Update 32 - The Intenser Update

It’s finally here, The Anacrusis Update 32, now with even-more-intense Intenser Mode! What is Intenser Mode? It’s our new, higher difficulty mode. Intenser Mode is designed for teams who work well together and would like to face a higher degree of challenge than the current Normal or Intense modes offer. To ratchet up the difficulty, we’d done the following five things (plus a few more we’ll let you discover on your own):

• Added friendly fire to this difficulty setting. Don’t shoot your teammates

• Removed player outlines and player names. Staying together is super important now

• We’ve disabled the health stations in airlocks and removed Healing Goo and Overheal from the Matter Compilers. If you see a health kit in the game, you’ll probably want to pick it up

• We’ve increased the intensity of spawn events and the likelihood of multiple specials spawning at once

• We’ve increased the relative aggression level of the common aliens

Because this mode is designed for players actively communicating with each other, it won’t be available in the Quick Play playlist. If you want to play games, you either need to get four friends together to play with or select the Intenser difficulty in the Episode you’d like to play manually.

We’re On Sale!

Because the new Intenser mode is designed to be played with friends, we’ve put The Anacrusis on sale for $15 during the Steam Spring Sale. You should tell your friends! (We’re also available on the Humble Store now at the same price, if that’s more your jam for the same price.)

Changes To Player Bots

We also know that a lot of you like to play the game with your bot friends, Guion, Nessa, Liu, and Lance. To that end, we’ve change the way bots work with this update. First, and most importantly, bot characters will now wear the skins and accessories the host has selected in the Loadout screen. For Steam users, this includes mods from the Steam Workshop too. If you only play with bots, this means you’ll finally be able to “enjoy” everything the Steam Workshop has to offer.

We’ve also fixed a long-standing bug that limited the maximum intensity for games that included any number of bots. If you play with 1, 2, or 3 bots you’ll find that the game plays more like it does with 4 human players.

Episode 4 Updates

We’ve had Episode 4 out in beta for a few months now, and have collected lots of good feedback from players about the beta. We’ve been hard at work incorporating that feedback and are ready to show off a major update to the first two levels of Episode 4. We’ve added directional lighting to areas that lacked it before, balanced the intensity of combat and spawns across both levels, done a major art pass to reflect the damage the Isolode has taken due to the alien attack, and reworked several large areas to make them more fun to traverse. We’d love to know what you think in the Steam forums or the Discord. (Don’t worry, the finale will get some much needed love in an upcoming update.)

Xbox Series and Xbox One Performance Improvements

Our team of crack engineers have found exciting new ways to optimize performance on most of the Xbox family of consoles. Expect significant gains on the Xbox Series S and Series X, as well as the Xbox One S and Xbox One X.

Text Chat + Emote Wheel

You asked for it, and we delivered. Steam and Microsoft Store players can now communicate to other players in their game using typed text. Steam and Xbox users can opt-out of the text chat in Settings. Xbox and Microsoft Store players will also have text chat disabled if they’ve opted out out in the system-wide communications permissions.

We’ve also added an emote wheel to allow players to use any of the emotes they’ve unlocked or subscribed to in the Steam Workshop at any point in their games. To access it, press and hold the button you have bound to trigger emotes in the game.

The Mall Holdout

This update also includes an experimental Mall Holdout map. Instead of focusing the combat in a single, well-defined arena, players need to traverse the map and explore the entire Mall to capture four points before taking on Mr Brute. And for once, the elevator actually works.

And the Rest

• At the end of a game, when the host returns to the lobby, the people playing in that game will return to the lobby with them. Players who want to leave before the host will return to their own lobby

• We’ve exposed a new setting that allows players to choose how long dead aliens linger on screen. In the Gameplay Options tab, look for the Max Ragdolls slider

• In two player games, the host is now able to kick the second player, if they choose

• Weapons no longer show for certain players when other players trigger emotes

• Network performance should be generally improved for all players

• The matchmaking engine should never attempt to join a dead or ghost game anymore

• When you complete a Weekly Challenge run, the post-game screen will display whatever you’ve earned