A Message from Benji:

Hey everyone, this is Benji from the Gun Jumpers team! On behalf of everyone on the team, thank you so much for your support since the release of the game. It was far greater than we ever could have anticipated. This is a post I wanted to write about our team, and Version 1.1: The Corrosion Update coming to DRACOMATON!

We formed our team in college for our capstone course and named ourselves the Gun Jumpers. We formed our group before the class even began, because we all shared a similar goal of wanting to make the best game we possibly could. During the course, we had about six months to create a game, and our game ended up becoming DRACOMATON. We were super ambitious in our goals because we all are incredibly passionate about the work we do. Truly, my teammates are some of the most inspiring people I’ve ever had the pleasure of meeting. We poured ourselves into making the game, and it ended up becoming something that we felt we would be proud to release commercially. So after our class ended, we spent an extra month during the summer of 2023 preparing for the Steam release. For myself and everyone else on the team, DRACOMATON is a game that we feel deep pride in creating, and seeing so many people play and enjoy the game has been one of the most fulfilling experiences we’ve ever had.

So truly, thank you so much for playing.

Even though we’re all in different stages of our life now, having graduated from college, in December of 2023, we came back together to do a jam for an update. Not everyone could participate, because we all have different obligations we need to attend to, but for those of us who could, we put our all into it. I made a new form called V-Synth form, which is inspired by different Vocal Synths and Vocaloids, and my good friend Tracie made a form called Scrapper form, which is a badass shotgun form. Both of us are artists, so doing all the programming and design work was hard as hell, but with the help of the designers and programmers on the team, we ended up being successful with the forms! Our amazing lead programmer Calex made a leaderboard system, so you’ll now be able to compete for the best completion times in the world and amongst your friends! Our enemy designer Sophie made six more enemies and more rooms to play in as well. I also animated all of those enemies, scrapper, and V-Synth form, AND made new animations for Reggie, aka Regulus, since we weren’t able to make his animations in the original scope of the game. It was a lot of hard work!!! But, I think it will have been worth it, since everyone who’s supported us so far, and new players alike will have a ton of new content to play with in DRACOMATON. Autumn, Annie, Nik, Andrew, and Ryan also did a great amount of work on the update to make some really awesome new content that you’ll be able to see in the Patch Notes below.

I can’t promise anything about the future of DRACOMATON, because we’re all just trying to figure out what we want to do after having graduated college. But, the jam we did for the update was a lot of fun, so if we end up making even more stuff for the game, we’ll be sure to let you know. In the meantime, I’d recommend checking our team member’s social media pages if you’d like to see more of our stuff!

Andrew Wei

https://sites.google.com/view/weiandrew/home

Autumn Moulios

https://autumn-moulios.com/

Benji Chavez

https://twitter.com/AvianBen

Ben Paulsen

benjamin.games

Calex Raffield

https://calexraffield.com

Michael Lamore

https://twitter.com/michaellamore_
https://www.artstation.com/michaellamore

Niklas Thomas

https://www.niklasthomas.com/

Sophie Martin

https://twitter.com/h_mAAm_h
https://sophiemartportfolio.carrd.co/

Yiyang Lu

https://yiyanglu-website.com/

Patch Notes:

New Forms

V-Synth:

 Debuff enemies and protect yourself with a circling shield.



- Melody Shot: Charm enemies with piercing bullets! Charmed enemies take more damage.

- Show Stopper: Explodes into smaller bullets. When you hit charmed enemies, create a shield of notes around you.

Scrapper:

 Get up close with enemies for devastating damage.



- Buck Shot: Shoot a 7-bullet spread. Attack enemies at close range for a <b>Critical Hit</b>!

- Hook Shot: Hook enemies, stunning them and bringing them closer for massive damage!

Hidden Forms:

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- Random Access Primary: Replicate the abilities of other Forms.

- Projectiles Not Responding: Due to rendering error you may see stationary duplicates of existing projectiles.

New Items

Normal Items:

Critaloo:

 Increase your Critical Chance by [5%] and your Critical Power by [10%].


Critical Bestie:

 When you crit, spawn a construct ally. The next construct takes 1 more crit, and so on.


Entourage:

 Spawn 5 construct allies when you enter a room.

Chaos Items:

Evasion Surge:

 Increase your Speed and Primary Attack Speed over time but reduce the base values. Resets on taking damage.


Chrono-Grav Rounds:

 Your projectiles last much longer, but also have a delay before moving.


Telefrag:

 Randomly teleport around rooms, creating explosions when you appear.

Hidden Items:

Platformer:

 Give [30%] Attack boost, [30%] Damage Reduction, [100%] Jump Height, and a Grapple Hook (SHIFT to use). Gravity now exists for you.

