🛡 Spear and Shield Overhaul!

In response to feedback, we’ve decided to refresh the Spear and Shield mechanics! Many didn’t like combat with the spear—to the point it was banned from fan tournaments due to flicking. We hope this update helps these weapons become a fun part of competitive play once again.

• The Spear damage area (the part that destroys voxels) has been changed to wide instead of long, making the spear more effective when it travels forward, and worse when it travels sideways.

• Spear flicking was still possible in multiplayer, so we have restricted it even more. Let us know how it feels!
• The Shield is now breakable! That’s right. The shield no longer protects you forever, but takes damage whenever a weapon hits it. This makes combat more interesting, and opens up for strategies that are less about going around the shield, and more about whittling it down to get past it.

🌏 Japanese (日本語) and Korean (한국어)!

Yes! More human languages for the communication bank. The robots now support Japanese and Korean subtitles.

Like with the other languages, we would love to hear your feedback to improve the quality of the translations. Let us know if something doesn’t feel quite qilsnib enough.

Quality of Life Improvements

Better Crosshair for Spear and Bow

The crosshair on the bow and spear could previously be hard to see depending on the situation. The bow and spear now have a new crosshair that’s bigger and inverts the colors behind it for maximum contrast. Let us know how it feels!

Arrow Rotation now SNAPS

Arrow rotation now snaps instantly between vertical and horizontal mode, giving you unprecedented tactical control for how you deal damage. Hotshot Arrow-Shooting Tip: Spidertrons mainly bob up and down.

Head Damage: Not always fatal!

Has THIS ever happened to YOU: 3 decorative voxels get taken off the beautiful horn attachment of your robot head, and you fall down on the ground, dead as the day you were harvested?

Now head damage is only fatal if it damages the important cubes sitting near where your central processing unit resides (a 2×2 cube 3 voxels above the neck).

Helping Stationary Bow1s Un-stick in Twitch Mode

In Twitch Mode bow1s now walk towards you if they’re the last type of enemy in the level, which should cause fewer issues with them landing on pillars and taunting your inability to destroy them.

Fix for Armor Exploit in Last Bot Standing

It used to be possible to acquire armor in LBS, leave and re-join the match, and continue to have that armor for zero upgrade points. No longer!

Chapter 5 – New Release Date

We are still hard at work on Chapter 5, and we’re now aiming to release it early next year.

Why the delay? A few reasons combined made it a choice we hope you can appreciate:

• Scope/Quality/Time balance – As some say, pick two 😅. While we could have rushed the final chapter update out sooner, we felt that adding a bit of time lets us get closer to the updates the game deserves for its exit out of Early Access. This includes the quality of life changes in this update, and epic-ness of Chapter 5 🙂
• Making a big splash with full release – We are planning a big push to share the game more widely with the full release, and (you might have noticed) the end of this year is packed with the releases of new games and consoles. We want to harvest and upload the minds of as many humans as possible into the arena at release, and we’ve learned choosing the date wisely is part of that. We will announce more about the release here at a later time, too!
• Console requirements – We are planning to launch on (at least) 3 different consoles! Parallel to Chapter 5, our porting team has been working tirelessly towards making sure the game has the features required by consoles.

As always, for those of you who live on the bleeding edge, you can follow our development live on Twitch, and even try out the current (very buggy!) build in the experimental branch. While we know how it can be disappointing to have release dates slip, we hope you all can appreciate where we’re landing!

Thank you all for being amazing OG Clone Drone community members! We are so glad to have those of you who have stuck with us throughout the long development process with us during launch and beyond. 💙

We’ve been building a lot of cool tools for Chapter 5! While we work on the chapter, we thought it would be fun to share them with you in a little update.

Manual Character Animations: Animate limbs!

While you could already play existing animations on characters, now you can go a step further and make granular adjustments to a character’s pose directly inside the Level Editor!

This is great for cinematic moments (we’re using it for Chapter 5) as well as creating new and interesting attack / movement patterns for the enemies of the game, specific to your level.

Animation Tutorial!

So how do you make crazy new animations? We made a tutorial! 😀

Other cool Level Editor Features

Animation Folders

Now you can organize all your animation tracks in handy folders! This is great for big and complex animations.

Use Key Triggers

Ever wanted to make the players of your level press a button? Now you can.

AITriggerArea now lives in the Triggers folder!

This might seem like a minor change to highlight, but this confused a lot of people! If you want to triggers things when the player walks into an area, use the AITriggerArea.

Bug Fixes

We fixed a number of bugs with this release:

• Exploit in LBS: You can no longer get both Armor and Sword.
• Twitch Notifications in the game are back! You can now see when both developers and other streamers are live.
• Fixed a terrible crash bug happening to people in Story Mode.
• …and many other small things.

That’s it for this update. Let us know if you make a super cool animation with the new tools! 😀

Chapter 5 will bring us to the final showdown of the Clone Drone storyline.

We've been working hard on laying down the foundations, exploring new game mechanics and expanding our level editor technology to raise the quality of our content even higher.

One of the key questions we asked ourselves at the end of Chapter 4, was how to proceed from its cliffhanger of an ending. We could move the plot along using cutscenes, but I'm happy to announce that instead you'll be able to have full control of your new battlecruiser in glorious 3D space combat!!!

Launching out of Early Access!

With the release of the final chapter of the story mode we're also going to be launching the game out of Early Access!

We'll likely put out an update or two after launch, but after four awesome years of development we're starting to look ahead towards what other cool games we can build. We hope you'll join us on that journey when the time comes! :)

Clone Drone comes to consoles!

We're super excited to tell you that Clone Drone will be coming to Xbox One, Playstation 4 and Nintendo Switch!

While the main team finishes up Chapter 5, the talented people at The Knights of Unity are hard at work making sure the game integrates smoothly with all the major consoles.

When??

We're aiming to launch both Chapter 5 and the console releases in in one glorious update sometime around October.

Note: This date is not confirmed and might change, but that's what we're aiming for right now.

Follow the development!

The experimental branch has a preview of space combat here: http://clonedroneinthedangerzone.com/experimental We'd love to know what you think of it so far. :)

As always, you can follow the progress of Chapter 5 live on Twitch right here: https://www.twitch.tv/doborog

Let us know if you have any questions! <3

Good news! We just added 5 new delightful Last Bot Standing levels, and introduced several balancing changes.

Weapon Balancing

Have you ever observed other players spinning around crazily and somehow killing people? We have, and it’s not much fun to be on the other side of.

The new update introduces restrictions on how far you can turn while swinging your weapon. Our goal has been to maintain a good range of motion, so you can still rotate towards your target and strike with great precision, but discourage flailing around wildly around in an attempt to make the hitbox make accidental contact with your opponent.

All weapons have this new restriction, but the one where it was used the most was probably the spear.

To illustrate what we’re talking about, here is a demonstration of flicking the spear around:

(thanks Gontarekt + Neik Alexander!)

And here is the fix:

The camera still moves to not interrupt your flow of motion.

The spear is of course not the only weapon this applies to. Hammer + Sword can no longer spin around wildly either.

Other multiplayer balancing changes:

• Sword attack cooldown increased from 0.6s to 0.7s to make it slightly less easy to spam attacks.
• Raptor kick cooldown increased to 2s, leaving a small opening for attack in between kicks.
• Kick + Dash: Kicking in the middle of a Dash no longer cancels the Dash momentum

A final note: We don’t resent anyone who may have flicked their spear around or rotated their hammer wildly in the past. If the game allows you to do it, it is a legitimate way to play! It is our hope that these changes make for a more predictable and fun multiplayer experience for everyone. Let us know what you think! 🙂

New levels!

Five new levels has entered the permanent Last Bot Standing rotation!

Moving Floor 
The risk/reward of getting upgrades is turned TO THE MAX in this level where the floor goes away when you stand on it. 

The Facility
Jump around these pretty walkways. 

Death Cubes 
What is better than a Death Cube? ALL THE DEATH CUBES! 

Cliffside 
Vast height differences and moving platforms makes for an interesting time among the cliffs. 

Crashed Waiting Room
Do you like playing in the Waiting Room? Now you don’t have to leave it! 

Other changes

You can now push garbage around. Help the garbage bots keep the arena clean! 🚮🚮🚮 

We’ve also fixed a multitude of bugs, including:

• Armor was completely not working against the hammer in co-op!
• Hammer bots can no longer kill you while returning the hammer to the idle position
• Numerous crash bugs!
• Many minor localization updates based on your excellent feedback. Thanks everyone for your reports!

Now what??

The time has come… for CHAPTER 5!!!

We’ll be ramping up development for the final story chapter in the coming weeks. This is going to be an epic chapter, so expect a release date many months from now.

More info when we have it! 🙂

We just added 8 wonderful human languages: 

For most of them we have translated all of the UI and added subtitles. For French and German we have also installed voice translators in all the robots!

To celebrate our new communication capabilities we made a brand new gameplay trailer!

Let us know if we missed your language or if you have feedback on the translations! <3

Hello!

It has come to our attention that humans speak more than one language!?

To help you understand the fine nuances of how your robot body will disintegrate in the arena, we have decided to translate our communications.

And we want your feedback!

So far we have translated:

• All of the UI
• Story Mode Chapter 1.

Since we normally only speak in binary, we need some human opinions on whether things sound right!

You can try the translated version of the game by enabling the experimental branch: http://clonedroneinthedangerzone.com/experimental

If you see something odd, please deliver your feedback using this handy form: https://forms.gle/NPz1jVuBh5kKwW5H7

To start with we’re going to translate everything into the following languages:

• English
• French
• Italian
• German
• Spanish (Spain)
• Spanish (Latin America)
• Simplified Chinese
• Russian
• Brazilian Portugese

Did we miss your favorite language? Let us know.

Once we’ve gathered some initial feedback, we’ll move ahead with translating the large amount of excellent commentary in the game. For most languages the game will only support subtitles for the spoken words.

