Swarmlake news & patch notes

Hi, the free Swarmlake 4.0: Zenith update is out now. 8 years after release, this is the definitive version of Swarmlake:

• Added shooting beam: A manual fire mode that charges and fires a concentrated energy beam. Can create corridors through enemies, detonate bombs directly and create an explosion on the floor, opening up new scoring combos and high-skill expression.

• Added beam jump: Fire the beam at the ground while jumping to launch yourself upward. Can be cancelled mid-air.

• Added variable jump height: Tap for a short hop, hold for a full jump. Opens up more precise vertical control in tight situations.

• Added training mode: Structured scenarios that teach the game's core mechanics one at a time. Addresses the most consistent feedback since release that Swarmlake is hard to get into without practice.

• Changed enemy steering and prediction behavior: Chasing enemies drift more when the player changes direction rapidly. Charger (yellow) enemies predict circular player motion. Rewards active movement over running in circles.

• Added GPU particle system: Explosions now have more density and atmosphere.

• Added volumetric lighting: Light shafts pass through the scene dynamically, most visible when looking toward the sky's zenith.

• Improved visual clarity: Enemy rim lighting makes dense groups easier to read. Colors are more saturated. Emissives are now transparent. UI panels use a frosted glass backdrop.

• Improved shadow quality: Softer, more natural edges.

• Improved input precision and responsiveness: Aiming and movement now register more precisely and consistently at any sensitivity or framerate.

• Rebuilt on DirectX 12 and 64-bit: A modern graphics API and native 64-bit process, delivers the best frame pacing and performance on Windows.

• Improved CPU performance: Approximately 3x improvement across the board through extensive optimizations. Most players will see a noticeable jump in frame rate and smoothness. Startup is also significantly faster.

• Rebuilt arena: The floor is now hexagonal tiles, the wall is dynamic hex panels, and ocean waves fill the space beneath.

• Improved music-reactive visuals: Light beams, ocean, and the wall now pulses to the beat.

• Added floor reactions: The floor responds visually to bomb explosions, beam impacts, and projectile hits.

• Added 3D gun HUD: The weapon's status display is now rendered in world space, appearing physically mounted on the gun rather than overlaid on screen.

• Improved gamepad controls: Aim assist, a dynamic stick curve for finer small adjustments, and reduced deadzones.

• Added gamepad rumble: Explosions, hits, and scoring moments produce physical feedback on controllers.

• Improved replay: Includes a gameplay statistics display, player model damage and heal feedback, and replay scrubbing. The game stays in replay after a run ends.

• Added localization: The game is now localized into multiple languages.

• Improved leaderboard: Names display correctly for all languages including CJK. Right-click any entry to open the Steam profile.

• Improved player responsiveness: Direction reversals are snappier, reducing input lag at speed.

• Reduced auto fire rate: Power shifted toward the beam. Better fits expectations of when taking damage relative to enemy density.

• Added score-gated active bomb cap: Limits how many bombs can be active at once early on, smoothing the difficulty curve.

• Increased enemy spawn scaling: Speeds up pacing.

• Tweaked bomb spawns to bias toward center with more height variation: Encourages more vertical play.

• Removed delayed shard attraction: Encourages more aggressive playstyles.

• Reworked achievements: Split into tutorial and score tiers. Score achievements are now higher due to increased maximum score achievable, which should result in similar challenge.

• Improved defaults: Defaults to vsync and borderless fullscreen. Skips rendering when minimized.

• Added retrying failed replay upload

A beta branch legacy_3.0 is available for players whose hardware does not support 4.0's requirements. In Steam, right-click Swarmlake > Properties > Betas > select legacy_3.0.

Thanks for playing!

