We're already six months in Early Access and now we have the biggest update for you so far that brings you multiplayer!

Hightlights

It's finally time for us to release the multiplayer. Besides that we reset the leaderboards due to the balancing changes in the past six months and added some other stuff.

Multiplayer

We did it and finally released our multiplayer. You can now play against other players. Every team can send monsters to defeat the enemy and has to build towers at the same time to defend the own teams portal(s). The multiplayer works with all official maps including random maps and also every mod. There are also three new maps that were created directly for the multiplayer but are also available in singleplayer.

By playing the multiplayer you will gain experience points to raise your level which then allows you to buy skills to personalize your tactics.

If you don't find an opponent, join our Discord to find active players. And if nobody can join your server, make sure Elemental War has a rule to pass through your firewall.

Important note: the multiplayer is considered a beta feature with this release, so it still might contain a few bug even though we had no problems testing with up to four players.

Map Editor

In the map editor a bug was fixed that prevented T crossings to work properly. Furthermore the user feedback was improved by adding some sounds and highlights.

Leaderboards

The leaderboards have been reset for version 0.9.13, so you get a new chance to raise to the top. This also removes the previous top scores that only were possible by using some exploits that have been fixed in the meantime.

Additionally the score calculation was slightly changed. The time bonus isn't part of the score anymore as its influence was too low before and there is almost no chance to get some significant boost of it in higher difficulties. The influence of gold was also changes to reduce the impact of gold exploits if still possible. Therefore lower gold values now give more points. A change that happened in one of the previous updates was that the value of towers now also affects the gold score.

Full changelog

Enhancements:

• multiplayer is now available
• added highlighting and sounds in editor
• added statistic for multiplayer victories
• removed tutorials
• unlocked three new maps for singleplayer
• added help page for alliances and challenges
• reset leaderboards

Balancing:

• cooldown of Gulp tower increases way slower than before
• cooldown of Money tower increases way slower than before
• reduced impact of gold on highscore
• removed time bonus from highscore as impact was almost 0
• elementals aren't healed anymore by Healer ability

Fixes:

• UI of editor now is blocked while publishing a map isn't finished
• transformed monsters now can't have more HP than monster before transformation anymore
• fixed wrong path detection in editor when there were two tiles directly next to start portal
• monsters don't move sidewards anymore until the first curve when start portal isn't at the edge
• fixed T crossings for single paths in editor
• fixed rare bug loading savegame of Hero Mode
• alliance flag now is displayed again when returning from sub menu
• correct emblem and pattern now is selected in edit alliance menu

What's next?

At this point we added almost everything we wanted to add. So we're moving towards the end of our Early Access period. That means that we'll now focus mainly on optimization.

For optimization we'll try to reduce memory usage, used CPU and GPU and also the network traffic in multiplayer.

As we want to try to also release on consoles we'll further improve the controller support.

There will also be some features that will come in the next weeks like an alliance challenge for the multiplayer and some more quests for Hero Mode.

If you have any other ideas, whishes, balancing concerns or bugs, please let us know, either as comment, in the discussions, via the Feedback functionality ingame or on Discord. You can also reach out there when you are looking for an opponent in multiplayer.