New Rooms 

- 5 new room layouts added to the Sun-Dappled Factory (Area 1).

- 2 new room layouts added to the Snowy Surface (Area 2).

New Enemies

Phantom:



These feisty little guys are determined to hunt you down, but find it difficult to contain their rage. Watch out for their unpredictable movement, as they’ll bounce off walls or even other enemies!

Split Phantom:


The ancient cousin of the phantoms. These intimidating foes are much larger and will spawn their brethren when killed.

Frozen Sentry:


A highly aggressive variant of the common sentry. They’ll hunt you down by burrowing into the ground, popping out at short range with a devastating split shot. Quick reactions and careful movement are required to take them down safely.

Mortar:


Watch out below! These intimidating foes appear rarely, but will predict your movement at long range with pinpoint mortar strikes. Try moving unpredictably to knock their shots off course!

Burst Mortar:


A powerful variant of the mortar, who’s devastating shots leave lingering bullets in their wake.

Gunner:


A cold and calculating killer. These enemies fire a pair of quick moving plasma bullets, able to pass through walls as they lock onto your location. Highly dangerous when approached at range or with nearby foes, but weak when up close range or alone.

Leaderboards

The game now has a global leaderboard! You can access the global leaderboard using the terminal in the starting area. Compete for the fastest times by defeating Regulus and escaping the factory!

New UI Improvements

Update 1.1 brings various UI improvements to the game, including but not limited to: item select and mod evolution equip sound effects, resized text boxes for Steam Deck, and more!

New Regulus Animations

Regulus has been refitted with new and improved sprites and animations (he's no longer just a recoloring of Antares). If you can survive the journey, take a look for yourself…

New Achievements

Feeling Protected:  Reach 15 protective notes using V-Synth.

Survivor:  Survive a boss fight with 5 or less HP.

Reflected Star:  Reflect a Starburst Guard's exploding projectile.

Divided Allegiance:  Spawn a friendly crawler.

Hyper Drive:  Move 500% faster than base speed.

Training Weights:  Have an 80% movement speed reduction.

Form Balance Changes

Spider Form Rework:
- Secondary replaced with new ability Spider Bite .

Spiderbite is a high damage single target ability that does massive damage. Shoot it through webs to increase its damage.

Tennis Form Buffs:
- Tennis secondary attack speed 1.5 -> 1.4s.
- Secondary damage scaling speed 18 -> 27.
- Secondary reflect hitbox size increased.

Tennis form felt unrewarding to use even when properly juggling. Now it has some crazy potential as well as a QOL change with secondary speed and size.

Hunter Form Buffs:
- Hunter primary damage 0.3 -> 0.4.
- Hunter primary drain 1 -> 0.6.
- Hunter secondary drain 0.5 -> 0.4.
- Hunter secondary now procs critical hit items on dash reset (Bug Fix)

Hunter form felt unusable for most of the room due to its high battery costs, along with it falling off later on for anything other than a dash. Items now properly interacting will hopefully help it out a bit more late game.

Construct Form Nerfs:
- Construct Beam damage scaling 0.6 -> 0.5
- Construct Beam damage falloff reduced.
- Construct Buddies damage scaling 0.6 -> 0.5

This is to help lag in super late game, and prevent auto room clears from being as prevalent
Might need to look into Swarm Construct interactions being too limited by the cap.

Flame Status Nerfs:
Changed formula for burn damage, will be the same in the early game and weaker in the late game.

Vessel Form Nerfs:
- Vessel Secondary Attack Speed per enemy hit 0.2 -> 0.15
- Vessel Secondary Attack Speed max 0.7 -> 0.4
- Vessel Mod now has a 0.05s cooldown

Vessel form has a mainstay niche in being able to destroy bullets, but by giving it less efficiency hopefully it opens up the door to other interesting combos.

The mod changes are to help prevent lag in super late game, and prevent auto room clears from being as prevalent.

Magnet Form Nerfs:
- Magnet Primary Bullets increased damage scalar from 0.4 -> 0.6.
- Sticky Magnet’s explosion damage 2x -> 1.5x.
- Magnet explosion now procs mods less often.
- Magnet Secondary Damage Explosion size reduced to better match the visual.
- Unstable Magnets damage massively reduced.

Unstable Magnets was our most broken mod evolution and hopefully this has addressed insane damage stacking.

Item Changes

Detonation Spike  - Explosions deal 25%->20% more damage and are 40% bigger.
This item is just bonkers with magnet form. Bigger explosions are funny, but I think the damage could be lowered a bit.

