SnekromancY news & patch notes

A fun update today, if not a huge one! One thing I've often noticed when people play is that they seem sad after combining two minions, that they can't combine again into a 3rd tier evolution. I've always hoped to be able to add this in, and today is the day that hopes become realities! I've added a 3rd for every minion, and they are an even bigger power boost than the 2nd tier. Not only do they get another transformative special power, but they also all get an extra multi-shot upgrade. I think you'll find them to be a lot of fun, and worth the trade-off of having fewer minions!

Minions

• Added third-tier evolutions for all main minion types.

• New evolved minions include Black Knight, Hellvis, Mistress, Pawcalypse, King Lichard, Bone Jovi, Charlotte, Alucard, and Zedeye.

• Added new minion attacks with built-in multishot, knockback formations, enemy pull effects, retracing boomerangs, splitting shots, web trails, chained homing shots, and temporary damage boosts.

• Added new minion sprites, icons, projectile art, and attack effects.

Combat and Gameplay

• Expanded projectile behavior with better chaining, splitting, trap trails, knockback, returning shots, and impact handling.

• Pressure plates can now sometimes reward gems instead of only spawning hazards or enemies.

• Enemy pressure now scales more smoothly during long stalls.

• Speed effects now combine more cleanly when multiple boosts overlap.

Balance and Polish

• Adjusted a late-game boss hitbox to make projectile hits more consistent.

• Improved blocked and immune feedback so repeated hits are easier to read.

• Improved upgrade selling values for stacked upgrades.

UI and Presentation

• Updated the act map title to show current act and total act count.

• Added descriptions for the new minion evolutions.

• Updated several visual effects and projectile visuals.

Store and Unlocks

• Improved store cards so purchased offers remain visible as used slots instead of disappearing.

• Moved the Unlocks tab later in the store flow and added filters for all, locked, and unlocked entries.

• Improved unlock row sorting, focus behavior, scrolling, and claimed unlock display.

Relics and Balance

• Adjusted relic availability, pricing, repeat limits, and rarity across many relics.

• Ancient Scroll now converts elite rooms into shops more consistently across the act.

• Some relics are now mutually exclusive where their effects would overlap too strongly.

• Tuned Titan wave behavior and Phoenix egg spawning.

Gameplay Polish

• Added health bars for bosses and elites

• Improved compass indicators for opened hidden-room paths.

• Improved enemy save/load handling for special enemies.

• Improved projectile hit detection for orbiting projectiles and reduced awkward homing turns.

Tutorials, Text, and Visuals

• Clarified food, growth, enemy eating, and White Snek text.

• Updated snack icons and several small UI visuals.

• Polished tutorial timing and reduced redundant early combat tutorial steps.

First of all, big thanks to GL1TCH3D from the steam discussions for their super helpful write-up covering the ascension difficulties, which most of this patch is based on! A lot of it is smaller balance tweaks, but there's a few big changes too. First, I've added the Codex Mortuorum, a compendium available both from the main menu as well as in-game in the store and minion management screens, which allows you to view all of the content you've unlocked so far in the game. I've also added a stronger tower shield, and most items now scale stronger later in the game. The snake also briefly becomes immune after losing a segment, to prevent from losing too many in a mob. I've also added several new snacks and rebalanced many existing snacks and relics, and the ability to sell unwanted upgrades.

Give it a try! And remember to wishlist, release is just 10 days away!

Codex Mortuorum

• Added a new in-game Compendium, available from the main menu and store.

• The Compendium tracks minions, relics, upgrades, snacks, and items with icons and descriptions.

Snacks and Store

• Added several new snack options.

• Between-act shops now appear as Cafes focused on snack offers.

• Improved the Build view so relics and owned upgrades are easier to review.

• Added selling support for eligible upgrades.

• Improved selling, combining, snack tutorials, unlock descriptions, tab focus, and close/cancel behavior.

Items and Combat

• Added a stronger late-game shield item.

• Held shields and speed items now scale more reliably with level and item-effect bonuses.

• After losing a segment, the snake now gets a brief damage-immunity window.

• Improved item drops, carried item saving, item indicators, pickup glows, projectile behavior, and camera shake.

Gameplay and Balance

• Improved enemy behavior around unopened rooms and spawner waves.

• Adjusted wave damage scaling, relic balance, snack balance, and some item spawn rules.

• Improved food, enemy, and snack tutorial timing.

Localization and Polish

• Updated and clarified text across achievements, enemies, items, minions, tutorials, UI, and upgrades.

• Added new item and snack art, updated shield art, and polished several menu, settings, store, and end-screen interactions.

Adds Russian localizations.

We are TWO WEEKS from launch day! I'm very excited to share the final version of the game with you all, but first I do have some bad news. This update marks the first version where I am limiting the game demo. The demo now ends with act 1, but is otherwise a full game experience just lacking some of the fancy steam features like leaderboards.

The good news though, is I've added another really cool new feature: secret rooms! These are available in the later parts of act 1, although they will be more common in the bigger maps of acts 2 & 3 (and in those there can even be 2 secret rooms in a single level). You might notice a room that's entirely walled off when exploring the map, and if you do, keep an eye out for a switch later on in the level. If you flip it, you can head back to that room and it will be open. The rewards can be chests, coins, items, and even a magical portal that teleports you to the surface for 2 minutes for an all-you-can-burninate buffet! Be careful though, as secret rooms can have hidden traps too!

Full changelist below:

Maps and Rooms

• Added new hidden room mechanics with switches, pressure plates, special rewards, and new room interactions.

• Improved dungeon generation to support hidden spaces and more varied room layouts.

• Updated the run map with occasional empty spaces and cleaner pathing.

• Added draw and erase tools to the map so players can mark routes or notes.

Progression and Achievements

• Added new ascension win achievements for key ascension milestones.

• Updated ascension progression and capped ascension levels at 10.

• Added new achievement art for ascension wins.

• Adjusted XP requirements slightly.

Gameplay and Balance

• Adjusted several enemies, including the Armored Warrior, Samurai, and Giant Snail.

• Improved food upgrade behavior, including better interaction with Crown Leech.

• Improved saving and restoring during active levels, including enemies, doors, room states, and level stats.

• Improved store flow between acts so the next act starts through the map instead of jumping directly into combat.