Until then, please try Chapter 1 in your human language and use the feedback form to let us know of any issues!

What are you doing on Tuesday, human?

We're launching the next big update to the game, adding Emotes, Achievements, Co-op Challenges and more!

Dance like a robot, flap your arms like a bird or enquire about the location of water like a human, the moment is fast approaching when all these things will be possible!

See you then! :)

Are you having a good consciousness cycle? Drinking enough water? We have news!

Emotes are coming!

Soon you will be able to communicate with other humans, via the brand new Emote System. Perform provocative dances, exchange greetings, or inquire about the location of water – We have got you covered!

Gameplay Achievements!

We are expanding the achievements in the game in a big way. From smaller things like killing robots in a certain way, to bigger things like beating Story Mode on INSANE, we’re adding a ton of achievements!

In addition to giving you normal Steam Achievements, the new achievements will also play a big role in unlocking Emotes. We were originally going to build this at a later date, but the synergy with Emotes was too hard to resist! 🙂

Co-op Challenges and Improvements

Do you find the Challenges of the game… challenging? Bring your friends! In addition to the original single player challenges we’re adding some brand new co-op exclusive ones.

Another big focus for this update is responding to your feedback on co-op:

• AFK Timers: Humans who don’t move will no longer be able to stop a co-op game in its tracks, but will be gently placed in the elevator.
• MOAR Upgrade Bots! The polite waiting in line is over! Prepare for an upgrade room with an Upgrade Bot for everyone.
• Stability and Bugs: We’re also continuing the work of hunting down terrible bugs and fixing them. Let us know what you find!

Coming soon!

When is all this coming?? Soon!™

In the meantime, you can always go poke Erik LIVE to see what’s in progress, and let us know your best ideas for new Achievements!

A new build is now live that fixes a variety of bugs!

Some highlights include:

• Private Last Bot Standing and Private Duel games now work again!
• The “Power Overwhelming” Achievement was not always awarded when you got the last upgrade.
• The “I think it’s dead now!” Achievement is no longer awarded for using the hammer normally.
• Spider-trons definitely die from lava!
• More info added for players who can’t play multiplayer due to Steam connection issues.
• A lot of crashes should no longer happen.
• A lot of Server Disconnected bugs should no longer happen.

No more Workshop Achievement Cheating!

Achievement progress is no longer counted on Workshop maps. We saw some levels pop up that pretty much gave you achievements for doing nothing, which goes against the spirit of Achieving things.

Thanks!

Thanks to everyone for reporting bugs. 🙂 If you encounter a bug or a crash, emailing bugs@doborog.com is a great way to let us know about it

Grab your favorite friend, sibling, twin, clone or machine learning algorithm and see you then!

We're baaaaaaaaaack! We've been working on some awesome stuff the last few weeks, so figured it's high time for an update post!

New Upgrade Room!

Following up on the new Arena design detailed in our last preview, the upgrade room and spawn areas are being given face-lifts of their own.

Can you spot the difference?

The TVs now also show a preview of the next level!

New Difficulty Tiers: Uranium and Insanium!

Clone Drone is "TOO EASY", you say? Well, now you've done it. We're adding two new difficulty tiers: Uranium and Insanium. Good luck.

Fresh Level Layouts!

As part of the all-new Arena design detailed in our last preview, we're working through all of the existing endless levels and enhancing them with the power of awesome new art and the last two year's worth of level editor improvements.

Before & After:

Twitch Extension Beta, sign up to help test it out!

We'll be including a Twitch Extension update alongside the next update, and will be starting a beta test of the extension before then. Shoot us an email with your Twitch stream URL and we will send along a link to the experimental beta extension once it's approved for testing by Twitch (late this week or early next week, hopefully!).

The updated Twitch Extension will feature:

• a new Enemy Spawn Queue in the extension will let viewers see exactly which enemies will be spawned next and their current position in line. No more trying to time your spawns for the next round or "maximum enemies have been spawned this round!" warnings!
• for Twitch Affiliate/Partner players, you can now use Bits from the extension to cheer for the streamer on top of your enemies. There will also be an optional "Bits-Only Mode" for large streams
• Level Editor: new ability to mark your Endless levels as "Twitch-only" or "Exclude from Twitch". (These won't require re-beating the level, so will be easier to toggle on and off)
• Level Editor: new TwitchSpawnPoint objects that allow for more viewer spawns per round and configuration of where different types of viewer enemies should be spawned
• instead of just some enemies being viewer-driven, ALL enemies will be dynamically spawned by the audience. If not enough viewer spawns are available, the game will automatically spawn enemies for you.

These features are still under heavy development, and during the beta will require using a separate test Twitch Extension app, so wait for the extension beta instructions if you'd like to try it early!

Don't forget, Co-op is coming this next release!

We've been having a blast playing co-op, and these arena and level changes have been making it all the more fun.

As always, Doborog is streaming development live on Twitch! https://twitch.tv/doborog

As we noted last time, on the stream page you can also find a link to access the latest experimental builds, which include progress on co-op and the new arena. (As the description notes — these builds are under heavy development and will contain lots of bugs! So proceed with caution :D)

We are aiming to release the co-op update before the end of August. It's going to be a big update!

Until then!!

Happpppy Summerrrr! We've been hard at work on some fun new things for our next major update, so we figured now would be a good time to share some peeks at what's in store.

Co-op Endless Mode!

Co-op has been one of our most requested features since we added multiplayer support last year. Now that we've started building it, we get it -- it's really fun! For the past few weeks we've been working through the various parts of endless mode to make them multiplayer co-op compatible.

Co-op places you and a partner in the arena for some tag-team robot slicing. Clones are shared, and if you run out, your partner's last-ditch combat may be the only thing standing between glory and humiliating defeat.

Our initial "tests" are revealing Co-op is a great mode to play with a friend and jam on for a few hours. Yes... "tests"... (we may have become a bit addicted...)

Arena Makeover!

Gary has been applying his voxel skills to refresh the Arena!

Ooh... pretty!

The audience! What is this?

They're doing the SIN() wave!

Spider-tron Legs!

As part of upgrading spiders-tron to work well in multiplayer for Co-op, we're making their legs smarter! Gone are the days of spider-tron falling over at the slightest gust of wind.

What wonderful inverse kinematics!

Twitch Mode Update!

We <3 Twitch mode! It's been a while since our last major Twitch-related update, so this update we will be doing a refresh of Twitch mode and the Twitch Extension. If there's something you'd like to see in Twitch mode, now's a great time to let us know, too!

If you're a Twitch streamer and interested in trying out betas of the extension update, email us with your Twitch stream URL and we will get you hooked up to try the latest!

Streams and Experimental Branch

Did you know?! Doborog has been streaming co-op development daily! If you would like to follow along with the latest, check out the Twitch stream here: https://twitch.tv/doborog

On the stream page you can also find a link to access the latest experimental builds, which include progress on co-op and the new arena. (As the description notes -- these builds are under heavy development and will contain lots of bugs! So proceed with caution :D)

We're expecting to ship this update some time in August, and will share more on release as it's closer to complete.

Until next time!

Holy cow, Chapter 4 was a big update!

Between the new enemies, mind transfer mechanic and spear / shield, we decided to put together a quick mini-release to add these elements throughout the game. (We also took this as an opportunity to do some extra bug fixing and optimization!)

Spears in Multiplayer & Last Bot Standing!

Spears and shields... over the network?!?! Yes!

The basic spear costs 1 upgrade point, which introduces many opportunities for interesting spear-combination builds.

All out of upgrade points? There is now also a Max Spear drop in Last Bot Standing!

New endless levels!! ...and Death Cube 3.0

This update adds a fresh batch of endless levels that feature the new enemies introduced in chapter 4. You'll find these levels are chock-full of spear and fleet command / analysis bots.

Look for these levels in Endless and Twitch modes (and in the workshop challenge below). Keep your head down!

Spears on Twitch!

We released an updated Twitch extension (0.0.7) with the new enemies from chapter 4.

We also:

• Updated the Twitch extension's "Allow Access" hint to reflect Twitch's new layout
• Updated the "Configuration" page with extra helpful getting started steps and support for Dark Mode
• Enabled spawning kick bots on flame raptors from the extension, since we hear it is "the ultimate troll move"

Optimized lava!

No longer must you fear lava causing the game to grind to a jittery halt! (Now you can fear it just because it might set you on fire...)

Less Garbage Setting!

Not a fan of garbage? There is now a setting to limit the amount of robot garbage the game keeps around the level. This is especially useful for Twitch Mode, or other custom levels with tons of enemies.

Loading bars for Chapters 3 & 4!!

We decided Chapters 3 and 4 are levels so big, they deserve their own dedicated loading bars. Now you can cheer on your computer while the bar fills up!

Challenge Modifiers: Random Upgrades & Mind Transfers, & more!

You can now enable any of the following in your workshop challenges:

• Mind Transfer mode
• Random Upgrade mode
• Greatswords for all
• Armor for all

Set these in the Level Editor under Challenges -> Config! We are looking forward to seeing what folks make with these new modifiers!

Bonus: Random Upgrade Challenge 2.0!

To demonstrate the Random Upgrade modifier for Workshop Challenges, Doborog put together a Random Upgrade Challenge 2.0 workshop challenge that features new endless mode maps from this update (including Death Cube 3.0)!

Subscribe on the Steam Workshop and play the challenge it under Challenges -> Workshop!

We hope you enjoy this update, & up next: Co-op!!

A hotfix is live! (0.14.0.107)

We just pushed a small update that fixed a few things:

• Workshop uploading: To upload levels to the workshop you must accept the Steam Subscriber agreement. The level editor now helpfully tells you about that instead of silently not uploading your level.
• Chapter 4 bugs: We fixed a number of issues where it was possible to transfer your mind into enemies that were not active and end up in a bugged out state.

Let us know if you find any other bugs!

