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Hey Squad,
We took on board the feedback to the enemy attack prediction in the game balancing update and have made changes to make it much less punishing and deadly. It's now much closer to how it was before.
Nerfed enemy attack prediction.
Fixed issue that prevented you being able to shoot enemies that were on top of you with certain weapons.
Fixed issue preventing selecting a card when the supply crate has fewer than 3 cards.
Creator - Fixed issue that caused cooldowns to go below zero.
Creator - Fixed issue that caused gun accuracy to be displayed incorrectly.
The demo has been updated with the revelant changes.
Hey squad,
Happy holidays! We hope you're all enjoying the last few days of 2025!
To round out the year, we've got a big game balancing update for you all. This is something long overdue, but we wanted to find the right balance for everything while retaining the challenge of the game.
So let's go through the changes and new features...
Meta-progression values have been increased considerably for the majority of the skills. This was an area of strong feedback where players felt the values were too low and not impactful enough. With these changes, we aimed to make every upgrade feel like a noticeable improvement in-game. Also, remember that meta-progression not only boosts your starting value but also increases the maximum you can reach with in-game upgrades.
Here are the Old -> New values:
COMBAT
Fire Rate: 5% -> 25%
Weapon Damage: 5% -> 25%
Penetration: 5% -> 25%
Crit Chance: 10% -> 25%
Crit Multiplier: 25% (No change)
Grenade Damage: 10% -> 50%
Grenade Cooldown: 5% -> 25%
MOVEMENT
Movement Speed: 5% -> 25%
Stamina: 50% (No change)
Roll Cooldown: 5% -> 25%
Roll Distance: 5% -> 25%
Coin Magnet: 50% (No change)
HEALTH
Max Health: 25% (No change)
Med Pack Heal: 25% (No change)
Damage Resistance: 5% -> 10%
Life Steal: 5% -> 10%
Revive Health: 25% (No change)
Revive Radius: 50% (No change)
As a result of the increased meta-progression values, the top movement speed has been increased by 20%, to a new maximum of 75% for a fully upgraded player.
We have completely reworked the RNG for upgrade cards in supply crates. We've written a new system that aims to provide a much more balanced selection of card types throughout your games, and now actively tries to avoid situations where you are not offered enough cards of a particular stat.
To complement the new RNG, we've also added two new mechanics for supply crate upgrades.
Unwanted set of cards offered? Re-roll! You can now swap your entire set of cards for a new selection, but remember it may be better or worse than before. Re-rolls are limited so use them wisely!
Two great cards in the same crate? Lock one, pick the other. Locked cards will appear in future supply crates until you either choose it or unlock it. You have free and unlimited locks at your disposal. Locked cards will not be re-rolled.
Firstly, they now start spawning earlier, so that players are much more likely to have one in their possession when they first need it.
Secondly, we've increased how many med packs we spawn for lower player counts. This is aimed as a response to the fact that in multiplayer it is easier to res-chain as player numbers increase - and therefore stay alive as a team.
The values have changed as follows:
1-player: 40% more med packs will spawn.
2-player: 20% more med packs will spawn.
3-player: 10% more med packs will spawn.
4-player: No change.
We couldn't let players get all the gains now, could we? So we gave the enemies a little boost of their own. They're now better at predicting player movements and will time their melee attacks accordingly to more likely hit you, making them more dangerous than before. So keep your distance and roll through danger!
We hope these changes make the game feel more rewarding, satisfying and fair. As always, we welcome any feedback you might have. Consider joining our discord to join the discussions, find players to form squads with and to give feedback or report bugs.
Martin & João
Bellyflop Games
Hey Squad,
It's been great to see everyone excited about the Challenge Creator and coming up with frankly insane weapons and challenges! We've also received a fair number of requests for new options and QoL changes which we're sorting through and will try to accommodate where possible over the coming days and weeks. For now, this patch brings a couple of improvements and some bug fixes to the Creator.
Added enemy renders to their respective panels in the Horde tab of the Challenge Creator
Improved animation speed adjustments based on the speeds setup for the challenge
Fixed an issue caused by players joining a lobby from an invite whilst loading a challenge in the Creator
Fixed some input callbacks being processed when they shouldn't
Fixed the end-game screens sometimes pausing for too long before showing the stats
Fixed equipped weapon changing to default when coming back to the lobby after playing a custom challenge
\ Fixed an issue allowing remote players to have their permanent upgrades in custom challenges
Hey Squad,
Hotfix for some early issues that have been found with the Challenge Creator.
