Stage Five Update

The new update is finally here! In our last post we told you about our successful test run at the Dokomi Japan-Expo, and now we release the update for everyone on Steam to enjoy. Here are all the fancy new additions we have in store for you!

New Factory Stage

The game gets a major content upgrade with the addition of the Factory as the fifth stage. It features conveyor belts, that disturb your movement, robotic enemies with shock attacks and other dangers.

Blinky & Minibit

Minibits are tiny one-wheeled bots, that try to swarm the player. When on low hit points, they will try to find a Blinky, which can fix them up. Minibits can also get charged by electric sentry towers to have their attack apply shock to the player.

Cube

Cubes are very aggressive guard bots, with a very quick but short ranged melee attack. Better keep your distance.

Hover Disc

Hoverdiscs give aerial support to their comrades. They annoy you from a distance while busy with the front line combatants.

Eye Walker

These guards have their watchful eye on you. If you are in sight, they will try to eliminate you with their laser attack.

Boss Fight

At the end of the Factory you will encounter the Tank boss, which previously guarded the Town stage.

Town Stage Changes

We felt, that the town had needed a few fixes to fully unlock its potential. Players were confused by the turn-around mid stage and the Tank was moved to the Factory, so some changes had to be made.

Reaper Boss

Leading the army of undead foes in the Town stage is no one else, than the mighty grim reaper – death himself. He is a powerful trickster with a variety of strange abilities. Can you evade his frantic attacks, or will he collect your soul?

Screamy

Scremies will relentlessly try to end you, when you come too close to one. They are probably more scared of you, than you are of them!

Blight Burster

This handsome fella is a little bit sluggish, but be careful: when defeated, they bloat and burst into poisonous splatters!

Complete Changelog

There are many more changes and additions in this update.
Here is the complete list:

Additions

• New fifth stage: the factory
• New town boss with soundtrack
• Input mapping screen and new mouse mode
• Stage result bonus screen with coins and stars
• New special attack for Walter
• Conjure venom skill replacing King of the Night for Walter
• Special notes for temple boss
• Effect resistance for amulets
• Visual effect for low energy level
• Stage number and level for region title splash
• Added more information to the status screen
• Added display for status effects

New Enemies

• Eye Walker
• Blinky
• Mini Bit
• Hover Disc
• Cube
• Screamy
• Blight Burster

Adjustments

• Less mask spawns in temple
• Moved drone to factory
• Moved brain crawler to factory
• Owl boss spawns less gnomes
• Adjust damage/health difficulty curve for five stages
• Adjust status effect graphic effect strength
• Enemies move faster when on fire
• Temple boss has more health points
• Scorchling has less health
• Lower chance for Scorchling Rush
• Health upgrades are cheaper but weaker
• Critical chance upgrades are more expensive and weaker
• Status effects do not affect projectile speeds
• Shocking experience des not affect bullets
• Explosions do not pass effects to invincible entities
• Weakened Mirror Shot
• Weakened Target Locked
• Snare damage upgrade has less effect
• More enemies in the mansion
• The mansion boss has more health points
• Astral enemy has more health points
• Companion mimics expire faster
• Flying masks are weaker

Fixes

• Entities on level borders receive damage properly
• Intimidate skill now does not self-terrify the player
• Boss entities can not be cursed

Beats of Betrayal conquers the Dokomi Japan-Expo 2025!

Conventions and Expos are always exhausting, and this time was no exception, but all the effort was worth it because of the awesome people we met there and the heartwarming feedback we received! So the first thing we want to say is: Thank you! Thank you to the whole Dokomi community, the interested players, the friends who just watched their buddies play, the cosplayers, and also the other game developers at the Creative Games Area. You guys are awesome! <3

Successful Play-Test

We received so much positive feedback from everyone playing the game at our booth, it got us kind of emotional at times to be honest… As a two-man-team, this support helps so much keeping the development going next to demanding day jobs. We are determined to see this project through, and you are part of that, thank you a lot!

New Game Update

Our Discord community knew this already, but we are currently finishing up a big update including a whole new stage and boss fight and the Dokomi was the perfect test run for us. There will be a separate update post, so keep your eyes peeled for that!

Interview with ‘Viet’ from Rocket Beans

The managers of the Creative Games Area, gamesAHEAD and GameUp! organized for Viet from Rocket Beans (a well known German channel for news and content around gaming and other pop culture topics) to interview us on stage during a live stream and let us showcase our game. This is a great chance and we want to thank them for this and all the other wonderful help, e.g. printing the banners, providing the devs with food plus drinks during the convention, helping us have a great time there.