What’s next? More spear content, then co-op!

Chapter 4 added a ton of new features, so before we move on we want to make sure they get a chance to spread to other parts of the game!

We’re putting together a fun little update that will:

• Add the spear and MAX SPEAR drops to Last Bot Standing!
• Add new enemy types to Endless Levels!
• Add new enemy types to the Twitch Extension!

Look for it in the next 2-3 weeks!

Co-op is coming!!!

Wouldn’t it be cool if you could fight robots with your friends? We think so too, which is why we’re tackling co-op as the next major update to the game!!!

What do you want out of a co-op experience? Is hugging important? Let us know!

Wait no longer, Chapter 4 has arrived!

Note: if you originally purchased Clone Drone in the Danger Zone on itch.io, redeem a free Steam key by following these instructions. If you already installed the game on Steam, all you have to do is update!

Story Mode Continues

With your mind now transferred into the Fleet, make your way through one of the fleet's most heavily defended ships.

So many new things!

Mind Transfer!

With no Clones or business transfer stations in the Fleet, you're going to need a backup plan. Mind Transfer gives you a lifeline and opportunity to fight as a variety of enemies.

B

Spear and Shield!

Stab enemies in the face with the new laser spear! The spear rewards precisely aimed stabs, and just feels dang satisfying.

Spears are now available as an upgrade in endless mode, the Spear Only challenge (which unlocks the Flame Spear), and in a number of enemies you can transfer in to in Chapter 4.

Zero Gravity Combat!

Grab your gravity boots, we're going outside! Chapter 4 features zero gravity combat, which makes for beautiful floating bouquets of voxel destruction.

Awesome Animations!

One of the major innovations in the development of Chapter 4 is the addition of a Level Editor Animation System. This is also available for use by level editors! Check out this demo video with some more details on how to use it!

Amazing new art! Spaceships! Gary!

This chapter is our first since the talented Gary Lucken joined the team! Gary's incredible voxel art is featured heavily throughout chapter 4.

Pretty!

Robot Enemies that SAY STUFF!

Look who's talking too! Combat robots in Chapter 4 feature a primitive voice system that allows for dynamic commentary. (This is also now available for use in the level editor!)

New Enemies & Epic Boss-fight

Chapter 4 features a number of new enemies, culminating in an epic battle with some fresh new faces. Good luck!

New Challenges: Spear-Only & Mind Transfer

In the Mind Transfer challenge, death is only the beginning. Can you make it to Titanium armed only with the ability to transfer your mind into enemies??

The Spear-Only Challenge puts your spear skills to the test. Beating it unlocks the flame spear.

Today: Bug Fixes! Later: Mini-Update!

Today we've already released some bug hotfixes, but if you encounter anything / get stuck in the game and can't continue let us know in the community Discord or at our support email. You can always try going back to the main menu, changing difficulties, or restarting Steam to see if there's been a game update that fixes your issue.

We'll likely put out another mini-release integrating some of these sweet new features elsewhere in the game (like adding the spear to multiplayer!)

Fresh robot combatants.

A laser spear.

Gravity-defying space-boots.

Giant.

Transport.

Tubes.

Chapter 4 Releases THIS THURSDAY, May 2nd

Can't wait? Follow Doborog's dev streams for a sneak peek.

Prepare for mind transfer!

Just about two years ago when we first started on Early Access, we included these two puppies on our FAQ:

Turns out, eventually is NOW!

Controller Support!!

Clone Drone now supports a wide variety of game controllers! You may now lean back and bask in the glory of playing Clone Drone in the comfort of not-with-your-keyboard-and-mouse.

The game's UI buttons are fully navigable by your controller's left stick or D-pad, and they come with visual selection and sound effects to make it clearer which button is selected.

Pretty!

Controller hints throughout the game have also been updated to use icons for the specific controller you are using. It will even swap hints in real-time if you change controllers or move back to using mouse and keyboard:

Thanks to everyone who helped test the controller support while it was in its infancy (shout-outs to Myriad453, AwesomePants, GeekCrafter412, Stealth000, Arcylic, davy jones locker, JustASloth, Jelley, theyummyoyster, RedCreep, X606, Dat Alpha Waffle, Niek_Alexander, LagTeam Leader & everyone from the Discord #controller-testers channel!). This rag-tag crew of brave experimental branch testers was super helpful in tuning the default set of buttons to something that was not just usable, but some may even say preferred!

Let us know what you think! And if you try it out with an esoteric flight pedal or Guitar Hero controller, send us a clip, because that's just awesome.

Key Remapping and Customization

Dvorak, Colemak, and AZERTY friends! No longer must you suffer the indignation of switching keyboard layouts or using external utilities prior to becoming a sword robot.

With the new Edit Controls menu, you may now remap in-game actions to whatever key (or controller button/axis) you would like. Let us know if there are any actions you would like to see made configurable in this menu!

BONUS! Another quick Chapter 4 Sneak Peek...

While Brian was working on getting controller support and key remapping hooked up, Erik has continued adding mind-blowing new mechanics that will be featured in chapter 4, like low gravity combat:

We're anticipating launching Chapter 4 and some new bonus challenges towards the end of April, if all goes to plan.

Until next time!

We figured it’s about time for another UPDATE POOOOST!

We’ve been hard at work constructing a mind-bending Story Mode Chapter 4 with completely new weapons, environment art, interactive story animations and characters. If you thought Chapter 3’s journey outside of the arena was a step up from the first chapters, wait ’til you experience this next chapter 😀

We are expecting Chapter 4 to release some time in April, and we will follow up with more details as we are closer to wrapping up its development.

Controller support (yes, controller support!) should come out some time in the next couple of weeks. See below for more details!

Chapter 4 Sneak Peeks (Spoiler Alert!)

Check out these tubes! Erik has been taking the level editor’s new in-editor animation system and using it to bring Chapter 4 to another level. Watch for even more immersive, surprising moments during this chapter.

One request we’ve gotten from players since we started in Early Access has been to tighten up the graphics a bit. With the incredible Gary Lucken now part of the Doborog crew, Chapter 4 is bringing the game’s visuals to another level!

Another feature of the new level editor animation system added for chapter 4 is the ability to animate LIGHTS!

Pretty!

Controller Support: Coming Soon!

(Even before Chapter 4!)

One of the top requests we’ve gotten ever since we entered Early Access has been support for game controllers & key remapping.

As fans of playing games with controllers on the PC ourselves, we always suspected Clone Drone would be a great fit for controller support, but couldn’t be sure until we tested it out to confirm. (That’s why we were always careful not to promise controller support, in case it didn’t fit with the gameplay!)

Turns out, it works, and it feels great! (Some may say it’s even better than keyboard and mouse. But those people would be heretics.)

Here’s VastLite slaying at the game while twiddling his thumbs:

Bonus: Control Scheme / Key Remapping!

No QWERTY? No problem! One of the things we’re adding in the process of adding controller support is the ability to re-map in-game actions to whatever keys or mouse buttons you’d like.

Dvorak, AZERTY, and non-US keyboard users, rejoice!

(Now we haven’t tried it with a Guitar Hero controller yet… but we can’t say that it WOULDN’T work…)

Want to help try Controller Support + Key Remapping Early?

We’re working with some early testers to whittle down a default control set that feels great across the gamut of controllers out there.

For those interested in trying the controller support + key remapping development pre-alpha early, join the #controller-testers room on the community-run Discord and we’ll put instructions there on how to test the controller support branch out. We’d love to hear what controls you find the most intuitive / enjoyable as you play. Note: the controller branch is still under heavy development and not quite feature-complete, so it may change / break your game data, so be sure to back your save data up before trying it out!

Thanks and <3

For long-requested, larger features like this, it’s taken a bit longer between updates than we’d otherwise prefer. Turns out — constructing a mind-blowing chapter with all-new enemies, environments, animation system, weapons, etc, takes a single developer while! & so does re-vamping the game’s input system and UI navigation to support a variety of controllers. 🙂

Rest assured, we’re well on the way to concluding the game’s epic tale and rounding out the rest of our planned major features for the game!

To all of you who have been with us in Early Access, diligently trying updates as we’ve continued developing the game — who continued streaming, sending in bugs, moderating community spaces, creating incredible workshop maps and blowing our minds with what’s possible with the tools we manage to share — thank you!!

Stay awesome, and watch for updates here soon!

Happy Friday!

After a fun morning of playing your workshop levels I'm happy to announce that we have 4 gems temporarily joining the official Last Bot Standing rotation!

Hidden Temple of the Cursed Canyon (by BinaryPanic8347)

This amazing looking level has an even more amazing Final Zone.
Survive until the end, and you may encounter... THE BEAST!

Roof Top (by Dr.Peppermint)

Why fight in buildings when you can fight ON them? Roof Top delivers a fun experience for all city loving humans.

The Maze Below (by ScienceBoy999)

A tight design delivering fun battles with a high tempo! The Maze Below impressed us with its gameplay.

LBS-Fireworks (by Baryonyx)

Turn into garbage and experience Fireworks! The sloped design of this level felt simple and surprisingly fresh.

Thanks to everyone who submitted levels and participated in the playtest!

Warning: Mild spoilers below.

Animation System!

Do you enjoy DRAMA??? Prepare for a very dramatic story chapter, built on the foundations of our brand new Animation System. When Chapter 4 launches you’ll be able to create animations directly in the Level Editor.

Swap bodies with your killer!

A fun thing we’re exploring is the ability to transfer your mind into whoever killed you. This will be a thing both in Chapter 4, as well as in a brand new Endless Challenge.

Initial testing suggests this is really fun! 😀

Next Last Bot Standing playtest: Feb 15

Do you love making levels? We’re holding another playtest session for Last Bot Standing levels on Feb 15th, 10am PST. No theme this time so make whatever you want!

The most awesome levels will be added to the main level pool. Don’t forget to peek at our awesome guide for making fun levels!

When is Chapter 4 out??