Fixed issue that could cause a hang with 100% penetration weapons.
Fixed invalid cards sometimes being offered in supply crates.
Fixed some issues that can occur after deleting challenges on the Workshop.
Fixed challenge duplication keeping a reference to the original challenge's Workshop item.
Fixed changing region while a search is ongoing in the lobby browser not returning results with the new region applied.
Fixed create/update workshop modals allowing users to close them while processing requests to steam
Hey squad,
We're happy to announce the new Challenge Creator is now live!
Challenge Creator is a major update to The Horde Wants You Dead that allows you, the players, to setup challenges how you want to. This isn't just about tweaking how big the horde is or how strong enemies are, instead we've exposed most of the game's systems to the Challenge Creator. We wanted to give you the ability to alter as much as we reasonably could. Here's what you can play with in the Challenge Creator:
Horde - What enemies appear and their spawn patterns.
Enemies - Their properties, such as health, speed or attack damage.
Players - Their starting stats and how much they can improve with upgrades.
Weapons - The selection available to players, and modifying all of their stats.
Supply crates - How many should arrive, or disable them entirely.
Upgrade cards - What cards appear and the upgrade values they provide.
Med Packs - How often they spawn and how much they heal you.
Length of the game.
Want to become crazy OP and mow down the horde? You can create that.
Want to setup a fiendishly difficult challenge for you and your friends? You can do that.
Want to tweak the game's existing 1-5 challenge levels? You can do that too - we've provided our current challenge levels as templates for you to start from.
The Challenge Creator is fully integrated with the Steam Workshop to allow you to share, collaborate and rate challenges.
Uploading challenges to the Workshop is encouraged but not required. You do not need to upload challenges to the Workshop to be able to host games with your own challenges. Likewise, you do not need to subscribe to any challenge in the Workshop to be able to join a squad.
The Challenge Creator may appear technical and daunting on first sight, but don't fret, as we've written a comprehensive guide to help you. It covers everything from creating new challenges, to explaining all the sections of the Challenge Creator, through to publishing your creations! Do let us know if anything needs further explanation.
You can view the guide here.
We have created and uploaded some official challenges to start things off. We took each of the 5 challenge levels from the main game, and created 2 varieties of each one:
One with all weapons unlocked.
One with 150% horde size.
Note that these are very basic examples based on our first demo and a frequent request to use all weapons on all challenge levels. You're able to do considerably more than these simple changes!
Have a look at the available challenges here and remember to subscribe to them in order to play and host games with them.
You can host and play custom challenges that you're subscribed to in the Steam Workshop, or join any squad with any challenge, but for now the Challenge Creator is disabled on Steam Deck as it's an intricate UI and we need to make sure it works nicely on the device with all the text input and controls. We hope to rectify this soon.
The Challenge Creator has a dedicated channel on our Discord, so head on over there to discuss authoring, ideas, give feedback and to play other people's challenges.
We're hoping that the launch of Challenge Creator goes smoothly, but it's a significant new feature that touched a lot of the codebase. Please report any bugs that you may find in our Discord bug channel and we'll aim to fix them quickly. Thanks.
We're also introducing a brand new way to find squads in this update! The Lobby Browser will list the squads available for you to join, showing you the selected challenge, number of players and ping.
The lobby also had a small facelift. You can now find the lobby discovery option at the top of the screen, next to the squad code.
They're coming! We promise! We plan to share more on this very soon. Thank you for your patience.
Thanks for reading this far! We're excited about Challenge Creator and we're looking forward to seeing what you guys come up with and what become your favorite type of challenges.
Happy creating!
Martin & João
Bellyflop Games
Hey Squad,
Just a small bug fix patch today to fix a couple issues that have popped up.
Fixed issues with gamepad input caused by the text chat
Fixed rare issue with the invulnerability VFX after reviving
Fixed an issue on SteamDeck and Big Picture mode where sometimes the chat text box is not selected when trying to type a message using the virtual keyboard
The demo has been updated with all the same changes and fixes.
