- 1.02.01: Secret area and engine update - 21 September 2026
There is a new secret area. It appears in a certain structure with a small probability, and it can be seen from the outside.There are now only half as many rats in the Mylantis caves (but there is still a huge number of them).In general, the moving entity update code is faster (using various tricks), but it is more complicated.It used to be that the depth buffer was cleared after rendering each level. Now the depth buffer is cleared after rendering 2 levels. This implies that the viewer level L as well as level L-1 are rendered together without clearing the depth buffer in between them. This decreases the number of depth buffer related render glitches.It is now possible to create a mod that has a skybox. See the skybox guide.It should now be impossible to move the player 0.1 block lengths or more through an env rect without triggering it.Now when the engine loads a game, it clears ALL k…
- 1.02.00: Icarus mode - 24 July 2026
Added a truly amazing secret area which required rewriting core parts of the engine! The community can have fun searching for and exploring this area.Now certain "infertile" chunks are not created at all. This is an example of "pruning the chunk tree". For example, consider the block type XAR_YING_FOREST_AIR. This consists of a single gray block in the middle, with sometimes a grower, a shrinker, or a goblin. Now this block type has been set to "prune when infertile" (PWI). When a XAR_YING_FOREST_AIR chunk exists and is fertile, it looks normal. However, as soon as the chunk becomes infertile, the chunk is removed. If we had not set it to be PWI, then when it is infertile it would just have its single block in the middle but no growers, shrinkers, or goblins.The Xar "block overrides" system has been improved. Now when you override a xar block with a Lua block, the texture of the Lua blo…
- 1.01.32: Mountains in I2 - 16 April 2026
Added new area: I2 Mountains. These can be found in Ostrich Ferns (in I2). At the center of these mountains is a new weapon mode for your Laser: the Cold Beam. This costs two ammo but freezes monsters for 2.5 times the amount of time as the standard fire.Added new area: Beta Cube. This can be found in the main treasure area inside Ying Trees. This is intended for very hard difficulties, where monsters limit which areas you can go. In a Beta Cube you can get RejuvenX and EMP upgrades.Load time of the xar package has been improved by bundling Lua script files together.There are a few more window API functions added for modding.Recall that for several technical reasons, the engine cannot make changes to chunks that are not part of the active chunk tree. However, there is a loophole: The engine can read and write chunk files for chunks not in the active chunk tree (chunk files are "random a…
- 1.01.31: Gone fishin - 18 January 2026
The new game menu has been modified. You still enter your player name and then the package you want to play (just like before). However, after this you are given a list of options. The first option is to start a new game. Another option is to change the "starting configuration". Another option is to change the seed. Then, the remainder of the options are to set variables that are passed to the package. We call these variables "mutators" See the guide on how to add mutators to your own standalone package (if you are a modder).The standard xar package now has the following mutators: "One Way", "Low Ammo", "Low max ammo upgrades", "Low upgrade buying", and "No stable singletons room". You can read about what these do in the new game menu.Now some of the Williston Fields at the base of Williston Trees (in I1) have orange cubes in them. These cubes contain Cannon Max Ammo upgrades. Let's cal…
- 1.01.30: Supermassive black holes - 6 November 2025
A new dungeon has been added: Supermassive Black Holes. These are at the center of Galaxies. In the treasure room you can pick up the following new Dark Hole weapon mode: The Quasar Drive. This is like the Black Hole drive, except it costs 60 dark holes to use (instead of 20) and it makes the player move even faster. It still lasts only 30 seconds, but you can "stack it" up to 300 seconds.We fixed an old quirk of the engine: monsters only respawning when the chunk they are in is recreated. This fixes the glitch where users were able to remove the Inner Core at the end of the game by sleeping for an hour in a certain location.There is a new mini area: The Space Root Pink Prison. If you try to use Pink Rings in Outer Space, this area will trap you to prevent you from growing out of the Space Root chunk. Although there was no way to abuse this previously, it is probably safer to have it th…
- 1.01.29: Directional lighting for meshes - 27 August 2025
Now there is optional mesh directional lighting. You can enable this with Options -> Engine -> Rendering. You can change the min and max lighting values. Also note that in the same place you can easily turn on anisotropic filtering (before you needed to do this from the console or program_startup.txt).Various improvements have been made to the chunk file database for saved games. For example, we now wait to process "remove chunk file requests" until the player saves the game.
