How Many Dudes Demo Update 0.1

OH WHAT? OH. Hey, Dudes. Didn’t see you there, because I was workin’ so hard duding up this game about dudes doing dude stuff. We’ve been collecting player feedback, squinting at analytics, and experimenting with all kinds of fun new toys to add to How Many Dudes over the past few weeks. And now… IT’S TIME TO GET YOUR TINY HANDS ON IT!

Unlockable Dice

There are two big points of feedback we’ve consistently gotten from our players:

1. “I want some kind of meta-progression,” and
2. “I want a bit more control over the RNG of the early game.”

So we solved both of these problems in one swoop with new UNLOCKABLE POCKET DICE!

As you reach certain Collectibles benchmarks, you’ll be rewarded with Pocket Dice that you’ll start every run with, allowing you to reroll all kinds of stuff in the early game if you so desire.

Dark Mode

Do you have sensitive, special eyes? If so, you’re in luck! With our new DARK MODE setting, you can gaze longingly upon the How Many Dudes UI without writhing in pain!

Not much more to it than that… uh… You just kinda check the box and you’re done. ENJOY!

The Scavenger Dude Arrives!

A Scavenger Dude will now begin appearing during your runs! If you lend him a couple of your Relics for a while, he’ll venture out into the Dudiverse with them and eventually bring them back with a bonus relic.

And if you’re feeling particularly brave, you can accept BOTH of his offers.

The Daily Dude

When starting a new run, you will now have the option to play a “Classic” run or “The Daily Dude”. The Daily Dude is a randomized team of Dudes that you can play for that day, and everyone in the world will have the same Daily Dude selection on the same day. See how far you can get with whatever weird team comp RNGesus comes up with!

And if the run goes badly, NO PROBLEM! You can replay the Daily Dude as many times as you want! Until midnight, when the Daily Dude turns over with a new team.

New Speed Increase Option

You asked; we delivered!

There is now an option to increase the game speed to 1.5x, instead of just toggling between 0.25x and 1x. We probably can’t go much higher than this, because as things are happening faster, more events get compressed into fewer frames. Thus the game runs the risk of having too many things happening each frame and crashing. We’ll keep optimizing to try to reduce the chance of this happening, but for now this is what we were able to do!

Cash Tracker

You can now hover over or click on your money to see a breakdown of all of your income and expenses from the current run. Why? I don’t know! IT’S COOL TO SEE NUMBERS.

“Best Runs” Page Improvements

As we make big changes to the game, your best runs from older versions will no longer be relevant. To make this clear, your best runs will be separated by minor version number, and runs from older versions will always be pushed down under runs from newer versions.

If there are runs from older versions you want to preserve on your Best Runs page, you can use the new “Locking” feature. If you pop open a run on the Best Runs page, you can click a “Lock” icon in the bottom-right corner to lock that run, which prevents it from being pushed off the Best Runs page.

Also, the Best Runs page now stores your 40 best runs, up from 20.

Updated Endgame

• Reworked all the boss fights from round 100 onward.
• Added a new arena background for rounds 110+.
• New music for rounds 100+.
• Added a new Round 110 boss fight that’s… something.
• New boss fight modifiers:
  • Serrated: 25% of enemy damage ignores Temp Health.
  • Resilient: Your Dudes’ Crit Chance against enemies is reduced by 1/3.

Localization

We’ve added language support for the following 8 languages:

• Simplified Chinese
• LATAM Spanish
• Korean
• Japanese
• Russian
• Brazilian Portuguese
• German
• French

Enemies

• Gorillas
  • A new, more powerful type of Gorilla has entered the fray! Diamondback Gorillas only appear in rounds 100+.
  • Gorillas have had their visuals updated to be less… game jammy.
• Bears
  • The Polar Bear is now much stronger and is only found in rounds 100+.
  • A new Grizzly Bear enemy is taking the place of the previous Polar Bear in terms of strength.
  • A new Panda Bear has appeared as a weaker bear type enemy who you can fight in the midgame.
  • The strongest bear of them all, the Zombear, has appeared, starting on round 109. It’s… a zombie bear. Also it makes a rot cloud that reduces Dude healing received, because it’s gross.
• Big Cats!
  • A whole batch of new Big Cat type enemies have appeared! All Big Cats have a passive “Piercing” trait, which allows 25% of their damage to pass through Temp Health.
  • Cougars, Leopards, and Panthers have been added as somewhat weaker Big Cats, and you can encounter them throughout the game.
  • Lions and Lionesses appear as a possible round 80 boss, as well as in rounds 100+. Lions and Lionesses have special pride-oriented abilities.
  • Tigers can appear in rounds 80+, and Sabertooths appear in rounds 100+. These two Big Cats will occasionally single out a Dude and throw him out of the battle, then pounce on him and start chewing his elbows off.