- Dominique

• Added player health Improves understandability of game overs which was by far the most common complaint since release. In the past the binary nature of one-hit deaths resulted in frustrations as there was no warning possible. Also increases the elasticity of the game challenge. This will affect the gameplay dynamic as it is now possible to intentionally take damage to get to a bomb.
• Added bowl-shaped arena wall Removes the punishing nature of falling off the arena while keeping effectively the same playspace as the recently introduced arena limit. As a reminder having a limited arena reduces the amount of invalid options such as running infinitely backwards/forwards or making too big of circles. Since the game gets harder over time this only ever resulted in slower and more frustrating deaths which were not obvious to understand. It also increases the required decision making and adds more positioning and meaning to space. So overall this improves the depth tree for both beginner and expert players.
• Added wall jump
• Added bomb detonation healing a fraction of health
• Added health bar display
• Added player damage audiovisual feedback
• Added player top percent display to leaderboard
• Added leaderboard rank display
• Added settings tab to hide individual HUD elements
• Improved enemy jump sign display
• Improved shard despawn warning feedback clarity by increasing flicker speed over time
• Improved sound effects mix clarity
• Improved milestone score visual effect
• Improved startup speed
• Fixed startup delay if loading showcase failed
• Reset leaderboard and settings
• Decreased fire rate by 10% Better fits expectations of when taking damage relative to enemy density. Also increases decision making by having to avoid enemies more and adapting to their patterns. This changes game feel so it might take some time to get used to it.
• Increased bomb spawn height variation by 20% Encourages more vertical play and reduces repetitive single jump strategies.
• Increased enemy spawn scaling by 25% Speeds up pacing and balances out the increased survivability of the player due to adding health.

• Added arena limit Increases the required decision making and adds more positioning and meaning to space. It improves the depth tree for both expert and beginner players. For the latter it reduces the amount of invalid options such as running infinitely backwards/forwards or making too big of circles. Since the game gets harder over time this only ever resulted in slower and more frustrating deaths which were not obvious to understand.
• Improved enemy spawning to be independent of player look direction Less punishment and more freedom of where players look. While this increases uncertainty of where enemies spawn there is still no randomness as it is the same sequence for everyone. Especially players now need to adapt more to reach bomb enemies which makes the game more dynamic.
• Improved avoider (orange) enemy projectile avoidance to be a bigger threat Makes this enemy more noticeable and reduces situations where player vision is completely blocked by enemies.
• Improved bomb min move height (now can trigger without jumping if pulled down) Increases discoverability of detonating bombs. If a bomb is not hit by a projectile and therefore possibly pulled down they still require jumping to detonate.
• Fixed jumping off of bombs
• Fixed showing wrong leaderboard avatar in rare cases
• Removed replacing bombs on spawn limit (now pauses spawning at limit) Encourages more dynamic player movement patterns. In the past players could ignore existing bombs and move in an infinite circle as the farthest bombs would despawn and new ones would keep spawning in front of them.
• Removed score-based fire-rate (now always at max rate) Increases death consistency as it is tightly linked to fire-rate. This also makes the early game easier.
• Removed doubled enemy spawn scaling after 10,000 score (now as before 10k)
• Reset leaderboard

• Added bomb projectile attract feedback
• Added death player hitbox pulse
• Added descriptions to settings and tutorial UI
• Improved fading out bomb shockwave
• Improved all UI icons
• Improved controller support
• Fixed bomb shockwave model size
• Fixed UI interaction with right mouse button

• Added bombs moving slightly to player on each projectile hit
• Added pulling shards vertically up to player on jump
• Added grace time to enemy jump
• Added enemy jump sign on UI
• Improved consistency of attracting shards vertically
• Improved death camera by adding vertical offset
• Improved replay compression
• Reverted constant bomb movement from last update
• Reset leaderboard

• Added gun muzzle flash
• Added slight horizontal bomb movement (reverted)
• Improved bomb spawn interval consistency
• Improved visibility of shadowed enemies
• Improved visual clarity by reducing enemy explosion size
• Improved floor model
• Fixed orbit camera ground collision by keeping player centered
• Fixed floor springs being able to clip into third person camera

• Added third-person death camera
• Added replay orbit camera mode
• Added 8x replay speed
• Added showcasing always a top 10 replay at game start
• Added gun fire rate display to UI
• Added first bomb movement to improve tutorial
• Fixed rare visual bomb spawn glitch
• Fixed immediately stopping sound effects on pause
• Tweaked visual player model
• Tweaked visual enemy explosion sizes
• Tweaked visual enemy sizes to better fit their collision sphere
• Removed visual sun object
• Removed score-based bomb spawn limit

• Decreased distance of replacing bomb on spawn limit when far away from player by 40%
• Decreased time-based enemy spawn scaling by 20% (same as before 2.8)
• Readded score-based bomb spawn limit (reverted)
• Fixed replacing farthest bomb on spawn limit in rare cases
• Removed replacing invisible bomb on spawn limit
• Reset leaderboard