Hey Squad,
We've added text chat to multiplayer games to help squad members talk to each other. Press 'Enter' on keyboard or 'D-pad Down' on controller to start typing a message. These keys can of course be rebound in the settings menu.
We also added a small fist icon on weapons in the weapon selection screen, to indicate if this weapon has been used to successfully beat the horde. This is for those of you going after the achievement to beat the horde with every weapon.
Additionally, the RNG has been tweaked to improve card distribution. It's subtle, so you might not notice a difference right away, but it should be fairer especially in late game or endless mode.
Added text chat functionality for multiplayer games.
Weapons tab now shows a fist icon on weapons that have been used to successfully beat the horde.
Tweaked RNG to improve card distribution in supply crates.
Tweaked some font sizes to improve Steam Deck readability.
Fixed end-game stats screen sometimes showing incorrect upgrade values for other players
The demo has been updated with all the same changes and fixes.
Hey Squad,
Just a small patch today to improve Steam Deck compatibility.
Tweak upgrades screen to increase the font size of some elements to improve readability.
Enable virtual keyboard for Steam Deck and Big Picture mode.
The demo has been updated with all the same changes and fixes.
Hey Squad,
Work continues on Challenge Creator and RNG improvements, but in the meantime, here's a small patch that includes being able to see everyone's upgrades at the end of a game.
Added functionality to view the upgrades of all players at the end of the game.
Fixed being able to select too many upgrades in the meta-progression screen.
Fixed special enemies not being able to hit players in some situations.
Fixed not being able to open your character upgrades panel when dead.
Fixed handling of corrupted save files.
The demo has been updated with all the same changes and fixes.
Hey squad,
Thank you for all the feedback and comments regarding our next steps. After going through it all, we would like to take a moment to update you on what we've decided to focus on in the short-term.
We'll be taking a look at the RNG and trying out a few things to improve fairness, card distribution etc. This may end up being an ongoing thing where we rollout changes over time to assess their effectiveness and gather more feedback. There's been some interesting ideas regarding RNG and upgrade cards that we'll be exploring. However, the core game will still remain a more grounded shooter, with stat-based upgrades and meta-progression that are balanced to maintain the challenge.
Having said that, we want to give you the tools to be able to play the game the way you want to play it, so...
Challenge Creator will be our first big update! This will be a brand new system that will let you customize almost every aspect of the game. People who played the Next Fest demo will remember the horde health and size sliders - this will go way beyond those. We plan to expose a lot of the game's systems to allow you to create all sorts of challenges and setups, where you'll be able to control things such as:
Horde spawning.
Enemy properties, e.g. health and speed.
The starting player stats.
The selection of weapons available to players, including modifying their stats.
How many supply crates players should get - or disable them entirely.
What upgrade cards are available and their values.
Length of the game.
Med pack spawning and heal amount.
Whether you want to become crazy OP and mow down the horde, or create a fiendishly difficult challenge - the Challenge Creator will allow you to do just that. We're also planning to integrate it with Steam Workshop so you can easily share challenges for others to play.
We're aiming to release the Challenge Creator in early December.
Martin & João
Bellyflop Games
Hey Squad,
Thank you to everyone who has bought and been playing the game so far! We hope you've been enjoying it as you battle through the horde challenges!
We'd also like to thank everyone for their feedback. Discussions continue on what's next for the game - join our discord to be part of that conversation.
Discord
Reduced the amount of booster enemies that can be alive at the same time
Reduced the cost of supply crates in endless mode, after normal game time
Added missing icons for Numpad keys
Fixed med pack drop sound not playing for all players
Fixed death indicator getting stuck on if the dead player disconnects
Fixed results screen sometimes showing stats for players that didn't take part in that run
Fixed 'Toggle Fire' mode not staying on sometimes
Fixed upgrade details panel showing incorrect values by default until an upgrade is selected/hovered
Improved handling of unknown input bindings when showing controls in-game
Fixed some rare errors related to players disconnecting
Fixed various other minor errors
The demo has been updated with all the same changes and fixes.
The Horde Wants You Dead is now available to purchase on Steam, and there's a 15% discount for the first 2 weeks!
