It’s been 1 year to the day of the initial release of Xmas Apocalypse, and it’s quite a joy to still see new players and returning ones having fun with the game.

So today is the day for the first annual major update! The minigun from the cover is finally in the game! Also Steam Achievements have been added! A new skill was added to the tree! Santa’s niece is a new unlockable character! There are several new enemy types, and a new mini boss. The Icy Forest level playtime has been doubled . I have also put in the foundation to be able to add more maps in the future, but I will make further announcements once it comes to that.

Also Cloud Saving is supported now and with that everyone’s saves will be reset, which is also needed because of the achievements. But if there was ever a time to start this game again, it should be now.

I have added localization for 10 additional languages for the game which took way more time than I anticipated! Please let me know if you come across any mistakes or anything that looks off.

I really hope you enjoy the update, I will continue working on more for the next couple weeks. Let me know if you have any feedback either in the discussions or on discord!

• Bullets spawn correctly now when the fire rate is high (no more bullet stuttering with the nailgun)
• Enemies that run away (especially boars) can be hit from behind now
• Fixed various performance bottle necks regarding collision detection, pooling, garbage collection and animation culling
• Fixed head bobbing glitch when aiming

• Added 10 more minutes to the Icy Forest map making it now 20 minutes to complete
• Removed the critical chance mechanic. Hitting the weak points will now always do critical damage.
• Adjusted the critical damage of weapons accordingly for balance and moved the Mistletoe of Misery skill card from the tree to the default cards
• Increased damage scaling of the following skills: Pain Cones, Burning Wreath, Donner & Blitzen, Slaying Bell
• Adjusted effective range of weapons and increased the falloff range
• Explosions and boars deal a numerical damage now instead of killing whatever they can kill immediately.
• More reactive voicelines from Santa depending on how the enemy died (default, burn, explosion, shatter) with the option to reduce the frequency or turn them off completely.
• Made the available nodes on the skill tree more visible
• Added an option in the selection menu for picking different maps in the future
• Not defeating a boss within the time limit will cause a shockwave as they despawn and damage the player
• Defeating a boss within the time limit will also drop a bunch of XP
• Pressing dash during aiming cancels the aim state now for faster reaction
• Weapon reload triggered immediately after the last shot in magazine
• Reload key bound to R (E still works for reload as well)

• Over 50 Steam Achievements!!!
• Cloud Saving (confirmed to work with Steam Deck)
• Added support for 10 additional languages: French, German, Spanish, Italian, Portuguese, Polish, Russian, Japanese, Korean and Chinese
• New unlockable weapon: the Minigun!!!! It’s finally in the game and not just on the cover!
• New unlockable skill: Nuclear Snow Globe – plant sticky bombs on enemies
• New unlockable character: Mary – starts with the Slaying Bell skill card
• New stat for characters: Gold rate – determines how many coins a character can get from presents
• New button when leveling up to reshuffle cards in case you didn’t get what you wanted. The first one is free but after that the price increases with every time used.
• New enemy: Undead Vulture – spawns when you leave items from presents laying around unattended.
• New enemy: Tree Imp – supports the Frosty Elder Tree
• New enemy: Mammoth – huge end phase version of the boar
• New enemy: Hellguard – beefy devils that perform sudden sprints to grab you.
• New boss: Horny Demon – summons goat skulls and teleports