- A Bloody Good Bundle! - 19 March 2026
The best things come in fours… From Beatles, to seasons, to horsemen… we love fours. And we are celebrating four great games in a Steam Bundle!While Lance is partial to the Anacrusis… everyone else has a favorite. Nessa is partial to Hunt the Showdown. An early extraction shooter that made the genre so cool, Nessa loves the discipline needed to play with scarce ammo and she absolutely loves the sound design. Liu can't help but want to terrify herself with the hardcore GTFO… she will play all night and then stay up hiding under the covers regretting her misses with her sledgehammer. Guion is partial to Killing Floor 3 - he is the reason we have played this series constantly on our discord since we first started - we can all remember Gary Busey as a bad ass Santa all to well… and with look forward to all the crazy to come in this latest iteration. We are playing them all night tonight and…
- Update 66 -- The Stuff Update - 3 October 2025
-Korean translations of the game have been improved-Fixed a bug in Versus where both Flashers wouldn't stop highlighting their target survivor on death-UV Flasher and Grabber have increased melee range in Versus-End Credits now reflect Community Update contributions-Ultrabrute's time dilation now normal in Versus, but has increased charge speed-Sanitation Grenade has a new model-Sanitation Grenade's max capacity increased from 1/2/4 to 2/4/6next upVersus balancing and improved player bots for single player versus mode!
- Summer update #2 - 9 July 2025
With the massive community update out - we have a quick follow-up for some things we wanted in that update as well as a few fixes for some bugs... including a strange one.With the Flasher's alt fire you can now highlight and target a survivor to send your horde their way - similar to the spawnerFree Camera is now availableVolatile Gooper firing slowly gets a shorter cooldown (eventually caps at 3s) Weapon mods will now spawn in similar frequency to their category (special weapon, primary weapon, grenade)Upped bandwidth limits - this will help with a smoother experience for online playHolographic Detonator's hologram no longer has headgear collision...So funny thing about that last bug. Let's say you had gone into the workshop and had one of the larger headgear... like the entire Isolode in hat form... that giant mesh would then have collision on all players when it appeared in the holog…
- Community Update - 18 June 2025
The Community Update is LiveA year ago we kicked off an experiment with the community. What happens when you give them access to the source code and set them free?The result is the community comes together and makes a crazy, compelling, and fun update that expands the game with new weapons, creatures, maps, and game modes and opens up a whole new level of customization.Every single part of this update, except for this page, was done by the community.Thanks to everyone in our community at discord.gg/straybombay for making, helping, testing, and giving feedback.The best way to see all of what's new is to jump into the game and make sure to hit the settings button.There you will see all the new options available to make the game the way you want, but that doesn't show it all. Make sure to visit the workshop to see all of what is new - it's not just cosmetics and maps anymore. You can now m…
- Community Update gets Ultra Violent - 9 December 2024
Join us testing the next major update - The community Update You can join us by entering "WeBeTesting" in the beta section of Steam and have access to our external playtest. Here are the notes on the latest update and what is being worked on for the Candidate build Bug Fixes: -> Removed collision for a cable (and rail) used throughout episode 2 which would kill non-host players on the alien team. -> Adjusted Survivor AI so that a player caught by the grabber is rescued far more quickly and consistently. -> Implemented a check to ensure a player cannot charge before their secondary melee attack finishes as the brute. Previously this would cause the player to lose the ability to swipe attack after finishing their charge. -> There are so many new Game Settings options in Versus that they began to overlap the confirm button — this has been fixed. Base Game Changes: -> Ultraviolence difficul…
- Community Sale - 4 November 2024
We have dropped our game price down to the lowest price we will offer this year - 75% off! This was at request of players wanting to be able to invite their friends to play and new players wanting to join our beta. To join our beta once you own the game enter - WeBeTestingInHere - in the beta code. We also want to be clear, our online community is small. You most likely will not find many online matches to match into in the wild. Our game works great with friends, solo, or joining our community at Discord.gg/StrayBombay where people are regularly looking for games or joining our game nights. If this means this game isn't for you - no worries - you can still join our community as we play many different games and even have modders testing their latest HL2, DoD:S, TF2, L4D2, etc mods. Which brings us back to where we are on the Anacrusis. We are working with the community and have expanded…