We’re aiming to release it in March sometime. 🙂 More info when we know more!

The Spear!

The game gets its third melee weapon: The Spear!

Paired with a shield, it focuses on precise stabs with a solid defensive barrier. Here is what happens if you put it in the hands of some high level enemy bots:

Note: All spear, shield and enemy models are temporary placeholders.

Battlecruiser art exploration!

Gary has been exploring what the hallways of the robot Battlecruiser might look like!

Below are some high definition mockups that will likely mutate and change as we figure out how to break them down into reusable level elements:

Chapter 4 is going to be pretty. 😀

What’s next??

Most of the work still lies ahead of us. We’re still in the planning and exploration stages, but we’ll likely move on to level design in January and start putting the chapter together!

It’s too early to tell exactly when this thing launches, but we’re aiming for sometime around February / March.

In the mean time, join us tomorrow as we play test Metal Christmas levels from the workshop. And watch for a mini-update in the next couple of weeks related to controller support and server regions!

This past weekend we held another Last Bot Standing playtest, it was a lot of fun! Thanks everyone who came to the stream to play test the levels.

In the spirit of the season, we've added FOUR new maps to the Last Bot Standing rotation today, and may add one more over the holidays pending a couple of small level tweaks.

We mentioned for last playtest that our level themes are just suggestions to inspire those who don't have an idea to start with, so you'll see non-METAL-CHRISTMAS-themed maps sprinkled in we think you will still enjoy! So if you have an idea for our next Last Bot Standing playtest, no need to wait for the next theme, you can start building now!

New levels live now!

Santa's Arena (Christmas Special!!) by Mr. Aurash

Ho-ho-ho-ly mother of Christmas decorations! Lots of nice Christmas touches throughout this map. Grab a gift from on top of one of the gifts. The combat area is cozier than most maps, so watch your back!

The Otherworld (Violetite) by BinaryPanic8347

If you like lore, you're going to love this level's background story. This level's unique layout and stylish jump pads make for a fresh new environment to battle in. Watch your step and survive the harvest!

Christmas In Town Square by Dr. Peppermint

This level has so much character and hilarious elements, we really want to add it to the rotation, so we're circling back with a few tweaks needed to get it ready for prime time. There were many deaths during the playtest caused by gawking in awe of the hilarious level elements.

And in the corner, what is this?! A gift, for me, from Doborog?!?! Aww, you shouldn't have.

Ironwake's Fortress (LBS) by BinaryPanic8347

You really don't see enough laser-sword-robots hanging around castles these days. This blast from the past level sports a dangerous courtyard surrounded by places enemies could jump down from. This results in a very different feeling combat experience.

May be Added Soon!

Christmas: Dust2 by BuH4eCTeP

I mean, doesn't the name here say it all? (radio) GIFT HAS BEEN PLANTED.

Ho! Ho! Ho-norable Mentions

There were a bunch of other fun METAL CHRISTMAS-themed levels we had fun playing on Saturday! These levels were very close to being included as well, and deserve to be mentioned:

• Santa's Lair by Sir Kotok - awesome Christmas decoration!
• DannyBot & Clones Salvaging Co. by fencing_vogel - featuring some mega compound-traps that are really fun to destroy your robot body with
• Long Live Metal Christmas by niekalexander - this level's layout elements call to mind pixel art and voxel games like Minecraft. Beautiful work!
• Christmas Fight: Day Version by Sir Kotok - includes a fun factory to battle on!

Thanks everyone for making such cool levels and participating in the event!

Next Playtest: in a month, theme TBD!

These playtest events have been a ton of fun, so we're gonna keep doing them! Some have asked that we give a bit more time between playtests, so we'll be doing the next one in about a month. We'll announce the next theme in an upcoming blog post, so watch for it!

What's next: Chapter 4, Controller Support, and Multiplayer Regions!

If you missed our last update post, Erik has been building a brand new weapon and enemy for Story Mode Chapter 4. Watch for another post in the not too distant future on a neat level editing tool he's adding to make the chapter even more dynamic than the others.

Brian's been adding controller support to the game and UI, and some say it might feel even better than playing with a mouse + keyboard (sacrilege!). That will be shipped alongside a change to our multiplayer system to support more regions to hopefully improve pings for those of you in US-West and possibly other regions.

Watch for our next update, and have a very happy holidays & new year! <3

The second Last Bot Standing playtest is over, bringing us six fresh new levels! Thanks to everyone who participated!

Next event is Saturday Dec 15th with the theme Metal Christmas!

Here is why these levels were a blast to play, and are now available:

Clone Drone In The Giant Kitchen Zone (Tapok_Bobra)

Simple and fun! Everybody liked this level when we played it. Jump around in a kitchen, like a little ant with a giant laser sword trying to kill the other ants instead of collaborating on whatever it is ants do with them!

Clone Drone in the Kid Zone (Pretzl)

Yay! What a fun level! With some beautiful toys and playful upgrade drop scenarios, the Kid Zone made us feel childlike joy. :)

Glorious Space Light! (Silva 01)

The light shines brightly in space! Really cool level with a lot of vertical jump pad action.

Prison Escape (Lionbreaker08)

Probably the level with the most innovative mechanics and theme of everything we played! Experience the chaos of spawning in a prison full of murderous robots. If you survive the first few seconds the rest of the level is also really neat!

Smelting Factory (Dr.Peppermint)

Don't smelt, little human! Running around this level is a ton of fun. The upgrade drops had some really unique configurations, giving this level a good balance between danger from hazards and your fellow contestants.

The Cathedral (BinaryPanic)

Epic and beautiful, this level lets you die inside a glorious cathedral. Inspiring use of light and shadow!

Honorable Mentions

These levels were very close to being included, and deserve to be mentioned:

• Neon Baths (fencing_vogel) - Pretty and fun to play! We decided not to include it due to the lack of clarity around the neon blue things actually concealing lava.
• Beacon in the ocean (Sir Kotok) - This level was super cool, but also suffered from lava that did not look like lava. Perhaps we should add color variants to lava... :)
• Dragon Ball Super Tournament of Power Arena (Destroyed) (Silva 01) - This level was really good looking, but a really hard to get to Final Zone made us reluctant to add it.

Thanks everyone for making such cool levels and participating in the event!

Next Playtest: Metal Christmas!!!

These playtest events have been a ton of fun, so we're gonna keep doing them!

The next theme is: Metal Christmas! We want to see levels that capture that holiday spirit of cutting up your festive friends, and letting their robot bodies rain down upon you like snow!

Join us on Saturday Dec 15th, at 10am PST!

Chapter 4?????

And just so there is no confusion, we are currently working on Story Mode Chapter 4. Keep your eyes out for some early weapon exploration footage in an upcoming blog post! :)

Thanks everyone who participated in our first Workshop Playtest event! We played through a whooping 39 levels, and had a ton of fun!

Here are the 9 levels that will be added to the official Last Bot Standing rotation until the next playtest:

Abyss Realm (by hollowedcommander)

Hollowedcommander creates a visually striking experience in the darkness of the abyss! Don’t step across the red lines!

Pirate Battle! (by MrCoconut)

Calling all pirates! Just kidding, pirates can’t play multiplayer, or access this super fun level. 🙂 When the cannons fired I knew we needed to add it.

Mother Tree (by Enderspoons)

The atmosphere of Mother Tree is really cool! You can practically feel the damp fog condensing on your metal face as you jump across its branches.

Green Plain Ruins (by Lionbreaker08)

It may look simple, but as soon as we tried it everyone had a ton of fun! Cleverly framed upgrade drops make this level really entertaining.

Hall of Laser Tag (by VastLite)

Like a hall of mirrors that suddenly appears in an action film, the hall of laser tag takes you on a trip! The view from the upgrade boxes is great!

Forest in the Mountains (by Sir Kotok)

A cozy valley full of trees and ramps! Jumping among the foliage is a lot of fun.

Space Arena (by BuH4eCTeP)

Experience the intense blue of the Space Arena! A great place to die!

Space Royale (by Combat Robot)

Space Royale offers a cool take on the interior of a space ship! A good warmup for Chapter 4. 🙂

The Molten Wheel (by BinaryPanic8347™)

There was something really cool about this level. The wheel feels solid and the fight for upgrade drops is fun!

There are of course a ton of other cool levels in the workshop that we didn’t add this time around. You can find them under the Last Bot Standing tag!

Next Playtest in two weeks: Glorious Light!

We’re doing this again!!! Next playtest takes place Fri Nov 30 at 10am PST

Theme: Glorious Light
We want to see glorious levels, that shine with light!
What exactly that means is up to you. 🙂

Participate simply by uploading your Last Bot Standing level to the workshop, and don’t forget to check out our helpful guide if you haven’t yet!

Tomorrow we’ll be holding a live play test of the coolest looking Last Bot Standing levels in the workshop!

Based on your feedback we’ll then add the very strongest levels to the game for a limited time.

Playtest time: 10am PST – Saturday Nov 17

Here’s how to participate:

• Play the game! – During the playtest we’re overriding the current level globally for all players. It should make for an entertaining time. 🙂
• Watch the stream! – We’ll be streaming live at twitch.tv/doborog! Hang out and tell us what you think of each level!
• Make a level! – Make a cool Last Bot Standing level and maybe we’ll try it!

Wondering how to make a great level? Check out our new guide! It has a wealth of information for all skill levels!

What do you think makes for a great Last Bot Standing level? Let us know in the comments! 🙂

We just released a cheeky update!

Introducing...

The Laser Challenge!

Surprise! We were fixing a laser bug this update, so we figured, why not make a challenge that uses it! Practice your laser skills with 10 fresh laser-forward levels.

Will you earn the new laser challenge trophy?

Last Bot Standing Workshop levels!

Some of you were asking if you could make and play your own Last Bot Standing multiplayer levels. Now you can!!

With a single click, your work in progress level is on a dedicated multiplayer server and ready to play-test. We now wish this was in every game's level editor!

