Steam news
Full Steam announcements and update articles for this title.
We have seen reports of launch error with the above prompt for non-English users. The solution is to turn off Windows 11 Smart App Control.
You can follow these steps:
Open Windows Settings
Go to "Privacy & Security".
Click "Windows Security".
Select "App & browser control".
Click "Smart App Control settings".
Choose "Off".
How Many Dudes is out now and 35% off to celebrate the launch, so I'd say it's time to find out!
Making How Many Dudes (a.k.a. "HMD") has been some of the most fun we've had making games since the three of us brothers started making games together 14 years ago. A lot has changed since then - but HMD represents everything we've always loved about making games together. It's weird, it's funny, it's dumb... but it's also surprisingly deep.
As with our other games, you can expect a wave of improvements and quality of life features over the next few weeks while we take in all your feedback and draw up plans for what's next for HMD. What exactly that is, we don't yet know! It'll depend on what we hear from you and everyone else who plays the game. Once we get out from under the launch chaos we'll start making plans, and we'll share those with you as they solidify.
In the meantime, you can join other Player Dudes in our friendly Discord to talk strats and share your best runs, or just to share some ❤️ with the Dev Dudes. To report a bug or get an answer to common questions, check the FAQ.
And with that we sign off so we can get back to working on How Many Dudes and so you can get back to playing it: those Toddlers aren't going to punch themselves, after all!
Adam, Seth, Sam, and the rest of the team at Butterscotch Shenanigans
About
This page aggregates Steam news feeds, patch notes, and developer announcements for How Many Dudes?, sourced from official Steam community posts.
Major updates, balance changes, and seasonal events often correlate with player-count spikes — cross-reference announcements here with the live charts on the main How Many Dudes? statistics page.
Articles link back to Steam for full changelogs. SteamScope refreshes news entries as new posts are published to the game's Steam hub.
How Many Dudes? is launching in ONE WEEK on July 30th @ 10AM PT (5PM UTC)! And I've got a PAIR OF SURPRISES for ya:
HMD will launch with a hefty 35% DISCOUNT!
We've updated the Demo!
To our 500,000+ demo players: ❤️THANK YOU!❤️ The feedback and enthusiasm we’ve seen while working on HMD has been truly amazing. We've had more fun making this game than, well, pretty much any game we've ever made, and that's in large part from hearing how much fun all of you have been having just playing the old demo!
The updated Demo reflects just how much the game has changed for its full launch. It includes all the same Dudes as the old Demo (you'll have to wait for the full game to get all 42 Dudes!), many which have been dramatically reworked, plus a glimpse of the mountains of new systems and content that await you in the full game.
And, of course, your progress from the Demo will still carry into the full game.
From here until launch we’ll be cookin’, so if you want to get extra insights from the Dev Dudes or hang with your fellow Player Dudes, join us over on the discord.
OKBACKTOWORKBYE
HEY, DUDES! Are you looking to get a bunch of Dudes all up in your Deck? We've got some info for you!
"How Many Dudes?" was originally designed around mouse input. It's all about clickable interfaces: you can click on just about anything on the UI to drill deeper into stats and details, which turned out to be a little tricky when it comes to full controller support.
However, through the power of friendship and thinking with our brains, we've put together an official input profile through Steam Input that lets you fully engage with the game using a controller (and the Steam Deck). You'll still have a cursor on screen, but we've configured the inputs so you can click stuff with the "A" button, go back with the "B" button, and so forth.
So even though the controller support isn't baked into the UIs, you'll be able to fully play the game on your Steam Deck without any issues.
Or, if you're feeling touchy and haven't been slamming too many cheetos, you can just use the touchscreen. It works both ways!
And don't worry about your save data -- by launch, we'll have both Steam Cloud Saves and our own cloud save service ("Rumpus"), so you'll be able to pick up where you left off as you bounce between your Steam Deck and your other devices. Have fun!
BUCKLE UP, DUDES! How Many Dudes? will be launching on Thursday, July 30th at 10AM PST / 5PM UTC!
The demo for HMD has been downloaded by more than 475,000 people, which is, y’know, a LOT. More than we ever expected!
Since y’all gave us more than we expected, we’ve been cooking up a whole lotta game to balance things out. FAIR IS FAIR. Here’s what you can expect from the full release (screenshots aren't translated, but everything will be for the launch!):
42 Dudes across 6 Dude Families. New Dudes include Mummy Dude, Druid Dude, Alien Dude, Pirate Dude, Cowboy Dude & more, plus reworks to a handful of the Dudes in the demo.