- We be testing in here! - 25 September 2024
The next update will be the "Community Update" We don't have an ETA yet, but are well on our way to working on and playtesting so I thought we could share here. If you would like to test I would suggest joining our discord - discord.gg/straybombay You can also test that branch any time by going into steam -> Betas and putting in the password WeBeTestingInHere That will give you access to the External Playtest Branch. Another big change is in the workshop we have areas for weapons and grenades. Those will be slowly added as we go through final versions - if you would like to make your own weapon or grenades, let us know. We are also working on a tutorial for this. We play weekly to test the changes and an example of those changes - here is the changelist for tonight. This change is for the core game and makes the Flasher more active in versus: In the base game flasher in Versus has been…
- Dive into The Anacrusis Pool Party - 28 May 2024
The Anacrusis is Throwing a pool party and you are invited! To kick off the summer, we've put The Anacrusis on its deepest discount ever! It's the perfect time to pick up some copies for friends, or dive in for the first time yourself. Don't worry, you don't need to go it alone, stop by our discord - discord.gg/straybombay where you can find a bunch of folks lounging by the pool, playing games and helping first time players discover everything The Anacrusis has to offer (we also play many old source mods and other fun multiplayer games). We have recently just updated our mod package to allow more extensive modding, so make sure to saunter on over to the workshop and pick up the latest mods - including the new game mode - ultra violence for versus or the popular snowy Ascension Level Test! From everyone at Stray Bombay, including Guion, Liu, Lance, Nessa, Boris, and Barry - let's break o…
- Update 62 - Happy New Year! - 12 January 2024
Happy New Year! This update adds backend support required for the impending Epic Store version of the game and gameplay fixes for Episodes 3, 4, and 5. Once The Anacrusis is live on the Epic Store, anyone will be able to download the mod tools for free. Fixed multiple areas where players or aliens could get stuck in the Ep5 stadium event Fixing collision on a handful of doors in Ep4 and 5 Reduced the chance that common will get stuck on the first Ep5 door event, reducing the intensity of the event Extended length of Ep3 Apartment and Medbay events to make them more impactful Did backend work required to make the mod tools available publicly (coming soon)
- Update 61 - A Very Festive Holiday Update - 22 December 2023
We’re on sale for 50% off this week, and we managed to squeeze in one last update before the holidays! We've also enabled the holiday hats for Survivors for anyone who logs in in the next few weeks. This week’s update includes the following changes and bugfixes Dramatically increased the intensity of the Episode 5 Stadium finale. Getting those corn dogs off the Isolode should now be as challenging as we intended Redesigned the barrier at end of the gantry at the start of Episode 5 Fixed several lighting bugs in the Episode 5 finale Fixed several holes in the world in Episode 5 Fixed a variety of forced spawns in Episode 5 that would allow aliens to spawn in front of players
- Update 60 - A Brute-al Update - 15 December 2023
This patch iterates the changes to the Brute we introduced in Update 59. The Brute charge's AOE attack damage and range are much larger, and the damage falloff is greater behind the Brute than in front of the Brute. We've also increased the damage that happens when a Survivor is hit by a charging Brute before the pounce.
- Update 59 - There Are No Small Fixes, Only Small Bugs - 13 December 2023
This week's patch fixes the following issues: Generally increased the intensity on the first level of each episode Prevented Mr. Brute from despawning in the holdout finale Fixed the closed door that players can traverse in Ep4 Increased the maximum volume for music in all levels. You can adjust the volume in settings to suit Versus AFK penalties are adjusted down Disabled the ability to turn the Brute during a charge in Versus
- Version 1.0! - 5 December 2023
Today marks our 58th update since launch, counting everything (aside from a few hotfixes here and there). It’s been a busy 22 months! Between Xbox and PC, more than a million players have tried The Anacrusis. In that time, we’ve added a dozen new weapons, a handful of new enemies, asymmetric Versus mode, Holdout Mode, full Steam Workshop support (including shared mods), and we also reworked the gamepad controls, reworked enemy AI, rebalanced the sound mix, added two new campaigns, and squashed literally thousands upon thousands of bugs. And yes, we’ve improved performance so much in the last 22 months we’re not even sure how to effectively quantify that improvement. The game runs really well on a shocking range of hardware now. We’ve made some big behind the scenes changes too. Last year, we switched from dedicated servers hosted in a handful of data centers around the world to peer-to-…
- The co-creator of Left 4 Dead just released a new co-op FPS game - 5 December 2023