Bring your very best skills to the arena as you take on the horde across five challenging difficulties, either solo or with a squad of friends in full online co-op. With a range of enemies eager to end your attempt, you must adapt, upgrade and fight to the bitter end. Should you even manage to defeat the horde, then why not challenge yourself to see how long you can last in Endless mode? Only the strongest will survive in The Horde Wants You Dead.
We want to say a huge thank you to everyone who has supported us along the way. All the feedback, encouragement and just seeing some of you put hundreds(!) of hours into the demo has been immensely encouraging. We hope you enjoy the game!
And if you're new here, come on over and join our Discord to discuss the game, find teammates to form squads with, or report bugs and give feedback.
See you in the arena!
Martin & João Bellyflop Games
Hey Squad,
Just a small update to deal with a couple nasty bugs that were brought to our attention.
Fixed Endless mode modifiers persisting into normal games
Fixed issue with players being able to join lobbies despite being on different versions of the game
Fixed issue that could occur when exiting a lobby containing 3 or more players
Edit 23/10: There was a second update for this patch to add one of the bug fixes that somehow went missing in the original update.
Hey Squad,
Just a few more days until you can get your hands on the full game. We hope you're as excited as we are!
We have been putting in the final touches and we're bringing a lot of that work into the demo. This is very likely to be the last demo patch before release.
This update introduces a revamped audio system that makes weapons sound better, grenades sound more explosive, and provides much better spatial awareness. Note that your audio settings will be reset to default values.
There's a lot more in this update so here's the full list:
Implemented new audio system with better spatial audio and distance filters
Bumped Crit Chance permanent upgrade to 2% and 4% for Tier I and Tier II, respectively
Added missing common upgrade cards for Roll Cooldown and Grenade Cooldown
Added clarification on Max Health cards that the same amount of health is applied as a heal
FPS cap will now default to 60 for new players
Added a 10min timeout for AFK players on public multiplayer lobbies
Automatically un-ready players when game settings changed
Tweaked XP bar animation speeds
Players' locomotion animations now adjust to match movement upgrades
Fixed a number of issues caused by cancelling a lobby search when a lobby had already been found
Fixed some stats in the upgrades tab showing incorrect values and improved their descriptions
Fixed issue where some enemies stopped processing bullet hits in endless mode
Fixed kick button not being disabled if a player joins after the host is ready
Hey Squad,
We're really happy to see people enjoying the refreshed demo and really appreciate all the kind words.
While the build is fairly stable, some bugs still managed to get through the cracks so here's the first batch of bug fixes.
Fixed blood remaining on some enemies after disabling blood in the settings
Fixed issue saving endless personal best times on 4 player matches
Improved network handling of clients that stop responding to the host
Fixed supply crates failing to spawn in rare occasions
Fixed Escape Menu being available during the end-game screens
Fixed minor visual bugs in UI
Fixed endless time being incorrectly formatted when over an hour
Fixed text box not being selected by default on the "Join with Code" pop-up
Fixed weapon continuing to fire after death when using Toggle mode
Fixed player ready icons switching to 'Not Ready' for a few frames when the game is just starting
Fixed issue processing XP rewards when the host disconnected
Hey Squad,
It's just under two weeks until the game releases now and ahead of that we've released a new and updated demo! This refreshes it with the latest changes and improvements that we've been working on, as well as introducing some brand new features.
This demo, while smaller than the previous one, is designed to be a taster that sits alongside the full game. We're also planning to keep this demo updated as the game evolves.
The key things:
The same intense, multiplayer, horde shooting action you've come to expect!
One challenge level to beat.
Unlock new Endless mode after you've beaten the challenge once. See how long you can survive for!
Introduces the new levelling system with skill points to permanently upgrade your character - up to level 30 in the demo!
A whole range of behavior changes and improvements to the enemy characters.
Updated network code to improve gameplay robustness in higher ping situations.
New audio for weapons, gameplay, effects, UI etc.
Massive performance boost across the board.
Various QoL settings.
We hope you enjoy trying this new demo, and remember, for those of you who want a real challenge... that's happening on October 27th! We hope to see you in the arena!
Martin & João
Bellyflop Games
Hey Squad,
We have a release date!
The Horde Wants You Dead will launch on Monday, October 27th!