• Increased time-based enemy spawn scaling by 20% (reverted in 2.9)
• Decreased fire-rate increases to 1,000, 3,000 and 6,000 scores
• Decreased distance of replacing bomb on spawn limit when far away from player by 20%
• Readded avoider (orange) enemy intercepting the player (same as in 2.5)
• Fixed spawning bombs too close to each other in rare cases
• Removed bomb movement
• Removed score-based bomb spawn limit (reverted in 2.9)
• Removed score-based bomb spawn frequency
• Moved slowmo from fire-rate increases to 10,000 score intervals
• Reset leaderboard

• Decreased bomb speed by 95%
• Increased bomb to bomb avoidance radius by 100%
• Increased bomb spawn frequency by 20%
• Added replacing bomb on spawn limit when far away from player
• Improved bomb spawn height variation
• Removed slowing down bomb on projectile hit
• Removed bomb itself dropping a shard
• Reverted avoider (orange) enemy intercepting the player (reverted in 2.8)
• Reset leaderboard

• Readded fire-rate increases at 1,000, 5,000 and 10,000 scores (same fire-rate as before 2.4)
• Added time-based enemy spawn scaling
• Added score-based bomb spawn limit until 4,000 score
• Improved movement of avoider (orange) enemy by intercepting the player
• Increased crystal attract speed by 100%
• Increased swarmer (white) enemy max speed by 10% (same as before 2.4)
• Removed slowmo outside of fire-rate increases
• Reset leaderboard

• Added score-based bomb spawn frequency scaling
• Increased bomb spawn frequency by 33%
• Decreased bomb spawn limit from 5 to 3
• Decreased swarmer (white) enemy max speed by 10% (reverted in 2.5)
• Removed score-based fire-rate increases (reverted in 2.5)
• Reset leaderboard

• Added leaderboard replays with slow-mo, fast-forward and 3rd-person camera
• Added deterministic gameplay simulation
• Added new gun model replacing the old one
• Added diegetic score display on gun
• Added leaderboard navigation slider
• Added showcasing player replay on start
• Added additional music loop transitions
• Added tutorial wait time limit
• Improved gun placement and animations
• Improved projectile shoot consistency
• Improved bomb spawn consistency
• Improved screen shake smoothness
• Improved highlight lines by removing diagonals
• Improved various models slightly
• Improved performance and stability
• Improved controller compatibility
• Fixed sources of indeterministic gameplay
• Fixed one frame input delay
• Fixed one frame projectile enemy hit delay
• Fixed enemy spawn scaling after 17,800 score
• Fixed playing footstep sounds synced to gun animation
• Fixed reducing CPU load if window is unfocused
• Fixed game not launching in rare cases
• Fixed tutorial input detection
• Increased avoider (orange) enemy turn speed
• Decreased charger (yellow) and swarmer (white) enemy speed
• Decreased shoot rate by 25%
• Decreased gun upgrade scores to 1,000, 2,500 and 5,000
• Decreased grounded jump height by 10%
• Removed score-based bomb spawn limit
• Reset leaderboard and settings

• Added distance scaling to off-screen bomb markers
• Added leaderboard user avatars
• Improved leaderboard loading smoothness, navigation and error display
• Improved tutorial clarity
• Improved various icons
• Improved performance and stability
• Fixed explosion effects and lag spikes on bomb explosions with lots of enemies
• Fixed leaderboard loading in rare cases
• Fixed possible freeze on achievement upload error

• Added see-through bomb outline and overlay
• Added off-screen bomb direction marker
• Improved mountains visual clarity and subtlety
• Improved jump icons
• Improved performance and stability
• Fixed grain artifacts after playing for a long time
• Fixed score display after dying on final achievement target score
• Fixed showing off-screen markers for bomb spawn animations

