The Bonerooms news & patch notes

Hello everyone! It's been a LONG time coming, but the Revival Update is finally here! This update brings new items, a new enemy, emotes, support for cosmetics, bug fixes, polishing, and more! Bonerooms is also 100% free to play! If players want to offer their support, there's also a completely optional "Support the Dev" DLC that unlocks access to some goofy cosmetics! https://store.steampowered.com/app/3369590/Bonerooms__Supporter_DLC/ Players who purchased Bonerooms before it became free should have received this DLC automatically for free, as a thank you for your support! Thank you all for your patience, and please let me know if you run into any issues in the Bug Reporting Steam forum!

CHANGELOG

NEW ITEMS

• Defibrillator
• Skeleton Mask
• Stun Gun
• RPG

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NEW ENEMY

Boomba {STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/44795311/397a92d17d3e644ab1af05c45f2fe35ccb0d3fb6.png

EMOTES

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COSMETICS (DLC)

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Other Changes/Additions

• Gameplay option to obfuscate players' Steam names/avatars, useful for streaming!
• Audio identity redesign
• UI Cleanup / Polishing
• Players can now drop dots in quantities of 10! This allows you to pool cash with your teammates to buy expensive items, or just take pity on players who are broke
• Mimics now properly record/mimic hosts / local players, so you'll actually hear your own mimics now
• Bones item now has a holdable alt-fire that continuously clonks in the same rhythm as a walking skeleton
• Smoke Grenades now cause a debuff to build-up if players/enemies stand in them, clouding vision, slowing movement, and preventing stamina regen.
• Slot machine can now be "sabotaged" with the Defibrillator
• Slot machine has a new "prize": an alarm that attracts all enemies in the map
• New win/lose logic to choose a winner in "draws" and discourage murder/suicides
• New UI transitions for match starts
• New on-screen messages for game type / goal when matches start
• Misc. balancing and bug fixes

Hello everyone! There's been so many new Bonerooms players lately and a handful of folks asking about the update, so I'm trying to at least squeeze in a bit of dev time on it on my weekends to try and get the update out! Each playtest gets me closer and closer and closer, with the amount of new bugs getting smaller and smaller, and with last night's playtest, there were no more game-breakers or major issues! (Knock on all wood available) With that, I'd like to give a more in-depth look at the new content that's coming!

NEW ITEMS

Defibrillator

The first new item is the Defib! The Defib costs a pretty penny, but is quite versatile! You can revive a dead player, murder a skeleton, and short-circuit electronics! Choose wisely though, you only get one charge! {STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/44795311/92d5b8a894a9090ec8d07a81ce14d902742736e3.png

Skeleton Mask

Next up is the Skeleton Mask! This cheap cardboard disguise will break enemy line-of-sight, meaning you can sneak by without them noticing you. If you're already being chased though, the mask can still work to give you a headstart on your pursuer forgetting about you! {STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/44795311/f22550b2325656f3228f29ad8e3a4abc3d95ec98.png

Stun Gun

The Stun Gun is an interesting new item in that it deploys automatically! If you have one in your inventory and you get grabbed, it offers you a one-time-use instant escape that also knocks the enemy out for the rest of the round! {STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/44795311/036eb0adce1e18dd4f2cc6e6511d9e5f805e550e.png

RPG

Finally, the RPG rounds out the list of new items. It's absurdly expensive, fairly rare, and incredibly dangerous. It offers players a direct way to kill other players, but the gigantic explosion radius is likely to catch careless players in it's wake, and the relatively slow rocket leaves you wide open for a retaliatory Swap Card! {STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/44795311/72b795e08be8b2541f8a2b78471f8cd01523eb99.png

NEW ENEMY

If your ears detect the dulcet tones of upbeat corporate music, it's time to check your corners! The Boomba joins the enemy roster, and offers a bit of a different challenge to the skeleton mobs that wander the Bonerooms. It wanders harmlessly until it spots a player - after which it will begin aggressively accelerating towards you. If it touches you, it detonates immediately, spelling instant death for anyone nearby. While they will lose track of you the moment you break line-of-sight, they will maintain their current max speed, so you might avoid them at all costs to keep them from getting too fast ... or a player with Teleporters/Speedy Shoes might intentionally speed them up to screw over a less fortunate fellow player! {STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/44795311/397a92d17d3e644ab1af05c45f2fe35ccb0d3fb6.png

