Kill The Climbers News

Hi all, we've released a new patch for the Early Access 0.80 version of Kill The Climbers, introducing the Defense Upgrades that make defending your mountain from the climber hordes all the better! Included as a bonus in this update is the newly created Bestiary, which holds valuable information on climber enemies and animal allies... Knowledge is power!

Kill The Climbers Early Access Patch 0.80 Changelog:

New Feature: Defense Upgrades

- Trap 'Quality' Upgrades: You can now upgrade the statistical effectiveness of each trap up to Level 6, which also improves the unique qualities of each trap like its damage, damage over time, and slowing debuff.
- Trap 'Quantity' Upgrades: You can now upgrade the number of placeable traps of each type from the default of 1 up to 3.
- Traps: While the basic Mountain Traps of Icicles, Bones, and Ice Slicks themselves were already implemented, they've since been rebalanced to better account for their new upgrade potential.

New Feature: Bestiary

- Bestiary Entries: Each climber enemy, mini-boss variant, and animal defender ally have their statistics documented for your viewing pleasure! These entries will be updated periodically in future updates to reflect the latest balancing of the game.
- Future Plans: Although the fundamentals of the Bestiary screen have been implemented, we will work to further refine its appearance, information, and gameplay utility between now and the next update. For example, we plan on introducing rewards for killing certain types and numbers of climbers, redeemable from the Bestiary.

Known Issues:

- The Tutorial segment may leave certain visual tooltips beyond the tutorial's duration.
- There may be visual issues on certain monitors and resolutions.
- The 3 second pause after the in-game skills menu may not necessarily pause everything.
- Some animals sometimes may follow climbers without apparently damaging or killing them.
- Potential bug where the defender quantity meta upgrades can cause issues with animal defender behaviors and spawning. These defender issues may be present regardless of the meta upgrade.
- Some animal dens still aren't placed accurately in the Prep Phase boxes and maybe be visually overlapping with others.
- Extra animals from the Defender Quantity meta upgrade won't appear at the Prep Phase screen, will require you to put a skill point into a particular defender first.
- Doing avalanche at the game over screen may cause infinite shaking.
- Potential bugs with animal quantity meta upgrade which may not give as many as it should, or extra defenders may seemingly disappear after a time. Or, it could be that they're just stacked on top of each other perfectly so you can't see them all.
- Left-Clicking in the bottom left corner of the screen may cause your wind gust to disappear/despawn.
- Some climber abilities are not yet fully implemented and are a work in progress. For this and other reasons the game is currently easier than intended... for now.

Thanks for reading, now go kill those climbers!

Hi all, we've released a new patch for the Early Access 0.70 version of Kill The Climbers, introducing the Climber Powers that make the game more challenging and your climbing foes more powerful!

Kill The Climbers Early Access Patch 0.70 Changelog:

New Feature: Climber Powers

Many climber enemies now have powers that activate passively during gameplay, which become increasingly challenging as they work together to reach the mountain peak! They can fight back against your animal defenders, speed past your defenses, and support one another with auras that affect every other climber on the mountain so long as they live! Take them out early to save yourself some trouble!

New Climber Powers:

- Master Climber: Speed Boost - Gains +1 Movement Speed for 1 second upon taking damage.
- Sherpa Climber: Global HP Boost Aura - Gives +1 HP and Maximum HP to all currently living climbers including itself, Sherpa auras stack.
- Jetpacker Climber: Flight - Can't be targeted or damaged by most animal defender physical attacks, except for flying or ranged attacks. Also immune to traps.
- Monk Climber: Regeneration - Heals self by 1 HP every 4 seconds.
- Hunter Climber: Shooter - Shoots Damaging Bullet at closest animal defenders and Yeti.
- Drill Sergeant Climber: Acceleration - Global Speed Boost Aura - for +0.25 Movement Speed, Stacks.
- Up-Doc Climber: Healer - Global HP Regeneration Aura +1 every 5 seconds. Doesn't Stack.
- Prospector Climber: Pickaxe - Deals damage to nearby animal defenders and Yeti in an area-of-effect radius around himself.
- Super Climber: Flight - Can't be targeted or damaged by most animal defender physical attacks, except for flying or ranged attacks. Also immune to traps.
- The Boss Climber: Global HP Regeneration Aura +1 every 1 second, which affects himself and all other climbers.

