6 months later: Everything we've improved since launch

Hello Reclaimers,

Rogue Core has now been out in early access for six months. It’s been a growthful half year.

Yeah, alright, the launch didn’t go so hot. But we learned a lot from that. And we’ve worked really hard these past months to fix the stuff people didn’t like, and add more of the cool stuff people do like. We think the game’s in a much better place, and headed in the right direction. We’re proud of what we’ve got, and grateful for all the feedback that helped us get here.

To celebrate our six-month milestone, we’ve put Rogue Core on a free weekend . It’s live now! It’ll run through this Monday, November 16th. Think of it as an open house. We’re hoping you’ll come back and take a look at everything we’ve done, and maybe bring a couple friends too.

Down below is a dev vlog from me and Mark, looking back at what we’ve learned (and how Rogue Core’s gotten better) over the past six months. There’s a written recap of everything beneath that, if you’re more of a reader.

Finally, we’ve got an updated roadmap ready too. That’s at the bottom of this post, and we also put it up on the Steam store page.

Hope you like what you see, and hope to see you down in the mines!

With love, -Ghost Ship Games

In case the video hasn't embedded properly, here's a direct YouTube link.

Six months later: What's new and what's improved

Down below is a run-through of all the major stuff we’ve added, removed and improved in the past half year. It's basically the video above, but in handy little bullet points.

If you’ve been following along with every update, most of this won’t be new to you. This is for the folks who picked up Rogue Core at launch, didn’t like it, and haven’t touched it since. Hopefully you’ll see a couple good reasons to give it another go this weekend. <3

CORE GAMEPLAY

Especially in the weeks right after our EA launch, we spent a long time looking at how we could tweak and improve the game’s fundamentals. Based on your feedback, we had two main priorities: Giving players more control over their own experience, and smoothing out the most major points of friction during a run.

Here are the main improvements to Rogue Core’s core gameplay:

• All enemies now drop EXP when killed. This gives a nice dopamine hit on each kill, and directly rewards combat. You can still mine Expenite like before too.
• You don’t need to group up to collect upgrades anymore. Just hit a button on the REPD, and the process starts for everyone.
• Chosen upgrades are replaced with new ones. This way, everybody gets the same amount of choices.
• You can reroll your upgrades now. There’s a Refractor Terminal in the elevator, so you’re never stuck with an upgrade you don’t want.
• We added difficulty settings. Choose from five Threat Levels to decide the level of challenge that’s best for you.
• You can adjust the mission timer. The ‘Assault Pace’ toggle allows you to add more time to missions for a more leisurely pace, or up the tempo for a spicy speedrun.

WEAPONS & EQUIPMENT

Since we launched, we’ve had ambitions to expand the Reclaimer’s arsenal. Every update so far has made good on that, giving you new ways to kill and get around the caves.

Here’s all the new weaponry and gear that we’ve added so far:

• Trident DES: An energy shotgun with an alternate ‘barrage’ fire mode.
• Ventura Model 57: A hard-hitting pump-action shotgun with a narrow spread.
• Corrosive Sludge Pump: The stinky goo returns. Time to get your goop on.
• LOK-1 Smart Rifle: Engineer’s auto-lock rifle makes a comback too.
• XQ-2 Quantum Warp Field: New teleporter traversal tool.
• Removed Flare Gun from traversal tools: Now it’s in a tidy glass box. Break the box to collect it.

Some existing weapons got reworked sound design and animations, too. Everything should feel extra crisp and punchy now.

ENEMIES & BOSSES

Adding more enemies has been a frequent request from players. We’ve tried to focus on enemies that disrupt your strategy and change up the flow of combat, keeping you on your toes during a run.

Here are the new enemies added to the mines:

• Voidkin Drifter: A sniper enemy that likes to keep its distance.
• Voidkin Dominator: An even bigger heavy-duty sniper with powerful projectiles and an area-denial attack.
• Corespawn Bloater: A big fat chud that blows up when he dies. Great for magnifying elemental effects on nearby enemies.
• Balgorath Gatekeeper: The fourth boss, with a series of tricky ranged attacks for a classic ‘bullet hell’ boss fight experience.