UI and Text

• Clarified many upgrade descriptions, especially minion type and affinity upgrades.

• Added tutorial text for new special gameplay sequences.

• Improved minion tooltip behavior when inspecting or hovering.

• Added new switch, portal, plate, and achievement visuals.

My favorite thing about watching streamers play for the first time is trying to guess which "snake" game they'll call out nostalgia for. I think the majority associate it with Nokia phones, although my first experience was probably NIBBLES.BAS that came with QBASIC. Still, I have to give it to Nokia's for being the most iconic, so as a nod to the nostalgia I've introduced a palette swap mode (available in the Display settings) that enables pure nostalgia for you :)

Other changes include the addition of wands that let you breathe fire, frost, or poison, and some more balance tweaks. Have fun!

New Items

• Added Fire Wand, Frost Wand, and Poison Wand items.

• Wands fire a cone-shaped burst that places elemental effects across visible tiles.

Visuals and Settings

• Added Super Retro Mode as a new visual setting.

• Updated UI colors, buttons, panels, sliders, toggles, tabs, bars, and menu visuals.

• Improved damage numbers, wave warnings, loading screens, tutorials, chest effects, level-up effects, and end screen colors.

Combat and Balance

• Added Titan, Exalted Titan, Celestial Lion, and Exalted Lion waves.

• Iron Stomach now grants a shield whenever food is eaten.

• Adjusted poison so its bonus damage effect is consumed over a limited number of hits.

There are many other post-next-fest updates, but this one is mine. I wanted to make something nice to reward all the wonderful support I saw during the fest, so this is a big one, almost certainly the biggest update to the game yet. The primary change is the game being split into three acts of 12, 11, and 7 levels respectively. This sounds like a lot compared to the 13 levels previously, but it's not as much as it sounds. Shops are no longer playable levels, which reduces the potential number of levels played considerably, and now only elite rooms have a boss fight, which means normal levels can be completed quickly (especially in the early game).

With the new acts come new enemies, and of course bosses, and each act has been given its own final boss, taken from the old boss pool but strengthened significantly. There are also many new relics and snacks to fill out the content, and the starting relic has been turned into a choice from two random relics each play through. Full changes here, with lots more:

Acts and World Progression

• Expanded runs into a three-act structure: Kingdom of Men, Garden of Elven, and Host of Heaven.

• Added act-specific maps, room layouts, terrain, decorations, spawners, music, and enemy pools.

• Reworked map generation so each act has its own shop, treasure, elite, and boss room distribution.

Enemies and Bosses

• Added a large new enemy roster across the elven and heavenly acts.

• Added new elite and act bosses, including major encounters such as the Rune Bear, Supreme Elemental, Chimera, Beast of the Sea, Great Griffin, and Phoenix.

• Added new enemy behaviors including charging, swooping, self-buffing, summoning, ranged pressure, support effects, and Phoenix egg rebirth mechanics.

• Rebalanced enemy progression so enemy families upgrade over the course of each act.

• Improved wave spawning so waves use the current act's enemy set and scale better through the run.

Run Setup and Starting Gifts

• Reworked the run setup flow so players choose a snake and starting minion, then receive a relic gift before the run begins.

• Added more unlockable starting minions, including Glich, Fang, and Dante.

• Improved controller and Steam Deck handling, including controller glyphs, mouse hiding while using a gamepad, and pausing when a controller disconnects.

Relics, Snacks, and Builds

• Added many new relics focused on food, shops, rerolls, debuffs, shields, rare upgrade odds, scoring, and risk-reward build paths.

• Expanded snack perks with new effects for critical hits, boss damage, gem drops, area damage, repeated-hit scaling, adjacent minion bonuses, and permanent temporary snack bonuses.

• Improved debuff builds with longer-lasting and stronger debuff interactions.

• Added free level-up rerolls from specific relic effects.

• Improved store sale behavior, shop discounts, and shop offer presentation.

Achievements and Progression

• Expanded the achievement and unlock system with new challenge achievements and clearer unlock descriptions.

• Added achievement icons and locked achievement art.

• Added local high scores and leaderboard presentation on end screens.

• Improved score tracking, run records, level records, and end-of-run stat summaries.

UI and Presentation

• Added a new book-style game over and victory panel.

• Added confetti and improved end-of-run celebration effects.

• Improved level completion scoring presentation and record callouts.

• Updated tutorials for the current combat, food, key, map, elite room, minion, and controller flows.

• Added new UI art, controller button icons, achievement icons, relic icons, snack icons, enemy art, and biome tilesets.

Balance and Polish

• Adjusted boss health scaling, elite encounters, enemy damage, enemy health, movement, and wave density for the longer act-based run structure.

• Improved enemy pathfinding, off-screen behavior, projectile behavior, attack sounds, debuff damage, and hit detection.

• Improved food, shield, relic, minion, projectile, and store interactions.

• Improved saving around maps, runs, scores, settings, stats, unlocks, and act progression.

• Added and updated localized text for the new acts, enemies, relics, snacks, achievements, tutorials, controller prompts, maps, and end screens.

There's a lot of little stuff in this patch, but the most important thing is that shops have sales now! Each time you enter a shop, there will be one item that's discounted. This should help you buy all the cool new stuff like snacks! There are also more shops spawned in each map, so enjoy!

The other change worth noting is that I've reverted the camera change from the last update that tries to keep the tail on-screen, because it causes some dizzying movement sometimes. I improved the smoothness of it significantly from the last update, but it still feels a little odd, so I have it disabled by default. If you want to try it out, it's in the display settings now, as well as another new option that centers the camera on the center of the snake. These are both worth trying if you're not sensitive to dizzyness because they help keep the important things on screen.

The final significant change is that I've increased the hitbox size for the larger boss enemies, and put a cap on the number of summons bosses can create at a time.

Stores and Maps

• Added discounted sale items to stores.

• General stores now offer a more consistent mixture of snacks, minions, and relics.

• Added more minion and upgrade shops to the map.

Camera and Movement

• Added three camera modes: always follow the head, keep the tail visible, or center between the head and tail.

• Improved camera movement and smoothing for long snakes.

Combat and Balance

• Improved projectile hit detection against large and flying enemies.