Known Issues:

- The Tutorial segment may leave certain visual tooltips beyond the tutorial's duration.
- There may be visual issues on certain monitors and resolutions.
- The 3 second pause after the in-game skills menu may not necessarily pause everything.
- Some animals sometimes may follow climbers without apparently damaging or killing them.
- Potential bug where the defender quantity meta upgrades can cause issues with animal defender behaviors and spawning. These defender issues may be present regardless of the meta upgrade.
- Some animal dens still aren't placed accurately in the Prep Phase boxes and maybe be visually overlapping with others.
- Extra animals from the Defender Quantity meta upgrade won't appear at the Prep Phase screen, will require you to put a skill point into a particular defender first.
- Doing avalanche at the game over screen may cause infinite shaking.
- Potential bugs with animal quantity meta upgrade which may not give as many as it should, or extra defenders may seemingly disappear after a time. Or, it could be that they're just stacked on top of each other perfectly so you can't see them all.
- Left-Clicking in the bottom left corner of the screen may cause your wind gust to disappear/despawn.
- Some climber abilities are not yet fully implemented and are a work in progress. For this and other reasons the game is currently easier than intended... for now.

Thanks for reading, now go kill those climbers!

Hi all, we've released a new patch for the Early Access 0.60 version of Kill The Climbers, introducing the more formidable new Mini-Bosses and some other quality of life features!

Kill The Climbers Early Access Patch 0.60 Changelog:

New Feature: Mini-Bosses

Prepare your peaks, a dangerous new threat has emerged on the mountain! Mini-Bosses, an elite variety of climbers that surpass their lesser peers with their strength and fortitude! As they periodically appear during waves, watch out for their signature red color and health bar! They'll be tougher to take down, will do more damage to your mountain's health, and even your mighty Avalanche power won't be enough to easily wipe them away alone! If you can kill them, you'll get bonus score and coins for your efforts!

Quality Of Life Features:

- New Yeti Automation Setting

For your convenience and flexibility of playstyles, you can now automate the fearsome Yeti like the other animal defenders via the new 'Auto Defender: Yeti' setting in the Settings Menu! Although the Yeti can potentially be even more powerful when controlled manually by skillful hands, this allows you to focus on killing the climbers in other ways and not devote as much time and attention to moving and dashing the Yeti around. As he moves, the Yeti will automatically pursue close climbers and deal melee damage by touching them. The Yeti's snowball projectiles will still follow your cursor, so aim carefully for maximum damage, slowing, and mini-stunning of climbers!

- New Tutorial

We added a new optional tutorial at the beginning of the game to help show new players the ropes! In the future, the tutorial will be updated further to make it more seamless and account for future features and content.

- Removal Of Ability Restrictions

Now you can use your primary and secondary abilities, like the Rockslide and Wind Gust, at the same time you have your Defender like the Yeti out and about! Feel free to synergize your entire array of abilities for maximum climber-killing potential!

Known Issues:

- The Tutorial segment may leave certain visual tooltips beyond the tutorial's duration.
- There may be visual issues on certain monitors and resolutions.
- The 3 second pause after the in-game skills menu may not necessarily pause everything.
- Some animals sometimes may follow climbers without apparently damaging or killing them.
- Potential bug where the defender quantity meta upgrades can cause issues with animal defender behaviors and spawning. These defender issues may be present regardless of the meta upgrade.
- Some animal dens still aren't placed accurately in the Prep Phase boxes and maybe be visually overlapping with others.
- Extra animals from the Defender Quantity meta upgrade won't appear at the Prep Phase screen, will require you to put a skill point into a particular defender first.
- Doing avalanche at the game over screen may cause infinite shaking.
- Potential bugs with animal quantity meta upgrade which may not give as many as it should, or extra defenders may seemingly disappear after a time. Or, it could be that they're just stacked on top of each other perfectly so you can't see them all.
- Left-Clicking in the bottom left corner of the screen may cause your wind gust to disappear/despawn.
- Some climber abilities are not yet fully implemented and are a work in progress. For this and other reasons the game is currently easier than intended... for now.