Connecting with other Developers

It was also very interesting to meet the other developers and trying out their indie game projects. It always felt like a healthy and productive exchange, where developers try to help other developers succeed. We think this is exactly as it should be and want to applaud the dev community. Thanks for the great experience!

Shout out: VierPfeile

Last but certainly not least, we would like to thank VierPfeile, the German rhythm game community! It was through VierPfeile that the two of us developers met, which led us to create a rhythm game. We had a separate VierPfeile table at Dokomi with an additional Beats of Betrayal setup in plain sight, and our friends in the community kept an eye on our setup while we were busy with the media and our other responsibilities. Thank you for the support! You obviously rock, and we are glad to have such great people in the VierPfeile crew.

See you soon

This was our report from the Dokomi 2025 in Düsseldorf. We had a great time and once again: Thank you to everyone involved! We’ll be back soon with the release of the new update.

New Stage, Boss, & More!

Yes, you read that right! We have been busy creating new content and are currently finishing up a big update. We want to tell you about all the good stuff, that will be added to the game soon.

Factory Stage

The fifth stage has been assembled and we are proud to present the new factory!

This stage offers a fast paced experience, that requires precise movement to maneuver on the moving conveyor belts. You’ll encounter many robotic enemies, electrifying defenses and some strange mutations.

The boss fight against the tank will be moved from the town stage to the factory stage, which fits the theme perfectly with the factory assembling the tank as you progress through the stage. The town stage will get a new boss fight instead.

The Pub

Giving the town stage some finishing touches was long overdue and one of the additions is the pub. This trendy hangout spot serves as the halfway point of the stage. You should stay away from any bottles you encounter, though.

Reaper Boss Fight

With the tank being moved to the factory, the town was in dire need for a new boss fight. The undead foes lurking in this stage will have a new leader: The Reaper! Are you ready for a showdown on the graveyard?

New Shops

Even though most people assume otherwise, undead creatures want options when it comes to grocery shopping, just like the living. The B-Mart finally has some healthy competition. A-Mart and Z-Mart will open their shops for you, adding visual variety with their bright signature colors.

Input Bindings

Over the course of developing this game, we tested multiple control schemes and button layouts. We are happy with the current default, but there are a lot of reasons why people might need to customize input bindings. With the upcoming update, this will finally be possible.

Walter Special Attack

We felt that Walter’s special attack was slightly underwhelming compared to the others. That’s why it will be replaced with a new one. Walter will now spray red cherry juice all over his enemies – just as vampires typically do. The sheer pressure of the spray causes recoil, adding an extra layer of chaos to the fight.

Soon™

We are still working on the Reaper boss fight and we can not yet name a date. However, we have most of the update complete, so stay tuned!

Steam Next Fest: June 2024 Edition

We are happy to announce our participation at Steam Next Fest: June 2024!

Check out our Next Fest Demo!

We have been putting a lot of work into polishing things and getting ready for Next Fest, and are proud to be featured in the official Next Fest Trailer. This is a huge milestone for us and you can help us by wishlisting and telling your friends!

Don’t miss our live-stream events!

• Saturday at 22:00 CEST
• Sunday at 18:00 CEST

Join us as we showcase Beats of Betrayal. You’ll get a sneak peek at upcoming content, gameplay, behind-the-scenes insights, and a chance to chat with us!

Content and Feature Update

Hey everyone, we’re back! The flu hit us hard and kept us down for a bit, but we have not been lazy. We’re excited to show you some of the cool stuff we’ve been working on since our last update!

Mallory

Meet our new character, Mallory! She’s burning up the scene with her fire-based skills that you might want to play around with. We’re still working on her abilities and special attack, but we think she will ignite your gameplay experience.

The Mansion

We’re hard at work on our fourth area, the mansion. While we’re not quite ready to reveal the area boss just yet, we’re excited to share a teaser soon. In the meantime, check out some fresh gameplay footage! We’ve added more rooms and decoration, new enemies, and a fitting sountrack. This haunted place will be part of the Early-Access version!

Slime Boss

To help players get familiar with the red attack, we’ve added a new boss – one that’s a real classic. You can now face this boss in the tutorial of the demo. It’s not a huge challenge, but it’s perfect for getting you comfortable with the controls. Give it a try and see how you do!