Emotes

Emotes will be coming to Bonerooms with this update! I've put together a small collection of little animations the player can trigger at any time. The emotes can be accessed from the same key as the Ghost Action wheel, and can be done in either third or first-person! {STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/44795311/a944189ea017aced8a8ee6bf6eecf82502d2b8b0.png

Supporter DLC / Cosmetics

With Bonerooms being completely free to play now, I wanted to have some way that players could still choose to support me, if they want! With that, I've put together a small batch of cosmetic items that players can equip to personalize their character. There are currently 14 different cosmetics to choose from, and the Cosmetics menu also allows you to customize your suit color if you want to have a custom color (outside of Teams VS). The completely optional cosmetics can be unlocked with the Supporter DLC, which will carry the game's original $1.99 price tag. This DLC, again, is *completely optional* and just there for players who want to enhance the Bonerooms experience a bit and support me as a developer. Players who purchased Bonerooms will receive this DLC for free when the update launches {STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/44795311/eceb10ee780dfde454be569480e8444c112decdc.png {STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/44795311/527278fd9a8a5e9265b24131975adbc885e50526.png

Audio Polish / Identity Pass

Since Bonerooms was originally created as a little game-jam project, I didn't have time to establish much of an audio identity, so the overall audio design was a bit discordant, and the game vibe was stuck somewhere between trying to still be "eerie" in service of it's Backrooms flavoring, and being "goofy", as the game itself is... well, pretty silly at times. With a bit more time, I revisited the audio design and tried to establish a more consistent sound across the game, which mainly involved establishing a core set of sounds/instruments for the new music, stingers, jingles, etc. There's not a ton of music in the game still, but here's the new main menu/lobby music, which will give you an idea of the new vibe!

Updated UI

The menus and player UI have gotten a major polish pass! Menus are more consistent and responsive now, and the player UI has a new look as well! In the below screenshot, you can see the new Stamina Meter and point counter, adjusted maze timer, new contextual control display for most items, and the new "Game Messages" that provide a bit more context to the game mode the host has selected. {STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/44795311/16ae1be1500b098e657bdcba9989d9a7a65da4a8.png {STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/44795311/850a15b482e6db9f12bd919931a07bc3f79d1242.png

Other Changes/Additions

There have been quite a few other changes made to the game since it's original launch - here are a few of them off the top of my head:

• Players can now drop dots in quantities of 10! This allows you to pool cash with your teammates to buy expensive items, or just take pity on players who are broke
• Mimics now properly record/mimic hosts / local players, so you'll actually hear your own mimics now
• Bones item now has a holdable alt-fire that continuously clonks in the same rhythm as a walking skeleton
• Smoke Grenades now cause a debuff to build-up if players/enemies stand in them, clouding vision, slowing movement, and preventing stamina regen.
• Slot machine can now be "sabotaged" with the Defibrillator
• Slot machine has a new "prize": an alarm that attracts all enemies in the map
• New win/lose logic to choose a winner in "draws" and discourage murder/suicides
• New UI transitions for match starts
• New on-screen messages for game type / goal when matches start
• Misc. balancing and bug fixes

I know this update is very, very late - I had originally wanted it to be done by the beginning of this year, but all of this new content took much longer than I was anticipating and was much buggier, requiring far more playtesting, and on top of that, I don't have much time to dedicate to Bonerooms since CULTIC is a bit behind schedule and demanding most of my dev time - BUT it's still coming along, slowly but surely, and I can't wait to get it released! It's such a huge improvement over the launch version and has been a blast to play with my friends/playtesters. Thank you for your patience, and if you enjoyed Bonerooms, please consider leaving a review!

Hello everyone! Bonerooms is now 100% free! I had been hoping to coincide this pricing change with the in-progress content update, but sadly I have had zero time to work on it now that I'm back on CULTIC full-time and trying to get it back on schedule. I do still plan to finish and release the update in the future, but I'm thinking it's probably gonna have to be after the summer at this rate. In the meantime though, I wanted to get this pricing change done since I promised it ages ago - sorry it took so long! Thanks for your patience, and hopefully this can open the doors to more players!

