[Asteroth]

Blighted is a fast-paced action roguelike with randomized encounters and many persistent items and upgrades. Every encounter features dynamically generated enemies, each filling unique roles and synergizing with each other, and every level brings new types of enemies with increasingly deadly abilities, each punctuated with a powerful boss. And for you, the player, there are many different weapons to unlock, complete with unique upgrades, as well as many passive upgrades to your ship, enhancing your ship's properties and providing new abilities, and an 'equipment' item, a special triggered item with various effects like temporarily reflecting enemy projectiles back at them, or a laser grappling hook to snatch enemies or quickly relocate.

Grab it on Knossos!

Here's a gameplay video!

Roadmap:
I have a lot of plans in store for Blighted, and this is far from the end. In vague order of priority:

• New Items
• New Equipment
• New Weapons
• A rebalancing of the game to remove damage and defense upgrades and squash the scaling of the game, because those buffs are kinda lame and I want no seed/not 100% seed runs to be more viable than they are. Accomplished in version 1.1!
• An intro hub area so I can dumpster the lame 'briefing'
• New Enemy Types
• New Playable Ships
• Achievements
• Challenge mode difficulty which comes with a variety of more-challenging shakeups and remixes of the normal mechanics
• Turn this into an actual TC like it should be
• Boss alternative variations

Credits:

• Eatthepath - for lots of early playtesting and a big shoutout to Warmachine for inspiring many aspects of this mod
• Kestrellius - for playtesting and directly contributing various graphical effects, and indirectly doing the same through my relentless pillaging of the MVPs graphics
• Marguel - for playtesting
• Hades, Risk of Rain, Synthetik, and Nova Drift - for being awesome games and my biggest inspirations

Changelog:

Hidden Text: Show

1.0.1: Fixed a bug which would cause a crash if the player picked Ykka
1.1.0:

• Scanning seeds now shows 'ghostly image' of the type of item dropped by the seed, whether weapon, upgrade, or equipment.
• Damage and Defense buffs removed
• Approximate enemy damage and HP scaling per level changed 1.0 / 1.5 / 2.2 -> 1.0 / 1.2 / 1.5
• Zealous Dynamo, Red Flux Capacitor, Blue Flux Capacitor added
• Fixed a bug where normal weapon energy difficulty scaling would apply. All difficulties now have the same weapon energy usage as intended.
• Static Charge changed, 100 damage at 100m (+40m) every 10 (-2) seconds -> 150 damage at 140m (+40m) every 15 (-2.5) seconds
• Shield Catalyzer nerfed, 25% (+25%) per kill -> 25% (+10%) per kill
• 'Extra Repair' renamed to 'Enhanced Regeneration'

1.2.0:

• Items Afterburner Engine, Overflow Reactor, Yellow Flux Capacitor, Ammo Catalyst, Hull Catalyst, Revengeant Prism, Afterburner Catalyst, Siege Drone added.
• Equipment Paralyzer added
• Weapon Venarus' Dart added
• Fixed a bug where spores would not deal damage
• Laser Hook has a limited range of 4km (used to be something like 30km, yikes!)
• Speed buffs now are indefinitely stackable
• Urumi slightly nerfed across the board. Less damage, more energy, worse homing.
• Collision damage modified to be less effective vs larger ships, but benefits from bonus damage now
• Added better sounds for Hammer and Onager hits
• Static Charge and Iridescence (and Siege Drones) no longer benefit from bonus damage, and have been slightly buffed in damage.
• Added Upgrade 'Options', where a choice of two can be chosen
• Added Augments, which augment the level of a currently equipped item of the Player's choosing
• Level 2 and 3 Spores no longer trigger catalysts, and level 1 ones only trigger at half effect
• Cyathiums are much faster, 20m/s -> 50 m/s
• Phase duration nerfed (15s -> 12s), Reflecting Shard nerfed (10s -> 8s)
• Base afterburners modified, burn for a bit longer, but recharge slower

[Goober5000]

Highlighted.   Looking forward to playing this!

[Iain Baker]

Sweet! That looks hella fun :-)

[EatThePath]

A rebalancing of the game to remove damage and defense upgrades and squash the scaling of the game, because those buffs are kinda lame and I want no seed/not 100% seed runs to be more viable than they are

All this time and I never tried going through the node before finishing all the seeds. Welp.

Go play this game. Even if roguelikes aren't your thing you should at least give what Asteroth has done a spin. I'm pretty sure Blighted has within it the coolest thing I've experienced while playing FSO.

[Mito [PL]]

Yeah, it's rather fun to play. The factor of random is one thing, but the amount of cool abilities to use is fantastic. Blighted is a great creation, so simple on the art side and so enjoyable.

Also the soundtrack is bonkers.

[Dilmah G]

^This. Gave it a whirl this afternoon and it was an absolute treat. Good work Asteroth!

[Asteroth]

Version 1.1 released!

• Three new items added, Zealous Dynamo and Red and Blue Flux Capacitors.
• Damage and defense buffs have been removed entirely, and enemy scaling has been reduced. They will still scale into late game, but now you have to leverage the boosts from your items more to compensate, which is more challenging but feels much better in gameplay.
• The type of item a seed drops can now be 'previewed' by scanning the seed.

Those are the biggest most user facing changes but details can be seen in the changelog.

[Asteroth]

Update 1.2 released, which comes with a boatload of new items, a new weapon and equipment and an expanded amount of choice over your build!

Note: You will need to restart your 'campaign' after starting the new update (this will likely apply to all future updates)

• 5 new items
• 3 new items in the newly added Legendary tier of items
• New Weapon, Venarus' Dart
• New Equipment Paralyzer
• Upgrades now have a chance to give you a choice of 2 upgrades
• Augments can now drop, which allow you to increase the level of a currently equipped item of your choosing

As always, details in the changelog.

[CRZgatecrusher]

I played through blighted and...


LOVED it, it's something I've always wanted in Freespace and I adore it.
The Enemies were great, the weapons were interesting and the items were fun (especially the lateral and reverse upgrades). The bosses were spectacular and the largest complaint is "There's not enough" (if that's even really a complaint. It's just such a fun mod).

I've found two bugs. your equipment (and only equipment) survives through mission resets (and mission resets only) and after beating a boss and jumping through the gate you can get an ally called "stand in" (probably just used for cut-scenes) but only if you time accelerate fast enough before the cut-scene for a new stage starts. Yes you can get more than one of them and yes it's kinda dumb (in a fun way). Sorry if you've already been alerted to these bugs.

An interesting thing to note but I find I avoid weapon and upgrade seeds after a while (equipment when I find one I like) and weapons when I beat the first boss.

I hope there are more updated in the future because this mod is awesome.

Spoiler:

ps: the friendly spirits from the final boss right with the root... what do they do?

[Asteroth]

I'm glad you enjoyed it! Rest assured that I do have many remaining plans for new content for Blighted down the road. I can understand skipping weapon and equipment seeds once you're satisfied, this is pretty intentional although I may slowly bring down their chances the longer you go into the game, but skipping upgrades? There's no downside to getting more!

Thank you for letting me know about those bugs as well, they should be pretty simple to fix.

Spoiler:

They have no gameplay effect, if that was your question.

[CRZgatecrusher]

oops I meant equipment not upgrades. I never skip upgrades or augments as they are always beneficial.