Jan 4, 2024

Shape Shifter: Formations - Castec Studios

Hey Everyone

Update 1 is out now, which includes the much requested endless mode, along with a slew of new content across the board, and multiple balance updates and bug fixes.

Hope you're all doing well after the holidays. We just wanted to apologise for this first update taking longer than we anticipated. We had to take some time off from work for personal reasons, so development was a little slow. We massively appreciate the patience, and hope to get the next update out at a quicker pace. Thank you.

Key Features

Endless Mode
New Boss/Enemy/Arena
3 New Ships
2 New Weapons
11 New Upgrades
2 New Threat Modifiers
Steam Deck Verification
Rebalanced Threat Levels
Rebalanced Skill Costs (We've reset skill trees this patch to accommodate, sorry for the inconvenience)
Multiple QOL updates requested by players.
& More

This is just a quick overview of the main features of the patch. The full patch notes will be listed below for anyone interested. We really hope you enjoy the update, and we're keen to hear any feedback you have so don't hesitate to let us know.

Castec

Patch Notes

Additions/Changes

Endless Mode is now available! This is unlocked by default. A new portal will appear after defeating the last boss giving you the option to loop round the levels again. Enemies will scale health and damage much faster each loop. Bosses will also increase their attack speed each loop as well. Increases chance harder enemies and primes will spawn. Reduced rate of cores earned once in endless mode.
New Boss/Arena/Enemy added. This arena is an alternate arena to the pentagon arena, and is unlocked by defeating the Serpentagon 3 times. After being unlocked, the arena will be randomly selected each run as an alternate to the pentagon arena. This arena has its own unique boss and enemy type.
New Ship - BLIGHT - Active: Summons a corrosive cyclone which follows enemies, rapidly dealing damage and applying corrosion. Passive: Has a chance on hit to instantly apply your max corrosion stacks.
New Ship - BORE - Active: Fires a spinning blade which pierces through all enemies and bounces off walls. Passive: Starts with an additional pierce, but greatly reduced fire rate.
New Ship - Storm - Active: Elemental Storm - For a short duration, calls down bolts which damage enemies and apply random status effects. Passive: Applying a status has a chance to call down a bolt of that status.
New Weapon - HMG - A fast firing, high damage weapon. Slows movement speed when firing. Greatly increased accuracy when not moving.
New Weapon - Flux Cannon - A slow firing, multi projectile weapon which has a chance of inflicting random status effects.
New Passive - Singularity - Uncommon - Bonus damage to enemies affected by a single status.
New Passive - Fusion Power - Uncommon - Increases damage dealt for each status effect currently on the enemy.
New Passive - Brute Force - Uncommon - Bonus damage to enemies not affected by any status effects
New Passive - Suppressing Fire - Rare - +Burn Duration, +Fire Rate -Accuracy, -Weapon Damage
New Passive - Combat Manoeuvre - Rare - Dodging increases damage for a short duration.
New Passive - Bouncing Blade - Epic - Chance on fire to shoot out a glaive which bounces between enemies before disappearing.
New Passive - Noxious Residue - Epic - Spawn multiple orbs when using your ability that explode and apply corrosion.
New Passive - Overflowing Energy - Epic - For every second your ability is on cooldown, gain ability damage for your next use. +Ability Duration, -Ability Cooldown Rate
New Passive - Splinter Salvo - Epic - Chance on kill to construct a turret which rapidly fires corrosive splinters in a 360 arc before disappearing.
New Passive - Cascading Assault - Legendary - Chance on hit to deal bonus damage to an enemy, this damage then chains to multiple nearby enemies in quick succession.
New Passive - Tesla Coil - Legendary - When using your ability, rapidly chain lightning to nearby enemies for a short duration.
New Threat Modifier - Electrified Walls - Adds a damaging effect along the walls of every arena.
New Threat Modifier - Alternate Prime Enemies - Adds alternate prime effects for every enemy in the game.
Reworked almost all menus/text to improve visibility on Steam Deck and general usability.
Added the option to navigate menus with WASD and select options with SPACEBAR.
Increased the cap on the following threat level options; Enemy Health, Enemy Damage, Boss Health.
New Skill - Banishment - Added a new node on the skill tree which allows you to banish items each run. This will remove it from the item pool for the rest of the run.
New Skill - Suspension - Added a new node on the skill tree which allows you lock items each run. This will save it for the next level up and allow you to choose it then.
Flamethrower (Weapon) - Reworked to improve hit detection on the weapon. Projectile speed now increases range. Also, the lower your accuracy, the wider the hitbox.
Added an option in the "Settings->Accessibility" menu to scale the cursor size.
Added tooltips to all stat descriptions to better explain how things work. E.g. explaining overloads, how much damage is reduced by armor etc.
Removed the guide menu as much of this is now explained through tooltips on the stats list.
Reworked the way upgrade descriptions are shown so it is now clearer to see what scales with each level.
The health bar that can be enabled under the ship now shows the cooldown for dodges and abilities rather than just if they're ready or not.
Changed multiple item descriptions so they match the item's effects better.
When killing a boss, all extra projectiles are now destroyed to avoid the player dying after killing them.
Added input popups when using interactable objects for clarity
Scoring now uses suffixes (K, M, B) etc. to accommodate increasingly higher scores with the addition of endless mode.
Added the option to chain menu navigation by holding the directional buttons down.
Added an option to reset all control bindings back to their default state
New SFX for the following; Tempest Blizzard Ability, Level Up, Siphon Miasma Ability, Critical Hits
New VFX for the following; Tempest Blizzard Ability, Level Up, Explosive Rounds Upgrade/Swarms Explosive Payload Passive, Siphon Miasma Ability