With 5 Dudes in a Team, that’s 850,668 possible team comps to play with - more than 137x the comps possible in the Demo. For those of you who played the demo for a few dozen hours and were wondering “how will there be more game than this?” Well, this is how!
“Should I give my Wizard Dudes a Medical License? Or let my General Dudes have Therapy?”
You can look forward to asking and debating questions like these thanks to the new Trinkets system. Defeating Act Bosses now rewards Trinkets - equippable items that amplify an entire Dude Type on your team. You decide which Dude type gets these bonuses, granting each run a whole new dimension of strategic chaos.
The Trinkets include things like the Baseball Bat, Face Tattoo, and Taser, and can add new synergies to just about anything, letting you break the game in totally new ways.
“Should I give my Spartan dudes a Chili Dog or a Baguette?”
Wandering Dudes already come by your ranch in the Demo - the Merchant Dude, Dude Whisperer, Business Dude, and Scavenger Dude. For the launch, we’ll be adding a handful of new Wandering Dudes who add more unique choices and strategic depth to each run.
The Food Dude grants a choice of delicacies to empower a chosen dude type, each granting significant stat boosts. The Promoter Dude offers a wager in an underground fight, and the Smuggler Dude will let you nab relics from Dude Families not on your Roster.
Once you’ve taken your Dudes all the way to the G.O.A.T. in Tier 1, new levels of challenge unlock. Tier 2 and Tier 3 introduce increasingly unhinged Final Bosses, enhanced difficulty, new enemies to fight, and new metaprogression unlocks.
And of course Endless Mode remains after defeating any final boss, which lets you keep on fighting to see just how far your team can go.
We’ve updated the Metaprogression system with more unlocks, including starting cash & consumables, those wonderful Pocket Dice, and access to the new Ensemble Mode.
Ensemble Mode lets you pre-select Dudes to take on your run, much like how the Daily Dude works. As you earn Silver and Gold Stars across the challenge Tiers you’ll gradually unlock all 5 slots, letting you assemble your dream team without alt-F4ing a dozen times and praying to the gods of RNG.
And you don’t have to fill all the slots - any Dudes left open will have a random flyer selection during the run, just like in Classic Mode. It’s a great way to play when you’ve got a theory about a few Dudes who would work well together, or are pushing for a new record to brag to your friends about.
From 475k demo downloads to earning a spot in the Top Demos of Steam Next Fest, How Many Dudes? has been full of surprises for our small team. Thanks to all of you who have played, wishlisted, and popped into the discord to say hello - it’s made working on the game an absolute blast.
Now I gotta get back to cookin’ so we can finally answer the question: How many dudes does it take to make How Many Dudes?
When the Ranch Shop opens, your pocket dice appear in the "Restock" row of the shop to make it more obvious you can use them to reroll the shop.
If you had your combat speed set to 1.5x and it was reset to 1x at the start of a boss round, it will now automatically reset back to 1.5x after the boss round.
When in Dark Mode, rounds 1-19 will now use the green arena background instead of the white one.
When in Windowed mode (Bordered or Borderless), changing the Resolution now also changes the size of the window. If you change back to Fullscreen or Borderless Maximized from a Windowed mode, the Resolution will auto-reset back to Automatic for best visuals.
Updated to a custom GameMaker runtime that fixes the issue on Windows that caused the game to crash silently with no error message.
Regular Dudes can no longer occupy a Flyer slot in the Daily Dude.
If you have acquired all of the Dude-specific relics available to you, the Scavenger Dude will now fall back on offering Family and Universal relics, instead of simply not appearing.
This is a minor update for bug fixing purposes:
Fixed an issue that could cause your Relic Stash to crash if you purchased relics from the Merchant Dude, played a round, and then abandoned the round before it ended and then replayed it.
Fixed a launch crash issue for players that use peripherals such as AURA LED Controller (Big thanks to player Gambit for helping us tracking this one down)
The game now creates a minidump file at the saves folder to help us diagnose silent crashes better. Please Make sure to include those files when you submit bug reports to us.
HELLO, MY DUDES!
We've been cooking up a TURBO UPDATE for the How Many Dudes demo, and we're ready to toss it into your lap like a hot potato before we dive into our Dev Cave to go full throttle on developing the full game.
Highlights:
Added support for 8 new languages: Korean, Japanese, Simplified Chinese, LATAM Spanish, German, French, Brazilian Portuguese, and Russian.
Several UI improvements, including DARK MODE!
A new 1.5x speed option during gameplay
New meta-progression via unlockable Pocket Dice through the Collections system
A new game mode: The "DAILY DUDE!" Every day, a random team of Dudes is assembled for you to put to the test. You can replay each day's Daily Dude as many times as you want! ... That day.
