We've been hard at work, and now we're ready to unveil the next set of zones filled with murderous, malfunctioning robots!

Presenting, the Refrigeration Unit.

This is still a work in progress as we tweak the enemy robots and add a cool boss at the end. However, we wanted to put this in your hands so that those of you in the public beta branch can see how a level takes shape. We will soon be merging the beta branch with the main game, so any feedback is appreciated.

Happy Holidays, and enjoy shooting robots! :puppyeyes:

We've added an easier difficulty to the beta branch. We are still balancing it, but you should give it a try if you want a more laid back Good Robot experience!

Here's how to get the beta:

1. Right click "Good Robot" in your Steam library, select properties.

2. Switch to the "Betas" tab in properties. If this does not appear, restart the Steam client and it should appear.

3. Select "publicbeta" in the drop down list of branches available.

Happy Roboting! :puppyeyes:

We've released a new public beta for Good Robot that moves the game over to SDL2 for better controller support and improves performance. It is still a little rough, but you're free to give it a try and send us your feedback!

Here's how to get the beta:

1. Right click "Good Robot" in your Steam library, select properties.

2. Switch to the "Betas" tab in properties. If this does not appear, restart the Steam client and it should appear.

3. Select "publicbeta" in the drop down list of branches available.

This is still work in progress, so any feedback would be incredibly helpful. Happy Roboting! :robotsmile:

As we continue refining the game and balancing things, we've made a small patch that addresses issues with certain weapons. Here's what we did:

• Electron Repeater DPS output and bounces lowered
  
• Piercing weapons now correctly count a missile collision as a hit, and continue moving if they have hits left
  
• Various misc interface fixes

Hey guys, I'm Ross. I have a strange job that involves wearing a lot of hats, and recently just involves a lot of hats. I've been with the gang since Unrest, usually handling scripting and level design. I also edit together most of Pyrodactyl's trailers with the same technology I use to play Terrible Video Games (Glass Houses - Ed.). I'm here today with some insight into the latest update for Good Robot, and hopefully our thought process as game designers to boot.

With QA teams that number in the ones of dozens (baker's, if you're exceptionally lucky), esteemed indie developers like ourselves soon become incredibly adept at one crucial step of the modern video game creation process: making mistakes. But perhaps more notably - making mistakes and fixing them quickly. It's in this spirit that I present you with a commented list of the major changes this time around.

All health and damage values increased by a factor of 10 for more granularity.
This alteration is a simple one with complicated reasons. As a few of our astute player-commenters noted (Erich T. Wade, kaypy, and DeathByDysentery among others - a hearty round of praises to all of your suns), although the game treats them as such, not all of the robot upgrades are created equal. Rate of Fire is a consistent improvement in damage and utility across the board, while Damage only has any visible effect in large doses, or on weapons which already deal lots of damage. This is because Good Robot stores its damage values as even integers, while upgrades improve them by accumulated percentages (7% per point for damage, for the curious), meaning your gains were frequently rounded down and ignored by the system. Multiplying everything by ten makes buying damage upgrades always applicable, numbers more visible, and gives me a lot more room to tweak the power of pesky many-shot weapons like shotguns.

Damage upgrade price scaling lowered
This is the change that might put Damage back in the running alongside its competitors. In short, the cost of Damage upgrades will now increase at a slower rate relative to the others as you make more purchases at the upgrade shop. Shooting down missiles is a significant part of Good Robot's gameplay, and buying extra RoF will always help you do it - in addition to increasing your damage per second. Damage has powerful situational advantages, but among the two offensive upgrades it will always be less valuable. So... now the less valuable upgrade costs less. With luck the balance should now be restored.

Larger Damage Numbers!

The following weapons have had their maximum ranges reduced, sorted by shortest to longest after the changes: SMG, Minigun, Mini-Cannon, Argon Blaster, Xenon Blaster, Rotary Cannon, HMG, Electron Repeater, Proton Repeater
Long-range weapons are inherently advantaged in Good Robot by keeping you far away from sudden danger and clearing threats you may not even be able to see. Automatic weapons in particular are incredibly strong, mixing fast projectile speed with a constant stream of missile-eating bullets that edges out competition which would otherwise fit the task better, such as the Phase Cannon and Rivet Gun. The most fitting weakness to give these guns without changing their identity or fun factor was a sharp cut to their effective ranges, meant to put players closer to danger in exchange for the incredible versatility of something like the Minigun.

One point of note for fans of bouncing weapons: projectiles reset their maximum range per bounce, so those trick shots should still be possible so long as all of the bounce surfaces are within your bullets' normal range of one another.

The Electron Repeater has been redesigned: it no longer homes, bounces more times, fires at a rate and speed closer to the Proton Repeater, and does significantly more damage.
Sometimes weapons look really cool. Sometimes weapons create degenerative strategies. It hurts the most when these two things coincide, and can't be sussed out without damaging one another. Bouncing, homing, multitudinous bullets are essentially the perfect projectile in Good Robot as it stands: they block missiles with the best of them, forgo the need for precision aiming, and can clear rooms swiftly from positions of total safety. Something had to break, and after the range reductions above the best candidate was the automatic homing and fast RoF.

All explosive secondaries now consistently damage the player when fired in close quarters.
This is more a fix for consistency than anything. There were four explosive secondary weapons (Plasma Cannon, Inferno Cannon, Grenade Launcher, Bomb Volley) that could be fired into a nearby wall or bounced into the player without detonating or inflicting damage, where everything else with this behavior did. To the chagrin of players and the delight of Arch-Wizards

Electron Repeater vs Officer BuddyPal

...did I mention that making guns is my favorite part of anything? No? Well here, have some more.

Note that Good Robot's weapons correspond to four "tiers" of power, with each level either adding a higher tier to the drop/shop tables, or removing a weaker one if two tiers are already featured. For instance: the second level drops items of Tier 1 and 2; the third drops items of Tier 2 only; the fourth drops items of Tiers 2 and 3. A weapon tagged (T1S) is a tier 1 weapon that fits into the secondary slot.

The Scattershot (T1S):
Certain vacancies in the tier 1 weapons list (see below) led to a power vaccuum in short-range face-melters. The Scattershot stepped in, removed its glowing purple gloves, and filled the void with a colonial-style barrage of plasma. This thing is, bizarrely, either a cut-down Blunderbuss or a very mean, very magenta Auto-Shotgun, depending on your perspective. It's meant to give players something shotgunnish to use from the very beginning of the game (and akimbo with the Auto-Shotgun by the third level - if they're brave enough!).

The Thermal Vent (T1S):
What's better than fire everywhere? Well... let's be honest. Nothing, really. But Arvind didn't agree and neither did the CSIS agent outside my door, so I was forced to make a gun that shot fire in - ugh - specific directions. If you've ever used a leaf blower or hit the wrong button when attempting to flambé an enemy spy, this is like that. Except with a beautiful effulgence of plasma instead of air.

The Ricochet Missile (T3S):
Originally intended as something entirely different, this little experiment turned incredibly wrong, incredibly quickly. In the first test I mistyped a number and had it shear off my poor robot's face after doing several laps of the test level before I had time to scream. Matters... did not improve from there. After the corpses had been swept under the carpet and this monstrosity rolled back into a state that only incidentally ruined painstaking three-hour high score runs, we found ourselves with an accelerating missile sporting decent all-round stats and a penchant for bouncing many times. Essentially a combination of the much-beloved Sawblade and Ballistic Missile, I have no doubt this is the weapon that will finally make me a pariah in my own video game's forums.

Scattershot : a new tier 1 shotgun

Hands-On Shooting
This update features a new controller layout for those less familiar with twin-stick shooters or more inclined to preserve their infinite supply of bullets, allowing you to aim with the right analog stick and fire using the right and left triggers (or shoulder buttons, at your leisure). There's also a V-sync toggle newly present in the menu, to eliminate any pesky screen-tearing not caused by recent users of the Ricochet Missile to their monitor setups.

It wouldn't be a changelog without... awards? Just roll with it, I suppose. These three deserve it.

Remarkably Skilled And/Or Tenacious: Three Excellent Players
This week we set the bar pretty abominably high with our challenge to players to keep hats on their head and Goodness in their hearts long enough to earn the Elite Hat and Hardest Hat achievements, staking a quantity of fine Pyro-merch on the outcome. Some manner of übermensch clearly took to the stage, because Elite Hat has already been cast down by three intrepid players who will be announced when this experiment of ours concludes. That it hasn't means only one thing, of course: the Hardest Hat is still up for grabs, should you have the sheer gall - the unmitigated moxy - to prove that the impossible is possible.

Awful But Dedicated Service Award: The Radial Heater
This scrappy little gun gets special mention for achieving nigh-on supernatural levels of badness. Radial burst weapons are already some of the most situational types in the game, but when you need to put one in the first tier and it has both limited range and no ability to bounce, the end result is little more than an intermittent robo-fart. With 24 bullets that still can't manage to hit that guy right in front of me after three tries, any changes to most gun properties immediately shoot its power up into the realm of exploitability. My condolences, Radial Heater. I've tried my best to save you since before the trailer went out, but sometimes it's best not to drag things out.

Least Helpful Ordnance Award: The Ricochet Missile (Prototype)
As you may have pieced together from its description above, the Ricochet Missile is a real piece of work. I didn't realize the latent capacity for psychopathy in inanimate objects until I tested it. What I haven't shared until now is why. You see, the Ricochet Missile used to home.

No, not a "little" homing. Not Cluster Launcher homing. I'm talking a bumper-hugging payload of malice the likes of which haven't been witnessed since the days of Descent. The idea was that a bouncing missile with strong homing would "skip" along walls and ferret out enemy bots lodged into wall recesses rather than detonating harmlessly outside. It was a good idea, and unfathomably wrong. I died half a dozen times just turning homing on, and regardless of what I changed from there, something strange was afoot.

Ross: Arvind, this thing is scary. I just pushed it to the repo.
Arvind: The new missile?
Ross: I shoot it into the level and everything’s peachy. But no matter what I do, it… finds me. Maybe it’s the six bounces, but I just keep dying.
Arvind: Wait.
Arvind: It homes in… on you?
Ross: No. I mean, that-
Ross is playing Good Robot
Ross: …Yes.
Ross: Wow.

Pictured: The Good Robot, about to explode
So now you know why nothing in Good Robot bounces and homes at the same time. Good evening everyone, and see you next time. I'll leave you with the full patch notes in one place:

• All health and damage values increased by a factor of 10 for more granularity.
• Damage upgrade price scaling lowered from 1.2 to 1.1
• The following weapons have had their maximum ranges reduced, sorted by shortest to longest after the changes: SMG, Minigun, Mini-Cannon, Argon Blaster, Xenon Blaster, Rotary Cannon, HMG, Electron Repeater, Proton Repeater.
• The Electron Repeater has been redesigned: it no longer homes, bounces more times, fires at a rate and speed closer to the Proton Repeater, and does significantly more damage.
• All explosive secondaries now consistently damage the player when fired in close quarters.
• Removed the Radial Heater from shops, on account of overwhelming badness.
• New Weapons: The Scattershot (T1S), Thermal Vent (T1S), and Ricochet Missile (T3S)
• Added a new optional control scheme which uses the shoulder buttons and triggers to fire weapons, rather than thumbstick direction.
• Added a V-sync button.

When we first thought of putting hats in Good Robot, it made sense to tie in a few achievements to them. After all, people like hats and achievements – combining them was a surefire way to video game stardom.

For reference, you lose your hat if you get hit by an enemy. Yep.

As it turns out, a couple of those achievements are slightly difficult to obtain. And by slightly I mean so difficult that nobody outside of the dev team has done it yet. The achievements I’m talking about are:

We don’t want these achievements stay un-achieved forever. To encourage you to go out there and get these bad boys, we’re putting a bounty on them. Be warned, this challenge is not for the faint of heart.

The target demographic for this challenge. The white space represents the universal set, i.e. those who like hats.
If you’re one of the first three people to get the “Hardest Hat” achievement, we’ll send you a Good Robot T-Shirt, an Unrest T-Shirt, a bunch of posters, an Unrest boxed copy, a bunch of stickers and badges, and a handmade certificate of Goodness and Robotness. Oh, and a key for the Pyrodactyl Complete Pack on Steam.

If you’re one of the first three people to get the less difficult “Elite Hat” achievement, we’ll send you a Good Robot T-Shirt, a Steam key for the Good Robot Soundtrack and a handmade certificate of Goodness.

EDIT: Elite Hat has been achieved by 3 people! That prize is no longer up for grabs - on to Hardest Hat, if you dare!

• You must stream yourself completing the challenge and save the VOD.
• Once you get the achievement, open the Steam overlay from inside the game and clearly display your Steam profile URL by opening the achievements menu. This is necessary because we will use this info to verify if you have the achievement.
• Post a comment in this thread on TwentySided[www.shamusyoung.com] with the link to your video of your entire run – from starting a new game to getting the achievement. The time at which you post your comment will be used to decide the winners.
• No cheating, video editing shenanigans, modifying game files etc. This includes means of cheating not listed here.

If you are eligible for the bounty, we’ll contact you for shipping info so we can send you the reward.

• T-Shirt sizes available from S to XXL. If your size isn’t available, we’ll send you a Steam key for one of our games instead.
• We’ll handle the shipping costs.
• We reserve the right to refuse rewards for any reasons whatsoever.
• We have never done something like this before, and have no idea what to expect. We hope this is an exciting experiment for both us and you.

Happy hunting!


This basically makes the game a one-hit-and-you-die kinda deal. We actually considered that as a game mode at one point, but it got pushed aside by other features. Like hats.
Above, Arvind said that nobody outside the dev team has these achievements. It’s important to note that the devs only have these achivements because we needed to test and make sure they actually worked, and they did so by turning off the robot AI. Nobody has legitimately earned these yet.Also, we may add more to the prize pool for the Hardest Hat. I suspect many people might want some stuff signed by me, but the swag is in India and I am… not. We’re still working out the logistics.

Elite hat seems pretty do-able. I’ve been watching streamers and YouTubers play the game all week, and lots of people were able to complete one level without losing their hat. without any real practice.

But the hardest hat? I have no idea. Aside from jokes, there are two reasons to put an achievement in the game:

“We should create this artificial goal, because people might enjoy attaining it.”

And

“If someone actually did this, they really deserve recognition.”

Hardest Hat is very much this second form of achievement. I’d say it was impossible, but I’ve seen people do some really insane stuff in games like Spelunky.

Don’t be shy about sharing your streams. Even if you don’t get the achievement, feel free to post a link to the VOD below. I really do love watching people play the game.

Also, please share this post with the streamers in your life. Thank you.