This is obviously a little later than our initially planned Q3 launch window, so for that we apologise. We understand this may be disappointing for those of you eager to get your hands on the full game, but this extra time will allow us to get everything polished and tested so that the game is released in the best possible state.
The response to the demo has been amazing - surpassing all our expectations - so thank you all for playing and providing feedback. We're having a lot of fun developing (and playtesting!) the game at the moment and we're super excited for everyone to play it!
Thank you again for your patience and support - it's very much appreciated!
Martin & João
Bellyflop Games
Hey Squad,
Today's update contains a change to how we handle lobbies to avoid a rare issue we've been seeing that can result in 5 players entering the same lobby - which breaks the game.
Fixed rare issue allowing more than 4 players to join the same lobby
Hey Squad,
Small update today that fixes a handful of bugs caused by players joining lobbies from different machines but using the same steam account. Unfortunately, this is not supported as steam only allows players to be logged in from one device.
Fixed players not leaving the lobby when signing out from steam.
Hey Squad,
Another round of bug fixes this week, as well as a change in the way we find open squads so that AFK people hosting a squad don't inadvertently block other players from finding an active squad.
Thank you again for all the bug reports and feedback!
When finding open squads, try and avoid entering the same lobby repeatedly if multiple are available.
Fixed issue with music not playing when you start the game.
Fixed issue with animation events sometimes playing on dead enemies.
Fixed issue that can occur when waiting for players after picking an upgrade card.
Hey Squad,
A few more bug fixes in this patch, as well as some additional reporting. We know a few of you have been having some disconnection issues occasionally, and this reporting will hopefully help us understand what's happening there. Thanks again for playing!
Fixed null reference related to settings screen.
Fixed a navigation edge case that could cause performance spikes.
Fixed player sometimes getting stuck on environmental objects.
Fixed issues during game shutdown when returning to lobby.
Improved reporting of errors.
Hey Squad,
Just a handful of bug fixes in this patch. Happy shooting!
Fixed rare issue that can occur when changing traits just as the game starts.
Fixed issue when trying to show an unbound control in-game.
Additional logs and checks to try and narrow down a rare, hard to reproduce issue.
Hey Squad,
It's so great to see lots of you playing the demo, and that more and more people are discovering the game every day! Thank you all for playing and spreading the word!
This patch aims to fix various issues that have been popping up over the last couple of weeks - thank you for sending in your bug reports, they've been very helpful!
We've also taken the opportunity to add support for controls customization, which is something some of you have asked for. You can find this in the 'Controls' section of the 'Settings' menu.
Please continue to let us know if you encounter any issues - and once again, thank you all for playing!
Controls customization - The controls for keyboard/mouse and gamepad can now be customized in the Settings menu.
Improved behaviour when swapping between keyboard/mouse and controller.
Fixed very rare issue related to the amount of data being sent after a connection drops temporarily
Fixed jerkiness on remote clients during slow motion
Fixed issues when closing the game via Alt+F4 or Task Manager
Fixed rare issue on disconnect when leaving the lobby
Fixed issue causing remote clients to try to change values on accessibility sliders when they shouldn't
Fixed potential cause of stutter for a number of players
Hey squad,
First of all, a massive thank you to all the people that have played our demo so far. The response to the game has been incredible and we're very happy to see so many of you having a lot of fun with it! We've also been receiving a lot of great and constructive feedback, suggestions and ideas. Thanks to everyone that has taken the time to send it in - it's hugely appreciated.
After going over all the feedback, there were clearly some common themes and criticisms, primarily related to meta progression, traits system and the in-game upgrades. We agree with a lot of this feedback and, whilst we have plans for these areas, we want to take a little more time in order to make sure we address them properly. Unfortunately, that means we're not going to be able to release the game in July.
We don't expect to take too much longer - just a few extra weeks. Once we have an exact release date, you'll be the first to hear.
Thank you for your patience and continued support,
Martin & João
Bellyflop Games
Next Fest is now over, but the good news is we're leaving our demo up for people to play!
Thanks to everyone who gave it a go, we hope you enjoyed it! The feedback has been very positive and constructive overall! So thank you for writing up your comments, thoughts, ideas and even those pesky bugs. We'll now be collating it all, going through it and using it to help guide the game's direction and focus going forward. Note that we're happy to receive feedback any time, so don't hesitate to send it in.
