- Secrets? - 13 December 2021
Hey everyone! We want to thank you all for the love and attention you’ve shown Beat Blast. It’s been an amazing journey for the team releasing our first game on Steam. A big part of that is the support we’ve gotten from our awesome community that’s been with us for nearly two years of public builds, QA and testing. For those of you that haven’t picked up the game since launch, we encourage you to come give it another try. You might be surprised just how much it’s changed from feedback from players like you! Today, we are providing Beat Blast’s final feature update. If critical bugs appear, we will of course provide hotfixes and we will still be around on our discord to chat with players. After nearly two and a half years of updates, our team is really happy with the state of the game and excited about the next project we’ll be working on. We’re a ways away from an announcement, but keep…
- Balance, Bugs & Chips? - 13 September 2021
Thank you to everyone that supported us during 1.0 launch and Early Access! Seeing so many Beat Blast streams and videos come out has been amazing these last few weeks, but it also highlighted a few pesky bugs and difficulty valleys we wanted to address. Most notably, we felt level 3 was a bit easy compared to level 2 and we've amped up the difficulty with one new enemy and tweaks to several existing enemies. We've also made some minor tweaks to level 4, specifically the Seed, which was far less challenging than we had hoped. It is much sturdier now and will take more than a few hits from a legendary power note to take down. Lastly we've made Meg a bit more predictable in her second phase and amped up the difficulty on the Giant Snake and Sentinel when enraged. We've also already begun work on our next update! We don't want to say too much yet, but we're aiming to add some more rare eve…
- Beat Blast 1.0 IS HERE!!! - 25 August 2021
1.0 is out now! It's been a pleasure growing our fan base and listening to all your great suggestions and bug reports. We couldn't have made Beat Blast without you all. Shout out to our Discord, and thank you to all our players! The game has grown so much over our year in early access. With how crazy the world has been in the last year it was a dream come true to release our first Steam game. We are pretty happy with where the game is now and are excited for you all to play it. This does not mean we’re done updating the game, but it does mean that we feel it has reached the level of quality we’re proud to present as a completed, fully-fledged game title. If you like the game and want to help us succeed, please join our discord, tell your friends and favorite content creators about Beat Blast. Word of mouth really helps. Here is a quick list of the major things added since early access l…
- Translations & Story - 20 August 2021
Beat Blast 1.0 is less than a week away! After nearly two years as a web demo and one year in Early Access on Steam, it's quite surreal to see the release date approaching so quickly. Today we want to tease a little bit of the Beat Blast lore. While this isn't a central focus of the game, 1.0 will feature two new cinematics to give the game a bit of context: one at the start and one at the end of your journey. Enjoy the intro comic below! Comic Translations We are also very excited to announce Russian, Chinese (Simplified) and Chinese (Traditional) translations for Beat Blast! We hope to have the full translations in and available on August 25th with the rest of 1.0. More Modifiers Here is another peek at the Modifiers coming to 1.0 We are extremely excited about these modifiers and believe they add a ton of re-playability to the game. Big 1.0 Balance Changes New players start with 100…
- Score Screen & level 4 Mini Boss - 11 August 2021
1.0 is 2 weeks away! Today we are showing off the new level 4 miniboss and the new death loop and high score system. Level 4 Mini Boss We tried several designs for this miniboss before settling on something a little different. Most of our minibosses act as a sort of moving room obstacle that you take care of after you've cleared all the smaller enemies. Microbe (level 4 miniboss) presents a different sort of challenge; the longer they're left unchecked, the more dangerous the whole room becomes. While it's still completely viable to take out the minions first, you may find yourself drowning in lasers and bouncing bullets before too long. Experienced players may find it more effective to hunt down Microbe as soon as they realize they're in the room. Strafing won't save you here! One More Run One particular point of focus in the 1.0 update has been the end of run experience. While we like…
- Achievements & Modifiers - 4 August 2021
Achievements and Modifiers are coming to the full release of Beat Blast on Aug 25th. Modifiers Menu The biggest new addition to Beat Blast 1.0 is the new Play menu! Before you start a new run, you can toggle challenge modifiers on or off. Most of the Compete mode's modifiers are available (with some exceptions). This is replacing the 'Chill' and 'Challenge' modes from Early Access, but we believe this gives you way more options to tailor the game to the way you want to play. There are 9 new modifiers available in this update that have never been seen before. 6 of them will also be available in Compete. Below is a sneak peak of some of these new modifiers: • Operation: The walls damage will damage you if you touch them! • Super Spot: Spot grows bigger or smaller based off how many hearts he has. The more hearts, the bigger a target you become! • Hot-Headed: All bosses and minibosses star…