Bug Fixes

Fixed an issue where the turret enemies were not correctly playing their spawn animation.
Fixed an issue where the red X that is shown when you're unable to interact with something, could persist longer than it should.
Fixed an issue where the Ricochet passive's projectiles could sometimes fire in the air.
Fixed an issue where fast moving projectiles would not track hits on enemies correctly.
Fixed an issue where the Octagonopus' tentacles were being affected by hitstop, causing some attacks to lag.
Fixed an issue where enemies could sometimes knock you back extremely far/into the air
Fixed an issue where Transfusion (Epic Passive) was scaling its chance incorrectly when having multiple stacks.
Cursor size should now properly scale based on the users resolution.
Fixed an issue where Prime Darter beams were not correctly updating their location sometimes when aimed directly at a player.
While spinning, the Octagonopus should now fire projectiles from the correct location when missing tentacles.
Fixed an issue where you were unable to see an upgrades description on your passive list, when hovering and unhovering from it.
Fixed an issue where sometimes projectiles were passing through enemies.
Fixed an issue where rebound controls were not saving when exiting the game.
Fixed an issue where the fire rate from Supercharger (Rare Passive) could scale incorrectly when gaining another stack while active.
Fixed multiple crashes related to using Direct X 12. You now have an option on start up to avoid using this, with the default being Direct X 11, should you run into any issues.
Fixed a bug where the skill tree was sometimes not being saved when refunding a single node.
Fixed an issue where the Goodness Gracious achievement was unlocking without meeting the requirements
Fixed a bug where Swarm's Explosive Payload passive was applying to the corrosive bolter sometimes.
Fixed a bug where the turret enemies on the pentagon arena would not correctly scale their bullet damage.
Fixed a bug where the Orbital Offence passive was not updating its damage.
Fixed an issue where the enemies spawned by prime spinners were not getting damage and speed increases based on the difficulty.
Fixed a bug where homing projectiles were sometimes never losing their target even when out of range.
Fixed an issue where the octagon arena's walls wouldn't pulsate.
Fixed an issue where dying at the same time as a boss in co-op could cause issues when reviving.
Fixed an issue where some popups would have flickering text when they first appear.
Fixed a potential crash when using the tag item shop.
Fixed an issue on the settings menu where keyboard input would not work when confirming and resetting video options.
Fixed a potential crash which could occur seemingly randomly during gameplay
Fixed an issue where the mouse cursor would flicker in and out on the ship selection screen when using gamepad.
Fixed an issue where you were able to navigate to the stats/upgrades tabs while in submenus such as the skill tree or settings.
Fixed an issue where it was possible to reroll your upgrades after selecting an upgrade.
Fixed a rare potential crash that could occur as an enemy spawned.
Fixed a bug where it was possible to avoid taking damage by standing still in certain scenarios.

Balance Changes

Greatly increased the cost of the infinitely scaling skills on the skill tree as you level them up. We noticed it seemed too easy to level these up to the point where the game is trivialized at any difficulty, rather than just providing a form of progression after obtaining everything as we originally intended. We've reset skill trees this patch to accommodate this. (Sorry for the inconvenience)
Adjusted the XP needed to level at higher levels as players were getting much higher than we intended, especially now endless mode is an option.
Increased the health scaling of enemies/bosses in co-op.
Shop costs now increase exponentially with each use on a single level. Base cost has been lowered to compensate.
Lowered the number of cores received from enemy kills, but greatly increased the amount of cores received for reaching and defeating bosses.
Lowered core bonus per threat level from 5% -> 4%
Reckless Fire (Common Passive) - Removed armor penalty and replaced with -10% Accuracy.
Magnetism (Common Passive) - Pickup radius decreased from 25% -> 20%, Rarity now changed to Uncommon.
Shard Scavenger (Common Passive) - Rarity now changed to Rare.
Lightning Stake (Uncommon Passive) - Now no longer scales the shock strength applied per stack.
Heatseeker (Uncommon Passive) - Damage bonus per stack lowered from 20%->10%. Burn strength per stack lowered from 10->5.
Prime Affliction (Rare Passive) - Now increases status strength based on your ships tags if there is a tie for the highest status strength.
Plasma Bolts (Rare Passive) - Increased fire rate from 6% -> 8%
Fission Missiles (Legendary Passive) - Damage bonus per stack decreased from 75 -> 25. Bonus chance per stack decreased from 20% -> 10%.
PHALANX (Ship) - Point Blank passive now has increased range, and the damage bonus is based on distance.
VORTEX (Ship) - Lowered the chance of Feedback Loop triggering from 35% -> 20%
Corrosive Bolter (Weapon) - Fire Rate decreased from 4.5 -> 4
Machine Gun (Weapon) - Fire Rate increased from 3 -> 3.3
Railgun (Weapon) - Base damage increased from 60 -> 70
Cluster Bomb (Legendary Passive) & Cryo Spears (Uncommon Passive) - Now fire bombs/ice spikes quicker based on how many stacks of the upgrade you have.

Optimizations

Fixed the gradual performance decrease that can happen in later levels when using damage numbers.
Improved the way damage numbers are handled generally for better performance also.
Improved prime enemy health bar performance
Optimized beam effects
Optimized the spawning of enemy projectiles, especially on bullet heavy bosses.