Thanks again for playing!
Fixed shielded enemy VFX getting stuck sometimes
Fixed enemies sometimes getting stuck in a bad state when the player they were targeting disconnects
Fixed issue related to coin processing
Speculative fix for a rare issue leaving the game in a bad state
Some more changes and fixes for the demo.
Improved bullet vs metal spark VFX
Fixed issue with error handling when trying to host or join a squad without steam running
Fixed some issues caused by players disconnecting during the game
Fixed issue when returning to lobby
Fixed an issue with some UI elements sometimes getting stuck on screen after card selection
Fixed an issue with shielded enemy charge effect when leaving the game
Good luck against the horde!
We've fixed some issues that have been found:
Fixed remote players sometimes being able to heal without having a medpack
Fixed accessibility sliders showing default values when returning to the lobby
Fixed enemies sometimes walking under ground or on air
Good luck against the horde!
Hi,
First things first, a big thank you once again to everybody who has been playing our demo and giving us feedback. It's been really helpful to hear what different players are enjoying and not enjoying. It's all valuable feedback, so thank you for taking the time to write it.
We're going to go through all the feedback after Next Fest is over to help figure out what needs to change and the direction to go in as we head towards the full release of the game.
However, one thing that has stood out in particular is that most people find the horde too hard to beat. We did want the game to be challenging so that it was something people could come back to, practice, and ultimately beat - but it seems we overshot the mark.
We've decided to address that with a couple things:
We have tweaked the medpack drops so that you get slightly more on average and, crucially, ensure a minimum amount each game.
We have added accessibility sliders in the lobby, which the host can set, for:
Horde Size (50% to 150%) - decrease or increase the amount of enemies spawning.
Horde Health (50% to 150%) - decrease or increase the amount of health enemies have.
We encourage players to try the game without modifiers but now you can make the game easier (or harder!) to your liking. Hopefully you can find a level of challenge that suits you. If you do, we'd love to know what values were right for you as it'll help us tweak the balance for the full game. You can leave a comment on this post or reach out to us in any of the other feedback channels - steam discussions, discord, google forms, etc.
Thanks again for playing, and good luck!
Adjusted medpack drop frequencies and ensured minimum number of medpacks per game
Added 'Horde Size' and 'Horde Health' accessibility sliders in the lobby
New graphical cursors for UI and gameplay
Improved UI animations in card selection screen
Added music to frontend
Added visual notification when new content has been unlocked
Fixed medpacks spawning at the center of the map for remote players
Fixed some UI issues when collecting multiple crates at the same time
Another big thank you to everyone playing the demo! We're happy that you're all enjoying it and would like to thank you for all the feedback we've received so far!
We've fixed some more issues, mainly related to gamepad input:
Added warning messages on trait selection when slots are full or locked
Fixed weapon list scrolling with controller
Fixed trait selection with controller
Fixed trait details not updating with controller
Fixed issue with sound manager when returning to the lobby
Good luck against the horde!
Thanks to everyone who has played the Steam Next Fest demo! We hope you've been having fun and been able to survive the horde!
We've made a number of improvements and fixes to address some issues that have been found.
Adjusted spawning behaviour for some enemy types
Save player loadout when quitting the lobby without playing (was previously only saved when starting a game)
Prevent quitting the lobby during game start up
Improved error handling during connection to host
Fixed issue leaving hosts in a bad state after a player disconnects
Fixed issue during player initialization when either the player or their host disconnects
Fixed revive circle staying permanently on when a dead player disconnects
Fixed players completing grenade throws after being killed
Fixed incorrect death pose when dying during sprint or grenade throw
Fixed being able to close non-interactive modal screens
Fixed revive icon showing when it shouldn't
Fixed issues with UI animations when leaving a game
Thanks again for playing and for sending us all the feedback, comments and bug reports!
About
This page aggregates Steam news feeds, patch notes, and developer announcements for The Horde Wants You Dead, sourced from official Steam community posts.
Major updates, balance changes, and seasonal events often correlate with player-count spikes — cross-reference announcements here with the live charts on the main The Horde Wants You Dead statistics page.
Articles link back to Steam for full changelogs. SteamScope refreshes news entries as new posts are published to the game's Steam hub.