- Polish and feel fixes - 30 August 2026
This is a smaller update than the last one, and includes a slew of feel and polish fixes, several straight from your reports, and a few from sharp eyes on the devlogs.Balance and feelPower-ups stick around longer now (15 to 20 seconds) and blink when they're about to disappear, both the pickup itself and its marker on the HUD. No more watching one vanish just as you fly over to grab it!Getting swarmed is a little less punishing now too. You get slightly more invincibility after each hit, and shields last a couple seconds longer, so the bigger waves in Worlds 2 and 3 don't burn through your lives as fast.SoundFixed the Quadgra, the spinning six-cannon enemy. Each of its guns was firing its own sound event, and stacking into a mess that flooded the audio channels. A few of you mentioned hearing phantom warning beeps, and that was the culprit. It now fires one clean shot per volley.Tuned t…
- Patch notes 6/24 - Cloud saves and offline play - 24 June 2026
This is a big one. A number of you ran into cloud sync scores getting overwritten, progress not loading offline, Steam Deck saves getting out of step. I dove deep and updated how Electro Havoc saves, syncs, and posts to the leaderboards. Thank you to everyone who flagged it. Cloud saves and offline play Your best is always kept. Saves now merge instead of overwrite across PC and Steam Deck, the game keeps your highest scores, furthest waves, and all your unlocks. Play offline anytime. Scores, stats, and unlocks save locally and sync automatically the moment you reconnect. This was always by design but had some edge cases I didn't design for. Fixed: leaderboard scores could be overwritten by a lower score. Steam now only ever keeps your best. I introduced this bug when I upgraded Godotsteam and didn't do a full regression test. Fixed: starting the game offline could show worlds as locked…
- Electro Havoc Full Release - 6 June 2026
When Electro Havoc launched into Early Access just over a year ago, it was one world, one enemy (affectionately known as The Shard), and a lot of experimentation. Launching a product from game jam prompt in mid-2023 to Early Access feedback in 2025 to now with a 1.0 Full Release has been a wild ride.Real life took the wheel for big chunks of the last year -- day job, family, the usual. Most of 1.0 got built in 15-minute commits squeezed between everything else, with the occasional late night when I could swing it. But a year of community feedback, late-night balancing, and absurd leaderboard scores encouraged me to keep building and release more content. I want to extend a sincere thanks to the folks who showed up during Early Access, the ones who left feedback, and the leaderboard regulars.Here are the broad strokes of what's getting released today:One world has become three: the origi…
- Heads up: Electro Havoc goes paid on Jun 8, 2026 - 24 May 2026
Quick note for everyone playing or thinking about it:On Jun 8, 2026 to coincide with Steam's upcoming Bulletfest game sale, Electro Havoc leaves Early Access and 1.0 goes live. At that point the game will become a paid product on Steam. Until then, the Early Access build is still free. If you've been meaning to try it, this is the window.A few things worth knowing:If you already have Electro Havoc, you keep it. No re-purchase, no save wipe, no catch. Your Steam Cloud saves carry forward -- your progression, your leaderboard scores, all come with you into 1.0.The 1.0 update lands the same day for everyone -- EA players and new buyers get the same build.There's a lot new in 1.0 -- more worlds, more ways to die, real boss fights, a thrust mechanic for getting out of trouble, the leaderboards got a proper stats panel -- but we'll do the full write-up on launch day. Today is just so nobody's…
- Major update inbound - exiting Early Access - 2 May 2026
Hello Electro Havoc community! It has been a while. Well, too long. Real life has taken hold but I have been slowly but surely making updates to the game to get it to a point where I'm comfortable exiting Early Access. I will post a more fulsome update soon on what's included in this, but I wanted to share this news as I have had to make some potentially breaking changes to the Stats and Achievements to get us ready for the full game. I have spent considerable time refactoring the game with the aim to minimize impact to everyone's progress on Early Access but some impact was unavoidable.Please post a thread in the discussion forum if you've been impact by these changes so that I'm aware, and in the interim, I will continue with urgency to release the full game. Thank you so much for your support over the last year in Early Access!
