This update features the game's mobile ports, healer and psyker reworks, 9 new items, 1 new class, and lots of balance and QoL changes.
Mobile Ports
The game has been ported to mobile and it's now available on:
Google Play: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=net.davidobot.mazette.snkrx
App Store: https://apps.apple.com/app/snkrx/id1572602587
It has been ported very quickly by David Khachaturov, so make sure to send him some thanks! Both mobile versions will usually be 1 update behind the Steam version. Right now I think both are on the Mercenary update, with the Item update coming up soon.
Healer & Psyker rework
New healer class effect:
Healers (2, 4): +8/16% chance for enemies to drop healing orbs on death
Healer unit changes:
- Cleric (tier 1 healer) - creates 1 healing orb, Lv.3 effect: creates 4 healing orbs
- Priest (tier 4 healer) - creates 5 healing orbs
- Fairy (tier 4 healer, enchanter) - creates 1 healing orb and grants 1 unit +100% attack speed for 6 seconds, Lv.3 effect: creates 2 healing orbs and grants 2 units +100% attack speed for 6 seconds
- Psykeeper (tier 3 healer, psyker) - creates 1 healing orb every time the psykeeper takes 20% of its max HP in damage, Lv.3 effect: deal double the damage taken by the psykeeper to all enemies
New psyker class effect:
Psykers (1): create a piercing, damaging orb around each psyker
Psyker unit changes:
- Flagellant (tier 3 psyker, enchanter) - Lv.3 effect: 2X flagellant max HP and +12% damage to all allies per cast
- Psykeeper (tier 3 healer, psyker) - creates 1 healing orb every time the psykeeper takes 20% of its max HP in damage, Lv.3 effect: deal double the damage taken by the psykeeper to all enemies
Explorers
Added the explorer class:
Explorers (1): +15% attack speed and damage per active set to allied explorers
Added 1 explorer unit:
- Vagrant (tier 1 explorer, psyker) - shoots a projectile that deals X damage, Lv.3 effect: +15% attack speed and damage per active set
Items
Healer:
- Blessing: +10/20/30% healing effectiveness
- Haste: +50% movement speed that decays over 4 seconds on healing orb pick up
- Divine Barrage: 20/40/60% chance to release a ricocheting barrage on healing orb pick up
Psyker:
- Orbitism: +33/66/99% orb movement speed
- Psyker Orbs: +1/2/3 psyker orbs
- Psychosense: +33/66/99% orb range
Conjurer:
- Rearm: summons repeat their attacks once
- Taunt: 10/20/30% chance for summons to taunt nearby enemies on attack
- Summon Instability: summons explode when disappearing, dealing 100/150/200% damage
Balance
- Curser: changed class effect to "+1/3 max curse targets to allied cursers"
- Item reroll: decreased cost to 5 (from 8)
- Enchanted: changed to "+33/66/99% attack speed to a random unit if you have two or more enchanters" (from 10/20/30%)
- Sage: increased attack speed by 25%
- Enemy spawn marker: increased duration by 50%. This should help with reacting to enemy spawns in time and without losing as many units.
- Tank (yellow enemy): decreased throw trigger range and throw speed. Many people have mentioned that this unit was now too strong and with these changes they should be more fair and allow more counterplay.
- Shooter (white enemy) + Exploder (blue enemy): slightly decreased damage
- Headbutter (orange enemy): now the headbutter can't kill multiple units at once
- Exploder elite (blue boss): now turns enemies into mines instead of exploding them directly
- Special enemy spawn probability: slightly decreased the chances of a special enemy being spawned at levels above 20
- Enemy damage: decreased overall enemy damage at higher difficulties
- Gold: increased gold rewards at levels 1-9
QoL
- Added a main menu
- Options menu is now accessible from any screen in the game
- Added volume controls
- Added unit Lv.3 effect text on the shop's card
- Added current snake size and maximum snake size text at the top right of the shop
- Improved text for two enchanter items that previously said "with at least n enchanters" and confused people
- Lowered sound effect for gambler's attack
Bug fixes
- Fixed fullscreen button and general resolution issues
- Fixed barbarian stun just slowing and not actually stunning
- Fixed a bug with Call of the Void that caused its DoT damage bonus to become infinite
Next week's update
The next update will feature 20~ new general items that should help with increasing the odds that items presented aren't completely useless because they don't fit the current build, the endless/looping mode which I couldn't fit into this update, as well as a small rework of the conjurer class.