Ghost Dude, Ninja Dude, and Wizard Dude have been reworked. They're good now!
The "Scavenger Dude" now appears several times throughout each run to borrow your relics in exchange for a bonus relic later down the line!
Several new enemies you'll encounter and get wrecked by
A reworked endgame (round 100 and beyond)
A whole bunch of bug fixes and optimizations
Would you like to know more? The full patch notes are available here. Have fun, and we'll see you at launch!
OH WHAT? OH. Hey, Dudes. Didn’t see you there, because I was workin’ so hard duding up this game about dudes doing dude stuff. We’ve been collecting player feedback, squinting at analytics, and experimenting with all kinds of fun new toys to add to How Many Dudes over the past few weeks. And now… IT’S TIME TO GET YOUR TINY HANDS ON IT!
There are two big points of feedback we’ve consistently gotten from our players:
“I want some kind of meta-progression,” and
“I want a bit more control over the RNG of the early game.”
So we solved both of these problems in one swoop with new UNLOCKABLE POCKET DICE!
As you reach certain Collectibles benchmarks, you’ll be rewarded with Pocket Dice that you’ll start every run with, allowing you to reroll all kinds of stuff in the early game if you so desire.
Do you have sensitive, special eyes? If so, you’re in luck! With our new DARK MODE setting, you can gaze longingly upon the How Many Dudes UI without writhing in pain!
Not much more to it than that… uh… You just kinda check the box and you’re done. ENJOY!
A Scavenger Dude will now begin appearing during your runs! If you lend him a couple of your Relics for a while, he’ll venture out into the Dudiverse with them and eventually bring them back with a bonus relic.
And if you’re feeling particularly brave, you can accept BOTH of his offers.
When starting a new run, you will now have the option to play a “Classic” run or “The Daily Dude”. The Daily Dude is a randomized team of Dudes that you can play for that day, and everyone in the world will have the same Daily Dude selection on the same day. See how far you can get with whatever weird team comp RNGesus comes up with!
And if the run goes badly, NO PROBLEM! You can replay the Daily Dude as many times as you want! Until midnight, when the Daily Dude turns over with a new team.
You asked; we delivered!
There is now an option to increase the game speed to 1.5x, instead of just toggling between 0.25x and 1x. We probably can’t go much higher than this, because as things are happening faster, more events get compressed into fewer frames. Thus the game runs the risk of having too many things happening each frame and crashing. We’ll keep optimizing to try to reduce the chance of this happening, but for now this is what we were able to do!
You can now hover over or click on your money to see a breakdown of all of your income and expenses from the current run. Why? I don’t know! IT’S COOL TO SEE NUMBERS.
As we make big changes to the game, your best runs from older versions will no longer be relevant. To make this clear, your best runs will be separated by minor version number, and runs from older versions will always be pushed down under runs from newer versions.
If there are runs from older versions you want to preserve on your Best Runs page, you can use the new “Locking” feature. If you pop open a run on the Best Runs page, you can click a “Lock” icon in the bottom-right corner to lock that run, which prevents it from being pushed off the Best Runs page.
Also, the Best Runs page now stores your 40 best runs, up from 20.
Reworked all the boss fights from round 100 onward.
Added a new arena background for rounds 110+.
New music for rounds 100+.
Added a new Round 110 boss fight that’s… something.
New boss fight modifiers:
Serrated: 25% of enemy damage ignores Temp Health.
Resilient: Your Dudes’ Crit Chance against enemies is reduced by 1/3.
We’ve added language support for the following 8 languages:
Simplified Chinese
LATAM Spanish
Korean
Japanese
Russian
Brazilian Portuguese
German
French
Gorillas
A new, more powerful type of Gorilla has entered the fray! Diamondback Gorillas only appear in rounds 100+.
Gorillas have had their visuals updated to be less… game jammy.
Bears
The Polar Bear is now much stronger and is only found in rounds 100+.
A new Grizzly Bear enemy is taking the place of the previous Polar Bear in terms of strength.
A new Panda Bear has appeared as a weaker bear type enemy who you can fight in the midgame.
The strongest bear of them all, the Zombear, has appeared, starting on round 109. It’s… a zombie bear. Also it makes a rot cloud that reduces Dude healing received, because it’s gross.
Big Cats!
A whole batch of new Big Cat type enemies have appeared! All Big Cats have a passive “Piercing” trait, which allows 25% of their damage to pass through Temp Health.
Cougars, Leopards, and Panthers have been added as somewhat weaker Big Cats, and you can encounter them throughout the game.