- Full Release Aug 25! - 28 July 2021
After 12 months and 15 updates in Early Access, we are pleased to announce Beat Blast’s 1.0 update and full release will be coming on August 25th, 2021! This does not mean we’re done updating the game, but it does mean that we feel it has reached the level of quality we’re proud to present as a completed, fully-fledged game title. The Early Access process was a blast for us here on the team. Engaging with you, the players and getting regular feedback on each update has been a pleasure and the game is much better for it. To everybody that contributed from players to streamers and even their audiences, we want to thank you. Beat Blast has been a passion project for our team and it means the world to us to share it with all of you. In the month leading up to the full release, we plan on sharing a new preview of what’s to come each week. Our 1.0 update is about five times larger than our ty…
- Music Control Update - 8 July 2021
This update we're focusing more on letting players personalize their song. We've received a lot of feedback in this area and definitely agreed that there was room for improvement! We've focused on giving more control and clarifying the existing control that players had so first time players can jump right in to sound mixing. Firstly, we've changed the look of the buttons that let you switch sound sets and added track names to help you better find the ones you like. Secondly, we've added volume sliders in the options menu for each row of the song and for power notes. This gives full control of sound mixing to you, the players! Finally, we've added one of the most requested features on our discord: A "Remove All Notes" button! This is rebindable, but will default to X on keyboard and A/X for Xbox/PlayStation controllers. An awesome new green sound set has also been added to the game. Belo…
- New Snake Boss! - 28 June 2021
New snake boss is here! We wanted to do another level one boss to add variety and to hopefully make it easier for new players. Two bosses means new users may find one easier than the other and have an easier time breaking through the first boss wall. Having multiple boss options for a single level adds some unpredictability that we think is exciting and prevents a single strategy from feeling strong for the entire floor. As an example, those fighting the Snake may find purple notes to be far more effective than they have been against the Sentinel. The Snake will spawn level 1 and enraged in level 5, just like the Sentinel. Which one shows up is completely up to chance! Unlike the Sentinel, which reinforces the use of the dodge, the Snake will test user's ability to simultaneously control movement and aim. Keep moving! Let us know what you think on the discord. Is he too hard or easy. Ma…
- Bug fixes, Tweaks and Peeks - 17 May 2021
Hey everyone, we have a small balance and bug squashing update for you! We've taken a few weeks to tackle some of the reported FPS issues later in the game and have tweaked boss loot rewards and enemy health scaling. At the same time, we have also been working on our next feature update, which will include a new level 1 boss. For those of you that love the Sentinel, never fear! They aren't going anywhere and will simply share the level 1 spotlight with our new sinister shape monster. We hope you're as excited as we are to spice up repeated plays of level 1 and hope you enjoy this early look at your newest nemesis (special thanks to discord user SlavaCat for the boss inspiration) Visuals UI transitions look more appealing Control pop up at the start of a run fades in to match the rest of the UI Features Camera shake can now be disabled in the visual options Balance Adjusted player damage…
- Accessibility Update - 19 April 2021
Hey blasters! We're proud to be launching our accessibility update! This will let more people get the full Beat Blast experience. This update includes a new inventory system, orange elite re-work, color modes and better controller support. First and foremost, we've taken a long look at the gamepad experience and improved it significantly. Aim assist is now a tunable setting in the controls menu and should make it easier to aim with a dual-stick setup. We've also added an inventory menu (accessible via the right bumper, Tab for keyboard) that lets users of any control scheme see all of the passive abilities they've collected in that run. Previously gamepad users needed to use the mouse to browse tooltips, which wasn't feeling great to us. We are also really happy to be including colour modes in the Visual menu! These colour modes will help people with protanopia, deuteranopia and tritano…
- Backgrounds Update - 9 March 2021
Hello everyone, this update includes several new backgrounds for levels 1, 2 and 3. There is also a rework to the classic level 3 and 4 backgrounds. We changed them up a bit to make them nicer on the eyes. This will hopefully help players see all the enemies and bullets on screen a bit easier. The new backgrounds have an about 3/8 chance of spawning. So the classic backgrounds will be a bit more frequent. As of right now the different backgrounds don't change any gameplay. In total there are 4 new backgrounds, 2 updated backgrounds. You can see below some of the backgrounds, but you will have to play to see the rest. We have also been working on the Mac Version. It will be available once we launch out of early access, sometime this year.