Once you're happy with your level, upload it to the Steam Workshop. People can then use your levels in...

Private Last Bot Standing matches!

Create your own private Last Bot Standing matches with up to 15 of your closest friends. Download some new levels from the workshop and try them out!

Don't have any friends to try out new level with? Join our...

Live Community-Created Level Play Tests!

You may notice a new countdown at the top of the game.

We're going to get everyone together and test out some of the latest Steam Workshop levels on a Twitch stream together. The first one will be at Saturday November 17th at 10am PST. Load up your game then to try the community-created levels we're testing!

Win Counting - Unlock sweet transport bots!

What's better than ultimately futile human combat? Memorable ultimately futile human combat!

Now when you win a public match with more than 5 players in it, your new Win Counter will go up. Once you reach a certain number of wins, your Transport Bot will automatically be upgraded to a new, more intimidating model.

You may notice this includes a macho mustache garbage bot. Are you happy, cogitoergosum?! Look what you've made us do.

A New Level!

As part of testing the new ability to play-test Last Bot Standing workshop levels, we've added a new map to the public Last Bot Standing rotation called Rising Tide.

As lava rises up, the level's combat surface grows progressively smaller. Kill your opponents before you drown in lava!

Other Cool Stuff!

• We added a Setting to select an override region for matchmaking. Hope this helps those of you who were having trouble pinging regions, or couldn't find enough matches in your own region. Let us know!
• We added a news widget so you can see what our latest updates have been (like... this one!!) You may also notice some cute little buttons right below there, including one to some Clone Drone merch from Design By Humans. Fresh.

Coming up next!

There's so much we want to do next, we're going to parallelize the next bit of development!

• Erik will begin work on Chapter FOURRRRRRRR! No firm release date for it yet, but we will share info once we start in on it! We're make sure to share some teasers along the way. We've got some fun plans for it!!
• Brian will continue upgrading our multiplayer server and matchmaking system to support a US-West region!

Don't forget to come join our play test on Saturday November 17th at 10am PST! Add it to your calendar, and see you next update!

And remember, all itch.io game purchasers can redeem a Steam key for the game for free: https://itch.io/t/67604/how-to-get-a-steam-key-from-your-itchio-purchase

Shower in garbage, human!

Unless, of course, you get smashed to bits in Last Bot Standing, the brand new game mode for Clone Drone in the Danger Zone.

Join as 15 human minds trapped in shiny robot bodies fight to the death! Claim the powerful upgrade drops falling from the sky, but be warned; There are not enough for all humans.

Inform your fellow humans that you will soon shower in their garbage remains. Update your game now, and come fight!

(And all itch.io game purchasers can redeem a Steam key: https://itch.io/t/67604/how-to-get-a-steam-key-from-your-itchio-purchase)

What a fun week! We’re finding Last Bot Standing is so much fun with full 15-player matches! If you haven’t seen it yet, update your game & come play, or check out this fun video from Draegast!

Thanks everyone who shared ideas & concerns with us this week, it really helped us prioritize! We did a bit of planning after this release about what we’ll be working on next, we hope you will like it!

Here’s what we’re planning:

1. Address the most pressing issues with Last Bot Standing!
2. Make Sure Last Bot Standing stays fresh while we add……
3. Chapter 444444444444444444!!!!!!!!!!

Address the most pressing issues with Last Bot Standing

Start taking direct Submissions of Last Bot Standing levels, trying some of them out on live streams! More details on how that will work, soon. :)

Add US-West Support! To do that, we’ll be switching up how we manage our dedicated servers. That will ALSO give us the opportunity to re-evaluate what regions we have. The goal will be to minimize player pings without splitting people into games that are too small!

Laser Improvements! Currently the laser sometimes damages things that are below the beam — we didn’t have time to fix that for release, but we’re gonna fix it now!

(Though it’s kind of cool…)

Make Sure Last Bot Standing stays fresh

Your Wins will Matter! We will start keeping track of wins, and display them in cool ways in the game :)

More Variety! Aside from including some Workshop-created levels (see above), we’ll be doing some fun stuff that makes the game even more different to play at times.

& then… Chapter 4444444444444444444444!!

Obviously no spoilers but, it’s gonna be coooooool! More details closer to starting it :)

Update your game this Friday at 2pm PST (countdown / convert to your timezone), and come play!

(Steam is required to play multiplayer! If you purchased the game on itch.io and need a Steam key, you can redeem one for free using this guide: http://clonedroneinthedangerzone.com/steam-key-from-itch )

New Game Mode Details

The new game mode will be called Last Bot Standing.

Confirmed:

• Ceremonial garbage bots
• 15 players per match
• Shower in a rain of garbage
• 5-10 minutes per play session
• Ride fire-breathing raptors

See you Friday!

Holy progress, Commentatron! There is so much new stuff from the past few weeks, we figured it’s way past time for an update post!

We’ve been working hard on creating a super fun Battle Royale game mode, and it’s turning out AWESOME! It’s hitting that point where play testing is becoming fun enough to become an actual development distraction (always a good sign).

If you’d like to try out the work-in-progress development branch with Battle Royale or otherwise follow ongoing development, check out Erik’s Twitch stream & our development branch guide!

New Movement Mechanic: The Dash

The Dash ability will launch with the Battle Royale game mode, and will be available in all game modes (even single-player).

The Dash ability (SHIFT + direction) allows you to perform a quick, short leap in a given direction, provided you have the energy to use it. Combined with a well-timed swing (or used to avoid one), it can become a very powerful addition to your combat toolbelt.

It also makes you look pretty cool.

We’ve already been finding the dash’s quick, punctuated motions make combat feel more dynamic and fun, and helps avoid chase scenarios where both players are running at the same speed — now there’s some excitement to it!

More Lag Compensation!

We’ve been continuing to improve the “hit feel” of multiplayer combat, and the Battle Royale update will introduce two major improvements: (1) cranking the server & client-side network send rate up from 20 packets per second to 60, and (2) using a hybrid client/server hit reporting mechanism that should help hits register more often while still detecting cheat attempts.

Erik has been using this cool visualization of sword hit detection to test out different lag compensation techniques:

Maybe in a future game, you’ll just draw flowers with your sword…

Beyond that, we still have even more ideas for how to improve the networked melee hit feel (including getting US-West region support, our provider suggests it’s coming soon!) — & this update should be a nice step forward!

New Levels and Battle Royale Improvements

Screw launching with one gigantic map, Clone Drone Battle Royale will will launch with a bunch of medium-sized maps!

These maps will take advantage of some newly added level features, such as…

Laser Kills, Shrinking End Zones!

You may notice some levels have laser cannons on them.

Don’t fall off the edge of the map.

Spectate Mode

Just because your robot body has been sliced to bits doesn’t mean you can’t keep enjoying the game!

Now you can fly around, follow players and watch the game (starting with whoever killed you).

Level Editor Additions

While we’ve been working on these new levels, we’ve been making some pretty cool additions to the level editor (which will become available to Steam Workshop creators when we launch Battle Royale)!

Multi-select, Align Tools

What’s better than the ability to move an object? How about the ability to move ALL THE OBJECTS?!

Those of you familiar with Photoshop, Flash, etc. will appreciate these other handy tools which will be available in our next release (align, distribute, chain). Here are some outrageous things VastLite has been making with them:

Move Groups

When we added Moving Platforms, we were amazed and a little disturbed by what players were able to accomplish with such a simple feature.

Move Groups takes that to another level. You will be able to move not just platforms, but other objects in the level with these groups.

Look what X606 made using move groups (in the development test branch):

Stay tuned for the upcoming release of Clone Drone in the Dancing Zone.

Just kidding.

Maybe.

Playtest with us & let us know what you think!

Come watch Erik live-streaming developing the Battle Royale game mode LIVE! & join one of the beta branch test matches to try it out yourself.

Otherwise, see you in the arena September 21st!

Wait... like... another Battle Royale??

If you're expecting 100 players to drop from a sky thing and then sneak around a large island with human houses... that is not what we're doing. :)

Clone Drone's take on the popular game mode instead builds on our learnings from Long Live Santa!, the merry Christmas game we prototyped last December.

We're placing a strong emphasis on fierce action, tactical trade-offs and contested upgrade drops.

Contested Power Upgrades!

Powerful upgrades become available after the match starts. To get them you must be the only living player inside of their capture zone for five full seconds!

These drops help drive players together, providing an interesting trade-off between risk and reward. You can avoid the fight entirely with just your starting upgrades, but as more competitors are eliminated, you'll really wish you snagged some power upgrades!

Power Upgrade: Flame Raptor!

Have you always wanted to ride a fearsome fire breathing robot raptor? Of course you have. Ridable Raptors is the first Power Upgrade in Battle Royale!

We're also thinking about the best way to introduce ridable raptors in singleplayer, but have yet to decide the exact shape that will take.

Power Upgrade: Mega Size!

Tower over your enemies and strike them down with your superior reach! It's fun to be a big bot.

Power Upgrade: Energy Laser!

Overpowered? I don't know what you're talking about.

Follow our progress!

Since multiplayer is way more fun to develop alongside real, live humans, you'll often find us developing it LIVE on Twitch -- and we've set up a beta branch where you can play along with every change we make. It's already getting quite fun -- come play and help us make it even more awesome!

• Watch us develop live on Twitch: https://twitch.tv/doborog
• Join the Multiplayer Test Build: http://clonedroneinthedangerzone.com/multiplayer-test-builds/

See you in the arena, or for our next update post!

• Fleet overseer moves crazily when legs cut off!
• Fleet overseer hovers high above ground!
• Kick only Challenge Level 1: enemy instantly activates and dies on spikes???
• Kicking a hammer should not work
• Commentator dialogue is incorrect in Duel Invites
• Armor can be applied to missing limbs
• Ally in chapter 3 runs away from armor bot

We’re hard at work on the next big update, but these issues were bad enough to warrant a little hotfix.

Happy Wednesday!

On April 18th, 2018, the average time played for Clone Drone somehow went up from around 20 minutes to an HOUR.

What the heck happened on 4/18/18??

If you guessed "Doborog & co. launched multiplayer after 4 months of extreme game-overhauling development", you'd be right!!

While we've had a blast playing against everyone after launch, and many of you had kind words about the new game mode, the day after launch we were left not-yet-satisfied with the overall feel of combat. Multiplayer hits often felt unfair, random, or surprising. At times, it felt like the best strategy was to swing blindly and pray to the server gods!

Before moving on from 1v1 duels, we wanted to improve client and server performance and responsiveness, and making melee hits feel more fair and predictable.

A few weeks in, we've got a fun update ready with a game feel we are thrilled with. Improving combat feel will be an ongoing effort for us, and this should be a healthy start!

Introducing the Greatsword!

Replacing the old sword in multiplayer, the greatsword is bigger and has a longer windup time.

Why the longer windup? It gives us the power to compensate for lag!

The problem: Attacks landing at different times!

"My sword passed right through them!" was a common reaction to our first version of multiplayer.

Although we used to start showing a swing right away on your computer, the server wouldn't start its swing until after receiving your computer's "swing now!" network event. By the time the server tried to deal damage, your opponent might have moved out of the way!

What's worse -- when your hits did land, your opponent would often get killed before they even got a chance to see your swing start. "How did that kill me??"

The solution: Eat the lag in the windup time!

Our goal is to make sword swings land at the same exact time. Your head should appear to fly off at the exact moment you see your opponent's sword pass through your neck.

To achieve this, we start with an alternative set of animations with a powerful windup sequence. Each strike takes note of and sends along its synced-up start time -- letting the server and your opponent both skip forward to the exact right time in the swing animation when they learn about it.

The result is that both you and your opponent see the strike land at the exact same time. It's like TIME TRAVEL FOR YOUR SWORD!

In play-testing, we've found it feels much better than before, and results in many more epic moments of "OH GOD THE SWORD IS GOING TO HIT ME" (and then the sword hits you). Let us know what you think!

The Greatsword Challenge!

Since the Greatsword has a longer wind-up and thus a new timing to master, you'll need some practice with it. We've added a new Endless Challenge where every sword is a Greatsword!

Multiplayer bow now works at close range!

Multiplayer kicks feel better!

We expanded the multiplayer kick collision box and added lag compensation similar to that of the Greatsword!

Duel Invite Match Customization

You can now customize the number of starting clones and skill points for custom duel matches!

Optimizations and Various Fixes

• Optimized the game to load 6 times faster and use 1/3 of the memory than before!
• Made multiplayer jump pads trigger quicker.
• Optimized landing in lava to no longer cause extreme lag in multiplayer.
• Fixed issue where game settings could override system screen refresh rate.
• Fixed server crashes related to fire (aka "the frozen robot then server shutdown bug").
• Optimized server build so games start up quicker (and not cause lag on other games when starting up!)

More fun stuff coming, stay tuned!

We have some exciting plans for the next multiplayer update. :)

If you're feeling extra adventurous and want to test bleeding edge versions of the game before the next update, follow our development on Twitch and watch for opportunities to try out what we're building next, live!

Find out what data we collect and what we do with it. Your privacy is important to us, and so is complying with the new European legislation (GDPR) going into effect on May 25!

What else is new? Well, we are hard at work on the next big multiplayer feature. In addition we’re also looking into a few high priority bugs floating around and aim to deploy a fix for them early next week.

More info soon! <3

And look — our servers scaled up without exploding!

So go ahead, tell your friends! Challenge your neighbors!

Next Update: Improving Lag & Performance!

While many players are enjoying multiplayer, there are a few things we want to do to get pings lower and make the combat feel much more responsive. We’re going to be doing a mini-update next, with:

1. (Soft) Ping-based region-locking for matchmaking — right now you’ll create matches in your closest region, but might end up joining a far away one if someone else is waiting. We’ll add some smart logic around how we handle that.
2. Lag compensation for sword / hammer / arrow hits. This will help hits feel more fair!
3. Optimization so new games starting up doesn’t cause other games on the server to chunk for a few seconds (you might notice your game freezes a bit — this should fix that!)

This was a BIG update (including an overhaul of so much of the single-player tech as well) — so let us know if you come across any new bugs or have issues with the game!

HUGE THANK YOU to everyone who tested the multiplayer beta over the last three months, who is hanging out playing duels this launch weekend, and for generally making this crazy dream of multiplayer Clone Drone a possibility for us!

Once 1v1 is feeling great, we’ve got some fun new plans for multiplayer on deck 

Bring a friend!

(to kick into a giant laser)

Multiplayer is alive! Soon the sword robots of the arena will be filled with human minds like yours.

We’re starting with 1v1 Duels!

Our plans for multiplayer are far-reaching, but we’re kicking it off with 1v1 Duels. Two humans pick upgrades, then fight! Whoever runs out of clones first loses.

We’re aiming to launch this to the world around late February / early March UPDATE: Now targeting releasing in April, but you can try it out on our development multiplayer branch now! (More details)

You can access the development branch!

Want to help test multiplayer? We’re giving everyone access to the in-development version.

• Go here to learn how to access the branch!
• This branch will be updated most weekdays, as we develop it live.

Right now it’s a super-buggy, broken experience with terrible usability. Nevertheless you can still try it! 🙂

Features on the Horizon

Multiplayer is going to grow and expand a lot over the coming months! Here are some of the things we’re going to be looking at:

• Ranked Ladder – A monthly ladder to climb! Rank up by winning, down by losing.
• Robot customization – Unlock cool skins by playing, and choose what your robot looks like.
• Emotes – Express yourself with useful phrases! A delightful combination of animation and text to speech.
• Play with your friends – Invite your Steam friends to play with you.
• Game Mode: Team PvP – Defeat the other team by achieving the map objectives!
• Game Mode: Battle Royale – Fight until only one robot remains standing!
• Game Mode: Co-op – Jump into Endless Mode with a human friend or take on Challenges together!
• Custom games: Want to play a super strange workshop map? Custom games will be where this happens.

Note: The above items are not in order, and might change drastically. We’ll make specific decisions as we learn what multiplayer is like and see what people love or hate about it.

Let us know what you would most like to see in the comments!

tl;dr: We’re making good progress! We’re shooting to officially launch 1v1 in April (later than we’d hoped!), but in the mean-time you can follow along with Erik’s live dev streams and try our bleeding-edge development test version!

What’s Done!

The Duel Match Structure

We’re zeroing in on a final, fun match structure for duels. Each player starts the match with 3 lives, and after deaths, players get to pick an upgrade!

Picking upgrades after death adds another layer of strategy to the game, letting you react to your opponent’s choices and the map you’re on!

Multiplayer-ifying Upgrades, Weapons, and Hazards!

As part of making the game work for multiplayer, we’ve been converting everything over to be multiplayer-compatible, including nearly every upgrade (hammer, bow, jetpack, kick) and hazards (sawblades, spikes, moving platforms over dangerous lava). While you may have kicked a Sword 1 robot or two into sawblades before, we’re finding it’s a totally fresh experience sending real human-controlled robots to their doom. Practice your maniacal laugh, you’ll need it.

Dedicated Servers!

When we built Long Live Santa! as a test game, we used a direct peer-to-peer connection for matches. While this worked okay (and cost a good bit less) — players who were acting as the host would sometimes drop, some hosts would have inconsistent internet connections or high pings to others in matches, and in some cases use their position as server host as an unfair advantage!

For Clone Drone’s multiplayer, we’re pulling out all the stops and hosting our own full-on auto-scaling dedicated servers! While the development branch is currently targeting a single region (US-East), soon we will support servers in regions worldwide, so not only should gameplay be nice & fair, but hopefully pings will be buttery-low!

What’s Left to Do!

While we’d love to launch right now, we’ve got some things to do before shipping multiplayer to everyone!

• Add some awesome multiplayer arena levels! While we have a few early level ideas, there’s a lot of potential for fun new combat levels. Some will even take place outside of the classic arena!
• Make all of single player work again! In the process of multiplayer-ifying everything, there are some things in single-player that need a bit of updating to work right again. On the bright side, this will make adding co-op much quicker once we get to that 
• Stability, anti-cheat security, performance, etc! We want to make this release as solid as possible, and lots of things have changed!

The up-shot of all this is — once we’ve developed this core fighting experience, other game modes will become easier and quicker to add! We’re super excited about what’s next for multiplayer (and shared some of our ideas in this other post), and can’t wait to start slicing you all in half with our laser swords.

Follow Along and Let’s Do This!

• Come watch Erik develop the game on Twitch! Say hello and some words of encouragement!! 
• Try the multiplayer development branch (warning: quite buggy, and not many players on it yet!). We update it many times per day with our latest development progress.

We’re getting there! Thanks for everyone who has been testing out builds and following along our development!! We can do this!!! YEAHH!!!!

(edit: postponed from original date Nov 25, see post below)

Kick overhaul!

This time the main focus is on improving the kick.

The main goal will be to make it a lot easier to use. The existing kick is kinda fun when you get it working, but unfortunately that's a very small percentage of the time.

The new kick works with a simple press of your right mouse button, and instantly unleashes a kick in whatever direction you're traveling (including sideways).

Spike plates!

So far the saw blade has been the only obstacle in the arena.

This update we welcome a new guest: Pressure triggered spike plates!

Expect some new Endless levels featuring this charming obstacle.

Bow upgrades!

Compared to the other upgrade paths the bow became a little bit less relevant with the last update. Expect some interesting upgrades attached to the Arrow Width branch!

Not included: Twitch Mode!

I spent a week building out the infrastructure for an exciting new game mode.

It's a crazy experimental experience where you can stream the game and interact with a live audience in novel ways.

Since it needs at least another week of work I decided to push it out to the December update, and focus on the gameplay things above for November.

OMG! Look at this fan art!

In non-update related news, a ton of talented people have started making some really cool fan art. Here are some highlights from the forums!

Allmighty Nubs

Cuz Y Not :3

Existentialist

Fishgiver

Minecrafterseppe

Randomcommander

Retrotation

Teodorp99

Zenax

Seeing all these beautiful creations makes me very happy! :D

If you feel a burst of inspiration, check out the fan art forum!

In terms of adding value to the game, few features could have a larger impact! It’s a big undertaking for our tiny team, but we’ve decided that it’s finally time to tackle it!

Here is the plan:

• Now: Recreate the challenges Clone Drone will be facing in a separate little game.
• December: Launch this little game for Christmas (FREE!) and gather feedback on how it’s working.
• January: Start multiplayer integration with Clone Drone, using what we’ve learned from building the prototype to make it awesome!
• ????: Launch it when it’s ready!

Rapid Prototype: Santa goes to War!

We’ve never launched a realtime multiplayer game before, so we’re going to fix that! 🙂

Who will be the next Santa Claus? The answer will be written in the snow with red letters!

We’re aiming to release the prototype before Christmas, but if you wanna try it sooner check out Erik’s twitch streams or the discord server.

Multiplayer modes on the horizon!

Once we start building multiplayer in Clone Drone we’ll probably start with a simple PvP experience, and launch it as soon as it’s in a good state!

After that there are many options: Co-op, team deathmatch, ranked ladder, weird Twitch integrations. We haven’t decided exactly what multiplayer in Clone Drone will look like.

What kind of gameplay would you be most excited to see? Let us know in the comments!

Other cool stuff:

• There have been a ton of amazing looking Workshop Maps recently! Check them out!
• The Steam Awards are open! If you want to nominate Clone Drone you can find the link on the Store Page. 🙂

Here is what's new:

Story Mode Continues!

Venture into the Fleet Communications beacon on a desperate quest. This is our most cinematic chapter yet, with many twists and turns!

Armor up!

The main new game mechanic this update is Armor. Protect your limbs from being instantly destroyed by death robots!

Armor is available:

• In Story Mode Chapter 3
• As an upgrade in all non-story modes (Endless, Challenges, Twitch Mode)
• In the Level Editor: Check a box and any robot in the game is suddenly armored!

Rise of the Fleet Overseer!

Long did the voices cry out for some sort of boss. The Fleet Overseer is finally here to shoot a giant laser at those voices! BOOM!

While she mainly appears in Chapter 3, other areas you can play with her are Twitch Mode and the Level Editor!

Allies!

A major new feature in Chapter 3 is playing with your trusty AI companion. Stand back and watch them wreak havoc.

Allies are also available in Twitch Mode! Simply type !spawnally fleetoverseer KappaPride to give your favorite streamer a helping laser beam! We initially restricted this to Twitch subscribers, but decided to open it up to everyone. Enjoy!

Aim Time!

Aim time is an awesome upgrade that's been in the game for quite a while now!

We've made it even more useful by making it not trigger automatically when you draw an arrow back. Instead: right click to aim time with an arrow drawn!

This has the great advantage of not wasting energy until you really want to aim, for all you energy-frugal archers out there. Hurray!

What's next: A small update with more stuff!

As is often the case, we could have easily worked on this update for another month without running out of high priority tasks to do.

But instead WE SHIPPED IT! Being in Early Access we strive to deliver you a rough, but satisfying experience in a timely manner. :)

The result is that we have a few things we wish we would have had time for, that we're gonna scoop up into a delightful update coming out 2-3 weeks from now:

• Chapter 2 Overhaul: The game has come a long way in terms of the quality of our levels. We redesigned all levels of chapter 1 for this update, but ran out of time to revisit chapter 2.
• Armor in Endless Mode: Endless Mode is completely untouched by this update. We're gonna fix that!
• Level Editor items: We've created a ton of cool new assets used in chapter 3. Expect to see things like glass, doors, lights etc. added to the level editor in the next update!
• General bug fixing: We know of plenty of bugs that we want to fix. If you find one email bugs@doborog.com

This one is minor, but fixes a few issues that slipped into the Endless Mode build.

Difficulty Adjustments - Level Balance

Endless Mode gets really difficult! This is by design, but there were some levels we noticed were a lot harder than was appropriate for their Tier.

We looked at some win/loss data and took a pass at tuning these levels down a bit:

Nerfed! Mark 1-2 Archers

An insidious bug snuck itself into the build. The little mark 1 archers would suddenly refuse to fire until they had the player squarely in their sights. This led to a lot of situations where they would kill you at point blank range.

This change has been reverted, and should make the early levels a little less daunting.

More Dialogue!

The always hilarious Albert Lai has been helping out with voicing the commentators.

You can look forward to snappy new lines in the following areas:

• The human made a clone!
• Story Mode Victory / Death
• Endless Mode started

More human names!

The humans in the forum wanted THEIR name to be included in the game. Now they have a 0.1% chance of hearing it!

Bug Fixes

Jonathan has gotten warm in his shoes as a QA tester, which means we know of more bugs than ever before!

Over the last week I tried to tackle as many of the serious ones as possible.

Here are the most interesting ones fixed:

• Cutting Accuracy - The code around swords, arrows and saw blades cutting things has been improved. At high frame rates it should feel about the same, but at low frame rates fewer arrows will miss, and fewer swords will pass through objects without cutting them.
• Emperor Arrives, for real! - Turns out that for some players the Emperor didn't arrive in Story Mode. Now he will.
• No jumping on saw blades - Saw blades had some crazy physics when you ran into them. Now they'll just gently shove you to the side.
• Windows version signed - Windows Defender incorrectly thought the game contained malware. It no longer does, but the game is now officially signed by Doborog Games to try to teach anti virus software that it can be trusted. The Mac version remains unsigned for now.
• Spidertron is Immune to Saw Blades - Commentary now plays when a live version of Spidertron touches a saw blade, not just one of his parts.
• Getting stuck just outside ramp edges - This no longer happens.
• Pausing the game makes Spidertron fly out of the arena - lol!

How to download the update

There are a few ways to get the update:

• Download it via the itch.io app: This is the easiest way to manage the installation and download new versions automatically.
• Download and extract the zip file:
  • If you've linked it to your itch.io account it will show up on the game page.
  • If you downloaded it but didn't create an account, find your original email that has the link to it.

Next week work starts on the next update which is set to launch at the end of November!
More info on that later. :)

Hello humans!

Many of you expressed that although the Chapter 3 update was a lot of fun, it was over too quickly. This update builds on the new mechanics introduced in last update and adds a slew of new content for you to play with!

Story Mode: A new experience!

All levels in chapter 1 & 2 have been updated with new maps. We’ve mostly kept the ideas of the existing maps, but re-built them using the level editor to up their quality.

We’ve also introduced Difficulty Settings!

If you’ve found Story Mode too easy try playing on Hard or Insane. The only difference is in what enemies appear on the levels.

Chapter 3 also supports the new difficulty levels.

Endless Armor Challenge

Do you wish every enemy in the game HAD ARMOR?? Try the Endless Armor Challenge!

We’ve also added a bunch of armored enemies to normal Endless Mode.

Hello I am Business Jetpack Bot!

Clearly the game needs a new jetpack bot wielding a fire sword. !spawn bjetpack Kappa Speaking of fire, we’ve made it spread faster! The slow creeping spread didn’t feel good to get killed by. This feedback first surfaced in this forum thread. Thanks guys!

Bugs bugs bugs

We also fixed a ton of bugs. Let us know if you find more at bugs@doborog.com!

Next up: TwitchCon!

Erik and Brian will be hanging out at TwitchCon this week. Look forward to some all day streams this weekend of random people trying Twitch Mode.

• Makes Photo Mode Music toggle on and off perfectly! It now makes us giggle every time we toggle it.
• Fixes a crash some people have seen when performing said toggling.
• Adds two things you Big-time Twitch Streamers out there: emote vocalizations for certain Twitch streamers' subscribers, and a new note about enabling slow mode to avoid being throttled.

Some Awesome Photo Mode Photos!

Humans, your creativity amazes us!! In the 3 days since we released Photo Mode, we have been blown away by the awesome shots our wonderful community members have taken.

Let's look at some of them! See more on Steam Community Screenshots, the Itch Forums, and the Discord chat!

From the Steam Community Screenshots:

The #RoboSelfie (thanks NoScope!)

Spidertron Deconstructed (thanks Dr. Greenman The Mad Scientist!)

A very nature-photography-style photo. Note the player killing it in the background. (thanks ShAzZ!)

From the Community Discord:

What happened here? DEATH! (thanks Dope Arcane!)

Spidertron... where'd your eyes go? (thanks VattHammer!)

Mid-air-duck-strike (thanks iosephusalbert!)

Off you go! (thanks Teewoo!)

From the Itch.io Forums

A cinematic jump (thanks mincpower!)

There are so many more awesome ones we wanted to include, but alas blog posts can only be so long (I'm impressed you're still reading)!

Check out the rest of the awesome Photo Mode screenshots, and make & post your own so we can see them too!

• The Steam Community Screenshots section
• The Itch forums
• The community Discord chat

Do you want Clone Drone in the Danger Zone in your Steam??
Vote for it now! :D

The Hammer is here!

The new update just launched with a bang on itch.io!
With a giant hammer, this update is sure to be a smash hit!

The hammer offers a slow, powerful alternative to the sword.
Smash right through their blocks and shatter their robot bodies all over the battlefield.

Hammer Bots!

You think you're the only one who gets a hammer??
The Hammer Bots have come to CRUSH YOU!!!! >:D

Chapter 2 - The Story continues!

Experience the entirely new chapter 2 of the Story with a freshly dispensed human mind.