Lions and Lionesses appear as a possible round 80 boss, as well as in rounds 100+. Lions and Lionesses have special pride-oriented abilities.
Tigers can appear in rounds 80+, and Sabertooths appear in rounds 100+. These two Big Cats will occasionally single out a Dude and throw him out of the battle, then pounce on him and start chewing his elbows off.
Stun Resistance
Many large enemies now have a resistance to being stunned. Each stun they are hit with will chip away at their Stun Resistance until they are finally stunned.
Enemies with large hitboxes will now be able to overlap with one another a bit so they don't end up attacking in single file like henchmen.
Horse-Sized Ducks will stop emitting their Quack Blast if there are fewer than 3 Dudes remaining. This should resolve the issue where a Frankendude gets thrown by 57 Horse-Sized Ducks for 45 minutes until he finally gets quacked to death. That’s a real sentence and I stand by it.
Ghost Dude
The Ghost Dude has been fully reworked to be a dedicated healer, using health bar equalization as his core mechanic.
“Phase Shift” now has a 20% chance to trigger when the Ghost Dude deals attack damage, and it no longer causes the Ghost Dude to go ethereal. Instead, it causes the Ghost Dude to equalize the health percentage between the most-injured Dude and the highest-HP dude, and then heal both Dudes based on his attack damage.
The Ghost Dude’s relics have been reworked to interact with this new Phase Shift mechanic.
Ninja Dude
The Ninja Dude no longer goes into Stealth on critical hits. Instead, he throws Shurikens on critical hits. The Shurikens are thrown in the direction of random nearby enemies, and they can deal damage to several enemies they pass through before breaking. Many of his relics have been reworked to interact with his Shurikens.
Turbo Team is no longer roster-based. Instead, it causes the Ninja Dude to buff nearby allies’ Attack Speed when he throws his Shurikens.
Wizard Dude
Instead of shooting fireballs based on dealing attack damage, the Wizard Dude now shoots a fireball every 3 seconds, guaranteed.
Fireballs’ AOE effect is no longer split between targets struck, allowing Wizard Dudes to deal uncapped AOE damage that scales up dramatically against larger groups of enemies.
Several Wizard Dude relics have been reworked to give him more stacking runaway damage effects, a cheat death mechanic, and some team buffing utility.
Vampire Dude
Increased base HP to 120, up from 100.
Hollow Fangs no longer reduces the Vampire Dude’s Max HP.
Venomous Lipstick now increases Vampire Dude damage by 30%, in addition to its previous effects.
Blood Bag now heals 3 Dudes for 40% effectiveness, instead of 2 Dudes for 50% effectiveness. This is an overall 20% increase in Blood Bag efficacy.
Soul Reliquary now provides 15% lifesteal to allies, up from 10%.
Warlock Dude
Increased the starting HP of the Warlock Dude to 180 so he doesn’t flop over so hard in the early game.
Dark Wand now has a taunt component, allowing the Warlock Dude to get taunts from two of his relics instead of just one.
Warlock Dudes who teleport using the Pocket Obelisk no longer teleport to other Warlock Dudes. This should prevent the scenario where Warlock Dudes all end up in a pile, leaving the rest of your Dudes to fend for themselves.
General Dude
Frilled Shoulderpads now grants the General Dude 100% of the amount healed as Temp Health, up from 50%.
Samurai Dude
Increased base run and dash speed so he has less downtime from dashing.
The Samurai Dude is now smarter about choosing targets. If there are targets he is able to dispatch in a single hit, he will dash to the closest one of those targets. If not, he will dash to the lowest-health target in the match.
Bokken now grants 30% Max HP, up from 20%.
Viking Dude
Grog now grants 2 extra seconds for Berserk, up from 1. This should make it easier for Viking Dudes to chain their berserks together to take advantage of Loki's Arm.
Frankendude
Frankendude now gains 1% Max HP from Borrow Organs, down from 3%.
Bone Broth now heals the Frankendude based on the Max HP of the Dude who got knocked out instead of the Max HP of the Frankendude.
Cleric Dude
Cleric Dudes no longer target summoned Dudes as their primary heal target.
Zombie Dude
When a Zombie Dude explodes due to Explosive Innards, all Relic knockout effects are now triggered and handled. So he will always turn into a Skeledude via Willing Flesh, and he can also be revived via Smelling Salts after exploding and continue fighting.
Misc. Relics
Adjusted Caged Tiger and Purple Heart so they aren’t quite so extremely overpowered. Still pretty dang strong, though.
Caged Tiger now grants 20% Crit Chance, down from 25%.