• Added summon limits to prevent summoning enemies from overwhelming a room.

• Improved off-screen combat involving tail minions.

• Adjusted the Death Knight, Hell Hound, Armored Warrior, and Griffin waves.

One of the most commonly requested features is equipment for minions. I've always wanted to do this as well, but was worried about the confusion between items and relics that apply to the snake, and ones that apply to minions. Why would only a snake be able to wear the boots (which we all know snakes do), but only minions can wear a helmet or carry a sword? I figured it might be less confusing to abstract things out a bit, so I took a page from auto-battlers and decided to lean into the games hunger theme with Minion Snacks!

To differentiate minion snacks from snake food, there are two important rules: 1) Snake food only appears during a level, and minion snacks only appear in stores. 2) Snake food is always savory (bread, hot dogs, etc) and minion food is always sweet (fruit and desserts). Again, as any herpetologists know, snakes love bread and the undead love sugar. Snacks can either give minions a permanent stat boost, a temporary boost, or apply a perk which have effects a bit like relics but on only one minion. A minion can only have one perk at a time, so giving it a new one will replace it.

To give minions even more love, I've added a "tail gunner" position to the snake. You can place a minion here and they'll anchor to the very tail end of the snake, so they can pick off any enemies aiming for a rear assault.

There are lots of other features today as well, mostly small balance stuff, but some extra polish of the snake movement. I've increased coyote time slightly, reduced the speed-up from chili peppers a bit, and added some extra animations to snake turning. Since a common complaint is that the grid-based movement results in a perceived input delay, I've added a leaning animation to the snake head so that you can immediately see that your input was accepted before the snake begins to turn.

Full patch notes for all the goodies:

Minion Snacks

• Added snacks that can be purchased and given to a specific minion.

• Snacks can provide permanent bonuses, temporary bonuses, or unique perks.

• Minion stats, snack bonuses, and perks are now displayed throughout the store.

Snake Improvements

• Added new turning animations and improved how the head and body overlap while moving.

• Added optional tail-tracking camera behavior to help keep longer snakes visible.

• Added settings for tail tracking and screen shake.

• Improved eating animations for food and edible enemies.

• Added support for assigning a dedicated minion to the tail.

Gameplay and Balance

• Adjusted minion upgrades, multishot effects, items, traps, enemies, and room generation.

• Improved shop placement and the distribution of elite and treasure rooms.

• Split the ancient scroll ability into 2 levels.

The origin of "Snake" as a game is a grid-based system where it simply adds a segment to the front and removes one from the back. SnekromancY was built around that core concept, with layers of improvements on top to make it feel smoother, but at its heart it's still a grid-based system. This means that when you change direction, it doesn't instantly apply because the snake has to finish its current tile movement first. For people who are skilled at the classic snake, this is no problem because it's exactly how those games worked. For players who are new  to the genre, however, it feels like input lag.

I don't really want to change the underlying movement system (because then it would feel less like Snake and more like Vampire Survivors with a tail), so I decided to look at the pain points on their own. The biggest problem with the perceived delay is that particularly hen moving fast, it's easy to accidentally wall-strike. This is a problem we can address on its own, by taking an idea form platformers: "coyote time." This refers to a trick platformers play where you can walk off the edge of a ledge for a tenth of a second or so, and still have a chance to jump before you fall.

Applying this idea to snake, I've introduced a system where when you are moving into a wall, the snake will give you 1/10th of a second grace period where you're still able to change direction before you take the hit. This even works if you take a corner too early. If you're quick, you can correct your snake by returning your facing direction to the forward movement before the hit applies.

Also in this patch are a number of balance updates, most notably the introduction of minion summons to the normal (non-chest) level up pool. Since this is a big power boost for the player, I've upped boss hp, and general enemy hp to a lesser extent. To come back around again, I've also reduced non-boss enemy damage across the board.

Major Updates

• Level-up rewards can now include minion recruits, capped at one recruit per level-up.

• Added clearer HUD labels and tooltips for level, score, kills, XP, coins, keys, and doors.

• Improved controls, fixing analog stick problems and adding coyote time system.

Controls and Feel

• Improved analog stick movement so diagonal stick input resolves to one clear direction instead of queuing multiple turns.

• Added a short wall-hit grace window so players have a moment to steer away before wall damage applies.

• Improved wall-hit handling so escaping the wall cleanly cancels the pending damage.

• Improved Hell Hound attack timing and animation feel.

HUD and Progress Tracking

• Door progress now tracks opened doors instead of total collected keys.

• Hammer-forced door openings now update key and door displays correctly.

Balance

• Large enemy balance pass across early, mid, and late-game enemies.

• Reduced damage on many fast or early enemies to smooth out sudden hits.

• Increased health on several late-game and elite enemies to make them last longer.

• Skeleton Volley and Lich Volley now add two extra shots instead of one, while keeping their attack speed penalty.

Combat and Fixes

• Improved bouncing projectile collision against walls so bounces are more reliable.

• Improved projectile sweep behavior for fast shots hitting walls or enemies.

• Improved enemy uninterruptible attack handling so special actions are not interrupted incorrectly.

• Improved trap visuals and warning behavior for spikes and sling blades.

• Cursed Shell now spawns its snail immediately when picked during a run.

Store and Text

• Improved store unlock tab behavior so newly claimable unlocks appear and tab attention clears correctly.

• Improved translated minion family names in the store.

• Improved CJK price button sizing in store cards.

• Updated minion recruit upgrade names and descriptions to make it clearer that they summon a new minion.

• Added and improved several localized UI and upgrade strings.

This is mostly a balance pass, and there are definitely no easter eggs, because snakes eat eggs so there couldn't possibly be any. Especially not on the main menu anywhere.

Changes Since 0.10.2

• Rebalanced treasure room loot so treasure rooms still feel rewarding without flooding the floor with utility items.

• Adjusted treasure room loot scaling to favor the intended gem-heavy reward pool.

• Reduced damage on several late-game divine enemies.

Store and Minion Management

• Improved the minion list in the store with clearer selection behavior.

• Added a snake segment display next to the minion list so supported and unsupported minions are easier to understand.

• Unsupported minions are now visually dimmed based on current snake length.

• Combining minions now preserves list order more cleanly by replacing the selected minion with its evolved version.

