The deep waters have changed - what was once a simple endless loop of growing, adapting, eliminating your foes and resting is no more. Instead of laying down your Zooids after finishing the game you will now be able to repeat your journey in a new Epoch. Some may call it a New Game Plus!

Each new Epoch starts after your long slumber, getting a wake up call to climb back onto the top of the food chain. After your first Epoch, Nature starts to Mutate and shift towards chaos. Each dive brings new Mutations to your foes and each Boss kill awards you with a choice of one. Alpha creatures also reward you with a choice of Mutation - but beware, the one that isn't picked gets applied to the rest of the creatures.

That is some highly mutated Sipho right there

New Epochs and Mutations will give new opportunities to experiment with builds that were not possible before - some Mutations may even change Zooid properties that affect their placement. Other Mutations will simply make you faster, stronger or prolong buff durations!


Gameplay Changes

Your run will no longer be ending in the area after the last boss. You can choose to roam The Open Waters (formerly Freeroam) and fight your former creations freely, but entering a Whirlpool will again bring you to a first Level. You will be stripped of Nutrition, but will not lose anything that has been Adapted or Mutated. A new Epoch will begin.

In following Epochs Mutations are introduced - permanent buffs that stack and affect your colony in different ways. Currently there are 4 Grades of Mutations with increasing effect with each Grade:

• Grade I: Usually affects all Zooids. These Mutations are weak, but can stack up quickly if combined with other Mutations.
• Grade II: A group of Zooids is affected - either whole Breed or type of Zooid - Combat, Movement, Utility, Structure. These Mutations can enhance your strategy or allow shifting it towards previously non-viable one. These Mutations have stronger effect than Grade I.
• Grade III: Affects specific Zooids and have strong effects. Some stats, like the new Neighbor Reach stat will increase how far, for example Zenoplate, Splitter or Greaser buff their Neighbors - a strong effect which even affects how your Sipho is shaped.
• Grade IV: Affects specific Zooids with very strong effect and can have drawbacks. Designed to change your playstyle and strategy. Negative effects can be countered with lower Grade Mutations.

Mutations can be acquired and will be applied to Enemies in different ways:

• Each dive to a deeper Level awards enemies with Grade I and II Mutations - the difficulty gradually increases, keeping you on your toes.
• Each non-boss, non Level 1 and not The Open Waters level will have an Alpha creature spawned which will be Mutated with two additional Grade I-III Mutations. Killing it will allow you to choose one to keep and another to give to your opponents. A risk-reward opportunity to make your Sipho even stronger.
• In addition to Zooids, regular bosses will drop Grade I-III Mutations and the final boss will award you with Grade III-IV Mutations.

As you might notice, Grade IV Mutations are never awarded to Enemies - this is intentional as this allows us designing more game-breaking mechanics without compromising the difficulty. We can never be certain that there will be enough counter-Mutations for adverse Grade IV effects and Layout designs so that Enemies stay competitive and varied. For example, some built-in designs can be broken with Grade IV Mutation which increases Spike Damage by 500%, but reduces Range to close to 0.

Layouts that have been Autosaved will retain Mutation information. This will preserve Mutation context in which that Layout works. In the future, we will add Layout Mutation manipulation to Aquarium so irrelevant Mutations can be stripped off or new ones added.

Changelog

You can find the long list of changes on Pastebin.

These new additions are massive and best explained while playing the game. Don't hesitate, jump in Sipho and let us know how you like them.

The future

This 0.9.0 update marks a huge leap forward and little remaining steps towards Sipho 1.0.0. Development will not be slowing down - in the near future we will be polishing up remaining boss fights, improving enemy AI and getting ready to come out of Early Access. More on these news will come soon. For now we are prototyping new Breed.
If you are interested how the game is made, we sometimes stream development on Twitch
Join our Discord community if you wish to chat with other players, share your strategies or creations and gives us feedback on early builds!