New Combat Effects & Behavior Tweaks

• Stun Resistance
  • Many large enemies now have a resistance to being stunned. Each stun they are hit with will chip away at their Stun Resistance until they are finally stunned.
• Enemies with large hitboxes will now be able to overlap with one another a bit so they don't end up attacking in single file like henchmen.
• Taunted enemies now ignore collision with one another, to prevent the issue where a single Dude could taunt hundreds of enemies, but only the closest enemies could actually hit him because they would block access.
• Horse-Sized Ducks will stop emitting their Quack Blast if there are fewer than 3 Dudes remaining. This should resolve the issue where a Frankendude gets thrown by 57 Horse-Sized Ducks for 45 minutes until he finally gets quacked to death. That’s a real sentence and I stand by it.

Dude Reworks & Rebalancing

• Ghost Dude
  • The Ghost Dude has been fully reworked to be a dedicated healer, using health bar equalization as his core mechanic.
  • “Phase Shift” now has a 20% chance to trigger when the Ghost Dude deals attack damage, and it no longer causes the Ghost Dude to go ethereal. Instead, it causes the Ghost Dude to equalize the health percentage between the most-injured Dude and the highest-HP dude, and then heal both Dudes based on his attack damage.
  • The Ghost Dude’s relics have been reworked to interact with this new Phase Shift mechanic.
• Ninja Dude
  • The Ninja Dude no longer goes into Stealth on critical hits. Instead, he throws Shurikens on critical hits. The Shurikens are thrown in the direction of random nearby enemies, and they can deal damage to several enemies they pass through before breaking. Many of his relics have been reworked to interact with his Shurikens.
  • Turbo Team is no longer roster-based. Instead, it causes the Ninja Dude to buff nearby allies’ Attack Speed when he throws his Shurikens.
• Wizard Dude
  • Instead of shooting fireballs based on dealing attack damage, the Wizard Dude now shoots a fireball every 3 seconds, guaranteed.
  • Fireballs’ AOE effect is no longer split between targets struck, allowing Wizard Dudes to deal uncapped AOE damage that scales up dramatically against larger groups of enemies.
  • Several Wizard Dude relics have been reworked to give him more stacking runaway damage effects, a cheat death mechanic, and some team buffing utility.
• Vampire Dude
  • Increased base HP to 120, up from 100.
  • Hollow Fangs no longer reduces the Vampire Dude’s HP.
  • Venomous Lipstick now increases Vampire Dude damage by 30%, in addition to its previous effects.
  • Blood Bag now heals 3 Dudes for 40% effectiveness, instead of 2 Dudes for 50% effectiveness. This is an overall 20% increase in Blood Bag efficacy.
  • Soul Reliquary now provides 15% lifesteal to allies, up from 10%.
• Warlock Dude
  • Increased the starting HP of the Warlock Dude to 180 so he doesn’t flop over so hard in the early game.
  • Dark Wand now has a taunt component, allowing the Warlock Dude to get taunts from two of his relics instead of just one.
  • Warlock Dudes who teleport using the Pocket Obelisk no longer teleport to other Warlock Dudes. This should prevent the scenario where Warlock Dudes all end up in a pile, leaving the rest of your Dudes to fend for themselves.
• General Dude
  • Frilled Shoulderpads now grants the General Dude 100% of the amount healed as Temp Health, up from 50%.
• Samurai Dude
  • Increased base run and dash speed so he has less downtime from dashing.
  • The Samurai Dude is now smarter about choosing targets. If there are targets he is able to dispatch in a single hit, he will dash to the closest one of those targets. If not, he will dash to the lowest-health target in the match.
  • Bokken now grants 30% Max HP, up from 20%.
• Viking Dude
  • Grog now grants 2 extra seconds for Berserk, up from 1. This should make it easier for Viking Dudes to chain their berserks together to take advantage of Loki's Arm.
• Frankendude
  • Frankendude now gains 1% Max HP from Borrow Organs, down from 3%.
  • Bone Broth now heals the Frankendude based on the Max HP of the Dude who got knocked out instead of the Max HP of the Frankendude.
• Cleric Dude
  • Cleric Dudes no longer target summoned Dudes as their primary heal target.
• Zombie Dude
  • When a Zombie Dude explodes due to Explosive Innards, all Relic knockout effects are now triggered and handled. So he will always turn into a Skeledude via Willing Flesh, and he can also be revived via Smelling Salts after exploding and continue fighting.
• Misc. Relics
  • Adjusted Caged Tiger and Purple Heart so they aren’t quite so extremely overpowered. Still pretty dang strong, though.
    • Caged Tiger now grants 20% Crit Chance, down from 25%.
    • Purple Heart now grants 20% damage conversion to Temp Health, down from 25%.