Aim Marker

Some players mentioned they had trouble figuring out which enemy they were targeting when they pressed the aim button. To make things easier, we’ve added a marker to clearly indicate your target, helping you navigate those tricky situations more smoothly!

Story and Tutorial

We’re currently fine-tuning the tutorial and laying the groundwork for our story mode. Throughout Early-Access, we will add all the remaining stages and characters to rogue mode, so we can work on and finish story mode. The tutorial now features a glimpse of what to expect playing through the future story mode.

Animated Controls

We’ve added some cool new control animations! Instead of hitting you with a ton of dialogue right at the start, we’ve packed the key info into these short, fun animations. A few of them turned out pretty amusing, and we think they do a great job of getting the point across while making the tutorial more enjoyable.

Next Up is Next Fest

We’re currently putting the finishing touches on Beats of Betrayal to participate at Next Fest! To make everything run smoothly we are fixing as many issues and bugs as possible. Check it out soon:

-> Steam Next Fest: June 2024 <-

That’s all for now. Stay tuned for more updates!

Steam Demo Release

We are thrilled to announce that Beats of Betrayal is now available on Steam!

Ready for a challenge?

To beat the demo you will have to beat both of the two stages in succession! Choose your skills wisely, as a good selection will be neccessary to beat the higher difficulties. Submit your final result onto the global score list and try to beat our scores!

Main Highlights

• Clear both stages in succession to beat the game
• Choose your skills wisely as you keep them for the difficult second stage
• Total result overview with victory tunes for each character and mini-game
• Critical combo system
• New and improved controls

More Changes

• Added inventory and status overview
• New behavior for enemies and companions
• Enemies aim smarter with some evil shots up their sleeves
• Auto-targeting drains your energy now
• New temple and taurus boss animations
• Added and improved lots of sound effects
• Tutorial additions and polishing
• Tons of tiny changes and bug fixes

Online/Offline

• Optionally enable it in the new startup screen
• Submit scores to compete with others
• Brag about it on Discord

This is a big milestone for us, and for the game, as we can now continue working on new stages and bosses, now that the main polishing for the demo is complete. We still have some ideas up our sleeves that we hope to surprise you with later this year!

If you have any thoughts or feedback, we would love to hear about it on our Discord!

Thank you for your support, especially those who already played last week!

February Update

Next Demo Release Date

Friday, 23rd of February, 2024

We aim to release the next public demo on 2024/02/23, and preparations so far are going smoothly. As you might know, we plan on submitting Beats of Betrayal to the “Steam Next Fest: June 2024”. The demo should be considered a “test run” for the version we want to upload for the Next Fest. To get into the mood for the demo, we want to give you a little peek into what you can expect from it this month.

Multiple Stage Runs

In our previous demo versions the game ended after one stage. From now on your run will continue until you either die or you complete all stages. This means you keep all your skills for the whole run, so choose wisely! In between stages there are ways to get stronger and modify your skills. For example you can spend your beatcoins on permanent upgrades. The stages that are currently available are the forest and the temple.

Scrolls

Within stages you can find “scrolls” in treasure chests. Between stages you can spend these scrolls in two ways:

1. “Enhance” one of your skills, making it stronger in general.
2. “Transform” one of your skills into a completely new skill.

When transforming, the new skill will always be one from another character’s deck. This allows you to create hybrid builds by combining skills from different characters. For example: You play as Bob and you picked up the skill “Power” twice in the first stage. Between stages you might have the opportunity to transform your Power skill into Alice’s skill “Ricochet”. This would make it as if you picked up Ricochet twice instead of Power.

Critical Combo Meter

It was suggested in the Discord, that some kind of combo mechanic would be neat. We listened and tried to work something in, which now became the critical combo meter. This means: The better you keep your combo, the higher your critical hit chance becomes! There is a maximum critical hit chance, which you can raise by spending beatcoins in between stages.

Steam Store Page

We are finally officially Steamworks Partners, so we are currently very busy with creating our store page. There are only few assets missing until we can submit the page for reviewing. We will soon have to create an official trailer as well! Getting the game to Steam was a goal from the start and to finally watch this become reality is very exciting!

… and more!

There is a lot more going on in the background, for example these cute robot enemies.

We are working on the third & fourth stage, as well as making enemies and bosses more engaging while keeping in mind to regularly implement small fixes. Additionally there are some preparations needed for the Steam Next Fest in regards to marketing assets and deadlines to keep. For now everything is going well and we are looking forward to presenting the game at the festival.