UI and Readability

• Improved upgrade card title readability with stronger outline and shadow treatment.

• Improved scrollbar and slider styling.

Gameplay Fixes

• Fixed an enemy attack-range latch issue that could cause melee or draining enemies to stay stuck in attack behavior after snake segments disappeared.

Balance

• Divine God health and damage reduced.

• Divine Warden damage reduced.

• Seraph damage reduced.

Major Additions

• Added the Cursed Shell relic: removes hunger decay, but spawns an invincible Giant Snail that hunts you each level.

• Added the Giant Snail enemy.

• Added Big Gems for every gem color, giving higher-value XP pickups later in a run.

• Added Big Shield as a stronger shield item.

• Items can now be carried into the exit and you will start with it on the next level.

• Vamp now has a "direct" shot style that comes down from the sky.

• Added a new Fusion Pixel UI theme and smaller font tiers for clearer, crisper text across menus, cards, tooltips, and HUD elements.

• Added a Pause on Focus Loss setting.

• Improved fullscreen and windowed resolution handling, including better multi-monitor positioning.

Progression and Balance

• Rebalanced XP scaling around the new larger gem payouts.

• Added normal enemy health scaling so later rooms hold up better against stronger builds.

• Large balance pass across relics, minions, upgrades, enemies, traps, and shop costs.

• Adjusted minion attack speed display and runtime scaling for clearer upgrade behavior.

• Adjusted speed items and speed foods around the new flat movement-speed system.

• Reduced poison damage amplification.

• Adjusted Spider and Vampire minion damage.

• Increased offering frequency for Hawk's Eye and Soul Magnet.

• Moved several relics into the starting unlock set instead of later score thresholds.

• Resetting stats now also resets run achievement tracking correctly.

• Fixed show tutorial checkbox sometimes showing unchecked.

• Changed default config values for fullscreen and the default starting minion.

• Adjusted Magnet behavior so attracted gems move in more cleanly.

Combat and Effects

• Multiple different debuffs can now be active at the same time instead of waiting in a queue.

• Debuff visuals now cycle between active effects on enemies.

• Improved damage indicators so repeated damage numbers are cleaner and less noisy.

• Updated Blood Pendant behavior to trigger after losing a segment instead of only checking low snake length.

• Improved projectile setup so projectiles with missing or zero direction resolve a valid direction or expire safely.

• Improved pooled projectile cleanup so old targets, sources, and hit areas do not leak into reused projectiles.

• Improved enemy attack-area handling so enemies only count live snake segments and stop attacking stale overlaps.

• Debuff damage indicators now use the debuff's color when applicable.

Enemies and Traps

• Added support for invincible enemies and enemies that should not despawn off-screen.

• Improved enemy targeting edge cases, especially flying projectile enemies on wall tiles.

• Updated off-screen enemy despawn rules so special enemies are preserved correctly.

• Updated Sling Blade trap animation timing and warning visuals.

UI and Quality of Life

• Added new on-screen and off-screen compass indicator visuals.

• Improved setup screen locked-item details.

• Improved store tab attention behavior so it only highlights affordable offers.

• Improved end of level sound behavior so tally animations are less repetitive.

• Added achievement and unlock support for Cursed Shell.

• Updated the pillar graphic to look more wall-like, while still being visually distinct.

• Improved upgrade and store cards so only one card description is shown at a time.

• Improved inspect label cleanup so stale labels are less likely to remain after objects disappear or focus changes.

• Lowered controller/keyboard deadzones for more responsive menu navigation.

Gameplay and Controls

• Reworked snake speed math so speed boosts, slowdowns, held shoes, and size penalties behave more consistently.

• Improved turn buffering to prevent invalid or duplicate queued turns.

• Fixed the hidden tail spacer so it no longer behaves like a real snake segment for enemies and traps.

• Modifier keys no longer accidentally toggle pause.

Fixes

• Fixed XP gain so collecting enough XP for multiple levels processes every level-up correctly.

• Fixed item and trap spawning so they avoid reserved tiles, exits, existing pickups, and occupied trap positions more reliably.

• Improved Hammer wall breaks so breaching earlier rooms opens the correct doors.

• Fixed several targeting and projectile edge cases involving dead, invalid, or invincible enemies.

Just a small update today, to fix some translation issues and with some minor UI changes, mostly to allow different translated texts to fit on the screen properly. Bit shout-out to LinuxFriend in the Final Screw discord for testing the French localization!

Watch the dev play SnekromancY!

Hi all, first off an apology as this update is once again going to break saves. I know I just rolled out save-breaking 0.8 the other day, but I needed to break compatibility again to introduce a couple new features. First, the game is now fully translated into Spanish, German, French, Portuguese (Brazil), Simplified Chinese, Traditional Chinese, Japanese, and Korean. I hope this helps our fans who don't speak English natively be able to understand the complexities of different upgrades and stats better.

The other save-breaking change is that I've added menu buttons to the store and map screens, allowing games to be quit and resumed from there as well. Since we're able to save the store state, this means you can also go back from the map screen if you'd like.

This is the big one for under-the-hood game updates, so next week is going to be back to focusing on balance tweaks and new content. Enjoy!

Today's update is all about maximizing the fun. What's fun? Exciting chest and level-up animations. Crazy boss fights where they get to summon their own minions and attack with their own bullet storms. Eating hot dogs. Magnets that attract every gem on the map. Epic chests. Bosses dramatically exploding when you kill them.

I also tried to address what's not fun. Dense and incomprehensible UI screens. Boss fights where they just spam unavoidable attacks. Effortlessly OP ghost builds that take all the challenge away (to be clear, I all for OP builds, but they should take a little bit of work to get or they don't feel rewarding).

Major Additions

• Added cinematic reward presentations for level-ups and chest openings.

• Added chest tiers: Chest, Rare Chest, and Epic Chest.

• Added new items, including Magnet and Hot Dog.

• Added new late-game divine enemies, including Light Acolyte and Divine Minion.

Rewards and Items

• Chests can now award higher-rarity upgrade choices based on chest tier.

• Added an equipped item display during gameplay.

• Improved held item handling, including clearer item names and better item save/load support.

• Wall Hammer can now be used more directly when a valid wall target is nearby.

