona-based independent games developer with +18 years of experience, 11 of them as a Sony exclusive studio. With a team of +40 people, Novarama's mission statement is to building innovative games for mass audiences. Killsquad is our first fully self-published game. Visit Novarama's website at http://www.novarama.com

Hello, Bounty Hunters!

After a long pause, we're back to the Dev Diary! And we have a really good reason to do so: today, we launch the Beta of our next major Killsquad update, Skua. This new update will bring two huge features: the full Skua Campaign, and a much-desired Performance Upgrade.

Skua is the fifth game world in the Killsquad universe, after Wasteland 07, Kemmekh, the Palace of Pain and the Colosseum. Skua is a huge orbital space station owned by the Federation. They use it to store and test their newest weapons of destruction. And guess who is going in? Yes, correct: YOU. The Skua campaign brings a huge amount of content to KILLSQUAD: new locations, all new enemies, new contracts, new storylines... it's a whole new world for you guys to explore. To suffer. To conquer.

Now, our second major point today is performance. You guys care about performance. And so do we at Novarama. And now it's even more important: with our success in Asia (our friends in China and Korea, yes, this means you!) we've realized a lot of people play Killsquad in net cafés. So, we worked super hard to give you a super smooth experience, across *any* machine. So yes, all of you are getting higher frame-rates. More stability. A better experience for all our community. We hope you enjoy it.

I don't want to drag on for too long. Today is a day to play and celebrate. If you want a final experience, wait for a few more days while we sort out the remaining bugs. We feel we may be ready for a public release next week. But if you just want to go kill bugs here and now, join the Beta. It's free, it's open!

Instructions are here

They are here

Full list here

Please write a review. This is THE single most important thing you can do. Reviews do magic to the Steam algorithm. Or, if you wrote a negative review back in the day, and feel we’ve done a good job, do you know you can update your review? Reviews are the blood that keeps us alive!


Discord: https://discord.com/invite/killsquad
Twitter: https://twitter.com/killsquadgame
And on the Steam forums

Stream Killsquad, post videos on Youtube. Tell the world about it. If you have a significant following, contact us at killsquad@novarama.com, and we’ll try to support you in any way we can.

Are you a member of the media? We want to meet you! Contact us at http://killsquad@novarama.com

That's it for today! Thank you for always being there, and thank you for helping us make Killsquad a great game together!

Happy Chinese New Year! It's the year of the Ox, and for all the support we receive from Asia, we're doing a mini-event! The game is now on sale, so GO GET IT NOW!. Also, for you collectors, we have added a new, exclusive portrait to commemorate this festival! It is now available to unlock in the Portrait section.


· Added a new portrait: The Year of the Ox.
· Fixed the bug where Troy sometimes used its "Luck of the Draw" skill, instead of "Execution". (Thank you Dism, Rice-Cooker, DeathCall and tehgreg)
· Fixed the bug where players couldn't complete the quest "One Queen to rule them all".


· Working on the new planet, Skua.
· Optimization.
· Improving the UI navigation.
· 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 killsquad@novarama.com, with your "Saved" folder (C:\Users\%USERNAME%\AppData\Local\Killsquad) attached.

牛年快乐!

Happy Chinese New Year! It's the year of the Ox, and for all the support we receive from Asia, we've added a new portrait to commemorate this festival! It is now available to unlock in the Portrait section.


· Added a new portrait: The Year of the Ox.
· Fixed the bug where Troy sometimes used its "Luck of the Draw" skill, instead of "Execution". (Thank you Dism, Rice-Cooker, DeathCall and tehgreg)
· Fixed the bug where players couldn't complete the quest "One Queen to rule them all".


· Working on the new planet, Skua.
· Optimization.
· Improving the UI navigation.
· 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 killsquad@novarama.com, with your "Saved" folder (C:\Users\%USERNAME%\AppData\Local\Killsquad) attached.

Hello all!
After Christmas, we took some weeks off the Dev Diary routine to chart our roadmap for Killsquad. With that process now done, we’re ready to begin telling you what we are working on. Here we go!

We have received comments that Killsquad’s framerate is lower than it should: framerate drops, difficulty running the game in some hardware… this is especially true for our fans in Asia (Korea and China mostly). Many of you are playing Killsquad in Net-Cafés, which we love. But sometimes the framerate is low. So, we have one team optimizing the game for performance. You’ve seen some of this already on the recent Hotfix, but more is coming on the next major update. Expect a more fluid experience across all machines. This has the side benefit of helping a console version as well (more on this later!)

In 2020, we had a game we needed to fix: there were systems still to be implemented or missing, so our focus was on the gameplay. Sales during Christimas 2020 have proven Killsquad is becoming a pretty good game. But that has introduced many bugs. We have a second team just focused on crashes, bugs, etc. Again, you saw some of their work on the Hotfix last week, but expect a push to polish the game so there’s no bugs at all.

Killsquad’s interface has been steadily growing as more systems were added: gadgets, talismans, portraits, cosmetics, quests… as a consequence of that, let’s say the interface is nowhere as logical or intuitive as it should be: some sections are out of place, some are hard to find. So, we are working on a full UI revision, to make sure things are as intuitive as possible. We’ll promote some sections, remove old ones, and make sure the interface works for you, not against you.

The three points above are all about Quality of Life. And Quality of Life is super important. But so is content. So, we confirm on the next update you are getting Skua, a full new world with its own contracts, quests and enemies. Skua is the space station where the Feds build and train their army of robots, so it can move across the galaxy conquering rogue planets. Expect Skua to drop during spring, in a mega-update that will include also all of the other things mentioned above.

We are working on Killsquad for Playstation. There, we said it. Expect it to drop summer this year, both on Ps4 and Ps5. We have always loved this kind of A-RPG on console, from Helldivers to Gauntlet to Alien Nation, and we wanted to be there. The port is almost done, we just need to optimize it and rework some network systems. But yes, Killsquad is coming to console. There’s no plans for other consoles outside of Playstation that we can confirm at this point.

And that’s not all. We’re working on an opening cinematic. We’re seriously thinking about progression changes to make the game more fun for longer. We’re working on new cosmetics. We have a lot of things we want to share with you all. 2021 is gonna be a great year!