Thanks for reading, now go kill those climbers!

Kill The Climbers Early Access Patch 0.51 Changelog:

Hi all, we've released a new patch for the Early Access version of Kill The Climbers, focusing on quality of life features, gameplay balancing, and some bug fixes!

With some help from your appreciated feedback and rounds of testing, we think we've been able to improve the game to an even more fun, fair, and playable state! The next patch after this one is planned to feature even more content additions, so look forward to that too!

Quality Of Life Features:

- Added a 3 second pause after closing the In-Game Upgrade Skill Menu via the 'X', so that players have a bit more time to readjust to the flow of gameplay after upgrading. If you don't want to wait the 3 seconds, you can simply close the menu via 'Q' or 'Tab' to instantly get back into the action.
- Added an additional Power Ups button at the Game Results screen to save players from having to go back to the Main Menu to purchase meta upgrades.
- Added Quick Exit Button to quickly quit to desktop.
- Both the Auto Abilities and Show Help/How To will be checked 'On' in the Settings at start of game.
- Made it more clear that Spacebar does Avalanche.
- Made it more clear that WASD moves the yeti.
- Put a GUI box around the in-game upgrade prompt to make it more obvious to players.

Balance Changes:

Climber Changes:

Developer's Note:

Further balancing of the various climbers will mostly have to wait until the upcoming climber abilities are all fully implemented. Look forward to them, they'll add much more unique variety to the enemies and extra challenge!

- Reduced Expert Climber Max HP from 8 to 6.
- Reduced Novice Climber Movement Speed from 1.5 to 1.25.
- Reduced Novice Climber Max HP from 4 to 2.
- Reduced Novice Climber Mountain Damage Value from 2 to 1.

Yeti Balancing:

Developer's Note:

The Yeti was designed as a high skill-floor and high skill-ceiling playstyle that offered a different experience from the other abilities given to the player. He can be deceptively powerful if you know what you're doing, but it's clear that beginners may struggle to fully utilize his potential. In order to make him more user-friendly, we've given several overall buffs to the Yeti and eventually plan on giving him more integration with other meta upgrades to improve his late-game scaling. Also, we're considering implementing an alternative mode to him that automates him like one of the other animal defenders, if the player doesn't feel like manually controlling him.

- Increased Yeti Max HP from 65 to 100.
- Increase Yeti Movespeed by +1
- Increased Yeti contact damage by +1
- Increased Yeti Dash damage by +1
- Increased Yeti Snowball damage by +1
- Increased Yeti Invulnerability duration while dashing slightly.
- Increased Yeti snowball sprite size slightly and snowball area-of-effect.
- Made yeti's Spawn Roar do an avalanche and then slow everyone to 1 speed for 5 seconds.
- Removed pressing 'X' to despawn the Yeti. This prevents players from accidentally 'killing' their Yeti without intending to.

Rockslide/Moonrocks Balancing:

Developer's Note:

As one of your primary abilities, the Rockslide's vertical clearing power was always intended to be significantly useful, particularly the higher up you drop it. After further testing and feedback, it became clear that the Rockslide had become the most popular and efficient 'meta' strategy, particularly if you place your cursor at the top of the mountain's peak. This becomes even more overpowered when you unlock the final 'Moonrocks' upgrade. So, in order to increase utilization of the game's other abilities and meta upgrades, we've endeavored to reduce the Rockslide's strength in various areas. In the future, we'll be adding and rebalancing other things to further encourage a greater variety of playstyles.