• Added enemy spawn scaling increase after 10,000 score
• Added hemispheric ambient color to improve shadowed enemy visibility
• Added bomb indicators
• Added keyboard layout detection
• Added exit game confirmation dialog
• Improved accessibility by increasing the bomb trigger radius by 33%
• Improved balance by increasing bomb spawn max rotation to that of other enemies
• Improved visual vibrancy
• Improved score and tutorial display
• Improved bomb explosion and killer highlight visibility
• Improved jump sound audibility
• Improved performance
• Improved supported controllers
• Fixed excessive bomb explosion radius for avoider (orange) enemies
• Fixed crash on game start after waiting on the tutorial screen for a long time
• Fixed stopping music visualization on death
• Fixed first enemy wave spawn delay when initially jumping backwards
• Fixed gun and killer highlight resolution scaling
• Fixed user interface resolution scaling above 4K
• Reduced required disk space
• Reset the leaderboard

• Added new data-oriented engine to maximize performance
• Added partial projectile ground hit reflection
• Added audio-visual effect when reaching final achievement score and multiples of it
• Added visual bomb pulse effect
• Added new shoot sound
• Added new achievement icons
• Improved jump arc control by decreasing fall speed by 25% (same as before Update 18)
• Improved jump height control by decreasing grounded jump height by 20%
• Improved ability to stop bombs by increasing bomb projectile hit radius by 33%
• Improved death consistency and feedback
• Improved bomb min and max height bounce behavior
• Improved bomb outline visibility
• Improved visual vibrancy
• Improved CPU performance by ~33%
• Improved game startup speed
• Improved audio mix clarity
• Improved UI visibility
• Fixed 6,000+ score-based shoot rate increase not activating
• Fixed last shard and gun flicker not activating
• Fixed projectiles hitting spawning enemies during animation after first animation frame
• Fixed projectiles now hitting closest enemy when hitting multiple enemies in the same frame
• Fixed player now dying from closest enemy when hitting multiple enemies in the same frame
• Fixed jumping off of bombs
• Fixed removing invisible bombs on bomb spawn limit to be field of view independent
• Fixed death enemy highlight to be visible through ground
• Fixed key rebind new key detection issue
• Fixed key rebind UI button focus loss
• Fixed some font symbols
• Fixed some user settings by resetting all to default

• Added sub-frame input detection
• Improved initial wave pacing to speed up restarts as much as possible
• Improved playing music instantly on restart after tutorial completion
• Improved gun upgrade flicker color visibility
• Improved performance smoothness
• Fixed touchscreen player look input
• Fixed visual projectile rotation variation if multiple projectiles are fired in the same frame
• Fixed playing audio on switching settings tab using a controller

• Improved bomb explosions no longer destroying other bombs
• Improved tutorial pacing
• Improved gun animation smoothing
• Improved controller support
• Improved multi-monitor support
• Improved performance slightly
• Fixed visual-only bomb explosion shockwave radius
• Fixed screenshake affecting movement input
• Fixed incorrectly being able to jump off the ground when slightly above the ground
• Fixed locking system mouse if the game window starts unfocused
• Fixed showing leaderboard if player has no uploaded score yet
• Fixed downloading excessive global leaderboard entries
• Fixed settings resolution picker open flicker
• Fixed hiding window in case of error messages
• Tweaked font
• Removed menu camera shake and menu UI fade-out

• Increased shard collect radius by 50%
• Decreased time until shards despawn by 10%
• Improved render performance
• Improved bloom
• Improved controller aiming
• Improved supported controllers
• Improved tutorial pacing
• Improved icons
• Improved teaching bombs (hint: jump into pink enemies)
• Fixed enemies becoming invisible in rare edge cases
• Fixed uploading a score of 0
• Fixed reticle size at very low resolutions
• Fixed updating leaderboard names in rare cases
• Fixed UI navigation using Enter key
• Fixed UI mouse hover while window is unfocused
• Reduced required disk space
• Tweaked lighting