Purple Heart now grants 20% damage conversion to Temp Health, down from 25%.
All Relics available in the Demo now have their final intended artwork.
Relic prices now increase faster after round 60, so you’ll want to utilize the new Scavenger Dude to more reliably fill out your kit!
Reviving via Smelling Salts or Dude Juice now clears damage over time effects.
Dude Juice now revives dudes during battle with 100% HP instead of 50% HP.
This update brings a large batch of optimizations to a whole bunch of combat mechanics, aimed at reducing the FPS drop in extremely large battles in the late game.
Several relics that previously didn’t have counters now have counters, such as the Death Rattle.
The Emergency Ring now clears Pact, so if a Warlock Dude triggers it he might actually live.
Audited and updated all Dude and Relic tooltips to use more consistent language and terminology.
Flyers are now posted on rounds 2, 4, 9, 13, and 17, so you can assemble your team more quickly and start gearing up your Dudes without having a poor straggler left behind in the 20’s.
Crit Damage is now considered an “Additive” stat, so any increases in Crit Damage will be added to the prior amount. E.g. if you have 200% Crit Damage and gain 10%, you will now have 210%.
There is now a setting to disable flashing enemies and Dudes during combat.
The run end screen Collectibles UI now has custom sound effects.
When a Dude is knocked out, a red X now appears in his healthbar frame. If the Dude was already knocked out prior to the current battle, his X will be gray instead of red.
Updated the hover frames for relics and consumables so they look cooler and can handle longer name strings.
Health Bars now animate Temp Health and Pact more smoothly.
Health Bars now take Temp Health into account for their sort order for Dudes that are at full health to create a pleasant viewing experience.
Removed the individual knockout information from Dudes when expanded in the roster, since the Knockout Report already has this information.
Disabled the Kill Feed by default, since it adds a lot of CPU overhead and doesn't really mean anything in the late battles. Players can still enable it if they want to.
Added the option to go to the Main Menu after losing a run, instead of always just starting over.
The Dude Family indicators in the ranch UI are no longer hoverable or clickable. They didn't convey any real information, but they kept getting in the way of click-drag.
You can now restock the first Merchant Dude’s inventory on round 5.
The camera now does a better job of taking your MASSIVE RELIC PILE into account during combat, so Dudes and Enemies are less likely to end up obscured behind it.
Updated the Burner Phone visuals so it's more clear which dudes are available and how many you have selected to teleport.
When in a boss fight, there is now a skull icon by the round number that you can hover over or click to see what the current boss modifier is.
Increasing the UI scale in the settings now increases the size of the healthbars.
Updated the Regular Dude recruitment frame to look like the other recruitment frames.
Fixed an issue where the Temp Health granted by Metronome wasn’t taking damage mitigation into account (such as from Toughness or Paladin Blessing), so it was giving far more Temp Health than intended.
Fixed the issue where blood splatters from larger enemies would sometimes get cut off.
Fixed an issue that caused the Dude Inspector window to be unable to cycle to the next dude if some of the dudes of that type are unconscious.
The Dude Inspector no longer depth-sorts behind Relics during gameplay.
Sending a dude to the Dude Whisperer now properly visually removes that dude from the Ranch.
Fixed an issue where the Leather Bracer buff was applying to the Spartan instead of his block target.
The game will now unpause when entering the ending kill shot visuals. Previously, you could pause the game, then use a health potion with Expired Skin Cream to land a killing blow, which would result in the final kill sequence being unable to progress.
Fixed an issue where, based on dude spawn order, some Spartans wouldn't always spawn near other dudes when you had the Ab Roller relic.
Added a backup save system that exists outside Steam Cloud. This allows the game to recover files that may be purged by Steam Cloud if the game or device crashes and Steam Cloud fails to sync.
Randomized round-end rewards are now calculated ahead of time and saved, so using alt-F4 to reroll your round-end rewards will no longer yield different rewards.
Certain tall enemies like bears now have their heights properly set, so the camera can zoom out and capture them in the frame properly.
Updated camera margins so Dudes and Enemies are less likely to go underneath UI elements. They still can a bit, but... not as much.
We have some BIG NEWS! We're launching the playable demo for How Many Dudes this Wednesday on Steam at 9AM CST!
The game is in such a good spot already that we can't stop playing it ourselves. So we decided to just pull the ripcord and get it into everyone's hands as SOON AS POSSIBLE!This demo contains a hefty volume of content and isn't time-locked in any way, so if you want to play the demo for 100 hours, you can AND WILL! (That's not a command; just a prediction.)You'll be able to access the demo directly from the game's Steam store page: