We have been working hard to formally add controller support and Steam Deck support for Bowmen. This game update includes many major changes to the game and UI that adds controller and Steam Deck support, however, there are still a few game bugs and kinks that need to be ironed out over the next few weeks. If you run into issues with this build, please let us know on the official Bowmen forums or here on Steam. Bugs will continue to be removed through minor patches as we find them. Once we feel we have ironed out all the bugs on the Deck, we will have the game reviewed by Valve so it can be Deck verified and provide another update. Until then, note that you may run into issues while playing on a Steam Deck.

What's New?: Release Candidate (RC) v0.1.6.5 from v0.1.6.4

• Controller support has been added to the game! In the coming months we will be testing various different controller types and Bowmen on the Steam Deck. Steam Deck support is currently limited, but we hope to iron out any remaining bugs before the winter quarter 2022/2023.
  
• Critical hits and melee attacks will now display damage numbers with a little sparkle animation to give it more flair.
  
• A magic guard ability has been added to the game, which can be activated with the D key or the left bumper. Magic guarding will reduce damage you receive from projectiles and is dependent upon how much fortitude your character has.
  
• A woodlands bear has been added to the game, which will periodically jump out of the forest to help you and attack enemies.
  
• The loading bar now has an outline design to make it pop a little more.
  
• Bombs from Skeleton Knight enemies now substantially increase their damage to the player if not detonated at a safe distance. This damage increase is more substantial on higher difficulties. In addition, other enemies receive less damage from bombs on higher difficulties.
  
• The Skeleton Mage now spawns on earlier waves if the player is playing on Hell or Inferno difficulty. Spawns are the same for lower difficulties.
  
• Projectile damage from the Fel Bats has been increased as a function of difficulty. Their accuracy is reduced on lower difficulties, and increased on higher difficulties.
  
• Gold has been added to the game, which can be used to purchase skins. Players accumulate gold for each minion they kill.
  
• A "low health" animation has been added to the game that plays when your character is below 10% of their maximum health.
  
• A few new sound effects have been added to the game, such as an equip sound effect when the player's skin is changed in the menu.

• The Battleaxe of Kings has been added to the game, which gives your melee slashes life steal.

• Equip and activation icons have been added to items that drop or are visible within your toolbar.
  
• Game icons will automatically swap from keyboard to gamepad if a controller is detected by the game engine.
  
• The GUI Icons on Onslaught have been increased in size so that they are more easily visible on the Steam Deck.

• Fixed an issue whereby the text showing the remaining time on the Mark of the Barbarian would not be positioned properly if the player also had a Spirit Golem and Piece of Balrog Heart active.
  
• Fixed an issue where damage would affect the player but sometimes not display the damage text if the player's health was low.
  
• Fixed an issue where Akash would sometimes not spawn the Wizard under very rare circumstances.
  
• Fixed a bug where the player could pause during the death animation.

Since the earliest days of Bowmen's development and consistently throughout its existence, I've largely gotten two major pieces of feedback from players:

1. The game would probably succeed best on a mobile device platform (such as iOS).
2. The game would greatly benefit from full controller support, in addition to support for a mouse and keyboard.

The second piece of advice I also received from Valve, since a large portion of PC gamers also own a controller and use it regularly for playing games. However, initially I wanted to stick to a mouse and keyboard for a few reasons: First, the original game concept design was to be that of old school PC games like the ones I played back in the day, such as Gunbound, Warcraft, and Diablo. For a lot of these games, they had a chat feature upon the initial game menu that allowed you to talk with other players that were currently in game, which I greatly enjoyed. This was implemented for Bowmen after months of development, but I wasn't quite sure how to morph this function to be useable on a controller (which, to be honest, I am still working on). Second, these types of games often utilize "mouse over" tooltips, which was also problematic for a controller (I could make a "gamepad" version of the menus, where the tooltips are stationary, but it would take a lot of code rewriting and a UI overhaul). Lastly, all of these features would need to be reworked again for iOS touch controls, and porting the game to something like the Nintendo Switch or an iPad would cause me to lose all access to the Steam platform for those ports, which my ranking system for Bowmen heavily depended on.


Then recently, I learned through a friend about the Steam Deck, which simultaneously appeared to answer all these problems (how the Steam Deck managed to slip passed my radar is either a testament to how much I've been working these days, or a testament to the metaphorical rock I've been living under). Regardless, the Steam Deck was a godsend, because it allowed me to add functional support for a controller to Bowmen while also simultaneously preparing the game for a "mobile" release. Not only that, unlike the Nintendo Switch, iOS, or other potential port options I was considering for the game, the Steam Deck would allow me to keep using all of the Steam APIs for things like a friend's list, ranking systems, leaderboards, usernames, and everything else that Bowmen relied on. It has been a daunting task to make all of these changes to the game over the last few months to say the least (and that definitely is NOT and understatement), but I am finally closing in on completing controller and Steam Deck support for Bowmen. It will likely take a few more weeks for me to conclude play testing of the game to ensure a bug free end user experience on the device, but we're finally in the home stretch to where I feel confident I can formally announce it and start prepping everything to be pushed to players.

Therefore, I am pleased to announce that soon we will be pushing an update for Bowmen that will formally add support for the Steam Deck as well as controller support on the PC. We will be focusing on Xbox 360 / Xbox One controller support initially (which appear to be the major ones used by PC gamers), as well as the Steam controller, but we are open to suggestions for more controllers to support as time goes on. There is not a currently scheduled official release date for this major game update, but you should expect it to drop roughly within the next few weeks to a month. Until then, stay tuned!

Thank you for playing Bowmen!

Ethereal Gem Development Team