Thats all for today, stay tuned!

October Update

The year is almost over and a lot has happened around the game. Of course, there is still a lot of work to be done and we would like to take this opportunity to let you know what we are currently working on and what our plans are for the coming year.

Roadmap

Next Fest
Our next “big” goal would be to participate in a Steam Next Fest with a demo version of ‘Beats of Betrayal’. We are currently going through the Steam on-boarding process. Exactly when we will be able to participate in a Next Fest depends on how long it takes for our tax and bank information to be verified.

Early Access
After generating a little more buzz around the game, it will be time to release the game on Steam Early Access. We plan to do this within the next year and have a major content update ready for that occasion.

Release
The actual release of the game will probably be about a year after the early access. Our vision for the final game includes more stages, enemies, characters and skills, and runs where you keep your skills across multiple stages. We are also thinking about things like an adventure mode or earning medals in challenges, although these are just ideas in our notebook right now.

New Demo
We are currently taking all the feedback from Gamescom and our trusty Discord community and implementing anything we feel will improve the game. There is also some polishing going on that may not be obvious to the player at first glance.

Sight Map

In the past, enemies would sometimes move to hard to reach areas. Since some players like to clear the whole stage, this was a bit unfortunate. To solve this problem, we have been working on calculating sight maps on the fly. This allows the enemy to know which parts of a room are difficult for the player to reach, so they can avoid them. However, this also means that they are more likely to hit you with their bullets. How unfair! We look forward to our enemies hunting you more efficiently from now on.

Behavior Tree

We love smart enemies. However, our current enemies are all handcrafted, so their behavior is not as complex as we would like. To address this, we have been working on a behavior tree system that is designed to be extensible and allows us to reuse certain behaviors, such as enemies fleeing when their health is low. In the future, we can take this behavior even further by having enemies try to get close to a healing enemy to recover. How unfair! You can see a behavior tree in action in the preview below.

This also means we are rewriting and refining the behavior of current enemies.
Check out our classic companion mimic being powered by a behavior tree!

New Stage Teaser

Are you afraid of what is lurking in the dark?
This stage will surely test your courage!

Gamescom, Free Demo, Studio, YouTube

Gamescom 2023 Review

The Gamescom 2023 is over and it was a real blast! Even though the event took a lot of energy, we are so thankful that we had the opportunity to present ‘Beats of Betrayal’ publicly and connect with interested players. We are especially happy about all the people that joined our Discord server to stay in touch, play the demo and give us feedback to help us give the game the polish it deserves.
Thank you for the support, we’re glad to have you!

Free demo in Discord

You read that right: There is a public demo version available for free right now!
To play, all you have to do is join our Discord server, visit the download channel and click the link.

Join our Discord server here: https://beatsofbetrayal.com/discord

The demo version includes two game modes, three difficulties, two stages, three playable characters and 36 skills. This playtest ends on October 9th 2023.

Games2Beat Studio

We are finally officially a two person company! Next to our official legal company name we were able to pick a name for commercial representation and settled on ‘Games2Beat Studio’. This took a while but this means we are one step closer to getting that Steam store page.

YouTube Channel

We created a new YouTube-Channel for the studio, for which we have some future plans. For now we settled on uploading gameplay footage of a complete forest stage run, to showcase some of the current state of the game. I recorded this very recently while playing the demo version that is available on the Discord server.

As you can see, these are exciting times for us and the game. There is a lot to be done, we have so many plans for so many things, but most importantly we are looking forward to seeing the whole project coming together.

This is all for now, thank you for reading!

Gamescom 2023

We have the opportunity to present ‘Beats of Betrayal’ at this years gamescom 2023 in Cologne, Germany! This is very exciting so we went ahead and did a lot of artworks and designs for print-media to be fully prepared for our time there.

For this event we have something really special in store for you: We got our hands on two “Vewlix Diamond” arcade cabinets, which will run ‘Beats of Betrayal’ at the convention! The artworks I mentioned earlier are in part for these cabinets, for example I created an instruction panel to place just above the controllers so you can always look up the button mapping.

To find us on the gamescom fairgrounds, enter hall 10 and get to the “retro area”. In the hall plan below you can see the area in orange.

Until the convention starts there is still much to do, so we will go back to work…
Visit us at the gamescom 2023 in Cologne between August 23rd and August 28th!

This is all for now, thank you for reading!