10 new levels present unique challenges, as well as a glimpse of what is happening IN SPACE!

The Team is growing!

This game may have started as a solo project, but this update had all kinds of talented people helping out!

Almighty Nubs made some awesome fan art a while back and whipped up a hammer model as soon as he heard of the concept! The hammer and hammer bot models are all Nubs.
No longer fan art, it is now canon! :D

Matt Olick also returns with some awesome Environment Art, Space Stations and other things I won't mention to spoil story mode for you!

Brian Jordan has been an enthusiastic Twitch Streamer, and used his considerable Engineering talents this update to improve the usability of the Twitch Mode Commands.

Call to action!

• Go vote for the game on Steam Greenlight!
• Tell your friends to go vote on Steam Greenlight! :D Help create a viral twitter explosion by retweeting this tweet!
• Download the update on itch.io! (need help finding your download page?)
• Give us feedback in the forums, chat with us on discord and spam emojis at people streaming the game!

We’re aiming to launch the update in mid-September!

SPOILER ALERT

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Here is a minor SPOOOOOOOOOILER ALERT!

Click away if you don’t want to know what happens in Chapter 3.

Here we go:

Some highlights:

• No Arena! – For the first time in the short history of the game, the action takes place outside of the arena.
• AI Companion – Fighting alongside you will be the other escaped human! You’ll be able to equip both humans with different upgrades and switch back and forth between them.
• City overhaul! – Let’s face it. That city at the end of chapter 1 and 2 looked kinda placeholdery. We’ve been hard at work concepting something that will look much better.
• Armor – The new combat mechanic of the update is: ARMOR! Any enemy in the game will be able to wear armor, preventing damage before shattering. In keeping with the detailed damage model of the game, armor only protects specific body parts.
• Business Bots – In Chapter 3 your minds will inhabit the slender frames of Business Bots. Watch their robot ties wave in the wind!
• Glowing Eyes – Every robot in the game is getting glowing eyes that fade out dramatically when they die.

We’re aiming to launch the update in mid-September.

It’s taking a bit longer than many of our smaller updates have, in part because we want to create something super cool, but also because Erik (that’s me) has a new side project:

(from https://www.twitch.tv/doborog)

We’re having a lot of fun building this update. 🙂

Ahoy!! As Erik mentioned in our last update, we've been super-duper-heads-down-focused on finishing up Story Mode Chapter 3 -- our most ambitious update yet -- a multi-stage adventure chock full of fresh new gameplay elements!

And we've set a final date for release! The Story Mode Chapter 3 update will be available on Steam and Itch on...

📅 September 29th! 📅

Until then, we thought you might appreciate a sneak peek at:

Armor!!

Armor, which will be introduced in chapter 3, covers sections of your body -- stopping blade cuts and breaking apart on impact.

Yes, YOU get to wear it, too!

"But wait...", you might ask. "Can ALL the enemies wear armor?"

...

🎷 YEAHHHHHH! 🎶

Come visit us at #TwitchCon, & ticket giveaway!

We will be hosting a live Clone Drone Twitch Mode stream from our booth at TwitchCon 2017! If you'll be there this year, come visit us!! Otherwise, play along online at http://twitch.tv/doborog during the event!

What: #TwitchCon

When: Oct 20-22

Where: Long Beach, CA

On top of exhibiting the game and Twitch Mode there, Twitch has kindly given us two TwitchCon tickets to give away!!

If you stream Clone Drone's Twitch Mode between now and September 25th and tweet out a clip from playing, you'll have a chance to get one of the tickets!

To participate:

1. Stream Clone Drone Twitch Mode at some point between now and the deadline (that's two weekends from now!).
2. Snag a Twitch clip of the game from your stream!
3. Tweet out your clip by the deadline: Monday, September 25th at 2pm PST / 5pm EST (convert to other time zones). Important: include #CloneDroneClips and #TwitchCon in your tweet!

And we'll contact the winners that week! It's a great excuse to try streaming on Twitch, or Clone Drone, for the first time!

Surprise, it's a mini-update!

While Doborog starts in on building Story Mode Chapter 3 (and begins teaching his own clone how to do things), we couldn't help but release our latest batch of Twitch improvements ASAP!

Share Your Workshop Levels With !suggest

Sharing your sweet workshop levels with Twitch streamers used to be a pain -- you had to:

1. Send your streamer a link (which would usually get auto-deleted...)
2. Convince them to open a browser and subscribe to it.
3. Hope and pray your level would eventually show up in the random Twitch rotation.

Not good enough!!

Now you can send levels directly to your favorite Twitch streamer! Just type:

!suggest [workshop ID]

and streamers will instantly see:

When accepted, levels will auto-download and become the next level in the rotation. Neat!

To get your workshop level's ID, go to its workshop page and grab the number from the id= part of the URL:

So go to your favorite Clone Drone Twitch stream and send em a level to try from the Workshop!

Level Editor: Twitch Spawn Areas and a Raptor Statue!

Tired of Twitch enemies spawning to their deaths or to un-reachable locations on your levels? Now you can configure Twitch spawn areas, so all Twitch enemy spawns on your level will target the areas you set!

What you do: Just drag a few of these areas out, and Twitch enemies will spawn there!

Pro tip: the vertical position of the spawn area is ignored, and spawn positions are found from top-down, so you can put these hints floating above the level if it's more convenient to lay them out like that.

How it works on Twitch: when spawning an enemy, the game will randomly select one of the spawn areas you've laid out, and then randomly select a position within that.

"Remember Me" for Twitch Logins

There's now a handy checkbox to save your Twitch username/auth token! No more fumbling around with your browser and clipboard when trying to connect live on stream.

Twitch "Up Next" and "Spawning Allowed" Notifications

Twitch mode will now tell the audience what level is up next (and if it's from the workshop, a link to the level), and when it's OK to start spawning. Especially on big streams, it used to be hard to know exactly when to begin !spawning to get in before the limit gets hit.

We've included a built-in delay roughly matching the stream delay so it doesn't spoil the outcome of the round you're watching.

Happy !spawning!

Big Stream Throttling & High Traffic Mode

Before this update, Twitch Mode on gigantic streams would usually result in streamers being temporarily global-banned from Twitch chat due to high # of messages the bot would send in a short period of time. 

With 0.9.1, Twitch mode will queue and throttle messages to keep you under the 80-message-per-30-seconds-in-your-own-channel limit, and when things get busy, enter a high-traffic mode, where:

• !coins reports get collated and sent in batched reports.
• "Too many enemies have been spawned" messages show up just once per round.

If you've got a really big stream and still see issues, email us support@doborog.com and we'll figure out how to tweak it to make it work for you! (And if you'd like to be added to our streaming press list for updates as well, let us know!)

Bug Fixes!

C'mon, you know we can't help smashing at least a few bugs!

• Twitch Mode now shows "Now Playing" TVs and UIs, so you can tell which workshop items you're playing.
• Fixed a bug where endless workshop levels with multiple difficulties would always select the first difficulty, which resulted in hard levels in easier tiers!
• "Workshop and Normal Levels" now alternate between workshop and non-workshop levels when they have been played the same # of times, instead of just playing a single workshop level and then only normal levels.
• The default endless workshop policy is now "Workshop and Normal Levels" instead of "Workshop only"
• Level editor: make zooming in exponential, so you can zoom in to see much smaller things.
• Fix rare crash that would occur when unsubscribing from currently played workshop level while in Twitch mode.
• If levels on the workshop have no enemies, the game will now skip the level & send us a report so we can investigate and remove them from the workshop.

Go check out some Twitch streams streams, find some cool levels in the workshop and suggest them! And watch for our next post with details on Story Mode Chapter 3, coming late August!

Note: If you'd like to subscribe to and play Steam Workshop levels and you purchased the game on itch.io, follow these instructions to redeem a Steam key from your itch purchase:

https://itch.io/t/67604/how-to...

This release, we've added FLAME RAPTORS, 2 new raptor-based challenges, and a "repair" upgrade!

Flame Raptors!!

Flame Raptors are the most versatile enemies yet -- they breathe fire:

Enemies ride on top of them:

And they'll whip you with their tail!

The Raptor & RAPTOR INSANITY Challenges!

We added two new challenges featuring the flame raptors:

- Raptor Challenge - Ten fun levels with brand new raptor-appropriate layouts!

- Raptor Insanity - A VERY HARD challenge. We decided to try splitting this challenge into an easy and hard version, since we know not everyone enjoys getting slaughtered repeatedly. ;)

You'll also find raptor levels in higher tiers of endless mode, and you can even spawn them with riders on Twitch streams!

"Repair"

Lose your arm, and can't use your bow? Tired of hopping around on one leg?

Well, would you look at that!

Weird -- wonder why there are scare quotes around "Repair"...

Other small improvements!

We also made a handful of smaller improvements we thought our wonderful fellow players would enjoy!

• Workshop levels can now use enemy deaths as triggers! (I think we may be getting close to Turing-completeness...)
• We fixed a bug with moving platforms resetting after death in workshop levels!
• You can no longer escape your damaged robot body by exiting and re-starting the game -- player voxel damage now persists!
• Hammer blows to enemies faces are now consistently lethal!

And as always, we're excited to subscribe to & play the awesome things you make next in the workshop! (If you want to play workshop levels, follow the guide to get a Steam key from your Itch purchase!)

Have fun with the raptors, and watch for our next post about what's next!

The Flame Raptor is coming!

On June 22 the next big enemy enters the Danger Arena... Prepare to be set aflame by the terrifying Flame Raptor!

A worthy opponent on its own, there are reports of Robots Riding Raptors.

The update will feature an awesome new Challenge, as well as introduce raptors to Endless, Twitch and Workshop levels!

Story Mode is brewing...

While we're working on getting dinosaurs to set you on fire, we have also begun concept art for the next Story Mode chapter.

Chapter 3 has been fleshed out on paper, and we'll start to implement it as soon as the raptor update is live! :D