Whew, we made it! It took longer than we expected, and it was harder than we expected, but we’ve had so much fun along the way. All the classic tropes of montages apply to our journey with Robot Resistors: Music Fade Ins, Learning, Failure, Improvement, More Learning, Thumbs-Uppery, Freeze Frame High Fives, Success, and Music Fade Outs. When we decided to make a fun little video game in our limited spare time, we thought it might take around three months to complete. Cut to almost two years later, and while we’re sheepish about our initial inexperience and ignorance, we’re very happy with where we’ve ended up. We hope all our players enjoy our game half as much as we’ve enjoyed making it!

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A new stage, new ultimate weapons, difficulty settings, and new weapon and passive upgrades are just some of the changes arriving as we leave Early Access.

Travel from the depths of the oceans to the moon itself while enjoying the absolute finest in 1994-era graphics technology. Battle all-new enemies as you defend the rocket drills on the lunar surface, and complete your robotic resistance!

• 15 new unique enemies with custom abilities!
• New gameplay mechanics!
• New art!
• New music!

Normal, Hard, and Hopeless difficulties are now available for those looking for extra challenges and rewards. Unlock harder difficulties by completing stages on easier difficulties.

• Normal Difficulty = Standard gameplay, unchanged.
• Hard Difficulty = Altered enemy waves, tougher enemies, slightly increased xp and salvage earned.
• Hopeless Difficulty = Even more alteration of enemy waves, even more challenging enemies, increased xp and salvage earned.

–Dev Note: Additional difficulties are something we’ve wanted to add for a long time. While enemies do have better stats on harder difficulties, we’ve tried to primarily increase the difficulty by changing and modifying the enemy waves. We feel it’s ultimately more fun to have a different kind of challenge than simple raw numbers whenever possible, and we hope you agree!

• New Ultimate Weapon – Arcing Coils: This ultimate version of the Tesla Coils chains between nearby enemy targets. Base damage and max charge up damage is slightly reduced, and damage is reduced for enemies further along the chain. Unlock this ultimate by beating any stage on hard difficulty.
• New Ultimate Weapon – Ricochet Pulse: This ultimate version of the Cyber Pulse ricochets off solid objects and walls, dealing increased damage based on the number of times it has ricocheted. Additionally, if no solid objects are hit, the blade will ricochet back toward the player. Unlock this ultimate by beating any stage on hopeless difficulty.
• Added a purchasable upgrade to unlock an extra passive slot. –Dev note: Unlock this upgrade by beating Stage 4 on any difficulty.
• Added a purchasable upgrade to unlock an extra weapon slot. –Dev note: Unlock this upgrade by beating Stage 5 on any difficulty.
• All weapons can now reach level 10 through the newly updated Advanced Weaponry upgrade, which has had its initial cost reduced from 850 → 650 and its cap increased from 3 → 5 levels. We’ve also made some small alterations to the leveling paths of certain weapons to accommodate this change, as well as giving some weapons unique upgrades at higher levels (listed below) .
  –Dev Note: We wanted to increase the maximum cap for weapons as we’ve once again added a challenge in the form of higher difficulty settings. This should help advanced players keep up while not affecting balance too much on easier stages and difficulties. In addition, we are always looking for ways to increase the viability of upgrades and builds beyond flat damage increases. Increasing the level cap of the Advanced Weaponry upgrade while reducing the initial cost makes this a more attractive option.
• Chain Gun now gains 100% armor piercing at level 9.
• Orbital Lasers suck nearby enemies into their beams at level 6.
• Cyber Pulses gain size with every enemy they pierce at level 9.
• Energy Burst now pierces terrain at level 9.
• Sawblades now apply a debuff to struck enemies at level 8, causing them to take 15% more damage from all sources for 3 seconds after being hit.
• Flame Chain now does reduced damage, but applies burning. Overall damage dealt with this weapon should remain roughly equivalent. Some level up options have been changed to affect the amount of burning damage directly instead of regular damage. –Dev note: When we created the Flame Chain weapon, we didn’t have burning as a status effect implemented in the game. Now that we do, we wanted to do the obvious and make Flame Chain apply the burning status to enemies as part of its damage profile. The updated leveling path for Flame Chain now includes special burn bonuses as well.
• Chain Gun max speed firing uptime slightly reduced. At max level, total uptime bonus reduced from 13 → 11 seconds. –Dev Note: The Chain Gun is still an odd weapon that oscillates from feeling incredibly powerful to feeling incredibly weak depending on the situation. We continue to play with the numbers.
• Adjusted the Extra Projectiles passive. Old: Each level of this passive subtracted between 7-10% from the initial damage penalty, levels 1, 3 and 5 granted an extra projectile each. New: Levels 2 and 4 grant between 10-13% reduced damage penalty depending on rarity, levels 1,3 and 5 grant ONLY extra projectiles. –Dev note: We continue to play with the extra projectiles passive. We feel this change leaves it largely the same in terms of power early on, while reducing the late game power slightly to make alternate builds more attractive. Additionally, this change makes the damage penalty reduction on level 2 and 4 feel more impactful while leveling.
• Added a secret unlockable [redacted] for [redacted]. The intention is to eventually add more alternate [redacted] like this in the future, but enjoy dino-hunting for the first one. –Dev note: Hopefully people still like obtuse and secret [redacted] in video games.
• Boosted starting shields for all characters by 10% –Dev Note: As a general rule, we want to encourage risk/reward gameplay. Giving a boost to default shields is intended to make the choice to sacrifice some shields to snag xp from betwixt groups of enemies more attractive, especially in the early game. And yes, we know “betwixt” is an archaic term and a bizarre word choice, but it’s still apt, and we wanted to have some fun with these 1.0 patch notes! We’re celebrating here!
• Boosted Heavy Metal health bonus by 10% to compensate for the new starting shield levels of other characters. –Dev note: Heavy Metal has no shields by default, so we gave it a larger health boost since we increased the starting shields of other characters.
• Added 18 new Steam achievements. –Dev note: We think most of them are very punny.
• Added small intro and outro animations to stages –Dev note: Something we wanted for awhile. Our game has now surpassed most cinema in terms of conveying emotion.
• Fixed tiny bug. Splash effect restored for xp and salvage dropping into oases in Scorpion Land.
• Updated graphical effect of enemies falling from above.
• Updated sprites used for tesla coil weapons and ults.
• Small balance changes to stages and waves.

As we look past Early Access, expect new weapons/ultimates/characters/etc… as we continue to add to the game. Thanks so much as always to all of our playtesters and players: the feedback and support was invaluable, and now the journey continues post launch. All Robot Resistors are welcome to reach out in the Steam forums or our Discord channel, and let us know what you think! Until next time, happy resisting!

The Crablacksmith Team