- 1.01.28: Cursor and new database model for saved games - 30 July 2025
There is now an optional cursor for menus. You can specify whether there is a cursor for both windowed mode and fullscreen mode. The intended use case is to not use a cursor for fullscreen mode, but then the user can quickly ALT-ENTER to windowed mode and use the cursor to click outside of the window.The game now uses a SQLite database for saved games. This should help Linux users. This will apply to new games that are created, but old games will use the old database model. You can tell if the old database model is being used because there will be a yellow cylinder on the HUD.In Tweedle-Dee Air there is a Tweedle Haunted House. These has several dungeons all focused around the idea of it being dark and you need to worry about seeing.In addition to the old waypoint system, there is a new related system: bookmarks. Many waypoints in the world are now next to "bookmarks" (when it is not co…
- 1.01.27: Mod selection GUI and the Sliver Maze - 11 April 2025
There is now a GUI (in game) for the player to select which mods to use. Mods should be installed in either Data/Packages or Input/Packages (depending on the mod). The mod selection GUI allows the player to select mods and choose the order in which they are applied. This order must agree with the dependency requirements of the relevant mods. Added new area: the White Rose. This has some health upgrades and 600% armor. We added a White Rose to a secret area in the Mylantis Caves Library. Can you find it? Added a new area: I3 Clouds. You can use these clouds to refuel on ammo. There are also White Roses in them. There is a new weapon mode for the laser: the Freeze Ray. This costs 2 ammo and freezes for double the usual amount of time. However the freeze time is "stacking". This can be found at the end of the treasure room in the Deep Sliver Maze. Added new area: the Deep Sliver Maze. This…
- 1.01.26: Iron war vulcans and chunk editing package - 25 January 2025
Integer environment variables are now 64 bits instead of 32 bits. As a result, integer game global variables use 64 bits. There is now a new xar package command: snap. This command will take a "snapshot" of the chunk that contains the player and will save it in the file "Output/FileOut/chunk_snapshot.lua". This can be used for level editing. Part of getting this to work involved allowing packages to write to files in Output/FileOut. That is, there are now API functions for writing to files. There is now another package on the game's website called xar_chunk_edit. This can be used to edit a chunk using block creation tools in game. Then the user can use the package's own snap command to auto generate a .lua block script file for that chunk. Colorblind friendly text boxes are now in beta. See the game's website. There is now a new rule: the program should not allocate memory buffers that…
- Labor of love nomination request - 27 November 2024
Nominate us for the labor of love Steam award! We have been working on this game for over 13 years, and we are still improving it! Thank you to the community for your many comments and suggestions.
- 1.01.25: Enhanced hardcore mode - 24 November 2024
The xar package now has the command "claimtrophies". When this command is run, you gain a Steam achievement for every trophy that your player has already collected. Note that you run the command by opening the console "press ~" then type "claimtrophies" and hit enter. You can now create the file "WorldNodes/xar/xar_block_overrides.txt". This file lists xar nodes that are replaced by Lua block scripts. Now any package that depends on the xar package can have the __main functions of its Lua block scripts create xar blocks. Now the __main functions of block scripts can use the built in xar chunk generation code to generate them. You can now enable and disable anisotropic filtering. Use the variable "engine.render.anisotropic_filtering". There is now a command called "save passive". This will do nothing if automatic saving is disabled. If automatic saving is enabled, this command will save…
- 1.01.24: Steam achievements - 15 November 2024
Steam achievements have been added to the game. There are currently a total of 244. That is, there are 112 achievements for normal trophies, 21 achievements for completing the game under different circumstances, and 111 achievements for "secret trophies". Secret trophies are like normal trophies, but their locations are not described in the game. In addition to the script Input/Scripts/program_startup.txt run on startup (which is in the internal Lisp style language of the program), also the script Input/Scripts/game_startup.lua is run whenever the player loads a game. This script can call the Lua code defined by the package. Now the console command "bind" exists, which can be used to bind input events to actions. This should be used in the game_startup.lua file. Now when selecting a package when starting a new game, a thumbnail of the package is shown. The thumbnails themselves are loca…
- 1.01.23: Custom music and modding support - 28 October 2024
You can now add custom music to the game. See the game's website for how to do this. You can mod textures, sound, music, meshes, basic entities, moving entities, environment rects, game scripts, window game scripts, and blocks. You do this by creating the package Input/Packages/xar, and whatever is found in that package overrides the corresponding asset the standard Data/Packages/xar package. Fixed glitch where you can telefrag large monsters by shrinking into them. Now when you are spawned in the starting room when you start a new game, the variable game.globals.xar.difficulty.speedrun_start is set to your current time. You can now paste into the console (control + v). That is, you hold down the left control key and press v. This just pastes to the last line that you are typing, and it does not add anything beyond the first newline character found. You can now copy the current line bei…