Future updates & commonly requested features
As most of you know, this game was made in 3 months and I didn't really expect it to be played by that many people at all. Once it became clear that a lot of people were enjoying it I decided to start updating it weekly both to fix most immediate problems that could be fixed quickly as well as to assess what kinds of things people liked and didn't like so I could build a plan for bigger updates going forward.
Now that 4 weekly updates have passed, most issues that can be fixed or improved in 1 week bursts have been fixed, and all I'm left with doing is a bunch of stuff that will take a longer amount of time to address. As such, here's my plan going forward:
Stat Update
After next week's update is out, I'll start rewriting the game from scratch and I estimate that this will take 1 month (may take slightly longer). The reason for this is that the game's code was written from the start with the intention of being thrown away, as I didn't expect to have to keep updating it, and so as time passes it will get harder to release updates with the current codebase.
A set of very commonly requested features will be able to be addressed with this update:
- New stat system: the game's current stat system was written in the game's very first week and hasn't been changed since. It is somewhat buggy and inconsistent, and because of this a lot of other features become harder to implement. In the rewrite I plan on creating a new stat system that will be both simpler and more consistent than the current one, and it will also enable:
- Post-battle stats: you should be able to see which unit deals the most damage, which one heals the most, which one disables enemies the most, etc. All of this is currently very hard to implement properly and so relies on a redo of the stat system. This also happens to be one of the most requested features so it's at the very top of my list to implement.
- Tag system: similar to Path of Exile, everything you hover over in the game should have tags attached to it that tell you what affects what. For instance, Call of the Void would have a DoT tag, and then units like the Witch would also have a DoT tag, and you'd know that Call of the Void affects the Witch without having to guess.
- Keyword explanations: similar to most card games, whenever you hover over something it should also be clear what each keyword means. This will generally be achieved by creating additional information windows explaining each keyword. So, if you hover over an Infestor, on top of the window describing the Infestor, a window describing what "critter" means should also pop up.
In general, this update should make the game a lot more consistent and clear, as well as making it easier for me to work with the codebase and release further updates going into the future.
Roguelite Update
After I release the stat update, I plan on adding a normal roguelite mode to the game. I also estimate that this will take about 1 month (so ~2+ months from now). This will be similar to how Slay the Spire's runs work, where you have a map of nodes and each node is a different type of room. In SNKRX's case, rooms might be arenas, unit or item shops, elite fights, treasure rooms that reward you with units or items, challenges of various types (i.e. move your snake through the labyrinth without hitting the walls), and so on.
On top of the normal roguelite stuff, this update will also be able to address a couple of other commonly requested features:
- Meta-progression: the kind of meta progression I'll have will be one where you simply unlock things and those unlocks add variety to the game. There will never be the kind of meta progression that you see in some games where you need to grind stats to be able to complete the game properly.
- More units: since things can be unlocked it makes sense to add more and more units! Unit ideas in general are some of the most common types of threads people create and many people have contributed lots of really cool ideas that I'll use in the future, so this is at the top of my list too.
So these are my plans for the next 2 months or so. There will still be weekly updates going forward but they will be smaller than they have been so far due to the fact that I'll be focusing most of my time on these larger updates. I'll update everyone with progress on the stat update every week from now on and if it's late you'll know in advance.
If you have bug reports, further suggestions, ideas, etc about anything I said here, create a thread on the forums. Despite not always replying I'm reading everything and taking it all into consideration.
Thanks for playing and I hope you have fun!