- Rooms Update - 9 February 2021
Hey everyone! This update is coming a bit later than usual because we needed some time off during the holidays. For this update we wanted to give some more room variety. We have added timer rooms, shrines and different base room shapes. Timer rooms need to be completed in the allotted time. When completed they give you a better better items. It's a bit of risk for some reward. If the room is not completed in time you get no chest. We added in some rare shrine rooms. Shrines can give temporary boost ranging from extra movement speed to total invincibility. The buff timer goes down to the bottom right of the screen and will slowly ware off. Shrine rooms are very rare and can be found from choice rooms. 6 new base room types have been added to the game. We hope this will add a bit more variety. But we don't want to add too many rooms because we want the shapes to still feel familiar. We pl…
- Chest and Choice Room Update - 14 December 2020
Hey everybody! This update we've taken a look at how you, the player, choose your ideal build through room rewards. You will now find chests after clearing a miniboss room and choice rooms will give you a reward for choosing an combat room instead of an easier option. These chests can provide a variety of loot, including bits, blops, notes, abilities and more. One of these new chests will grant you a passive stack, allowing you to level up a passive you've already acquired earlier in the run. This will help you double down on a few abilities that you feel are more central to your desired playstyle. This is a pretty exciting update that will hopefully give you all a lot more power to tailor your experience to whatever playstyle you want to try for the given run. In upcoming updates, we will be adding more room types and more opportunities to earn chests. Features Reward rework: Chests ar…
- Sword and Powernote Update - 30 November 2020
Hey everybody! This update brings four new power notes and new offensive passive, which we feel rounds out player build options nicely for the near future. We think this brings an end to the 'player ability' chapter of updates (at least for now). Alongside the abilities, we have a new set of sounds (one for each colour) and a new difficulty mode for those of you that want to make beats, but don't necessarily want the tough-as-nails adventure to go along with it. We are excited to see your feedback on the new "Chill" mode and will likely be tweaking it in the future to provide a fun, relaxing experience. So what's next now that the player abilities are in a good spot? We want to give you more rewarding ways to find and combine them! Our next few updates will be focusing on the MIDIverse itself, bringing new room types, rewards and enemy balance. Features 1 new Offensive Equipment: Sword!…
- What's coming? - 3 November 2020
Hey everyone, we just wanted to give an update on what we are working on and what to expect. We are currently working on new power notes! Currently 4 new power notes are in the works. Here is a sneak peek at one of them, the sprinkler. While we were working on the power notes we tried making a melee sword ability, but found it worked best as an equipment. So that's what we are doing. Making the sword a melee offensive equipment item. So players can have fun with a truly melee build. We are going to try to balance the fourth boss to make this item viable. Lastly, we wanted to give an update on how we will be rolling out new content. We are really happy with where the game is at and all the new stuff added since launch. However, we are going to be slowing down the rate of content updates. This allows us to thoroughly test, balance and build hype for the new content. Also we are currently…
- Equipment and Status Effects - 19 October 2020
Wow this is a big update, maybe the largest so far! New offensive/defensive equipment and on hit items. The goal of this update was to add a ton of build variety. So each run will feel different and players can experiment with different combos. New on-hit and status affects. These status affects can be activated by finding the right passive. The on-hit affects have also have the chance of being on powernotes. We think this will give a lot more build options. Yellow notes can stun Green notes can poison Blue notes can crit Purple notes can slow We have added 4 new offensive and 3 defensive equipment items. Blink and comet have also been reworked and buffed. These are all going to add a ton of variety. The drop chance in the first level has also been increased for equipment so you can get a build going earlier. A new legendary that lets you chain an extra dodge has also been added. So the…
- Upgrades & Curses - 28 September 2020
Hey everyone! This update completely reworks power note upgrades to feel more rewarding, varied and exciting. Instead of the flat damage boost offered previously, each power note tier will come with a unique boost to your stats during the power note shot. Additionally, we're introducing a new item classification: Cursed. Cursed items can only be collected once and are tremendously powerful, but bear a heavy cost. Finding them is the first challenge, but adapting to overcome their weaknesses will prove far more difficult... Lastly, we've made some changes to some of the new passive abilities added in the last patch to improve performance and keep the player's power fun and varied, but in check. There was also a noteworthy bug that's been squashed that was giving some of you much more bits than intended from most enemies. While this was a bug fix and not a balance patch, it should have a…
- Passives are Here! - 14 September 2020
This is a big update. Tons of new passives that can all be stacked. Each passive has a rarity rating that affects its drop rate and power. We added 2 new shops, one where you spend notes and the other costs hearts. We are focusing on making each run feel different right away in level one. This build adds a ton of new combos and synergies to experiment with. We are listening to player feedback on item balance for this update. We are super excited about this update and will be adding more passives down the line. More details on this update below. Visual Level 4 background darkened and made more purple to help enemies and pickups stand out more Features 15 new passive abilities have been added to the game Passive abilities now have rarities All old passive abilities and stat boosts have been reworked to have more interesting names, no visible numerical values and stackable bonuses Two new…
- New Passive System - 8 September 2020
Hey everyone, we are turning our attention to a new batch of updates that will focus on run variety. Part of these updates will include major overhauls to existing systems, so we wanted to reach out to you, the players and give a heads up about what’s on the horizon and what changes you can expect! First and foremost, passive abilities and stat boosts (now referred to under the umbrella term ‘passives’) are all going to be stackable. This means Barrier, Sharpshooter, Heat Seeking Missiles, Echo and Heavy Bullets can all be acquired multiple times and will become stronger each time you acquire them. Secondly, we are introducing rarity tiers to these passives: basic, uncommon, rare and legendary. Basic bonuses are items that you could stack many times (damage boosts are a good example of this). Legendaries are the opposite end of the spectrum: if you get even one of them, they’re going to…