Bosses and Enemies

• Refactored and rebalanced late-game boss progression.

• Updated the Divine God encounter with new projectile patterns, summoning behavior, and a more dramatic death sequence.

• Added support for radial enemy projectile attacks.

• Added new enemy summon behaviors for divine enemies.

• Adjusted balance across several late-game enemies and bosses.

Combat and Debuffs

• Reworked debuff stacking so matching debuffs merge while different debuffs queue cleanly.

• Rebalanced fire, frost, poison, acid, electric, bleed, and slow effects.

• Improved fast projectile collision so shots are less likely to skip through enemies or walls.

• Improved minion projectile behavior, orbiting projectile handling, and attack timing edge cases.

• Reduced unnecessary off-screen combat feedback and sound spam.

Upgrades and Balance

• Large balance pass across minion upgrades, stat upgrades, multishot upgrades, and relics.

• Many repeatable upgrades now have tighter caps and stronger tradeoffs.

• Elemental upgrade descriptions and behavior were cleaned up around level-based effects.

• Adjusted minion names, upgrade values, and several late-run scaling options.

UI and Quality of Life

• Redesigned parts of the setup screen to make selected snake, minion, relic, aiming, and ascension choices clearer.

• Added hover details for more setup options.

• Added coin display to the map screen, to help the player decide if they should go to a shop.

• Improved upgrade icon feedback for inactive minions and cooldown-style progress.

• Improved exit visibility once the exit is unlocked.

Save and Input

• Added save version tracking for 0.8.0 compatibility.

• Old incompatible active-run saves are now cleared so they won't load into a broken state.

• Added remapping support for the use item action.

• Improved scene transitions so game pause state is reset more reliably between screens.

Just a small patch today, to fix a couple bugs. The big one was that the save system would sometimes not save keys on the map, so continuing from a save could result in an un-winnable level. Big thanks to zyr from the Final Screw discord for reporting this bug! I also fixed some performance issues with the death knight's rotating shots that could cause a major frame drop when you pick up the multi-shot upgrades and they end up with dozens of projectiles rotating on screen.

Watch the developer play SnekromacY

Another smaller update today because I found another couple game-breaking bugs (bosses could despawn when off-screen, resulting in a level that can't be completed). I decided to go ahead and push the progress I've been making on some boss refactors to make the combat more interesting along with it though. There will be more to come with the late-game bosses, but for now I have reworked the mid-game quite a bit. The Dwarven Marksman can place traps, The King now has an entourage. The Elf Druid can summon fairies, and has a whirlwind attack that's slow and high damage, but possible to evade. The Gnome Gyrocopter now drops bombs with a time delay fuse.

New Enemy Content

• Added the Fairy as a new summoned enemy type.

• Updated Dwarven Marksman with trap-setting behavior.

• Added a new Dwarven Trap hazard.

Enemy Behavior

• Added enemy summoning behavior, used by Elf Druid to summon Fairies.

• Added enemy trap placement behavior, used by Dwarven Marksman.

• Added support for enemy companion spawns around bosses and special enemies.

• Improved enemy spawn animations when enemies have dedicated summon visuals.

• Added support for uninterruptible enemy attacks.

Projectiles and Hazards

• Expanded enemy projectile support with custom projectile animations, speeds, impacts, explosions, and wall-ignoring behavior.

• Updated Gnome Gyrocopter with explosive bomb behavior.

• Updated Tech Priest projectiles with new visuals and wall-ignoring shots.

• Improved trap behavior for one-shot traps and activation animations.

Balance Changes

• Adjusted several enemy stats, ranges, and attack behaviors.

• Adjusted Death Knight projectile speed tuning.

• Updated Fire upgrade descriptions to reflect attack-damage-based fire damage.

• Updated global affinity descriptions for Fire, Frost, and Poison.

• Renamed Shoe to Speed Shoe.

Fixes and Improvements

• Improved enemy attack timing so attack frames are clamped safely to the current animation

• Fixed an issue where bosses could despawn.

• Fixed a game lock when starting a new game after winning the game.

This is a smaller update, but I found a couple game-breaking bugs this morning that I really wanted to get patched out, and I figured I'd send up some smaller changes I've been working on with it. The biggest gameplay change is that I'm bringing back store levels being playable, because it just seemed like too much skipping. I may revert this change in the future if I decide to implement multiple acts, but right now the game is just too short if you skip half the levels.

Visual Updates

• Updated several boss sprite palettes for consistency.

• Added custom mouse cursors for normal play and manual aiming mode.

• Improved item and off-screen indicators to be visible over the HUD UI.

Map and Shops

• Increased the number of specialized shop rooms generated on the map.

• Changed shop rooms so they are entered as gameplay rooms from the map, then route into the store afterward.

• Adjusted unlock pacing for a few progression rewards.

Combat and Upgrades

• Reworked Fire damage so it scales from the attack that applied it instead of using flat damage only.

• Updated Lava Orb so its fire trail damage scales with snake length.

• Increased the offer rate for multishot upgrades.

• Improved upgrade offer weighting so owned minion types and matching minion roles appear more reliably.

Manual Aim

• Improved projectile collision behavior in manual aim mode.

• Added a manual-aim cursor to make that mode easier to read.

Balance Changes

• Adjusted several minion and evolved minion stats.

Fixes and Improvements

• Improved save/load bug where upgraded minions were getting deleted.

• Fixed boomerang-style projectiles creating impacts when they returned without hitting anything.

• Improved enemy knockback position tracking.

• Fixed a bug in manual aim mode where you couldn't fire next to a wall.

v0.7.3

I have mostly a balance pass for you today, but there's still some cool new stuff that I wanted to go over. I really liked the way the debuff affinities worked out, allowing diversity in the group while still encouraging strategy around minion matching, so I extended the system with three new minion affinity groups: Grave (Zombie, Death Knight, Hell Hound), Crypt (Skeleton, Spider, Vampire), and Hex (Ghost, Lich, Devil). After recruiting a minion in one of these affinity groups, you'll unlock upgrades that apply to the whole group. In addition, all debuff affinities will appear twice in each group, so if you pick carefully you can double-up with both types of affinites applying to your minions.