LOTS OF NEW UPGRADES

One initial point of feedback we got was that a lot of upgrades didn’t feel super impactful. We’ve spent a lot of time addressing that: Removing some that just weren’t super flashy, and adding lots more that actually feel fresh and fun.

We’ve added 25 new upgrades since launch. Our focus has been on upgrades that give you new abilities, or drastically change the effects of what you’ve already got. Stuff that feels more exciting to unlock, like a proper game-changer should.

Some highlights include:

• Grid-Shock: Damaging electrified targets spreads +50% as electric damage to other enemies connected via electrical arcs.
• Icicle Strike: Power Attacks spawn icicles lasting for +5s.
• Impact Duplication: Direct grenade hits on a target spawn +1 extra grenades from the impact point.
• Chemical Instability: Damaging a corrosive puddle or Goo Cannon puddle makes it explode for +50 Corrosive damage in short range.Stun is guaranteed when destroying breakable weakpoints and doubles duration.
• Nuclear Optics: Enemies in your flashlight beam take 30 Radiation damage per second.

GAMEPLAY VARIATION

With a game like Rogue Core, an eternal priority is keeping things fresh. We heard the same from you, so we’ve done our best to introduce new ways to make each run stand out.

Here are some of the key additions focused on gameplay variation:

• 13 new cave constructions: These are the big structures like scaffolding, excavation and big machinery.
• 15 new cavern formations: These are the organic cavern shapes that make up the cave system.
• 4 new entrance facilities: These are new starting rooms, where you first collect your gear and enter the mine.
• New boss biomes: Each boss’ biome “infects” the starting biome as you get deeper, making for a more immersive lead-up to the finale.
• Boss Risk Vectors: An optional Mission Alteration allowing you to introduce unique challenges to each boss fight.
• New Mission Alterations: More ways to spice it up. A personal favorite is ‘Death Mitosis’, where all Corespawn enemies split into baby zombie versions when they die.
• Elevator variations: Instead of simply defending the Drive Unit in each level, you might have to collect gears to repair it, or remove some mysterious growths and trigger a wave. It’s random for each level.

QUALITY OF LIFE

On top of all the major stuff, there’s been loads of little tweaks focused on making everything run smoother. A bit of grease on the gears, filing down the sharp edges. Removing little frustrations and focusing on the “yeah, it should have been this way” stuff.

Here are the major QoL headlines since we launched:

• Single player “Save and Quit”: This is a new one for this week: Solo players can now ‘save’ after any level and quit the game, and return later on to pick up where they left off.
• Crash recovery system: If your host quits or crashes, the rest of the team can retry from the start of the level they were on.
• Auto-sprint: You're as beautiful as the day I lost you.
• More ammo spawns in caves: To reduce frequent frustrations about running out of ammo.
• Improved Bio-Booster UI: Easier to see what Bio-Boosters you have (and haven’t) unlocked.
• Adding new “class-unlocked” Bio-Boosters: Adding new decks that don’t belong to any class, allowing for more mix-and-match action.
• Cosmetic Sheet rework: Most cosmetics now unlock for all classes, not just one. Reworked the UI to be easier on the eyes.
• Alpha Clearance auto-granted: Now even new players can unlock Grenade Lockers and Expenite Events from the start.
• Visual polish for loadout UI: Made most menus easier to understand and less cluttered.
• Hundreds of new voicelines: Big focus on environmental interactions, and making the Laser Pointer much more effective for context cues and objective-focused communication.

FULL PATCH NOTES: UPDATES 1/2/3

There’s much more, too: smaller stuff, bug fixes, more QoL tweaks, things like that.

For a full run-down of everything we added since Rogue Core launched in May, you can find links to each major update’s patch notes right below: https://store.steampowered.com/news/app/2605790/view/690886614188034199 https://store.steampowered.com/news/app/2605790/view/676256891013169314 https://store.steampowered.com/news/app/2605790/view/668380665149918571

New roadmap: What's next for Rogue Core

We’ve still got a big to-do list. Below is our newly-updated Rogue Core Roadmap, with our plans for Update 4 and beyond. You’ll find this uploaded on our Steam store page as well.