Miscellaneous

• All Relics available in the Demo now have their final intended artwork.
• Relic prices now increase faster after round 60, so you’ll want to utilize the new Scavenger Dude to more reliably fill out your kit!
• Reviving via Smelling Salts or Dude Juice now clears damage over time effects.
• Dude Juice now revives dudes during battle with 100% HP instead of 50% HP.
• This update brings a large batch of optimizations to a whole bunch of combat mechanics, aimed at reducing the FPS drop in extremely large battles in the late game.
• Several relics that previously didn’t have counters now have counters, such as the Death Rattle.
• The Emergency Ring now clears Pact, so if a Warlock Dude triggers it he might actually live.
• Audited and updated all Dude and Relic tooltips to use more consistent language and terminology.
• Flyers are now posted on rounds 2, 4, 9, 13, and 17, so you can assemble your team more quickly and start gearing up your Dudes without having a poor straggler left behind in the 20’s.
• Crit Damage is now considered an “Additive” stat, so any increases in Crit Damage will be added to the prior amount. E.g. if you have 200% Crit Damage and gain 10%, you will now have 210%.
• There is now a setting to disable flashing enemies and Dudes during combat.
• The run end screen Collectibles UI now has custom sound effects.

UI Improvements

• When a Dude is knocked out, a red X now appears in his healthbar frame. If the Dude was already knocked out prior to the current battle, his X will be gray instead of red.
• Updated the hover frames for relics and consumables so they look cooler and can handle longer name strings.
• Health Bars now animate Temp Health and Pact more smoothly.
• Health Bars now take Temp Health into account for their sort order for Dudes that are at full health to create a pleasant viewing experience.
• Removed the individual knockout information from Dudes when expanded in the roster, since the Knockout Report already has this information.
• Disabled the Kill Feed by default, since it adds a lot of CPU overhead and doesn't really mean anything in the late battles. Players can still enable it if they want to.
• Added the option to go to the Main Menu after losing a run, instead of always just starting over.
• The Dude Family indicators in the ranch UI are no longer hoverable or clickable. They didn't convey any real information, but they kept getting in the way of click-drag.
• You can now restock the first Merchant Dude’s inventory on round 5.
• The camera now does a better job of taking your MASSIVE RELIC PILE into account during combat, so Dudes and Enemies are less likely to end up obscured behind it.
• Updated the Burner Phone visuals so it's more clear which dudes are available and how many you have selected to teleport.
• When in a boss fight, there is now a skull icon by the round number that you can hover over or click to see what the current boss modifier is.
• Increasing the UI scale in the settings now increases the size of the healthbars.
• Updated the Regular Dude recruitment frame to look like the other recruitment frames.

Bug Fixes

• Fixed an issue where the Temp Health granted by Metronome wasn’t taking damage mitigation into account (such as from Toughness or Paladin Blessing), so it was giving far more Temp Health than intended.
• Fixed the issue where blood splatters from larger enemies would sometimes get cut off.
• Fixed an issue that caused the Dude Inspector window to be unable to cycle to the next dude if some of the dudes of that type are unconscious.
• The Dude Inspector no longer depth-sorts behind Relics during gameplay.
• Sending a dude to the Dude Whisperer now properly visually removes that dude from the Ranch.
• Fixed an issue where the Leather Bracer buff was applying to the Spartan instead of his block target.
• The game will now unpause when entering the ending kill shot visuals. Previously, you could pause the game, then use a health potion with Expired Skin Cream to land a killing blow, which would result in the final kill sequence being unable to progress.
• Fixed an issue where, based on dude spawn order, some Spartans wouldn't always spawn near other dudes when you had the Ab Roller relic.
• Added a backup save system that exists outside Steam Cloud. This allows the game to recover files that may be purged by Steam Cloud if the game or device crashes and Steam Cloud fails to sync.
• Randomized round-end rewards are now calculated ahead of time and saved, so using alt-F4 to reroll your round-end rewards will no longer yield different rewards.
• Certain tall enemies like bears now have their heights properly set, so the camera can zoom out and capture them in the frame properly.
• Updated camera margins so Dudes and Enemies are less likely to go underneath UI elements. They still can a bit, but... not as much.