- Increased Rockslide Level 2 to do +2 Wind Damage for 5 seconds rather than +1
- Increased Rockslide base ability cooldown by 0.50 seconds.
- Slightly slowed down rockslide/moonrocks projectiles movement speed.
- Reduced rocks to only do a 0.25 second ministun instead of 0.5s at its Level 2 upgrade.
- Reduced Rockslide Level 3 to -0.25s CD instead of -0.50
- Reduced Rockslide Level 6 to -0.25s CD instead of -0.50
- Reduced Rockslide Level 8 to -0.25s CD instead of -0.50

Wind Gust/Mirror Gust Balancing:

Developer's Note:

Up until recently, one of the most critical functions of the Wind Gust wasn't yet functional, but we've since fixed it so that it properly slows enemies when upgraded to Level 2. This should allow it to be that much more useful, especially against fast enemies. We'll probably modify it further so that it serves its niche as a debuffing crowd control option, further differentiating it from the damage-focused Rockslide.

- Wind Gust now properly slows enemies at Level 2.
- Increase Wind Gust Level 2 to do +2 Rock Damage for 5 seconds rather than +1
- Increased wind movement speed by 1.
- Increased Wind damage by 1.

Avalanche Changes:

- Made it so that the upgraded avalanche freezes the boss for 3 seconds rather than 5.

Bug Fixes:

- Fixed bottom black border that was glitching.
- Fixed the time calculator at the Game Results screen being off by some seconds.
- Fixed the How To Play screen not coming up automatically.
- Fixed issue with animal dens being already placed at the start.
- Fixed frame outline on the "You Win!' screen.
- Fixed bug with avalanche that shook the screen so hard it disrupted the GUI.

Known Issues:

- There may be visual issues on certain monitors and resolutions.
- The 3 second pause after the in-game skills menu may not necessarily pause everything.
- Some animals sometimes may follow climbers without apparently damaging or killing them.
- Potential bug where the defender quantity meta upgrades can cause issues with animal defender behaviors and spawning. These defender issues may be present regardless of the meta upgrade.
- Some animal dens still aren't placed accurately in the Prep Phase boxes and maybe be visually overlapping with others.
- Extra animals from the Defender Quantity meta upgrade won't appear at the Prep Phase screen, will require you to put a skill point into a particular defender first.
- Doing avalanche at the game over screen may cause infinite shaking.
- Potential bugs with animal quantity meta upgrade which may not give as many as it should, or extra defenders may seemingly disappear after a time. Or, it could be that they're just stacked on top of each other perfectly so you can't see them all.
- Left-Clicking in the bottom left corner of the screen may cause your wind gust to disappear/despawn.
- Some climber abilities are not yet fully implemented and are a work in progress. For this and other reasons the game is currently easier than intended... for now.

Thanks for reading, now go kill those climbers!

Finally, Kill The Climbers is now available on Steam in Early Access! We look forward to showing you our labor of love and would love any feedback through its development to make the game that much more enjoyable for all! Buy now to save 10% off during the next week, and tell your friends to give it a try if they'd like some good arcade action! Please leave a review too, it really helps!

We also polished things up some more for this Early Access release, and will be hard at work going forward in fixing bugs, making quality of life improvements, and adding new content in future patches! Please look forward to it!

Kill The Climbers Early Access Release Patch 0.5 Changelog:

BUG FIXES:

- Various fixes and improvements relating to climber enemies, animal defenders, UI/GUI elements, etc.

BALANCE CHANGES:

- Minor stat rebalances of climbers and animals to improve viability of different playstyles and increase overall challenge.

KNOWN ISSUES:

- Some animals sometimes seem to follow climbers without apparently damaging or killing them.
- Potential bug where the defender quantity meta upgrades can cause issues with animal defender behaviors and spawning. These defender issues may be present regardless of the meta upgrade.
- Some animal dens still aren't placed accurately in the Prep Phase boxes and maybe be visually overlapping with others.
- Extra animals from the Defender Quantity meta upgrade won't appear at the Prep Phase screen, will require you to put a skill point into a particular defender first.
- Doing avalanche at the game over screen may cause infinite shaking.
- Potential bugs with animal quantity meta upgrade which may not give as many as it should, or extra defenders may seemingly disappear after a time. Or, it could be that they're just stacked on top of each other perfectly so you can't see them all.
- Left-Clicking in the bottom left corner of the screen may cause your wind gust to disappear/despawn.
- Some climber abilities are not yet fully implemented and are a work in progress. For this and other reasons the game is currently easier than intended... for now.

Thanks for reading, now go kill those climbers!