Hello and Happy New Year all! Unfortunately, this update is taking longer than I expected, and my target of having it finished by the end of the year clearly didn't happen! Things have been pretty slow going since I'm back to working on my main project CULTIC full-time, and I only really have time to work on Bonerooms in my free time. That, and the update keeps growing as I keep adding new stuff! This update was originally only going to have the Defibrillator as a new item, and some cosmetics for the Supporter DLC, but at this point, it's going to feature the following:

• New Item: Defibrillator
• New Item: Skeleton Mask
• New Item:
• New Enemy: Boomba
• A small selection of hat cosmetics (Supporter DLC)
• Customizable suit colors (Supporter DLC)
• A small selection of player emotes (Supporter DLC)
• Updated music design / soundtrack

Just a reminder that the Supporter DLC will be *FREE* to anyone who purchased Bonerooms, and only exists as an optional way to support me after the game switches to be Free with this update. I'm also trying to see if I can get it so that joining matches-in-progress is possible, which should *greatly* improve server visibility as you won't be limited to seeing servers that are in lobby, which are always going to be very few. Dunno how complicated this will be, but sometimes I get pleasantly surprised with how simple netcode tasks, so lets hope this is one of those times! I'm hoping it won't be too much longer to get this update finished! At the moment, I only have one more item to add and then the join-in-progress thing, then testing. Thanks for your support and patience!

Hello everyone! I want to thank all of you who purchased Bonerooms and supported the launch! I did my best to jump into every single stream I saw on Twitch and watch/chat along, and it was a blast watching folks figure out the little quirks of the items and enemies. The highlight is always seeing folks interact with the Decoys for the first time :D Now, it's no secret that Bonerooms didn't exactly explode in popularity. It wasn't really marketed heavily due to being just kind of a goofy side project of mine, and then releasing during a big Halloween Event didn't help much either! The game's player count has suffered because of this, meaning many of you who purchased the game have had no other players online to play with. This is obviously not the experience I wanted for you all, so with that in mind... I'm going to be making Bonerooms Free to Play with its first update. I've been getting nudges in this direction from the community and from some fellow devs, and I think it's a good direction to move into. I had intended to sell Bonerooms in 4-packs for extremely cheap, and didn't find out until launch week that Steam had discontinued the ability to do multi-packs awhile ago, which threw a big wrench in the plans - but it was too late to switch it to Free, as this is something you must reach out to Steam to do and it was already closing in on Halloween. Of course, there's one glaring issue with switching the game to a Free to Play model so soon after launch - what about those that have already paid for it? My first idea was to just refund everyone, as the game hasn't been out long enough for me to receive a payment from Steam yet, so it would be easiest to just refund those who paid for it and it'd be done. However, this wound up not being something I'm able to do through Steam. So, plan B: a Supporter DLC. I'm going to be adding a Supporter DLC with this first update, that will go live at the same time the game goes Free to Play. This DLC will add a few cosmetic items to customize your character with, just as a very simple bonus for folks who want to support me as the developer - but is entirely optional. Those that purchased the game will GET THIS DLC FOR FREE, as well as maybe another little bonus if I can figure out how to get it work from the Steamworks side of things. Hopefully this will spare any hard feelings of the game switching away from a paid model! I'm hoping to have this update and pricing change in effect by Christmas, but some of that will depend on the logistics of switching things over. In the meantime, here's a little tease of some of the stuff coming in the first update. Thanks again for supporting Bonerooms! {STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/44795311/8f193710a9455259972cc1afad685e69c112c3f1.png

Eat dots. Buy items. Don't get boned. Bonerooms is now available! I'm excited for everyone to check out my first real multiplayer game! The Bonerooms started as a fun little Halloween game I made in 2023 in a week, but the gameplay loop wound up being fun enough that I wanted to expand it into a more fleshed out title. With a couple of months of work polishing it up, adding content, and playtesting in my spare time, I'm proud to present the official release of this goofy, spooky little game!

In the Bonerooms, everyone can hear you scream. They may not hear the land mine you just placed at their feet though. The Bonerooms launches October 30th!