- 1.01.22: Fertile radius and new I2 areas - 9 October 2024
We increased the default draw distance. The level radius for the player's level used to be 3, now it is 4. The main technical advance here is the "fertile radius". The fertile radius determines which chunks contain non-block entities. So all chunks (on a level) outside the fertile radius only contain blocks. The fertile radius for the level of the player is still 3. Added new weapon mode: the Progressive Rocket. These rockets have a very slow velocity and do not explode, but they have a very high damage per second and damage per ammo. Added a place called the "Stable Singletons Room" next to the player's emergency waypoint. This room has copies of some of the areas of the world, so it is easy to come back to them later. For example, when you enter I1 and eventually reach a Williston City, you can touch an item which unlocks a door in the I1 block in the Stable Singletons Room. That bloc…
- 1.01.21: Pool balls and monster shoot delays - 16 June 2024
Rat monsters now follow the player. Pool ball monsters now follow the player. Moreover they are able to follow the player around corners using the game's new pathing system! Many types of monsters (marines, menaces, slivers, lampreys) are now part of a "Hive Mind". Once monsters part of the hive start attacking the player, there is a two second delay before they actually start damaging the player. The "hive delay" is indicated by the green rectangle on the lower left hand corner of the screen. Once the player is safe for 3 seconds, this delay resets. So if the player is on the boundary of a bunch of monsters that are part of the hive, the player can chip away at the edges safely. However if the player tries to fly through all the monsters, the 2 second grace period will be used up and the monsters will damage the player. Many monsters now have a "personal delay" X (usually X = 2 seconds…
- 1.01.20: Arcades, Tommy Guns, and Rapid Railguns - 17 May 2024
Replaced several white box devices with "arcade doors". An "arcade" is an area where when you go in it records your ammo, then you are given infinite ammo, and when you leave the area your ammo is reset to what is was when you entered. Examples of arcades are 1) The Richmond Library Arcade, 2) The Central Burlington Tower, 3) Rail Caves (just outside Burlington Cities) and 4) The Inner Crust of Oranges. Added waypoints (and save points) to I3 Mahogany Treetops. Added Colchester Cities to Mahogany Bark along with more nuke ammo, savepoints, and a map room. Added more waypoints and ammo to Carrot and Turnip caves. New weapon mode: Nuclear Pulse Propulsion. This is equivalent to a normal nuke, but it propels the player forward with a great velocity. New weapon mode: The Tommy Gun. This is designed to replace the primary cannon in the later game. It damages monsters at a long range and has…
- 1.01.19: More I2 trophies (Willow Trees and Mystic Vines) - 12 May 2024
Removed the White Box Device at the start of Large White Flowers. Added trophies in I2 for Willow Trees, Dark Willow Trees, and Mystic Vines.
- 1.01.18: Nuke flash - 8 May 2024
The nuke now makes a flash when it hits. You can disable this in the package menu. Made Mystic Vines in I2 better for farming.
- 1.01.17: Botany Lab story - 7 May 2024
Apple Trees are now better for farming. The secondary laser now has the following effect: if the secondary successfully kills a monster, then this will fire primary laser beams (from the killed monster) at all nearby monsters of the same size. Made Montreal city easier to enter and exit with a 300 gold toll door. Made Danville towns easier to exit (and reenter later) with a 1 gold toll door that can only be opened from the inside. Telekinesis (an ability to pick up items) now is cheaper. The cost is between 5 and 10 gold, depending on the size of the pickup. Now the player can choose to respawn but keeping all their health, armor, and ammo. The cost is the min of 500 and 8% of the player's gold. Added more to the storyline in the Botany Lab. You can how grow out of the Desert area, and the Oasis in the desert has an easy to find waypoint. Certain monsters now emit a poison gas cloud to…
- 1.01.16: Toll doors and improved early game - 28 April 2024
Navigation changes: There is a new kind of shrinker with a skull and crossbones. This indicates that it is hard or impossible to grow once shrinking. Also, it is possible to exit more dungeons from their entrance. We increased mobility by having more two-way waypoints (instead of one-way waypoints) and less one way passageways. There are less "White Box Device" corridors (which removed the player's ammo). Many of these are replaced by a new type of door (a Toll Door) which you pay to open and then it remains open forever. To facilitate these changes which open up the world, there is now a new type of ammo box (in addition to the old type) that does not respawn when you pick it up. Weapons and ammo: Improved baseline velocity stats of the rocket and nuke. Increased the amount of ammo placement, especially for the rocket, minigun, and nuke. The intended difficulty (the purple cat) is now…
