Hello everybody, and welcome to the Christmas Crossbow Update!

Lots of new stuff going on here, and for two weeks the game will be on sale! You can use those 3 bucks you're gonna save to buy candy and lure some schmucks to play Escape from Mandrillia with you!

NEW WEAPON: CROSSBOW

The latest addition to Escape from Mandrillia's arsenal, the crossbow, is unique in more ways than its operation. It's the first weapon to have multiple ammo types, and similar to the dart gun, it's silent enough to not interfere with the multitool cloaking, which makes it a perfect choice for a stealth build.

Due to the bolt's trajectory, using the scope is necessary to adjust for different engagement distances.

The crossbow and all the bolt types have their own Item Spawner entries.

CROSSBOW BOLTS AND BLEEDING STATUS EFFECT

There are 3 types of bolt, each one with its own features.

The standard bolt deals a solid amount of damage, but its main feature is the bleeding status effect: for about 10 seconds, the Mandrillian it hit (no matter where it landed) will bleed, leaving a trail and losing body HP. Standard bolts can be recovered from wherever they stick to, be it a wall or a Mandrillian's forehead.

The explosive bolt doesn't deal as much damage by itself, and doesn't cause bleeding, but it's not like it needs it. After 1 second of delay, it will explode causing massive damage in a very small radius (enough to be a 1-hit kill on standard Mandrillians).

The tracking bolt won't spawn in modes where the Multitool is disabled, because its main purpose is to appear on its screen even with the radar turned off. It can be reused, but be careful: if you hit anything other than a Mandrillian, the bolt will break.

HUNTER PRESET, SILENCED STARTERS

A new preset based around the new crossbow weapon. Sort of the more aggressive cousin of the Horror preset, in this mode both the Robot and the Mandrillians have to track and hunt each other.

This mode also uses the newly added option to start with a silenced version of yoru gun of choice.

The Robot has a crossbow, a silenced gun, stealth skin and extra multitool energy for the cloak and radar, but no stun charges. With 1.5x faster movement, you can quickly and silently move across the shadows, track the Mandrillians and hit them when they least expect it, but you also have less total HP, so getting caught will probably end in death unless you're quick on your feet.

The Mandrillians are tankier, but have only 5 respawns and no extra 1-ups in the vents, so they need to plan their ambushes carefully, on top of the Robot being harder to track and find.

MANDRILLIAN TRACKING NERF

Getting a sniff off the Robot is no longer a guaranteed win, as the FX has been tweaked to give a less accurate reading of its current position and direction. It also looks better and is more performant but that was an accident.

DAMAGE REWORK

Excess damage dealt to a low HP limb will now be applied to the Mandrillian's body HP. Until now, if you for example hit a 1 HP arm with a 100 damage blow, it would just deal 1 damage to the arm (making it go critical). From now on, that would also deal 99 damage to the Mandrillian's body HP.

This makes high-damage weapons like the Plasma Revolver much more dangerous.

HAPTICS

This update introduces haptics, hopefully for all compatible devices (currently tested on Index, and Oculus controllers). I've added them to all actions I could think of, but might have forgotten something, feedback is highly appreciated!

If you don't enjoy the vibrations on your hands, you can always disable haptics on the player settings console.

HEALER REWORK

Healers and Overclockers now can't miss: they will only fire if a compatible target is on range (be it the VR player or a mandrillian). You will get a faint haptic vibration to notify you when you can fire them.

GATE DAMAGE VISUALS

To make it easier to assess gate damage for both the Robot and Mandrillian players, gates will now display visual FX according to their HP level: at 50% HP their lights will start flickering, and they will start sparking when they're at 45 HP or less (that is, one 3-point attack away from guaranteed breaking).

SPAWNER POLISHING

The spawner now has consistent item images for all items, and updated descriptions for each one.

IN-GAME GRAPHIC SETTINGS, NO MORE SPLASH SCREEN

Gone are the days of the good ol Unity starting resolution selector window. You can still access it by pressing Alt when you launch the game, but its features are right now all located inside the game's main menu scene, along the option to enable/disable the dynamic wound system.

...And more!

TL;DR CHANGELOG:

-Added new weapon: Crossbow

-Added 3 new items: Normal Bolt, Explosive Bolt, Tracker Bolt

-Added new preset: Hunter

-Added silenced variations to choose as starter guns (they are included if you select Random)

-Added new damage status effect: Bleeding

-Nerfed Mandrillians' tracking FX

-Excess damage dealt to mandrillians' low-HP limbs will be applied to body HP

-Added haptics (tested on Index and Oculus devices, can be turned off)

-Healer and Overclocker now can only be fired when in range (no more missed shots)

-Gates visually show damage at 50% total HP (flickering light) and at 45 HP points (sparks)

-Firebomb sound now matches the fire AOE activity

-Added consistent images for all Item Spawner entries

-Removed starting resolution window (can still be used by pressing Alt while launching the game)

-Added basic graphics options on the in-game menu

-Slightly reduced Plasma Revolver's bolt projectile speed

-Slightly increased Plasma Revolver's base damage