Left 4 Dead remains the high watermark for co-op shooters. Atmospheric, varied, and able to encourage teamwork without clunky or intrusive extra mechanics, it's testament to the very best of Valve's game design principles. Both L4D and Left 4 Dead 2 succeed at subtly, almost invisibly making you want to work together. It's not about combining skills, abilities, and unique moves - you want to help each other because you love the characters, and because the drama and presentation are so intense, you get an intrinsic need to escape and survive. Now, 15 years later, Chet Faliszek, one of the co-creators of Left 4 Dead, as well as Portal 2, the Half-Life 2 episodes, and CSGO, returns with independent studio Stray Bombay and a new co-operative FPS. This is The Anacrusis. Read the rest of the story... RELATED LINKS: Co-op shooter The Anacrusis has arrived, and you can sign up to be a modder
- Chet Faliszek says he'll never do Early Access again after The Anacrusis due to inaccurate player counts - 28 November 2023
The Anacrusis is a co-op swarm shooter from Stray Bombay, the studio co-founded by former Left 4 Dead developer Chet Faliszek. It's currently making its way through Steam Early Access, but Faliszek says he "will never do Early Access again" due to "how player counts are seen by steam and then downwind by the community." Read more
- Update 57 - The Last Early Access Update - 28 November 2023
This is it. This is (probably) the last update before we hit 1.0 next week. This week's update has a bunch of performance fixes, fixes for GPUs with 3GB of RAM, support for sound replacement mods, and a bunch of fixes for bugs that have vexed us all. Enhancements to eggs in Versus mode General performance improvements that should show gains across the entire range of supported hardware Significant performance improvements during large hordes Changed graphics presets to be more aggressive at the Low and Medium settings. If you’re using a 3GB GPU and experienced crashes when you ran out of memory, you should run on the Medium or Low setting depending on available memory Preliminary support for audio mods that can replace any sound in the game. Try the mouth sounds shotgun mod in the Workshop! Using Discord rich presence shouldn’t result in a ghost member of your party anymore Bots should…
- Nominate The Anacrusis! It's Your Last Chance - 24 November 2023
We're up for the Labor of Love category for The Steam Awards this year. Here's our case: Since we launched in January of 2022, we've worked with the community, collecting feedback and iterating on the game constantly for the last two years. In that time, we've release 56 updates (Update 57 is coming next week) and we're leaving Early Access on December 5. We wouldn't be here if we didn't love the community and the game, and we think that that kind of commitment to the Early Access process deserves recognition! Thanks for your consideration!
- Update 56 - Bring That Boom, Boom - 21 November 2023
Happy Steam Autumn Sale Week! To celebrate, we've put The Anacrusis on sale for 50% off. Tell your friends and spend the Thanksgiving weekend stuffing your faces with gravy and pie, then blast a few thousand aliens together! It’s a short week here in the US because of Thanksgiving, but we wanted to make sure we got a patch out for players before the long holiday weekend. Reworked pretty much all the primary weapon sounds with the goal of improving their impact and feel. More of the guns make sci-fi appropriate gun sounds now and have more of the punch that you’d expect from a modern shooter Rebalanced most background noises so there was more dynamic range for the guns. If you hear weird/loud sounds after this update, please take a screenshot and post it to #report-a-bug on Discord or the Steam forums. Likewise, if you used to hear sounds in an area that you don’t anymore, please let us…
- 55 - Flasher’s Gonna Flash - 17 November 2023
The march to 1.0 continues with a bunch of perf improvements and fixes for long-standing bugs. Flasher Perf fixes Flasher death leaving common they control stalled out is fixed The dead corner at the start of Episode 4 should be fixed (finally, we hope) Heavy Plasma is now louder and punchier Fixed collision bugs in Episode 4 Bug fixes and QOL improvements
- Update 54 - Getting Free From Grabbers - 10 November 2023
This week’s update fixes a handful of long-standing bugs that have haunted us since launch. Sorry it took us this long to get to them, but they turned out to be surprisingly complicated. We fixed a collection of bugs that prevented Survivor bots from reliably rescuing players who had been grabbed. Bots can now target and shoot the Grabber more effectively at close to medium range. That means you shouldn’t see any more bots shooting into the wall by the Grabber Additionally, we found a few cases where pulse wouldn’t release a grabbed Survivor when we expected it to. This was caused by a reduction in efficacy of the pulse at its maximum range, and affected both bots and human players, where a pulse at the edge of the effective range would look like it hit a grabbed Survivor, but it wouldn’t actually free them from the grab. We’ve fixed the issue, so now any amount of pulse hitting a grabb…