With all these new changes, I took a fresh look at balance and difficulty. Bosses should now be easier to defeat in close-combat, but are more resistant to damage that ignores walls (the ignore walls flag now also reduces hit stagger). This should hopefully address the issue where the only really viable build for late-game bosses was just going full zombie. In testing, I've found a good mix of 2-3 minions works really well now to handle all situations.

Maps are also now a little bit larger, which should help with things feeling a little tight in the later levels, and also give your minions more room to fight. As a counter-balance to this, more shops have been added, with unique shops that sell a certain type of upgrades. Entering a shop no longer has an associated combat for the level (although I may change this back, let me know how it feels), which can be a bit of a double-edged sword since there is an opportunity cost to choosing a shop now since you'll miss on the level's loot.

If this feels like it's making the game a little too easy, don't worry, as I've added ascension level unlocks. Every time you beat the game, you'll unlock another ascension level that increases the overall difficulty and map sizes for all levels.

Major Additions

• Added Ascension levels as a new post-win difficulty system.

• Added new specialized shop room types: Minion Shops, Relic Shops, and Upgrade Shops.

• Added new minion role affinities: Grave, Crypt, and Hex.

• Added shared role upgrades that improve groups of minions by damage, range, or speed.

Ascension and Difficulty

• Winning runs now unlocks higher Ascension levels.

• Ascension increases room difficulty, enemy health, boss health, shop prices, and reroll pressure.

Minions and Upgrades

• Grouped minions into Grave, Crypt, and Hex affinities for broader build synergies.

• Added new role-based upgrade icons and UI indicators.

• Rebalanced many minion base stats and upgrade values around the new role system.

• Updated minion cards, tooltips, and store details to show role and elemental affinities more clearly.

• Adjusted Shattered Mask to execute enemies at a lower health threshold, with repeatable stacking.

Gameplay Changes

• Level timers, spawners, enemy pressure, and waves now wait until the player first moves.

• Some bosses can now fire projectiles that ignore walls.

UI and Visuals

• Improved damage number scaling so larger hits read more clearly.

• Updated store build display styling and minion detail formatting.

Fixes and Improvements

• Improved dungeon generation behavior for high-difficulty rooms.

• Improved shop item pricing, selling, and combining calculations.

• Improved projectile and hit-stun behavior for high-hit-rate attacks.

• Improved enemy movement fallback when direct movement would hit walls (fixes a bug where enemies would sometimes get stuck on walls).

I know 0.7.1 was just a few days ago, but I wanted to push this update out quickly, because I decided to introduce a reworked progression and unlocking system, and it's not fully backwards-compatible with the old one. From this update forward, unlocks will now be persisted and even if the score thresholds or conditions change in the future, anything previously unlocked will be kept. Additionally, any new unlocks added will be available to unlock in your first game after the update. I figured it was worth getting this out quickly in order to set up that baseline for current players.

With that boring stuff out of the way, time for the cool stuff in this update! The biggest change is two new minions! Devil and Hell-Hound are late-game minions that bring the heat with close-combat attacks. I'll be adding more and more minions as we approach release, but these were needed now because I've reworked the debuff system with a new affinities system. There are now three main affinities: Fire, Frost, and Poison. Fire is DoT and spread, Frost is DoT and movement slowing, and Poison is a damage multiplier effect (same as the previous Bleed debuff, which is now removed). This gives all three distinct gameplay effects, and now every minion can pick one of two options for its upgrade path.

Additionally, instead of taking multiple levels of the debuff upgrades specific to a minion, you'll be able to choose a new blanket upgrade that increases the effect for that debuff on all minions.

I hope this new system should add some additional strategic depth and allow for creative synergies when picking your teams, to go with the newly added flexibility of starting lineup selection. Let me know how it plays out!

Major Additions

• Added two new minion families: Devil and Hell Hound.

• Expanded starting minion options with additional unlockable choices, including Portia, Knightmare, and Vlad.

• Added a broader affinity system built around Fire, Frost, and Poison minion effects.

Progression and Unlocks

• Expanded the achievement progression track with new unlocks for minions, relics, starting options, and upgrade families.

• Adjusted unlock pacing and progression thresholds across the achievement system.

• Changed unlocks so earned rewards can be claimed from the store instead of being applied silently.

• Added compatibility for previously earned unlocks whose upgrade names changed in this version.

Store and UI

• Added a dedicated Unlocks tab to the store for viewing and claiming earned rewards.

• Added a Build tab to review the player's current upgrades.

• Added attention indicators for available shop offers and claimable unlocks.

• Updated upgrade and store cards with clearer visual categories for minions, relics, and other upgrades.

• Added affinity icons to minion cards so Fire, Frost, and Poison synergies are easier to read.

Gameplay and Combat

• Added support for targeted close-range attacks and shockwave attacks.

• Added new impact and bite effects for the new minion attack styles.

• Reworked several minion status upgrades into the new Fire, Frost, and Poison affinity structure.

• Added global affinity upgrades that strengthen all minions sharing the same elemental effect.

• Changed Poison to increase damage taken instead of acting as a simple damage-over-time effect.

• Improved upgrade offer weighting so upgrades are more likely to appear for minion types the player already owns.

Visuals and Fixes

• Improved projectile layering so enemy and minion projectiles display more consistently.

• Updated end screen and unlock progress UI behavior for the revised unlock system.

Ok folks, I think this one finally warrants a 0.x.0 version bump. I got a massive amount of feedback over the weekend, which has been truly awesome, and a huge thank you goes out to everyone who added helpful reviews, posted discussion comments, and even commented on youtube play videos. I read everything and while I may not use every idea I take them all in.

The biggest change here is that I'm introducing a progression system I call Scale. This isn't a stat-boost meta-progression or anything like that, but rather a system of card and starting configuration unlocks. The idea is mainly to not overwhelm new players with too many choices, as well as to reward continued play with new strategies. I've balanced it so that a single full play-through should unlock pretty much all of the previous starting configuration options, and just a few more should unlock most of the content that was previously available from the start.

Since I don't like to take without giving, many new things have been added that can be unlocked. First, there are now six unique snakes. and they now all have a special ability in addition to just having stat differences. For even more customization, there are now a few different starting relics available. These things together should make it possible to play the game very different ways based on your preferences.

