IT’S TIME FOR ANOTHER UPDATE! This one has been in the works for a long time and delayed for many reasons. However, we’ve come to the conclusion though that even if things aren’t perfect, we should let those who have supported us in early access know what we’re working on. We are going to try to push updates with fixes and tweaks significantly more often. While there will be fewer changes in each update, players will see changes more often and we’ll be able to get feedback before we invest in an idea too heavily.

Speaking of feedback, we’ve decided to start up a Discord server. Anyone can join. We’ll be around most of the time to answer questions, listen to feedback, and talk through new ideas. Sometimes we’ll even be available for matches against our fans! Help us to shape this game and it’s growing community by joining the discord server today!

https://discord.gg/v5w24qm

The server list hosting is unfortunately still broken. We’re a small team and have had a lot of higher priority tasks to work on lately. We’ve been to Momocon and Denver Comic Con already this summer and still have Atlanta Dreamhack left for the end of July. We’ve also been working on finishing our newest character Old May! Work on the new server list has still made progress. My hopes are that we can start initial testing on the rewrite this month, but with Dreamhack fast approaching, we will have to spend time preparing for that. The “Server List” option has been disabled for now. We do have plans to start more closely integrating with Steam soon, which should allow for joining a friend’s game through the right click menu if the person hosting has port forwarding set correctly.



Our newest character is an old veteran granny. She still has some of the tools and techniques she used in the army. We teased her quite some time ago on social media (and player who have seen us at cons have even gotten a chance to play her), but she’s finally ready. Her attacks are as follows:

• Vulcan Minigun - Fire a 3-bullet burst
  
• Rev the Minigun - Make the minigun fire faster
  
• Bear Traps - Roots opponents
  
• Flying Press - Leap to the front line and break a line of tiles

SRA has already seen moveset tweaks before. However, after spending some time with the last set of changes, we began to feel like they made SRA way less fun to play. Many of her abilities required her to stand still. Charging her lazor, countering, and venting all required SRA to stop moving and made her general play style very defense. This meant she was hard to kill, but also had a difficult time damaging her opponent. Now we’ve made some changes that we think will really help her be more mobile and fun to play.

• SRA’s triggered-detonation big bomb is now her ultimate ability
  
• We brought back a modified version of SRA’s old ultimate “Mortar Barrage”. It will now hit one full column the same distance as SRA is from the center.
  
• SRA now has a concussive round to knock enemies back

We plan to continue trying to get the server list running again. We will also be looking into how to best balance Old May and SRA’s updated moveset. The framework Grid Masters is built on (Monogame) has received a pretty big update, so we would like pull that in soon with the hopes that it will fix some of our controller issues. Steam integration is also a high priority at the moment. Note: A possible workaround for controller issues is to launch the game outside of Steam.

Lastly, we found out while preparing for this update that feedback sent from the in-game menu has not been making it through to us. This should be fixed now, but we will be working to improve the stability and reliability of our feedback system to ensure all messages make it to our inboxes. Any that fail will be saved for later viewing. From this point forward however, the best way to reach us would be directly on Discord with any feedback, so we can have a conversation on how to make the game the best it can be!

For the Steam Winter Sales, we're announcing the release of Grid Masters 0.4.1.0 and celebrating by making the game 50% off!

We've gotten a lot of great feedback over the last month and some of the fixes in this update address some of the problems we've been hearing about. Keep the feedback coming!

Now onto the patch notes:

• Updated combat HUD
  
• Health bars have a backing for more contrast
  
• Health bar colors match player colors from the character select screen
  
• Cool down animations look better
  
• Visual indicator added for when a cool down finishes
  
• Character faces, names, and player number added to health bar
  
• Animating selector arrow for menus
  
• Added backing box to pause menu in game
  
• Fixed final match image in arcade victory screen to show all characters

We're excited to announce the release of 0.4.0.0 just in time for the Steam Autumn Sale.To celebrate we've put the game on a 30% discount, so tell your friends!

It has been a while since the last release and we apologize for the lack of communication. We've have had a lot going on and ended up with several half completed features. We have moved to a new project management system that will help us better track our work, handle reported bugs more easily, and focus our efforts on what's important. We hope to be putting out smaller, more frequent updates and have a general plan for updates over the next several months. As always, we love getting your feedback. Let us know of any issues you find or cool features the game is missing.


Now onto the patch notes:

• Updated many UI assets
  
• Increased contrast on several screens
  
• Arcade final battle now cycles through more enemies
  
• Added Lava level
  
• Added Options menu for mode, stage, and song select
  
• Sydney's 3rd ability replaced with a phase dodge
  
• Sydney's boomerang-less animations updated
  
• SRA values balanced
  
• AI should be a bit more human-like
  
• Announcer lines have more reverb