Today we’re happy to announce that the fourth, largest-to-date Early Access update for Guntastic is now available on Steam! This update has been a long time coming and includes several features that we hope will help spark new interest in the game as we approach the final release on PC and Xbox.

One of the main issues with Guntastic was that it didn’t offer a single player mode. Since the game has unfortunately failed to attract a large online player base so far, this resulted in a lot of people being unable to play the game at all. To fix this issue we’re now introducing A.I. opponents.

Bots can fill-up vacant slots in both local and online games and offer four difficulty levels: Easy, Normal, Hard and Ludicrous. This feature is still a work-in-progress and we’re looking for feedback, just beware when playing at Ludicrous level as bots tend to become extremely cunning. ☠

Make sure to tune in on Steam or on our brand new Twitch channel[www.twitch.tv] as we’ll be streaming CPU-only gameplay that we’ll be using to fine tune AI design and behavior in the future.

Another problem that arises from having a small online player base is that finding a match can take way too much time. While this will always be an issue to a certain degree, we identified several flaws in the way we designed public matchmaking for Guntastic that made the problem sensibly worse:

1. No real indication of how many players and games were available. One could only press “Play with anybody” and cross his fingers.
2. Games could only be joined at lobby time. That’s nice – provided you have an enormous amount of players and games available at any given time.
3. Public games couldn’t be customized at all, leaving players stuck playing the same way over and over again.

In this version we introduced a handful of new features that should streamline the online multiplayer experience: from finding a game, to the lobby, to the game itself. When opening the Play Online section of the menu you’ll now be welcomed by a redesigned interface:

Here you can select a game to join directly, or ask the system to find the best one for you (just like it was already possible). In-progress games can now be joined as well, or you can explicitly decide to create a new one.

«From great power comes great responsibility.»

The lobby itself was updated to let you move back and forth between the character and level selection screens as you wish, reducing the number of steps required to start the game. Game Rules can now be customized in public multiplayer sessions and new rules are available to control CPU players and player count. Finally, the new player menu provides access to additional player information and moderation actions (kick).

Ruthless 1 vs. 1 competitions are now possible.

Due to some specific Xbox requirements we had rethink the overall design of the scoreboard screen. The new version should be much cleaner to read and also provides a quick way to find out more about your opponents and eventually add them as friends for future games.

• Notifications are now shown each time a player joins/leaves the lobby or an in-progress game.
• New animated menu background, featuring all the locations available in the game.
• Powerup bubble animations were given a final update and are now pixel-perfect like everything else in the game.
• The Central Station stage received a final visuals update.
• The background of the High Voltage stage was darkened to increase visual clarity and make game action easier to follow.
• Buttons and levers were updated to match the surrounding level theme.
• Effort sounds are now played when characters jump and land.
• Fixed a network replication issue that made grenades jitter on remote clients.
• Fixed available weapon not being randomized after a pickup was disabled by a generator in the High Voltage level.
• Fixed edge case where kills performed with the sawmill lift immediately after activating it would be awarded to the wrong player.
• Fixed application icon not being visible in the taskbar on Windows.

That’s it for now! We hope you enjoy the new features. As always we look forward to hear your feedback here or on Discord[discord.gg]!

After releasing version 1.40 we discovered a number of high priority issues that should now be fixed.

• Fixed crash when trying to create a local couch game with four human players.
• Fixed audio not working during local couch games.
• Fixed bug preventing invitations accepted with the game closed or on the welcome screen from working correctly.
• Fixed canceling creation/join of online games not working as expected.
• Fixed players not spawning in the correct order.
• Fixed action hints not being displayed properly during game.
• Fixed a couple of strings not being included in the Italian localization.

Today we're releasing a new update for Guntastic, the third one since the game entered Early Access at the end of 2019. Work on this update took a bit more time than we originally anticipated, but we believe the new content will be worth the wait!

Each level in Guntastic has a strong underlying theme and for this new level we wanted to play around with electricity.

Water and electricity, what can possibly go wrong?

High Voltage is set in a hydroelectric dam, where some mad scientist has been running secret experiments on teleportation. And guess what? He succeeded! The level introduces a main new gameplay element: teleporters.

«Beam me up, Scotty.»

These can be used to instantly travel across the map and should make for some nice gameplay opportunities. Projectiles are teleported as well, so look out for that! Also watch out for the big generators at the center of the level, you sure don't want to be caught in them while they're active.

«1.21 Gigawatts?!?»

Make sure to use generators to your advance to unlock the new Electrician achievement.

Another element that also makes its first appearance in this level is water. We're still experimenting with it and for now it simply slows character down while they're in it. High Voltage also features a new music track whose synths and sounds should bring '70s spy and alien movies to mind.

Please welcome our latest character, a mutant potato called Root!

«I am Root.»

As it was the case with our last character – the happy unicorn called Blue Magic – Root was also designed with feedback from our awesome community.

• Guntastic now uses the latest Unreal Engine version available, 4.24.3. This release brings quite a few improvements and fixes to character movement, rendering and more.
• Fixed an issue that prevented lock-on on rockets to work correctly in some cases.
• Network traffic is now encrypted for improved security.

That's it for the first Guntastic update of the decade. More content awaits in future updates. As always we look forward to your feedback here or on Discord[discord.gg]!