• Added gun fire-rate scaling: 75% @ 0+, 82% @ 1,000+, 90% @ 3,000+, 100% @ 6,000+
• Added audio-visual effects for gun fire-rate upgrades
• Added visual-only score display freeze on gun upgrade
• Increased max jump and enemy move height limit by 40%
• Increased score-based enemy spawn amount by 20%
• Decreased base enemy spawn amount by 20%
• Decreased projectile collision size by 25%
• Decreased max possible simultaneous bomb enemies at the start
• Improved max shadow distance
• Improved gamepad movement and aiming
• Fixed one frame jump input delay
• Fixed unintended restarts when jump button is still held shortly after death
• Fixed incorrect leaderboard input focus for one frame after death
• Fixed displaying missing leaderboard entries around player for top 4 ranked players
• Fixed shard visible state on collect in rare cases
• Fixed prioritizing removing farthest invisible bomb enemy in case of spawning a new one when already at the simultaneously spawned limit
• Fixed updating last leaderboard entry username
• Fixed simultaneous gamepad and keyboard movement input
• Fixed gamepad rotation speed during slow motion effect
• Fixed gradual footstep interval based on gamepad analog input
• Tweaked enemy spawn sound location to prioritize bomb enemies
• Tweaked initial enemy spawns
• Tweaked enemy death highlight wireframe models
• Tweaked death slow motion speed
• Tweaked gun jump and land bob animation
• Tweaked projectile enemy hit camera shake
• Tweaked credits text
• Removed music volume ducking when hitting close enemies with projectiles

• Added in-game friends leaderboard
• Added audio-visual effect for reaching the final achievement score
• Improved leaderboard display of long usernames
• Improved leaderboard buttons by indicating navigation limits and loading
• Fixed reticle being clipped off in some resolutions
• Fixed high-pitched shard collect sound artifact during audio speed change
• Fixed locking mouse to window only during gameplay
• Fixed setting mouse over resume button only when pausing the game
• Tweaked enemy jump cooldown marginally

• Added in-game leaderboard navigation
• Improved visual gun recoil animation
• Increased charger (yellow) enemy max move height limit by 7%
• Tweaked death slomo speed
• Tweaked bomb explosion camera shake intensity
• Tweaked close enemy projectile hit camera shake intensity

• Burst jumping is either exploitable or unusable due to looking away which requires enemy pushback to make usable. See: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P91YPnAaeTg
• Burst jumping causes deaths which are perceived as random since you need to look away
• Burst jumping is difficult for the sake of it (look down+shoot+look up instead of just jumping)
• Burst jumping is hard to learn, hard to master (instead of easy to learn, hard to master)
• Burst shooting has zero usage outside burst jumping

• Replaced burst jump/shooting with normal jump
• Increased bomb explosion radius by 14%
• Increased fall speed by 33%
• Decreased jump height by 17%
• Added keybinding tutorial screen
• Improved teaching explosions by looking at first bomb enemy
• Improved some icons and keybind names
• Fixed restart music fade effect in some cases
• Fixed credits text clipping
• Tweaked volume of some sound effects
• Reset leaderboard

• Replaced projectile ground reflection with visual hit effect
• Increased base enemy spawn amount by 25%
• Removed score-based shoot rate
• Improved spherical enemy spawn positions
• Fixed enemy spawn consistency
• Added score icon
• Tweaked score layout
• Tweaked death slomo
• Tweaked round start player initial shoot delay

• Added in-game leaderboard showing 20 global entries around the player
• Added visual bomb enemy outline
• Increased CPU performance by ~100%
• Decreased game over slomo by 50%
• Improved charger enemy movement by only moving horizontally
• Improved base font
• Improved visual game over killer enemy highlight
• Improved teaching bomb enemy on game start
• Fixed mid-air burst jump height aim angle consistency
• Fixed charger enemy velocity after bouncing off the floor
• Fixed avoider enemy avoiding projectiles on the other side of the arena in rare cases
• Fixed player rotation when restarting on first frame when restart button becomes visible
• Fixed theoretically possible crash on startup when all achievements were achieved
• Updated controller mappings
• Reset leaderboard

• Increased score-based enemy spawn amount by 17%
• Reverted burst shoot interval changes of Update 12
• Tweaked burst shoot gun recoil animation speed
• Fixed gun idle animation
• Fixed window DPI issues
• Fixed massive score exploit due to burst shoot interval change
• Removed burst shoot music audio ducking
• Reset leaderboard

• Added gun enemy shadowing
• Improved gun lighting
• Improved music visualization responsiveness
• Improved bomb explosion sound effect audibility
• Fixed rendering backside of bomb explosion shockwave
• Fixed one frame delay when resuming from pause
• Increased visual bomb explosion shockwave height
• Decreased death slomo by 50%
• Removed death killer fade-out
• Changed default fullscreen mode to windowed to prevent tearing