Haste Trigger  - Upon switching to a Form with a 100% battery, gain 40%->35% Primary Attack Speed over 3s. This effect is on a 5s->10s cooldown.
I think this is for sure the best on form switch item, but it also currently has the lowest cooldown.

Hoard  - Gain an extra 5% Damage per 50 Bolts currently owned. Caps at 75%.

Impact Converter  - Decreased how much damage it adds by 20%.

Momentum Spinner  - For every 1s a projectile is out, boost its Damage by 5%->20%.
This item has zero potential to do anything with most of the forms in the game, and then even for forms like tennis where it should be great, it barely does anything. Big numbers increase.

Recoil  - Gain a Damage (2->1.5) and Knockback (25%) bonus on all abilities.
This increased the base damage from 10->12 which is just a straight up 20% damage increase on everything PLUS extra knockback. Knockback is funny, but less damage

Safety Plate  - When below 30% health, gain 65%->50% Damage Reduction.
Getting a second health bar at no cost that was more efficient with heal pickups was too strong.

Safety Trigger  - When you switch Forms, grant a 15% health shield for 5s->4s. This has a 10s cooldown.
With the shields lasting for half of the item's cooldown, it basically made it so that you can only actually take damage 50% of the time if you are frequently swapping forms. Don’t wanna nerf too bad tho!

Battery Overclock  - Above 80% battery, you deal 50% more damage and your projectiles are faster. Your batteries drain 70%->60% faster.
This item is really good now.

Wyrmweave Wiring  - Gain 35%->20% Primary and Secondary Attack Speed. You move 25%->20% slower.
Numbers were just a little too big, this should even out the item.

Twisted Circuits  - Gain 25% Secondary Attack Speed and your batteries deplete 20% slower. Your Secondary activates automatically.
This helps the item remain usable and less instantly run ending.

Unstable Batteries  - While above 70% battery, nearby enemies are set on fire. While below 20%->15% battery, you’re set on fire. (Increase damage scaling of fire dmg source from .35->.45)
This item had the scariest downside while simultaneously having the worst upside. Making the downside less scary and making the fire do more damage should help it.

Enemy Balance Changes

Sentry:


- Will teleport closer to the player when out of attack range
- Max HP reduced
- Attack rate reduced
This enemy could often extend the length of combat encounters by forcing the player to hunt them down after they’d cleared the rest of the room. These changes help keep them as an active element, and reduce the tedium involved in killing them.

Pile:


- Reduced max HP of spawned crawlers
This helps address situations where the player has low damage output, and finds themselves unable to keep up with killing crawlers as they’re spawned.

Rapidfire Flapper:


- Reduced number of bullets spawned
This helps increase visual clarity, and provides more options for player movement.

Burst Guard:


- Reduced number of bullets spawned
- Max HP reduced
- Slow bullet size reduced
This helps increase visual clarity, provides more options for player movement, and reduces tedium involved in killing them.

Guard:


- Max HP reduced
- Slow bullet size reduced
This helps increase visual clarity and reduces tedium involved in killing them.

Super Chariot:


- Max HP reduced
- Bullet size reduced
This helps increase visual clarity and reduces tedium involved in killing them.

Super Crawler:


- Max HP reduced
This reduces the tedium involved in killing them.

Antares/Regulus


- Max HP reduced
- Attack rate reduced
- Damage reduction during phases two and three increased
This prevents the fight from dragging for too long, and gives the player more opportunities to be active in dealing damage during the boss fight.

General Changes and Bug Fixes

- General VFX improvements.
- Reduced overall file size (from 1.5GB to 250MB!)
- Miscellaneous changes to room layouts/enemy placements.
- Enemy projectiles now always render above ally projectiles.
- Added a small cooldown to hit flash when attacking enemies - your eyes should hurt less!
- Reduced Conveyor Belt speeds in all room layouts.
- Controller cursor stops anchoring to the player when entering the death screen.
- Form evolution EXP requirements reduced from 7500 -> 5000.
- Max Health Pickups changed from +10% increase to current hp to a flat 20 HP increase.
- Explosive barrels have been added to various room layouts, dealing damage to allies and enemies when ignited.
- Made Dev Cheats easier to access: keep “wei” held down while the game is paused
- Transition to tutorial level is much smoother, especially when booting the game with no save file
- Fixed a bug that resulted in Construct Form “Attack Order” laser dealing double damage when equipped with Tennis mod.
- Fixed a bug where enemies too close to the player would not be hit by player attacks.
- Fixed miscellaneous font/spelling errors + inconsistencies.
- Fixed form menu done button not working after the mod evolution menu pops up.
- Fixed form EXP counting overkill damage on enemies.