To make it easier to complete multiple playthroughs, a save/continue system has also been added so you can set a game aside and pick it up later.

In addition to all this, many smaller tweaks have been made based on feedback. Bomb explosions now have a visual effect, traps are much easier to see (and the fire blast trap has been removed since it blends in too much with blood splatter), and have had safegaurds added to prevent from spawning in ways that would force the player to move over them (like fully blocking a corridor). Enemy spawners also now always show their ladder so that they don't look too similar to the spinning blade trap.

New Features

• Added a new achievement and unlock progression system.

• Added persistent save support for continuing active runs.

• Added selectable starting snakes, starting minions, and starting relics.

• Added achievement popups when new unlocks are earned.

• Added an unlock progress panel to show earned and in-progress achievements.

Progression and Unlocks

• Added long-term unlocks based on lifetime score.

• Added minion-family progression for zombies, skeletons, ghosts, and spiders.

• Added unlockable snakes: White Snek, Blue Snek, Red Snek, Black Snek, and Purple Snek.

• Added unlockable starting minions and starting relics.

• Added unlock requirements for several advanced minion upgrades.

New Snake Types

• Green Snek: eating food pauses decay for a short time.

• White Snek: eating enemies at full health can grow the snake.

• Blue Snek: gems grant bonus XP.

• Red Snek: eating enemies briefly increases minion damage.

• Black Snek: the front minion gains damage based on snake length.

• Purple Snek: empty minion slots can hold extra items.

Gameplay Changes

• Snake length now increases your score.

• Improved trap placement so traps are less likely to cluster together unfairly.

UI and Visuals

• Overhauled the run setup screen with previews and locked/unlocked selections.

• Added new UI panels for achievements, unlock progress, and end-of-level results.

• Improved pickup lighting with item-specific colors.

• Updated several icons and sprites.

Fixes and Improvements

• Improved enemy eating logic to prevent enemies from being eaten multiple times at once.

• Improved projectile cleanup when projectiles expire from range.

• Added proper impact effects for explosive projectiles.

I am once again here to tell you that this is way too big of an update to be a 0.0.x release, but I've just been busy, folks. This update has been a long time coming and I have literally been playtesting it 16 hours a day for the past 3 days to get it right. I always would rather tune the game too hard and make it easier later than have to make it harder, so please let me know if the difficulty has gotten absurd (comments here or hop on over to the discord)!

The biggest change is that all minions now have a multi-shot upgrade, although there are three main shot configurations (barrage, spread, and volley), plus a fourth for Death Knight because he's a special boy. 

The enemy spawning system has also been completely reworked from the ground-up. Spawner tiles still exist, but there are fewer and enemies can now also spawn just off-screen. There should now be a significant increase in on-screen enemies at all times, so you're going to need those multi-shot upgrades to clear the crowds! Bosses, waves, and drops have been completely rebalanced. The game will throw a lot more at you now but give you more rewards to deal with it.

New Features

• Added multishot upgrades for every minion type.

• Added Zombie Barrage and Spider Barrage: extra trailing burst shots.

• Added Ghost Spread and Vampire Spread: extra cone shots.

• Added Skeleton Volley and Lich Volley: extra radial shots.

• Added Death Knight Ring: extra orbiting projectile rings.

• Added Snek Boots as a repeatable snake speed relic.

• Added Snek Heart as a repeatable max health relic.

Gameplay Changes

• Enemies now use off-screen spawning in unlocked rooms instead of relying only on visible spawners.

• Enemy population pressure now keeps the dungeon more consistently active.

• Waves now scale more strongly with level depth.

• Elite rooms are now treated as slightly higher difficulty for map generation.

• Early levels now spawn extra food near the starting room.

• Keys avoid spawning too close to the level entrance.

• Elite and boss-room bosses now get extra health scaling.

• Bosses now attack faster and resist repeated hit-stun.

Balance

• Speed boosts were toned down for speed potions, big speed potions, chili, and shoes.

• Several high-tier enemy damage values were reduced.

• Peasants and militia now drop gems more often instead of only rarely dropping healing potions.

• Shattered Mask now executes non-boss enemies below 50% HP, but is rarer.

• Hawk's Eye now reveals chests first, then food at stack 2.

• Banshee Tongue was renamed to Banshee Ring and made more common.

• Free Food is now more common.

• Bone Ring, Ouroboros Ring, and Soul Magnet had their offer frequency adjusted.

UI and Store

• Upgrade names now show rarity color on upgrade cards and store cards.

• Store cards now show damage, range, and attack speed for minion upgrades.

• Minion ordering can now be changed with up/down buttons.

Visuals and Audio

• Updated projectile visuals for minions using a new projectile sprite sheet.

• Added new multishot and minion upgrade icons.

• Added new pickup and dodge/block sound effects.

Fixes

• Fixed enemy attack range checks so attacks use grid positions more reliably.

• Fixed enemies failing to attack when already overlapping the snake.

• Fixed snake overlap tracking so one segment leaving range does not cancel another segment still being in range.

• Fixed multishot and rapid hits being able to permanently stun-lock enemies.

• Fixed hit sounds playing for off-screen debuff damage spam.

• Fixed enemy attack sounds playing when damage was blocked or dodged.

• Fixed trap sounds so they only play when damage is actually dealt.

• Fixed item drops rerouting if the target tile already has a trap or pickup.

• Fixed boss tracking cleanup when pooled enemy sprites are reused.

• Fixed exit-room border detection for all four sides of the room.

• Fixed camera bottom clamping so the level starts flush without showing empty space.

Who has two thumbs and likes relics? Well, not snakes I guess. Regardless, I've added a bunch more new relics for you! I've also reworked many of the old relics that either no longer make sense (the poisoning relics aren't really useful any more now that minions can apply debuffs themselves), or I just wanted to clean up thematically of because they weren't good enough (looking at you, Ancient Scroll). Expect more changes and additions to relics in the near future as well!

Another big change is with the way food spawns. The dungeon maps are broken up into "rooms" (separated by locked doors) and each room will start with 1 food. When you eat a food, it will respawn only in still-locked rooms. This means you can't really cheese the food respawns any more, but also food will be much easier to find reliably while you traverse the level. To make up for there now being overall less food availability, the free food upgrade now gives you 3 foods.

