The first week since En Garde!'s release has passed and we're incredibly grateful for the reception! Thanks everyone! 💖
In between peeking at streams and reading all of the comments, we've been working on some things based on your feedback! Today, we release the first main patch for En Garde! 🛠
It contains some new quality of life features, some gameplay tweaks and improvements, and a variety of bug fixes. This will not fix all remaining issues with the game, but more patches will be coming in the upcoming weeks!
New features:
- When replaying episodes, tutorials windows will not open and be minimized in a corner of the screen, with an optional button prompt to reopen them.
This is a quality of life improvement to fluidify the experience of consecutive playthroughs.
- Added a setting to hide all interface.
This was made for players who want to capture gameplay videos or screenshots without interface.
- Added an accessibility setting for disabling instant-regen (yellow) guard bars on enemies.
This new setting is useful for players who find yellow guard enemies too difficult or too restrictive.
- Improved support of ultrawide display.
HUD and camera framing should now better adapt to ultrawide screens.
These improvements should be a first step towards a perfect support of ultrawide. We will perform extra tests on this in the upcoming days. We are eager to hear feedback from players using ultrawide screens!
Gameplay improvements:
- Difficulty tweaks on final boss (episode 4). Added some extra interactions in the arena, simplified waves of enemies. Various tweak on the final boss Count-Duke enemy : especially, reduced his guard amount during yellow bar phases.
We have slightly reduced the difficulty of the final boss. We still want the final boss to be a difficult challenge where you must do great tactical use of every tool at your disposal, but we felt like we went a bit too far with its difficulty.
- Various tweaks on the Captain enemy when she is enraged. Increased the number of attacks she can initially take before deflecting the player. Added the ability to surprise her by dodging her base combo even when she's enraged. Reduced her aggressiveness weight. Reduced the maximum time during which captain will chase the player when they want to attack.
We tweaked the Captain enemy to make her a bit more forgiving when she’s in “rage” mode. We might do even more tweaks on the Captain in future updates.
- Various clarifications for challenges in UI. Added a highlight on current level’s active challenge in the level brief menu. Challenge titles are now always displayed even when not discovered yet. Fixed an issue with challenges sometimes not displaying in HUD in the areas you have to accomplish them.
- Reduced enemy aggressiveness. Slight decrease of the frequency of base attacks for enemies in normal difficulty. Does not impact the frequency of enemies opportunity attacks (red attacks when they defend each other).
- Increased time spent by enemies on the ground from 2.5 sec average to 3.5 sec average.
This makes the special skill #2 more powerful because you can now keep enemies on the ground for a longer time while you fight one of them.
- Reworked the reaction of captains and count-duke against cannons.
- Grenadier is now forbidden to dodge with her smoke bomb if she is currently surprised (!), for the entire surprise duration (even if she's not in an animation blocking her).
- Tweaked El Vigilante episode 1 guard regen speed and removed his fatigue bar decay.
- Removed Zaida opportunity attacks to make her easier to deal with in group fights in arena mode.
- Changed color of enemy guard regen VFX because some player were confusing it with a red attack VFX.
- Removed a grid in the wall in the sewers to make the secret entrance where you can roll under easier to see.
- Added extra lanterns in episode 2, in a situation where you must use an explosive crate to make it clearer to understand.
Other fixes:
- Refactored UI logic to avoid loss of focus and desync of focus between mouse and controller. Should fix the issue preventing to properly rebind buttons when using a controller.
- Fixed an issue causing T key on a keyboard being unresponsive when assigned to an input.
- Fixes on arena mode modifiers that trigger critical attacks.
- Fixes on arena mode modifiers that would prevent to use a special skill properly.
- Fixed an issue allowing selection of multiple arena mode modifiers at once instead of one.
- 'Henchperson Solidarity' modifier won't heal dead enemies anymore.
- Controller rumble will stop during level loading.
- Dialogues lines are now interrupted when the speaker dies.
- Fixed an issue where a secondary gate would open in episode 2 leading to an invisible wall.
- Fixed the location of a respawn checkpoint in episode 4.
- Added a logic to prevent the same bark from occurring twice in a row.
- Fixed an issue causing chickens to always default to the same skin color.
- Fixed multiple camera fade issues.
- Fixes on statistics on level recap screen.
- Fixed timer saved data now correctly recording last level of the episode.
- Fixed inconsistency with saved timer when starting a previously played chapter with the main menu's continue button after finishing the previous one and going back to the main menu
- Fixed an issue causing arena mode to appear in the wrong place and in the story mode.
- Fixed Vigilante constantly going back near the table in episode 4.
- Fixed Zaida constantly going to the edge of the bridge in episode 4.
- Prevent barks when player is running away from being said before the enemy was ever engaged in fight.
- Removed the need to interact with the lever to trigger the boss fight in episode 4, to avoid players being confused by the lever’s utility.
- Fix some animations of enemies falling to the ground to make sure characters get up if you attack them while they’re on the ground.
- Fixed bark subtitle sometimes not disappearing when NPC despawn falling in water.
- Prevent generic death bark playing when an enemy is drowning in water.
- Investigate points will now be destroyed if they are in a map loaded in arena mode to make sure they can never ever appear in arena mode.
- Fixed localization of arena mode bosses names.
- Fixed localization of text for Elite soldiers group tutorial.
- Fixed inconsistency with the kick when Zaida has a bucket or turkey on her head.
- Fixed an issue causing main menu input bar to not stretch properly.
- Enabled preservation of aspect ratio in windowed mode.
- In episode 1 weaken tutorial, first lackey is now registered as objective with other lackeys.
- Fixed arena music when reloading some arenas.
- Fixed impact SFX layer when kicking a door to open it.
- Reorder accessibility settings, moved camera assist settings to gameplay page + resized settings row to show more on one screen.
- Cauldron is better outlined when aiming at it with a grenade.
- Fixed foley sounds on various animations.
- Fixed some AI navigation issues.
- Various UI improvements.
- Various graphical fixes.
- Updated credits.
You're enjoying En Garde! but you're done playing the story? Don't hesitate to give the arena mode a try! With its crazy fight situations and its gameplay modifiers, it elevates En Garde!'s comedic combat experience to new heights! Plus, you'll have a secret boss to defeat if you make it all the way to the Legend difficulty... 👀