- Patch notes 4/20 - 20 April 2025
Small but important update today brought to my attention on our community forums by the first Steam player to beat the Early Access version of the game, 光咲凛音! Bug fixes: Wave 10 Complete achievement wasn't firing when Wave 10 was completed! Restart Game button wasn't enabled on Finish Game modal
- Patch notes 4/18 - 19 April 2025
Bug fixes: Total enemies left would not always reset to the correct start-of-wave numbers after a player hit "Try Again" Player health bar HUD was out of sync with the player health value so the player could die when the HUD still showed there was 1 block of health left Fixed race condition where the last enemy death would sometimes count towards your score High score now correctly displays in game over modal Balance updates: Shield now lasts for +2s longer (7s instead of 5s)
- Electro Havoc is now available! - 19 April 2025
Annnd that's it, folks! WE ARE LIVE! You can now play Electro Havoc for free while it's on Steam Early Access. Big ❤️ to everyone who shared feedback over the last +2 yrs -- it has certainly come a long way. I'd also like to share a heartfelt thanks to those who give the game a shot and leave some constructive feedback on how I can continue to improve it over the next few months while working up to a full release. A Note on Early Access During Early Access, you'll be playing World 1 that consists of 10 waves of increasingly difficult and numerous foes. I will be creating new Worlds and the ability to transit between them. You can also expect the following when the game comes out of EA: Enemies already have different movement patterns and stats (speed, health), but they are of just one type. Expect lots more variety and maybe a refactor of the existing ones. I'd like to add impact damage…
- Early Access begins Apr 18! - 8 April 2025
It has been a long, and illustrious journey these last two years as I've chipped away at this game as a hobby in my spare time. These last two months have been even more fruitful as the Playtest feedback I've gathered across the Steam, Godot, Seattle Indies and more communities have helped shape the game into what it is. But, I'm not there yet. That's why I've decided to release the game for free as part of Early Access next Fri Apr 18, 2025. I have more levels, power-ups, enemies and boss mechanics that I want to experiment with, but I'm eager to get what I feel is a completed "World 1" into the community's hands for feedback and enjoyment. Over the next 3-6 months I'll continue to add content, hopefully start a new Playtest or two, and then release the full game this Summer/Fall. I've closed down the current Playtest as I squash those last few bugs, and make a few more adjustments to…
- Major update with your playtest feedback - 22 March 2025
A few days before the Game Developers Conference (GDC) in San Francisco, I updated the playtest build with a massive update thanks to all of your feedback. Here's a summary of the major changes: New features and game updates The aesthetic of the game incl. TileMap, space background, and ship have been overhauled Player's ship now pays homage to the Electro Havoc logo (though still in progress) includes a thruster burn "tail" that reacts to the player's movements Player's ship now rotates to direction of input "Enemies left" counter added to help keep track of wave progress Power-up compass indicator added that points you to off-screen power-ups Enemy splash damage now has more unique animations and aligned color palette Added "back button" support to controllers Added Godot logo on start-up Increased the map size and game resolution (from 720p to 1080p) Enemies no longer cluster awkward…
- Major update coming soon, but also: a delay - 6 March 2025
First off, a huge thank you to all of you who have added Electro Havoc to your wishlist. Your +1's are a strong indicator to me that I'm working on something exciting, and reinforce the conviction I have in what I'm building. To the playtesters who've reached out personally, via Discord and other means -- your feedback is invaluable! I'm taking it all to heart and adding it to my issue and feature tracker (available here) to stack rank, ideate and plan for. Unfortunately, the improvements you've asked for have influenced me enough to delay the game to Q2-25. I was really, really pushing to get this out for the Steam Spring Sale and in time for the upcoming Game Developers Conference in 2w, but if I did, I'd be pushing out a subpar product that I knew I could bar raise. So, I'm going to keep the playtest open and instead of pushing out the "final" product, I'm going to push out a major u…
- Electro Havoc is open for playtesting! - 14 February 2025
This all started when I foolishly entered a game jam sometime mid-2023 and I decided to challenge myself by learning a new engine (Godot) and language (GDScript) at the same time. The “game” I built, dubbed “Electro Havoc”, was inspired by the Geometry Wars easter egg minigame in the Project Gotham Racing 2 game for the OG Xbox back in 2003. When I stumbled on it back then (and rediscovered the sequel more recently on Steam), I was hooked on the simplistic yet satisfying game loop, rockin’ soundtrack and retro aesthetic. Shockingly, I managed to score second (of four submissions…) in best use of graphics and audio and dead last for the other voting categories. Here’s a preview of what I built in ~2 hours in Godot 3.5.2 some years ago: So as you can see, it was a looong ways away from an actual game loop but it was demonstrative of what I had in my head (a scary thought). The prompt for…