New Features

• Added a large batch of new relics, including Banshee Tongue, Cord of Teeth, Crimson Tear, Demon Skull, Tin Fork, Lucky Horseshoe, Hawk's Eye, Lava Orb, Shattered Mask, and Infinite Shield.

Gameplay Changes

• Food now spawns room-by-room instead of by simple distance counts.

• Food respawns now prefer locked rooms and are throttled to avoid overfilling the current area.

• Free Food now gives three food heals/growths instead of one.

• Leveling up now also grants extra max health.

• Snake damage now flashes only the segment that was hit.

• Snake damage numbers now appear near the segment that took the hit.

• Enemy damage indicators are now white, while snake damage numbers are red.

• The snake's large-body speed penalty was reduced.

Relic Changes

• Ancient Scroll now also turns elite rooms into shops.

• Vampiric Fangs now increases healing from eating enemies instead of adding minion lifesteal.

• Witches Brew now improves heal and speed potions by 50% instead of 25%.

• Hive Mind now gives minions +1 damage per owned minion.

• Plague Vector and Scorpion's Sting were removed.

• Repeatable upgrades can now have a maximum stack count.

• Basic snake max health and snake speed upgrades were removed from the normal upgrade pool.

Fixes

• Fixed a physics-space lock issue caused by raycasting during collision callbacks.

• Fixed crashes when random enemy selection returned an empty list.

• Fixed spawner cleanup for invalid enemy references.

• Fixed minion removal so the matching minion sprite is also removed.

• Speed boosts now reliably clear when their duration ends.

Performance and Cleanup

• Cached torch scenes instead of loading them dynamically during level generation.

• Used squared-distance checks in more placement and spacing logic.

• Reduced array copying and filtering in spawn and spawner logic.

New Features

• Added holdable items. Bombs are now carried and can be triggered manually with Spacebar (remappable).

• Added new holdable item types: Shield, Hammer, and Shoe.

• Added a score display to the in-game HUD.

Gameplay Changes

• Bombs no longer detonate immediately on pickup. They are stored as the current held item and used on demand.

• Only one holdable item can be carried at a time. Picking up a new one drops the old one.

• Added Shields: absorb incoming damage and visually degrade as they weaken.

• Added Hammers: smash nearby wall tiles on impact.

• Added Shoes: grant a movement speed boost while carried.

• Larger snakes and minions now apply a small movement speed penalty after a certain size.

• Self-collisions no longer block the snake (but still deal damage same as any other collision), so that snakes won't get totally blocked.

• Phylactery now restores the snake to 4 pending segments instead of a single segment.

• Portia now has bouncing attacks.

• Widow now has bouncing multi-hit attacks instead of wall-ignoring attacks.

• Manual aim mode no longer fires on treasure levels, or before any enemies have spawned.

Balance

• Previous level bosses now appear less frequently as normal spawns.

• Wave names were simplified.

• Fewer monks spawn.

UI and Stats

• Level and run records are now displayed more clearly.

• All-time best records get more prominent formatting.

• Record stats are shown before normal stats in results screens.

• Level records no longer count the first recorded value as a new best.

• Combining minions now preserves the selected minion's custom name when possible.

Fixes

• Fixed a crash in enemy chase path handling when paths were too short.

• Fixed enemy state loading to fail gracefully if a state script cannot be loaded.

• Fixed electric debuff spreading so it cannot recursively spread forever.

• Fixed enemy nearby detection group name mismatch.

• Fixed pooled objects not restoring physics processing correctly.

• Fixed pooled objects being reset at the wrong time when returned.

• Fixed invalid pooled instance handling.

• Fixed minion pickup parent checks.

• Fixed projectile trap placement to use the global grid size instead of hardcoded 16.

• Fixed several Vector2/Vector2i type mismatches.

• Removed debug logging and unused pathfinder/debug code.

Performance

• Cached upgrade filtering lookup data.

• Cached minion line-of-sight checks briefly instead of recalculating every frame.

• Switched several distance checks to squared-distance comparisons.

• Reworked blood decals to use a circular buffer instead of repeatedly shifting arrays.

• Avoided unnecessary copies when retrieving inspectable sprites.

• Improved spawner placement setup by avoiding redundant wall-position duplication.

I've got a pretty big update today, thanks to some great feedback from the demo (shout-out to Lord Dyran on steam, and as always to TigerJ for playtesting on his youtube channel). The big effort in this update is around the level generation, and trying to make maps feel more interesting and require more strategic pathing. Rooms will now be more densely populated with columns, or even patterened layouts of traps, but these columns can be shot over by all minions. Maps will now have larger sections of mazes that you'll have to get through to reach the end, and the maze sections feature narrow corridors. Since traps are now more prevalent, they have an activation lmit for each time you pass over them.

Gameplay:

• Chest rolls now offer one minion upgrade, one minion-or-relic upgrade, and one bonus upgrade.

• Added chest rerolls with increasing coin cost.

• Reduced normal coin spawn count slightly.

• Non-store levels no longer have upgrades for sale.

Dungeon Generation:

• Mazes now have smaller corridors instead of using the same value as room width.

• Reworked hybrid dungeon generation to support alternating room and maze regions.

• Added pillar placement in dungeon rooms, with a new pillar obstacle type that can be shot over, but still blocks movement.

Traps:

• Added room-aware trap placement instead of purely global random placement.

• Added trap placement protections for entry and exit rooms. Neither will spawn any traps, and exit rooms no longer spawn columns.

• Added spawn reservation checks so traps, pickups, food, and enemies avoid colliding with pending spawns.

• Added per-trap trigger limits.

• Tuned trap damage:

  • Spikes: 10 -> 25, max 1 trigger.

  • Flamer: 25 -> 50, max 2 triggers.

  • Sling Blade: 50 -> 100, max 3 triggers.

Combat:

• Debuff damage no longer forces enemies into hit-stun animations (this makes bosses less trivial since you can't just stun-lock them with debuffs).

• Bomb damage logic was optimized.

Performance:

• Cached inspectable sprite lists and added dirty-state invalidation.

UI / Setup:

• Added an aiming mode option to setup: Auto, Assisted, Manual (same as the one that was already in settings).

• Updated theme styling for checkboxes and option buttons.